Available for download.

OpenSuse 11 is here - actually, it was made available for download yesterday but better late than never.

The latest version of OpenSuse has some improvements which should make life a whole lot easier for users.

• improved installer
• improved sound management - at last
• faster package management
• OpenOffice 2.4 and Banshee media player

Personally, I’ve always liked Suse. I know that there have been a number of issues over the years regarding installation and support for certain pieces of hardware but with the backing Novell and AMD the free OS should be onto a winner.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Skype told to play the GPL game.

Last July Skype was convicted of failure to comply with the GPL v2 for it internet messaging service supplied on Linux devices. As part of the licensing requirements, vendors have to provide source code for Open Source products which Skype refused to do  with its WSKP100 phone.has abandoned its efforts to avoid complying with an open-source licence that requires it to provide source code with Linux-based VoIP phones. Skype had appealed saying that Germanys antitrust rules made the GPL invalid - nice try! Skype lost.

The appeal was dropped after German courts hinted that Skype would lose the case. The previous judgement has now been accepted by Skype. There was some hope that Skype could come to an agreement but Harald Welte, head of gpl-violations, is only interested in seeing GPL upheld - rightly so. The GPL is a license just like any other, proprietary or not, so there’s no dodging the terms. Skype thinks users don’t need access to the source code  but the company must abide by the licence requirements, the judges said.

And Welte is not backing down. He is determined that the agreement will follow the GPL v2 license to the letter. “We’re not interested in settling for anything less than full GPL compliance,” he said.

Message to the proprietary vendors.

It looks like the GPL will defended to the last. Can you blame them? Personally, I’m on the side of Welte. Look at it another way; what would Skype do if someone infringed their license? Enough said.

Popularity: 31% [?]

For the love of Open Source?

It would appear that support for Linux is really taking hold amongst hardware vendors. Dell, HP and Lenovo have promised to convince chipset manufacturers that it’s time to start building drivers for Open Source OSes. The commitment, made the Linux Foundation conference last week, appears to part of the great Linux lovefest currently being experienced by hardware suppliers - oooh, I feel all warm and cuddley!

Linux at your front door.

A major issue with a number of distributions is the availability and support for drivers. Proprietary code is only accessible by the vendors of the related product i.e. you’re not allowed to fix Linux compatibility issues, this is down to the organisation that provides the software. Now, for many Linux code hackers this isn’t an issue but it’s a different story in the commercial sector. In the main, companies want supported products not a bodge to ‘make it work’. Supported drivers from chipset manufacturers would give Linux a significant boost in the commercial sector. Let’s see if they stick to their guns.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Creation of a grotesque love child?

Do you have platforms running Windows and Novell Linux? You’re in for a treat - if you run SCOM 2007. Novell is working with Microsoft to produce a suite of tools that will allow you to manage SuSe from a Windows platform. The move is part of the joint effort to push both Novell and Microsoft products deeper into Enterprise territory.

Novell have also announced a major push to use Open Source providers to enhance it’s ZENworks management tools for Linux.

I know that many of you will be thinking that Novell is a possible acquisition target for Microsoft but I doubt this will happen. Why buy a company when you can just squeeze them out of the market?

Popularity: 84% [?]

It’s Hardly a Heron!

Ubuntu 8.04 is here. I’m sitting at my laptop typing away on a fresh install and it feels good. I’ve had two days in which to have a good dig under the bonnet and I’m impressed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all sweetness and light and I’ll tell you more about that. Do you want to know what’s in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS? Good, I’ll tell you.

Eye, eye.

The first thing that hit me was the improved resolution and refresh rate which is a significant improvement over the last version. The 3D interface, Compiz, comes integrated and partially enabled. If you want to benefit from the full features you’ll have to do some twiddling of knobs. But be warned, I found Compiz to be a little clunky when running on an Intel embedded chipset.

Digging deep.

