Novell is announcing a new Linux desktop today, called “Novell Linux Desktop 9: Powered by SUSE Linux.” More info at Newsforge and News.com.
Novell Launches an Enterprise Linux Desktop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Downloading the free 30day eval now.
The question has been raised and answered by some companies that invested in Linux such as Corel. In the end, Corel Linux died in a very short time. Now Novell’s turn, I find the fate of this next release distro is quite unstable b/c last week the vice-chairman of Novell who gave decision to buy Ximian and SuSE resigned. As the articale stated, Linux hardly replace the Windows because there are lots of missing apps. For now, Linux apps are quite poor in quality and quantity, and the question is ‘Why commercial companies don’t jump in and write Linux program?’. It’s very simple that Linux commnunity somehow slowdown the Linux adoption process because all Linux geerks all the time seek for things FREE, (if things becomes UNFREE, they then swap to other stuff that is FREE immediately, they don’t even care to stick with any thing related to word “PAY”). How can a commercial company pay attention to such community? Just thinking about writing a softwares and can’t sell it, even if I run a software company, I won’t jump in Linux market. Then now talk about normal users, if they have choice between Windows and Linux, at the begginning, they choose Linux for its FREE-ness, then later abandon Linux because most programs that users require for their work are quite poor written in Linux (most programs are written by small group and inviduals not huge company). The Linux community should change their point of view about the OPEN and FREE, it’s killing our Linux.
More Linux investment is great for everyone!
What a troll. Google around for distro with apps like openoffice, mozilla, abiword, etc. You will find that the quality is at times better than any like commercial product. Yes, it free. But, with Novell you are getting the support for their distro. And if you need free help there are so many users out there willing to help.
umm…how about IBMs WebSphere, Oracle, IBM DB2, and Sybase databases, all run on Linux…..ever heard of Java or Eclipse.???? Apache web server perhaps? What are these “missing apps” and apps that are “poor in quality..” ??
Swinburne must really be teaching you well.
Not sure where you’ve been hiding all these years, but most companies have a Linux strategy and pay for the commercial versions of Linux due to 24*7*365 support requirements.
Oh, and that guy didnt resign, he was asked to leave.
cheers
peter
More precisely, it’s not enough that the program is free. It definitely _must_ be open, because all proprietary software is Evil. The truth, however, is that an open source project needs a long open tradition (like Linux has) before it can evolve to something superior to its commercial rivals. You can’t just start an open project and hope that people will eventually join in and all of a sudden: BOOM! The project becomes the market leader because it’s so great. Thanks to GPL, of course.
Open and closed software can and must cooperate. There are some things OSS community or commercial companies just can’t do alone.
I am glad to see this release, but the cost per desktop will put it out of the reach of small organizations. These are people with 10-50 desktops for whom paying $50 per desktop/per year is too much.
That amounts to $15000 for 50 desktops with five years of support, which I presume is what the fifty bucks buys you.
Then add $5400 for Zenworks for those 50 desktops and we are already spending $20400, which is small peanuts for big places, but is quite a bit of money for the types of organizations where I have seen Linux adoption taking place.
And we still don’t have an email server, which I presume that Novell is likely to want to charge another per-seat license.
This isn’t too much of a problem for me. In fact, it allows me to go in and outbid Novell in those types of organizations by bundling support into my services, something that is yet another separate charge with Novell.
In summary, I am glad to see this and I hope that it becomes a huge success, but I guess the market for these desktop is very big corporations.
I think you should give Novell a break; they are one of the few companies that is actually trying to reverse the microsoft OS domination. Them (Novell) and Sun Micro. are putting a lot of work into creating a desktop platform that is viable for THE BUSINESS DESKTOP. This market segment is very different from your home “techie” that does not require the QOS or stability that business users need.
I see your point with your statement that “Linux apps are quite poor in quality and quantity” I assume that you mean “desktop apps”, most server apps for the linux platform are quite stable and mature. Both of these companies (Novell & Sun) have based their desktop offering on an older much more stable branch of “open-source-sofware”/”free software” to provide the stability that a business user would need.
“Then now talk about normal users, if they have choice between Windows and Linux, at the begginning, they choose Linux for its FREE-ness, then later abandon Linux because most programs that users require for their work are quite poor written in Linux” – don’t know what you mean by normal users, do you mean home users???, non-technical users????
