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openSUSE Launches 11.1
Novell has unveiled their latest release to the openSUSE line with 11.1. Offering both updates and new features, Novell continues to push for more openness and transparency. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, Python 2.6, Mono 2.0, OpenOffice 3.0, and many others. "[...] Our choice was also influenced by impressive changes that are transpiring in the openSUSE community, which is growing rapidly and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent. Last month, the project announced its first community-elected board, a major milestone in its advancement towards community empowerment. This is a very good openSUSE release and it delivers some very impressive enhancements. The distro has evolved tremendously in the past two releases and is becoming a very solid and usable option for regular users."
Because I can't seem to get Windows Genuine Advantage to run on it ...
It is an Microsoft os. Novell have gone to the darkside. Mono - oh dear NO Thanks.
paste from distrowatch weekly:
The Faculty of Physical Sciences at the University of Glasgow recently migrated their main logon server across to Slackware Linux. Shane Kelly writes: "A little while ago, the requirements for data transfer from some overseas research sites jumped tremendously, meaning I needed to assess the impact on our aging 'log in' server that was used as a portal to the Physics network." Their original server running SUSE Linux 9.3 had been working well, handling numerous login sessions, but its P3 CPU, 100 Mb network card and 96 MB of RAM were no longer enough to handle the increasing load. A new AMD Opteron-based server was selected and when it came time to choose a distribution, he headed here to DistroWatch.com to help decide. "I have never liked Red Hat (too many 'extras' between you and the operating system), ditto SUSE, and looking at the top twenty Linux distributions on DistroWatch, I could see that many were more suited to desktops, while many more had no 'pedigree' and were simply re-vamped editions of something else. Then my eye hit upon an old-timer that was said to be a bit difficult, devoid of GUI management tools, and rock solid. Yep, I'm talking about Slackware, the oldest surviving Linux distribution, now at version 12.1". The author is happy to be re-acquainted with his old friend Slackware and is recommending it to others for use on their servers.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
openSUSE 11.1, the next major version of the company's community-driven Linux distribution, is scheduled for release on December 17.
where can I get ninnle linux?
This is another release that will go months, if not years, before it has a working Novell Client. It seems that the left hand is never sure of what the right hand is doing.
[citation needed]
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
People say this stuff, but the truth is that Novell doesn't love Microsoft, they just see a business opportunity and a legal wrangle.
If Microsoft wanted to take on Novell again, they'd need a chair. AND a gun. AND a dog.
If I wanted to use SUSE, I would without fear. It's not Microsoft that I'm afraid of. It's Google. M$ is in decline. Google is not.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Novell is "pushing" for more openness? Why does it take "pushing"? Novell owns SuSE - it can just open it as much as it wants. Finally opening the project governance to the community that's been contributing for years isn't even "pushing", or at least not harder than inertia.
Novell does seem to be gradually getting around to opening SuSE. Which is good. But since SuSE could be doing even better if Novell just opened it more, and more quickly, bottlenecked by only it's community's maturity and not by corporate hesitance, I'm not believing this happy talk about "pushing".
--
make install -not war
It seems that every post that points out the Novell/Microsoft deal are marked as troll or flamebait.
I know it's a hot issue and the Microsoft/Novell deal still bothers me, but anyone bringing up this issue is automatically tagged as troll. Care to explain?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Since it doesn't look to be an anti-novell troll.
Not primarily or not solely, at least
I dropped Suse off ALL my servers the day that deal was signed. I mean, literally, on the day. The webcast ended and my centos cds came out.
How does the Novell/Microsoft deal affect your rights? You have not signed it.
If it did affect your rights in some nefarious way, how would not using Suse counteract that?
But still, being aware to look after your rights is a good instinct. Just make sure it is based on facts not FUD. The Free Software Foundation has a list of free distributions which meet their standards. The FSF is generally the most legally conservative and ideologically pure outfit in the free software world, so if you use something they have approved you can be pretty certain of peace of mind.
A reasonable alternative is to use a distribution which keeps a clear distinction between free software and non-free. Debian is famous for this, but Fedora (which is what I use) also has a policy to include only free software (in recent releases anyway). The difference with the FSF-approved distributions lies in loadable firmware, but you may not be concerned about that.