What else does it have? There’s the usual apps you’d expect in a Linux distro: OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 (with speed improvements), the GIMP (2.4.5), F-Spot photo manager and multimedia players galore. Drop in other tools such as Pidgin, Skype and Evolution email and you’ll start to see the appeal this distribution has. Not happy with that selection? In that case you can check out the 24,865 packages currently in the repositories.
Firefox 3 Beta 5 comes installed in this release. Ok, I know it’s not a good idea to include a Beta version but you’ll be pleasantly surprised. This release is faster and more stable than the version 2. Oh, and it doesn’t eat memory anymore! There are some bugs. Some pages are slow to load and the extensions aren’t all available yet but I can live with that for a little longer.

There must be something wrong?

Yes, unfortunately. There are issues with Windows SMB shares – you can’t connect to them after an upgrade. This bug is known but not yet fixed. No doubt this will be a priority for Canonical.

There you have it. A worthy and highly capable successor. If you aren’t reliant on an MS network, go for it.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Barging into the Enterprise.

Canonical, vendors of Ubuntu, have unveiled their second stab at the server market. Ubuntu server 8.04 features improved stability, performance and security. Equally pleasing is the announcement that the software is now certified on a number of Sun X64 servers. Yes, I do like Sun.

Sweety jar.

The inclusion of FreeRadius, monitoring tool Munin, OpenVPN and backup tool Bacula means that this release has even more infrastructure apps than 6.06 LTS. This gives Ubuntu huge potential in terms of deployment; from bastion host to centralised backup management.

Security in the kernel has beefed through modifications and the integration of AppArmor policies. To compliment this, he server integrates host firewalling functionality.

iSCSI and DRDB are now part of the stock install, good to see in my eyes as I can’t remember how many times I’ve had issues with iSCSI in the past. Chuck in more than 500 maintained and supported server packages and this looks to be a very impressive beast.

The addition of KVM virtualisation and kernel enhancements should mean the server is more resource efficient when using virtualisation.

But it won’t work with Active Directory.

Yes, it will. Through the addition of Likewise Open. This piece of software allows users to interactively login to Linux using AD credentials. In addition, services using the kerberos authentication mechanism on the host will be available to logged in users.

There’s more that could go on about. But I won’t. I’m very impressed. I had an idea of some the enhancements that I read in the roadmap but this is truly a product worthy of high accolade.

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Pesky penguin eats £30 billion.

Penguins are lovable little animals whose antics amuse many of use. The flexibility and resilience of this birds is amazing; just like Linux and the Open Source industry. Vendors of proprietary software will agree with that statement. A study from the Standish Group, Trends in Open Source, suggest that Tux and co. are having a significant impact on the tech markets - a £30 billion effect. Admittedly, this represents only 6% of a yearly global market worth $1 Trillion but it’s still a lot of hard cash. The study suggests that if a commercial price were placed on Open Source and associated services it would exceed the combined total of Microsoft, Oracle and CA. Ouch! So much for certain software being ‘ubiquitous’!

In the bowels.

The old days of Open Source being on the fringes would appear to be well and truly gone. The functionality and capabilities of offerings such as MySQL rivals that of proprietary software. In many cases, the standards and requirements of free software meets those of enterprise organisations. So, why pay obscene amounts of money for licensing when you can get it for free?

Are the days of proprietary software numbered? No, not yet. Companies typically have a defined service model. This effectively requires them to do as they’re told and follow the well beaten path. How long will this continue? I’m not sure but consider this: the world economies are in a poor state. Businesses must continue to sell of die. Savings need to be made. Where do you think cost cutting exercises will be made? (that is, after they’ve sacked half of their staff!).

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 24% [?]

2 days to go.

The days of Linux being a tool of the pure techie are gone. Recent years have seen the Open Source distribution move from the data centre to the desktop. Unfortunately, some of the big Linux vendors aren’t pushing into the desktop realm as quickly as consumers would like. Notable exceptions to this Novel and Ubuntu.