Home users will indeed be attracted to the “FREE-ness” of linux but that attraction can be compared to the attraction that home users have to pirated windows software. There are indeed home users (mostly techie teenagers & the curious) that will download a linux distro and find that it is not for them. Most teenage geeky guys love their FPS games too much and will have to take linux off of their box and put windows back on it. As for the curious out there, they may not see a reason to justify learning a new desktop environment.
Work environments that choose to deploy linux must be very careful about how they go about it; many times an improper systems installation can cause more problems then the software itself. This is usually not the fault of the software.
I personally use Linux at home because it fits my needs; i use firefox to browse the web, evolution for email, gtk-gnutella to download “FREE” stuff, Azureus for bitorrent files, bluefish for website coding, samba for sharing file between my windows laptop, totem for movies, eclipes for writing java apps, rhythmbox for listening to music, openoffice for letters, spreadsheets, etc.
At my office we run multiple servers some with solaris for databases, others with gentoo, and fedora core for file sharing and Apache. Things run smooth and we don’t have to worry about viruses taking down our server infrastructure.
I for one will be trying Novell Linux and deciding whether it has a place in my work environment.
Cheers
My Swin fellow seems to stir this comment board abit heh?
Honestly to say, Linux is great BUT as long as Photopshop, CubaseX, all editting movies program haven’t ported to Linux, our multimedia department still stick with Windows solution, I also check the Gimp up but coudn’t bare it for longer than 30 minutes, Gimp is quite hard to use and not very ergonomically design, the plugins is quite poor. If Adobe and Marcomedia port their products to Linux, it’d be a evolution for Linux. I love to see Novell makes a move by developing new Novell Client for Linux, when it finished, I think our school will try it on a small lab for Unix course students. Goodluck Linux community.
I just got NLD9 installed, the installation is smooth going, then I start up with GNOME desktop, the theme is extended version of Ximain Desktop, the icons are very neat and nice designed. The YaST runs a bit laggy, but it’s working perfectly. I’m still trying it.. It’s like a piece of art.
Where did you download the evaluation version?
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/eval.html
ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/forge/nld/source/
I don’t give linux companies much a chance in the long run, BUT i would say the odds of Novell doing ok are pretty good. Novell allready makes some nice software, and Ximian is about the only open source software maker with a clue and actualy makes nice stuff. If Novell brings out a solid linux distro, suse is a good start, then builds on top of gnome using Ximian products and their own they will probably come up with some nice stuff. Not sure if this will be using gnome or not though, i think suse uses KDE. But if they get rid of KDE for gnome and make it a nice clean spartan desktop that users will like to look at and is easy to use, they really could have something.
Novell has wagered their entire corporate future on Linux. Obviously they have HUGE motivation to make this thing fly. Bottom line; Novell better damn well make this work.
Regarding the costs (once you add zenworks,etc):
Your math doesn’t seem right. I believe the MSRP for zenworks is $30. Furthermore I’ve never payed the actual MSRP when I’ve bought licenses. Lastly, I’ll gamble here and say each one of these will go down with that many desktops. It’s true that each one adds the costs but you don’t have to get all the Novell services. I’m sure you can upgrade the desktop without zenworks, working much like windows. Zenworks provides a centrally managed service that make’s administration cake. The same goes for about every other service. It isn’t necessary but I believe it adds a lot of value to Linux. If you’ve every used iManager (which I’m sure comes with their base server product or will with their big release next year) then you’ll know what I’m talking about, their tools make administration a snap, something that Linux lacks.
I guess the other thing here is $50 is way cheap for a full a possible Windows/Office/Internet solution.
“It’s very simple that Linux commnunity somehow slowdown the Linux adoption process because all Linux geerks all the time seek for things FREE, (if things becomes UNFREE, they then swap to other stuff that is FREE immediately, they don’t even care to stick with any thing related to word “PAY””
The geeks are not a part of their market. The ones who pay for Linux are big companies, administration of cities, schools, etc. These cannot use an OS on their own responsability, they need someone they “can sue”. In other words, someone who’s _responsible_ for the product, and will be there in <24h if something goes wrong.
I’ve tried myself to get support, tips and tricks for free software from the authors (geeks) myself, but you know, you can’t complain on something you’ve been given for free. If they’re not interested in the exact moment they’ll tell you to learn to code or that they need another beer.
This of course has NOTHING to do with if the software is free, software NOT being free just takes away your right to use it on your own personal responsability. People copy it anyway, and buy it if they need the support. In practice that goes for all software.
