SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas

If you’re using Twitter or Facebook and would like to stay connected to Novell on those network sites, here are a couple of OpenPR blog posts you’ll want to check out…

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Novell announces first open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight

The Mono® Project, an open-source initiative sponsored by Novell, today announced the availability of Moonlight™ 1.0. The first and only open source project that provides Linux* users access to Microsoft* Silverlight* content, Moonlight demonstrates Novell’s commitment to making Linux a first-class platform for multimedia and Rich Internet Applications. Moonlight provides the platform Linux users need to use Silverlight and Windows* Media content. In combination with Banshee™, a Novell-sponsored project to produce an open source media player, Moonlight is part of a complete multimedia solution on Linux.

“Microsoft Silverlight offers the most comprehensive and powerful solution for the creation and delivery of rich internet applications and media experiences, and is used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “We have worked with the Moonlight team and Novell to enable interoperability between Windows and Linux platforms and extend the high-quality interactive Web and video experience for the benefit of the Linux community.”

Available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE®, SUSE® Linux Enterprise, Fedora*, Red Hat*, and Ubuntu*, this release is in part a result of the existing technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell that extends interoperability between Windows and Linux. Windows Media Video (.wmv), Windows Media Audio (.wma) and MP3 files are supported through the Microsoft Media Pack, a Microsoft-delivered set of media codecs that brings optimized and licensed decoders to every Linux user using Moonlight. Additionally, it allows developers to write Rich Internet Applications for multiple platforms.

Moonlight has already proven useful to tens of thousands of Linux users. A pre-release of Moonlight was delivered on January 19, 2009 to allow Linux users to stream Barack Obama’s Inauguration. More than 20,000 Linux users downloaded Moonlight to watch the Silverlight broadcast.

“Moonlight brings the benefits of Silverlight’s popular multimedia content to Linux viewers,” said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Developer Platform vice president at Novell. “This first release delivers on the goal of breaking down barriers to multimedia content and creating parity in the user’s viewing experience regardless of whether the user is on Windows or Linux.”

The Moonlight 1.0 release is part of a technical collaboration announced by Novell and Microsoft in September of 2007. Microsoft has provided Novell with access to its test suites for Silverlight, and provides Linux end users of Moonlight with free access to the Microsoft Media Pack, a set of licensed media codecs for video and audio.

For more information on Moonlight, visit go-mono.com/moonlight. To learn more about open source projects that Novell sponsors and contributes to, visit www.novell.com/linux/opensource.

About the Mono Project

The Mono Project is an open source initiative sponsored by Novell to develop a UNIX* version of the Microsoft .NET development framework. Hosted at www.mono-project.com, the Mono project provides all the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris*, Mac* OS X*, Windows and Unix. Mono has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

Right Information. Right Time. Right Place.

On-demand Training

We all know knowledge creates success. But where do you find the time and money for training in the face of shrinking budgets, rising travel costs and tough economic times?

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• Convenience. We’ve made all the advantages and benefits of our industry-leading live training available any time, from any location.
• Quality. On-demand training provides a rich, interactive and complete online learning environment that includes expert instructors, video demonstrations and much more.

Start taking advantage of on-demand training right now. Now that’s smart made simple.

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One of my most favorite comic strips for years has been User Friendly.  Back in a previous life/job, we even made Sid (the ubergeek Unix sysadmin) a certified SAIR Instructor complete with his own verification code and entry in the official database.

User Friendly is always spot on with it’s humor, causing many a reader to snort caffeinated substance accidentally, myself included.  Now UF is releasing a 10 Year compilation limited edition book that contains EVERY one of the strips, commentary by Iliad (J.D. Frazier) and much more.

I’ve ordered my copy and one in shrink wrap for many years from now, order yours today by visiting Computer Gear’s great shopping site and pre-orderfor shipment in December.

Now THAT will help make a Happy Holiday!

Enjoy,

RossB

From the latest openSUSE Weekly Newsletter…  (you get that right?)

 openSUSE TV

• “I have created an openSUSE channel on blip.tv – http://opensuse.blip.tv The aim is for videos by the openSUSE Community for the openSUSE Community can get uploaded there and reach a much wider audience. “

There’s also an official repository of videos by openSUSE people, which you might want to check out…  It ain’t pretty but the content is great!

http://tube.opensuse.org/

The Situation

Ok, so you know that currently SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 defaults to GNOME as the desktop, a move that garnered comments from a few cranky folks in the KDE [KC]amp.  This move is more easily understood when you realize that most corporations really needed to have a default, that way they didn’t have to stall their testing to make a decision about what Linux Desktop standard they would support.  openSUSE 11.0 doesn’t force such a choice, you have several options, none is selected by default, it’s like being in line at Starbucks and having to decide if you want a twist of lemon in your half-caf, double-decaf.