(If you don't want to use Suse because you dislike Novell's business practices and their deal with Microsoft, that's your choice, but just say so rather than inventing stuff about 'legal risks'. Or if you do know of legal risks, please explain what they are so that people can fix the problem.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
And another Ars article says:
Mono does not seem to be just means to an end, but an end in itself.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
You have to have...connections.
Good for you. You did also stop using Microsoft, right?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I haven't seen any *direct* relation between using Suse and losing rights.
But when switching to Suse, people *are* joining the subset of Linux users protected from Ballmers patent war dreams. They can feel at ease there. Nice and quiet. No worries.
Personally I choose to be on the other side, with the majority of OSS developers. That's where my code comes from.
By experience I tend to avoid using the .0 releases as they are often buggy :/
Some like it with bugs..... I don't!
this is the exact reason i will never use 'open' google ware. and as that news from google should not be considered of interest.
RHEL has an "open" clone, CentOS.
Where is the "open" clone of SLES?
I bet most women fail your girlfriend test too.
That's not the case. Only Novell customers (that is, those paying Novell for SLES) and Microsoft customers are covered by the no-sue agreement. OpenSUSE users are not included, so I don't think you are breaking solidarity in that sense.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Oh I see, you are trying to be clever and say because a company that has a monopoly on desktops should make a deal with a Linux distro, we should also dump all our desktops and be innoperative as a company? Yes, good business sense. You should be running a fortune 500.
So by your logic, if you owe money to the mob and are now in debt for life and you see your brother going for a loan, you should be 'happy'???
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
So, what great evil does await me when using this distro? Will it eat my bicycle or infect my record collection with the GPL?
Trust me, I work for the government.
Ironically, I know companies which started Linux (SUSE) adoption upon hearing the news about collaboration.
If nothing else, that was one huge pitch to use Linux coming from nobody else but Microsoft itself.
If you have business and have heaps of Windows servers and Windows clients, adopting something (e.g. RH or Debian) what isn't targeting heterogeneous environment where M$ dominates, is plain too risky. With SUSE the risk is much lower and calling Novell support on M$ vs. Linux compatibility is already an option. Try calling RH and complain that RHEL doesn't connect to Windows (or vise versa).
No, I personally do not like that Novell cooperates with M$. Yes, it is sound business decision which is needed now to spur wider Linux adoption. I hope that famous Novell lawyers know what they do. Let the GPL be with them.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I don't know what elderly people you work with, but none, I repeat, none of the people I work with have every known how to shut down or reboot Vista without me explaining.
MS has hidden the Shut Down and Reboot options under a very small, and unassuming button with a triangle on it in the very lower right of the menu. The Sleep button is the big, red button with the power symbol on it.
I know anecdotal evidence and everything; but your test fails for Vista on every user I have worked with.
+1.
A reasonable alternative is to use a distribution which keeps a clear distinction between free software and non-free.
SUSE always made clear distinction between commercial/non-free software they include and core OS. Core OS always was and is GPL'ed Linux.
All software is installed with rpm - you can always grep for license.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I have hard time belieeving your grandma was able to install Windows and not Linux. 1) Pop in Fedora Live , hit "Install to Hard drive" 2) Open up what word processor (usually only one on a Live cd) 2b) Type letter, save as/export as PDF 3) Open up Firefox/Gmail or Thunderbird send email 4) Take picture, plug SSD into SSD reader on machine 5) Here it gets tricky, can't remember if Linux distros auto add printers... then again I can't remember Windows auto adding printers either. And why exactly does your grandma test include installing and setting up and operating system?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
the sad part is there's probably only one requirement for that test
1. has warm squishy
If it's a matter of principle to have nothing to do with Microsoft, then don't run Microsoft programs. If you're just picking the best software for your business to get work done, then there is no particular reason to drop Novell. You can't have it both ways.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Why write an email in Word or PDF format and attach it to the email? Why not just write it in the email client?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Please link to the 11.1 live kde 4 iso
You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE. Back in the day, SuSE intentionally tried to package non-free software without warning the user: see this talk by RMS:
Since then, of course, they've seen the light and nowadays OpenSUSE is pretty good (I believe) about making a fully free distribution. There was some debacle with a non-free EULA on some beta releases, but I think that is resolved now.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Wow. You must know some extremely technologically savvy old people if you can find a grandma that can configure a mail client. I still sometimes have to pause and think about what the correct settings are.