I like Ubuntu. The OS was originally supplied as a desktop but, more recently, has made moves into the server domain. Don’t think that Canonical have started to neglect the desktop version. Companies such Dell have recognised the rising demand for this OS and have responded with a range of PCs having Ubuntu pre-installed.

Gone are the days of needing to know the command line to install software (unless, like me, you want to get your hands dirty). Ease of use and attractive layout are of the focus now.

Proof of another world.

Ubuntu is making big gains. Don’t take my word for it. Search the web. You’ll find information relating to uptake. Examples include: the French police force deploying 50,000 Ubuntu-powered machines and the Spanish education authorities were rolling out 500,000 Ubuntu desktops.

Do you want it?

The next release, 8.04 Hard Heron, comes with improved support for multimedia, including photo editing, music sharing and video playback. Proprietary drivers can be installed if needed (check the licensing if you need to do this). This release will be Long Term Support (LTS) which means the distribution will be supported for 3 years from release. Now there’s some pretty good reasons to have a look.

Interested? Check out the Ubuntu hompage.

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Head for the hills.

Redhat, the Linux software vendor, has announced that they will not be developing a consumer desktop distribution. Apparently, the long shadow of Microsoft has deterred them. The company issued a statement yesterday: “The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative.”

So, in a scene out of…hold on. Did they say: ‘one dominant vendor’ and ’some people’? I’m amazed that ’some people’ can hold such a massive sway over a multi-billion dollar company! And what happened to that word ‘competition’?

Admittedly, the desktop market is a pretty hard nut to crack but that’s not to say it’s impossible. Redhat has decided to go after some ’softer’ markets with the Redhat Global Desktop (RHGD) including Russia, Brazil, China and India but the original push has been set back by about a year due to “business issues”.

So where does this leave the desktop market? Novell have a SuSe desktop OS but the company has stated it will take time to get it ready to go to the consumer market. But don’t forget Ubuntu. The Debian based OS has been climbing the popularity stacks for quite some time now. Couple Ubuntu’s attractive layout, ease of installation and easy navigation with the massive repository of open source and proprietary packages and you can start to understand the appeal of this OS. Maybe it’s time to look at an alternative to the big Linux vendors (and Microsoft)?

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Uptimes are up.

UNIX pretty much sets the standards for Operating System reliability. I’ve been working on UNIX, Windows and Linux for a number of years now and will stand by this statement. Well, that is until I saw this: The 2007-2008 Global Server Operating System Reliability Survey. There are a number of very noteworthy points which I’ll cover with for you.

Linux moves into top gear.

The first point that came out of this survey was that mainstream Linux distributions have significantly caught up with UNIX when reliability was measured. At the same there, a 25% increase in downtime was noted in Windows Server 2003. Much of this time can be attributed to the sheer number of patches and security updates released resulting in a higher than normal number of reboots.

Falling through time.

Back in 2006, a similar survey suggested that Windows admins reported less downtime than their Linux counterparts. I won’t delve into that statement. Now, based on the 2007 - 2008 survey it would appear that Linux has made leaps of up to 75% greater reliability mainly thanks to some serious money being pumped into Linux development by the large vendors.

But we mustn’t leave UNIX out. The venerable OS is still the most reliable out there. The winner here is IBMs AIX which came in at an average 36 mitnutes downtime, over a twelve month period, being reported.

Another significant point that came out of the survey was the adoption rate of the Linux OS. The article shows that, as reliability figures rose, the adoption of the corresponding OS grew i.e. SuSe downtime decreased by 73% between surveys whilst market share grew from 13% - 17%. This increase could be the result of more revenue being available through higher market share or may simply be due to improvements in the SuSe OS.

Finally, the survey noted that use of Ubuntu is on the up. 22% of respondents stated that they used the Debian derivative in their business. The interesting point here is that Ubuntu is a relative newcomer to the server market but users reported only 1.1 hours of downtime per year.

Do you think Ubuntu will be the one to watch? Only time will tell.

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 23% [?]