I’ve been a KDE supporter for a while now, (me love you very long time, KDE) but I realize also that while KDE is very snazzy and fun to use, that’s not exactly the set of criteria that corporations use when choosing a desktop for their users who run Linux.  Let’s face it, most corporations would be very happy and a lot less confused if they didn’t HAVE a choice, it just comes in Blue, and that’s it.  With a big sigh, I realized long ago that when it comes to the corporations out there, KDE loses out to GNOME, it’s just a fact, we demo and demo and they choose the one they want.

What to DO?

I have come to the realization that while we support KDE, we have a whole GNOME division, staffed with tack-sharp and very committed guys/gals who really think that GNOME is the cat’s behind.  I have finally come to the weird and strangely comfortable compromise where I use the GNOME desktop as my default, and I almost homeopathically use KDE apps to get certain things done.  Alt-F2 to run a program is a real time-saver…

Case in Point

Nautilus.  Oh my GOD, Nautilus, what’s happened to you?  I’ll use Nautilus grudgingly, only if it’s easier than setting up KDE’s Konqueror with the Midnight Commander view, or it’s not my machine.  Otherwise, it’s straight into Konq’y and the 2-pane MC view for this techie.  Peter Norton is the KING and I loved and still love the Norton Commander view of things, even more than Xtree Gold, which I have opined (a bit misty-eyed) about in the past.

If you unsync the views on Konqueror’s Midnight Commander mode, you get a great way to move and copy things without having to do a lot of right-clicking, and then when you’re on the command line, which I spend a LOT of time in, the same keystrokes are there, and you don’t have to remember yet another set of oddly-mnemonic-ly setup commands.

Cool Tip

Use Konsole, it rocks.  Set up Konsole to remember your settings, and open up multiple tabs, which gnome-terminal does grudgingly and not very well.  I use the konsole program to administer 7 different servers all from the command line, from a single konsole instance.  I just start konsole and then open up the tabs I need by either clicking on the little tab icon on the bottom left of the Konsole window, or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-t.  When the new konsole tab appears I then ssh to that server and rename the session tab to something useful like ROOT@prod1.blahwoof.net.  Talk about easy to use, you just press Shift-Left or Shift-Right to move among the tabs and administer the servers.

End Game

Use whatever desktop for your Linux desktop experience you want, but remember that the other side has some cool apps too.  You only sacrifice 2MB or so for the needed libraries to run the alternative Desktop’s apps, so it’s memory well spent.

Enjoy,

RossB

There’s a fairly funny and irony-splattered article in BusinessReviewOnline that takes some exception with the latest Aberdeen Group State of the Market Research Report, asking why companies like Symantec aren’t above companies like Skype, etc.

Anyway, Novell came in 48th, a respectable showing, and since the author is taking exception to the orderings of the report, then I’m sure Novell ranks much higher as a result.

Enjoy,

RossB

Evangelia Berdou wrote her PHD thesis (PDF) about the effects of commercialization on the free/open source community. With it’s glib title: “Managing the Bazaar: Commercialization and peripheral participation in mature, community-led Free/Open source software projects” and being chock-full of facts and figures, this is a very informative thesis.

From the introduction:

The central question addressed in this study concerns the structure and ynamics underlying the F/OS model of development which is often perceived as asocio-technical process. F/OS software is developed by online communities of globally istributed contributors, the majority of whom are volunteers who rarely meet face to ace. Despite this, they develop strong collaborative ties and abide by the principles of ooperation. F/OS developers are often said to adhere to the ideal of meritocracy, be riven by the principle of reciprocity and be guided by peer-review practices.

A good read, I’m working my way through it, you might want to check out Matt Asay’s report on this, well, report.

RossB

From the Article:

Corporate computing is about to enter a golden period, when the innovations found on consumer Web sites begin to make their way into business software.

That’s the opinion of Ron Hovsepian, CEO of Novell. Novell makes a computer operating system and other software based on Linux, the free alternative to Windows that tech departments mostly use on back-office computers.

He tells the Business Technology Blog that three trends – the rise of consumer-oriented technology, the emergence of standards that allow different technologies to work together, and the continued commoditization of tech components, which makes developing new products cheaper than ever – are coming together at just the right time.

Read More.

One of the key capabilities needed in a shop that makes use of numerous Linux servers is to have a management infrastructure that will help manage patching.  If you have Red Hat servers, and perhaps some SUSE Linux Enterprise servers/desktops too, or maybe a combo of the two, ZENworks Linux Management can help in a big way!  It’s a tool you should at least be considering…

Novell’s own Cameron Seader, Nathan Conger, and Bob Reynolds put their heads together to build a very nice lab setup guide for ZENworks Linux Management.  Thanks, guys!!

Check out the Lab Setup Guide