Your grandmother knows how to find drivers for her network card and install them? Wow. I'm impressed.
Erm...so your grandma can install an OS but can't turn the computer off?
And how the frack is grandma supposed to send an email in Word or PDF from a fresh Windows install? Did she also install Microsoft Office or Adobe Acrobat, or was she supposed to use Wordpad?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE.
Well, in the days I used SUSE very extensively. And, no, SUSE never tried to hide the fact that they ship and install non-free software.
What's more, if you would dig you memory, you might recall that they pretty much from day one were stating that it is impossible to build good OS with only free software. And they were always shipping commercial software. e.g. SUSE was first Linux to include movie editing software - in the times when there was no F/LOSS alternatives. They were also shipping MP3 support - because they acquired license for that. (*)
SUSE was openly stating that they are per se not free. You can make out of SUSE free OS - yet you would loose lots of functionality, making OS non-starter in any OS comparison. And SUSE was always comparable versus Windows and Mac OS.
(*) Freely downloadable ISO image not always included all goodies of the boxed retail version.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I'm interested in more details about the ones who passed the test in XP and Vista. Specifically, how did they acquire the software needed to create a letter in Word or PDF format?
Principles have nothing to do with it... it's a matter of engineering.
Microsoft threatened lawsuits over 200 patents but licensed them to SUSE. Our IT dept (as well as many other IT departments) saw a potential for incompatible licenses after that licensing agreement and made a purchasing decision not to purchase SUSE or other Novell products due to potential incompatibilities in licensing.
It's more than principles... It's engineering and logic, stupid.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Ahh... that's interesting. Still it does not rule out using OpenSUSE, which is not a Novell product (in the sense that they do not sell it, and OpenSUSE users are not Novell customers) and is not covered by the no-sue agreement.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I am a long-time SuSE fan, since it had the least problems with my hardware (esp. laptops), could get my favorite package manager (apt, although since 10.3 & zypper you don't need it), and its config tool Yast was better than most things out there. When our company needed 64bit servers (running VMware among other things) about 4 years ago, SuSE was the best option.
And with every version, it did get much better... until the dreaded 11. At first I installed a SuSE 11 beta on an AMD system to check out KDE 4. As you all know, KDE 4.0 was nothing to look at unless you were a KDE developer, so I didn't have much fun there as a KDE user, however I noticed that the system was VERY unstable, even for a beta. I am not used to seeing hard locks even on beta linux distros.
Anyway, I gave SuSE 11 a shot when it came out. I installed it on a very common Core 2 system (Asus mobo, fresh bios etc). A few seconds after you started KDE (random number), even WITHOUT doing anything, the screen would freeze, and there was nothing you could do, no ctrl+F1, or ssh etc, it was a hard lock. If you switched off and on, nothing out of the ordinary was on the system logs... Tried three clean installations, same behavior, gave up and reinstalled 10.3 (which was always fine). I never had a hard lock with out any clue in the logs, so I could not imagine how I could troubleshoot (without randomly trying things)...
Sorry for the rant, I hope I am allowed a little bit as a SuSE fan. Anyway really hope 11.1 is what 11 should have been for me...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Well played, master troll. You knew Linux live CDs pass these tests regularly with old and young alike. MS Windows is the OS that fails these tests (particularly installation; often no NIC drivers). You got myself and others to respond. Hopefully you're a Linux advocate using reverse psychology...
Well, while you go on in fear, I'm going to continue using what I've found to be the most polished distribution for KDE4 users (out of Fedora, openSUSE, Kubuntu, and Debian). Fedora annoyingly included a pre-release version of xorg that didn't have driver support from nvidia or amd. I have no idea what's up with Kubuntu; the maintainers need to work a little harder at making it stable and fast. Debian is just missing some of the nicer GUI tools for system administration.
If you've got a better distribution to try, I'd love to hear it. (I'm really happy we have KVM ^_^)
Google is such a terrible company. They go around pretending to be the good guys by helping open source projects, promoting an open-source browser, developing an open source browser and supporting webkit, pushing standardization and inter-communication between chat clients. pushing for the use of free (as in beer) software. It clearly won't be long before we were wishing Microsoft was back and those rat-bastards at Google had never touched the web!
