by ezs | Apr 11, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
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Have you tried OpenSUSE yet?
Written at: Draper, UT
OpenSUSE – project site at http://opensuse.org – is sponsored by Novell and “promotes the use of Linux everywhere”.
I guess for mere mortals that means on your laptop, home servers, development boxes – anywhere that matters! I know a few people who have given it to family and friends to cut down on the support and virus workload.
There are some interesting innovations coming out of the OpenSUSE community. Take a look at the OpenSUSE build service – demoed at BrainShare just a few weeks ago. Also look at the cutting edge in desktop and laptop usability – anyone who says Linux is a long way from ready for the desktop should seriously look at the massive leaps made in SUSE Linux 10.1 – currently in Beta 9.
And finally to the information that prompted me to write this post: OpenSUSE won the Best of Show award at LinuxWorld Expo last week in Boston – congratulations!
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Apr 10, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
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One common question from customers and partners is “What is Novell’s support stance for running Novell products and solutions on VMware”
Written at: Salt Lake City, UT
Here is the official answer in the form of Novell Technical Information Document TID 10098095 – this is directly from Novell Support.
Novell Technical Services (NTS) will provide reasonable best effort troubleshooting support for Novell products in VMware configurations. This support includes both lab and production environments. NTS personnel will assist the customer in troubleshooting the problem and will work to identify any necessary configuration changes, a viable workaround, and/or initiate a defect report. Novell product defects will be handled using existing defect reporting procedures. When necessary, NTS will involve VMware using the TSANet multivendor support process.
Novell Technical Services has established this policy to ensure that Novell customers receive the best possible support when issues arise in environments that include Novell products in VMware configurations.
I’d be interested in your comments – and your experiences – about running Novell products on top of VMware server or Microsoft Virtual Server environments.
Written at: Salt Lake City, UT
by ezs | Apr 10, 2006 | blogging, evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I’ve been splitting my time blogging between Novell Cool Blogs, my family blog and this site.
I’ve now posted over twenty posts to the Novell site in a month; and I’ve been trying to slow down. I don’t want to make that site ‘mine’. However I’m still posting double that of others.
I’ll try to keep my posts coming on all three blogs – but for Novell related things I’ll probably cross post to Novell Cool Blogs. I’ve just posted on Windows Vista – I think it’s the start of an interesting thread.
by ezs | Apr 10, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
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This is the start of another series of blog posts – this time around managing desktops and laptops – and what will happen in the future with Windows Vista.
In the words of Microsoft’s own marketing – we’ll try and “Bring Clarity to your World”
Written at: Draper, UT
First to the basics – the versions of Vista and hardware requirements.
There will be at least five versions of Windows Vista – although only two of these really seem suitable for businesses: Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise.
It seems that the proliferation of choice will be confusing at best. Will most customers choose the Business edition? Enterprise?
The next piece of the puzzle is hardware requirements. As always – take the ‘minimum requirements’ as just that. Analysts and beta testers alike are giving the following recommendations:
- general knowledge worker – Pentium 4 class machine, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
- ‘power worker’ – Pentium 4 class machine; dual core and 64 bit ideal, 2GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
Now I have talked to enough of you to know that this is a tall order. Most organisations are currently working to a three year replacement program for laptops and a four, five or six year replacement cycle for tethered desktop machines. One other factor in this equation is that almost every IT team did a refresh of hardware and OS in 1999. (Remember that!)
This has led to the “Y2K + 5″ phenomenon – hardware was replaced on the desktop in 2004/2005 – and will next be replaced in 2008/2009/2010. Laptops are due for replacement this year – following a first round of replacement in 2003.
These two factors combined are significant:
- confusion on choice of Vista desktop
- massive costs (replacement and just churn costs) of desktop hardware
Already enough to make you think twice.
In the next post I will talk about another area to consider – application support. I’ll dive into some of the murky details of getting applications supported on Vista and why this may be another roadblock for some customers.
As always – comments are welcomed.
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Apr 6, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
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Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be ‘opening the doors’ of their Open Source Software Labs.
Early days – the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio – flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).
Overall I think this is probably a good idea – Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years – most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice – but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools – even the software that runs these blogs.
Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we’ve made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we’ve adopted more open standards – and we’ve been active with many Open Source community projects.
(I’ll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions – from OpenSUSE to iFolder – take a look on Novell Forge.)
Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so – even if it’s only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.
Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.
What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?
Written at: Provo, UT
by ezs | Apr 5, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Technology, Uncategorized
Apple released Boot Camp.
Legally letting you dual boot your Intel based MacBook.
Very nice – more fuel to the “Why I want a MacBook” 🙂
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