And how do you verify that your compiler has not been Trojaned? (warning: PDF)
You using X.org? Have you stripped out any Novell code from the Kernel? Did Banshee, FSpot?
So you don't use OpenSuse. I happen to like Unbuntu myself but that has nothing to do with the Microsoft deal. OpenSuse is a good system from what I have seen, We use it in our office because that is what our sysadmin likes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What license incompatibilities? There are none.
The only thing that changed after the MS/Novell deal wrt using SLED/SLES is that you'd have been protected from law suites over patents from Microsoft.
You chose to make sure that Microsoft could sue you, grats.
There were no license incompatibilities then and there aren't any now.
to test how accessable a word processor is. One of the most common activities at work is attaching a file to an email so we just create a document to attach. Feel free to switch it to a spreadsheet but last time I checked most grandmas know what a letter is more so then a spreadsheet.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Plz seeeeeeed!!
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
What does your grandma attaching a document to an email have to do with work? My mother, who's a grandma (if it matters) has no trouble with this on any OS I've thrown at her except it wasn't word. It was a picture which is more common than writing a letter in a word processing program and far more likely. In fact, I can't think of a time when she's opened office/productivity software other than to make greeting cards with clip art.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Actually, this makes a lot of sense for an Office suite that tries to be MSOffice-compatible. See, according to Redmond, VBA is not cool today - it is being phased out and replaced by Visual Studio Tools for Office. And guess what technology are those "tools" based on, and what languages do they use...
Anyway, for Gtk# development, Mono is actually pretty good - I dare say, not any worse than Python - and quite a bit faster, too. Why shouldn't Novell use the fruits of their own labor to develop helper applications for their distro more rapidly? It certainly makes business sense for me. Similarly, RedHat invests heavily into Python, and uses it to write their own tools.
I recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 on a new machine for my mom's business. It autodetected (correctly!) the HP inkjet plugged into it. CUPS is pretty snazzy these days.
Your grandma knows what a mouse is?
Please take your American software patent problems elsewhere.
Thank you,
rest of the world
Because it's a common activity. Nearly 30% of all email has an attachment according the documentation I have. If you can attach a document to an email it's pretty safe to assume you can attach a picture, mp3, video clip, etc.
Most people do three things:
Send Email
Surf the Web
Use a word processor
Those are three activities to test. You write and attach the memo to kill two tests at the same time. You don't get all day for these kind of tests so you have to compact you test cases down to a slim as possible.
Ethel, install this operating system by following it's instructions. ....
When you are done open a word processor and write a letter to some one and save it.
Go into the email program and set it up using the following settings
Attach the document you made earlier to the email. Don't forget to use the help if you need to.
Once you are done take a picture using this camera.
Connect it to your computer and save the picture from the camera to your computer.
Print that picture you just took.
Go to http://blah/ blah blah/ and check and make sure the date displayed is today's date.
That's what I give them almost verbatim. They are actually printed on those notecard you used in high school and college. Then the observers measure how easy it is for the user, how many times they check the help, ask questions, etc. To pass the user has to do all tasks within 2 hours NOT counting the OS install time. The OS must be installed to the local system, no cheating with Live CDs.
Linux has always failed. First and worse stumbling block, to this day is the Time Zone selection. They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start? Seriosuly they all know they are in Central Time, why the hell would people in Minnesota pick Chicago (their words not mine.)
Next, Windows XP provides actual tutorials and a decent help system. Telling a 75 year old women to read the MAN pages or she's a moron doesn't get you a passing grade either.
With all the Linux fanboys and MS haters, they need a reality check that not everyone can write BASH scripts, use VIM\EMACS, and program in PERL. Linux suffers from a bad case of denial in the INTUITIVE department. Until you start using reason rather then hate the Linux crowd isn't going to get far in an actual discussion about why it keeps stumbling in the user department. It's sad and telling on how humans now communicate. Obama Sucks. MCCain sucks. Linux Sucks. MS Sucks.
Welcome to Idiocracy apparently. No no, no reason needed, just leave that whole reason stuff outside with the smokers.
It's just sad..
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
This is surely a top-notch release. They're only one major version behind with Python.
because that way tests the ability to use the word processor (and the various formatting function to get a decent-looking letter), the ability to save the file, the ability to attach a file and the ability to find where you saved the file (so, for instance, if the word processor saves to ~/Documents by default, and the email client looks for attachments in ~/ by default it may not be immediately obvious where the file has gone)
FGD 135
I set up my parents with openSuSE 11.0 on an older desktop of mine. It runs fine. They are using KDE 4.0. I have to fix a few things now and then, I had to show them how to use some stuff, but they are using it now to print (Canon MP210, network share... slightly buggy when accessing via network on XP but it still works), e-mail (gmail), web (firefox), video (can't remember the program), music (amarok, pandora), documents (openoffice.org, pdf reading), etc.
I'll upgrade my laptop to openSuSE 11.1 first and if it works, upgrade their desktop as well. Hopefully it will support the video card (Radeon 9800) drivers a little bit better.
Frankly, the Microsoft/Novell "evil deal" thing is extremely frustrating to me. I'm working with both SuSE and RedHat a lot at work now, and I frankly prefer SuSE to RedHat as far as usability. I've tried Ubuntu and I don't like Gnome, and it was harder to customize Ubuntu (at least for me) than SuSE 10.3/11.0.
No, SuSE did not pass the grandma-install test, but it passed the set-up-for-parents-and-let-them-use test.
I've been using Ninnle for some time, and I can happily confirm that it is unsurpassed in terms of usability and performance.
The other distros have a lot of catching up to do.
Why are you limiting yourself to Vista? I can honestly say that my 60+ year old grandma wouldn't be able to install any OS I've ever seen. I know very many very smart people who didn't grow up with computers that need help setting everything up still. The GP is an obvious troll. Connecting to the wireless router is a dead giveaway even without the other steps.
Real Slashdotters use Ninnle.
"Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"
My grandma managed to get windows xp installed. But then had a startling realization. She had no network drivers. It made it impossible to get a office application or any drivers to fix the problem. She thought about maybe driving to a library to get try to download them there, but she was without usb stick.
Then I bailed her out. So xp failed the test.
Yes, really, this is not even freshmeat material. It was not even released yet... Who cares? And well, as long as Novell is behind this I'd rather not care at all about testing it, it is not like the other distros didn't do a much better job at those things that were mentioned so eagerly in this slashvertisement...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Isn't todays default mail client internet explorer?
No, I'm pretty sure it's Windows Mail, iMail, Evolution or KMail.
Windows XP will auto add local printers if you simply go to 'add printer'. Pretty easy stuff. Your arguement = fail.
I wasn't aware it meant wait 3 days.
Ethel, install this operating system by following it's instructions.
When you are done open a word processor and write a letter to some one and save it.
sounds like an interesting list. i should try this out, if i get enough free time ;)
They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start? Seriosuly they all know they are in Central Time, why the hell would people in Minnesota pick Chicago (their words not mine.)
i guess this depends on location. here, less than 1% would have an idea what timezone they are in. choosing a city, yes, that will work.
With all the Linux fanboys and MS haters, they need a reality check that not everyone can write BASH scripts, use VIM\EMACS, and program in PERL. Linux suffers from a bad case of denial in the INTUITIVE department.
why would simple users need that ? they don't. for some 5 yers at least. ;) ).
i have set desktop linux for several people. with few exceptions (strong cases of "i'm used to old way and i don't have to pay for it"), all cope surprisingly well.
i even had a user tell me a week ago that they feel windows & microsoft office at their college are unintuitive, because they have used linux/oo.org at home and work for several years (though they were a bit puzzled with interface change when abiword popped up instead of oo.org because of some repo/mine fuckup few years ago
as long as there's somebody to deal with major problems or offer minor advice (like, where to look for custom effects in oo.org impress), they aren't that dumb and can cope really well.
Rich
I haven't ever used Suse, as I've never had the desire. Ubuntu floats my boat just fine, and I'll be trying out Opensolaris pretty soon. All you people saying we shouldn't even talk about Novell can stop talking in this thread, and easily not even read the article. This is an open forum. And C# is technically a good language.
Because it is trolling. Same as your post.
...and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent
It's more than a little ironic that a company which stands the shoulders of countless developers who's work is the product of being "open, inclusive, and transparent" have decided that maybe this methodology may have merit. There are plenty of distributions that "get it". Suse clearly does not.
When did it become SUSE instead of SuSE? DuDE!!
If the ms/novell deal was not an ms scam to make all other linux distros illegal, then what was the point of the deal?
And why hasn't novell offered any good explaination?
Heh. I know of nobody that wasn't already using Linux. Maybe it made some gullible CTO's think that SUSE had special magical connection powers to Windows but these are the same people who probably bought into the whole 'SCO owns Linux' thing too and didn't jump to a Linux distro until their Redmond masters gave them the thumbs up.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Linux has always failed. First and worse stumbling block, to this day is the Time Zone selection. They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start?
Troll much?
Anyway, which distro are you on about? I've installed Suse, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix and XP (twice) recently. XP gave me most bother - I've only got a preinstall of Vista so can't say how good it is. No, I'm not a Grandma.
Also: they know what timezone they're in but not what city?
But then that's usually the case for /.
OpenSUSE is a good Linux distro - one of the top five best, and probably the best. I have 10.3 on my old machine and just installed 11.0 on my new machine. Only complaint I have is now I have to consider whether to upgrade to 11.1. As usual, I'll probably hold off for a couple months to let the bugs get fixed. And I won't touch KDE 4.x until it's at 4.2 at least - too many people complaining about bugs for me to consider using it, although 4.1 is allegedly stable for many people.
Once again, I said when it occurred that Novell's deal with Microsoft was irrelevant for Linux and FOSS in general except to a bunch of FSF psychos and that has proven to be the case. Only lames with no clue continue to bring it up every time Novell is mentioned.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Anybody else notice that posts that are not favorable to the msft/novl deal are modded down as troll or flamebait?
Isn't it funny how that happens whenever there is a issue that is important to msft? Like the ooxml scam, or msft's vista pos?
>>Why is this marked as TROLL??
Because msft shills take over slashdot anytime msft thinks it's important to quash discussions that msft might find unflattering.
Typical msft "Tonya Harding" tactics - just like the msft/novl scam.
If anybody claims that the deal was not a scam, then please explain why the deal was needed?
Then please explain why the deal was needed?
Well, while you go on in fear, I'm going to continue using what I've found to be the most polished distribution for KDE4 users (out of Fedora, openSUSE, Kubuntu, and Debian). Fedora annoyingly included a pre-release version of xorg that didn't have driver support from nvidia or amd. I have no idea what's up with Kubuntu; the maintainers need to work a little harder at making it stable and fast. Debian is just missing some of the nicer GUI tools for system administration.
If you've got a better distribution to try, I'd love to hear it. (I'm really happy we have KVM ^_^)
Have you looked at Mandriva?
I haven't used Mandrake / Mandriva in many years (I'm an openSUSE user), but it is a KDE oriented distribution. Last time I used it, it was quite polished and worked well. I can only imagine that is still true.
Personally, I will stay with openSUSE for the foreseeable future. For me, it just works (TM)
Ever stop to think
Novell bought SuSE and open sourced YaST.
But first they bought Ximian and open sourced the Exchange Connector for Evolution.
Damn those Novell guys for liberating the non-open source pieces of code these companies had! The community has suffered greatly because of Novell! :-)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080904043402537&query=Novel+Microsoft+deal+patent
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070930081040440&query=Novel+Microsoft+deal+patent
And so forth...
Now there was some question as to whether Open SUSE was equally damned as SUSE Enterprise.
I don't want to bet that Microsoft _won't_ sue.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I'm tired of the "easy enough even old people/my parents can use it" statement -- in any context.
My dad's 66 now and he introduced me, a young person, to computers when I was growing up. He was the one that fixed the computers in my house. My grandfather, back in the early 80s, bought a computer and was very competent with it.
Neither my dad or grandfather were engineers or programmers - they were just smart and curious. Using a computer doesn't have anything to do with age -- its not the domain of the young.
Novel doesn't have to "love microsoft" in order for Microsoft to pee in my pool if I use SUSE and they think that means I have a licence with them (Microsoft).
Even if it was an obviously friviolous action, I don't have the reserves to fight off even a casual suit from M$.
So I stay away from products they have tainted, particularly those that are tainted with untried legal practices...
I don't have the money to be a test case.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The number of times this message has bounced between "troll" and "informative" is kind-of funny.
There really should be a way see not just the current rating, but the entire rating log of a message.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Luckily this is a release of opensuse, a distribution that's got nothing to do with the novell-microsoft deal.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
I love the Novell-Microsoft agreement, you now why?
Because since it has been signed, when some geek find out I use linux and start the usual psycho-babbling about Italian translations of free, how cool gimp is, how fast gentoo is or how evil skype is, I can just say "I use SUSE, and I happy with it".
Guaranteed to shut obnoxious open-source paladins up 98% of the times
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Has anyone tried this in a QEMU session? I had real problems getting the last version to install under QEMU most often ending in a QEMU lock up. For info this is the QEMU that comes with Intrepid on AMD64 X2 but using an "i386" guest as the x86_64 guests wouldn't even start to boot.
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
Please note that they are talking about free as in speech. This includes Opera and pine. The latter was put on their non-OSS list because they were not 100% sure. So if in doubt, they put it on their non-oss list.
This still means that things can be distributed freely, just that the source is not as open as one would think or perhaps not available to you or to them. You are obviously free to install these programs or not.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As I have said - this is normal risk based evaluation.
If you have huge install base of anything, you get sensitive as to not ruin everything with e.g. bad budget decision or system update.
SCO? Didn't even registered. CxO's do not read news anyway. And for the rest they have legal counsel on board.
Novell? Same thing. Many companies deployed Linux as cheap backbone for everything what is of Unix origin. Linux in enterprises is most popular for Oracle: RH and SUSE invested heavily into making Linux good Oracle platform. DB, Java, proprietary apps ported from Unix - all that runs on Linux happily. Yet, if you want to deploy Linux as replacement for Windows servers, few CTOs would immediately get excited about the savings. The problem is that risk is too high: M$ with single update to Windows clients can ruin whole infrastructure. Huge companies have phone support from M$. And not some out-sourced support - but real support from M$. If there is a problem, in a matter of few hours you would get M$ engineer helping you resolve problem. That essentially means that M$ alleviates the risks by providing supreme support options to its customers. And support here means that M$ really solves the problem - complaining that some 3rd party (from pov of Linux provider - M$ is 3rd party) did change something won't do. And now that's where Novell enters. They are perfectly positioned to allow CTOs painless migration to the Linux, because they can be called responsible for problems integrating Linux and Windows together. There is no other single company which have any kind of agreement with M$.
And Novell has the experience with huge enterprises, what RH is plainly missing at the moment: RH was and is after Unix server market (what is kind of cheating, as Linux is free Unix implementation), Novell tries to make a dent into Windows server market (a.k.a. missing impossible).
IMHO, enterprises drove themselves into the M$ lock-in. It's theirs problem. But I'm pretty happy to see that some new companies install all-Linux infrastructure - what is true solution to the whole Novell-M$ debacle problem.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I've just tried installing openSuse 11.0 a few days ago. The installing process was maybe the best I've seen so far. Only afterwards the problems started. I did not find out how to get dsl-running and Linux without network is just unusable. Especially Suse which complains all the time about a missing network connection when you try to get the network connection running. Also I failed to get the desktop running correctly with 1440x900 - the resolution was correct, but the desktop itself insisted on beeing larger and everytime I tried to change that a) my taskbar vanished and b) it was reset to the old resolution on the next login. I suppose it might be a problem of KDE 4. Oh and KDE 4... I don't really think it was a good idea to switch to that already. Though I have given up on Suse due to the above troubles and tried Kubuntu afterwards and so my KDE experiences are more based on that configuration (which was the worst desktop experience I had had this decade).
I do not like Novell however this is just absolutely untrue. If Novell looses the ability to distribute GPL softwares then only they loose that right, and parties that they distributed, as long as those parties are comply with the license, keep their license. Read the text of the GPL if you doubt me.
However be weary of changes as in any distrobution. Make sure that you know the licenses of the content you consume and what that means. If this leads to Microsoft turning open-source (HAHAHAHA, oh i got a good laugh there) thats good, otherwise its probably going to be Novell that will push toward propritary solutions. Otherwise this deal will lapse and hopefully nothing comes of it, that would help show that Microsoft FUD is loosing weight.
Gnome main menu too unresponsive.
KDE 4 too slow
KDE 3 menus a little weird compares to suse 10.
11.0 scragged audio settings, made it difficult to
get any sound.
Does 11.1 fix these things?
What is Windows Mail? Is that like Windows Antivirus 2009?