I don’t think this a worry at all. I don’t know much about the Chris Stone departure (I’m still hoping/waiting on one of the Ximian guys to comment on this) but Novell is fully dedicated to Linux.
Just read this: http://tieguy.org/blog/index.cgi/229
I know a couple of guys who work at Novell and they have all switched to Linux from windows. They are much more a Linux company than a windows company at this point.
I will try their desktop as I’ve been quite excited to do so. I wish the would come with a crossover version for like $10 more (I’m guessing this could be arranged). I’ve heard the version they use internally has crossover (I think it’s called that, it’s the commercial wine program) with it, allowing them to use several internal applications that they haven’t ported yet. It seems to me they should know that other companies would certainly run into the same issues as well.
Could someone tell me whether there are big differences between Novell 9, and SuSE 9.1 / 9.2?
Is it just repackaging (newer versions of the products) or more than that? Anyone care to briefly review, diff between the two?
I just installed two weeks ago SuSE 9.1 on my LifeBook, and I’m wondering whether I have to go with that (will SuSE support still go on?).
Thanks
I wonder how hard Novell is targetting laptops with this release. I was impressed to see Ubuntu making this a priority. It looks like it uses a slightly older 2.6 kernel since, as I understand, the newest ones are offering much better support.
“I am glad to see this release, but the cost per desktop will put it out of the reach of small organizations. These are people with 10-50 desktops for whom paying $50 per desktop/per year is too much.”
As compared to paying $300 per desktop/year for Windows? Most companies seem to manage that okay.
“That amounts to $15000 for 50 desktops with five years of support, which I presume is what the fifty bucks buys you.”
$15,000 not being quite as horrifying against the $50,000 the company paid to get those 50 desktops in the first place. It’s not cheap, but I will reiterate: Cheaper than Windows.
There are a number of differences.
The big things are gnome support and a number of Novell technologies seeing their way into the product. These include iFolder, Zenworks, I’m sure it can use netware services, etc. These may not be a big issue for a home like atmosphere since they’re primarily targeted at Enterprises.
It sounds like a lot of tweaking has gone into as well to make it more integrated.
Well, this smells to me like what used to be Ximian Desktop on top of SuSE 9 series. I guess that this will be hard competition for Java Desktop, but considering that Sun doesn’t care that much for Linux, it won’t botter them. JDS is just a replacement product for companies that used to run older versions of windows on older hardware, so they go for JDS. JDS is based on SuSE 8.2, so it doesn’t run on anythign resebling a modern machine, where Novell Desktop is based on the 9.x series, which are pretty cool IMHO. I can’t wait to get home and download the eval, if I like it, I’ll get me a copy. I’m running Windows XP on my laptop, but on top of it almost all OSS software, FireFox (cool browser), Thunderbird for email, just purchased Star Office 7 for 39.95 which absolutelly rocks, it’s OOo, but way more polished, plus it came with 5!!! licenses, can’t beat that deal. I guess that there is a whole lot more quality software out there than what MS has to offer (that’s why I bought Star Office, needed a polished Office Productivity package, but couldn’t afford $300+ for M$ Office). And soon the fact that there is a lack of drivers for some hw out there won’t be a show stopper for Linux because we have now driver wrappers for windows drivers to run on Linux, so mainstream adoption will be bigger. If Linux gets a considerable user base then HW manufacturers will start releasing native drivers… As for commercial software, I guess that by 2010 we’ll see native version of Adobe and Macromedia software for Linux. Linux can’t be stopped anymore….
Go Novell, GO!
PS: The only Windows I like is 2000, XP sucks, and Longhorn will suck even worse…
Are they still giving users a choice of both KDE and Gnome or are they focusing more on one?
As much as I love KDE, I really can’t stand using Gnome, they should just chose one of them and stick with it. Better to make one the best of breed than to confuse customers with multiple, basically redundant choices.
I mean really, there are 50 bajillion linux distros out there that are functionally identical to Novell’s Linux desktop.
So if you don’t want to pay… well.. just don’t pay.
Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/Slackware/Gentoo will all give you as much Linux as you can handle, as cheap as you want to make it for yourself.
If you want a company to provide you with some support, and a products/services framework around the Linux OS, then you can chose Novell, Redhat, IBM and about 50 bajillion less ‘formal’ alternatives.
I can’t see what there is to whine about here.
I agree with you. Theoretically, if these small non-profits had paid for their office software, then they ought to see Novell’s offer as a steal.
Yet most places where I am called, they have installed the same version of Office on all of their computers and they do not seem to understand or care about piracy.
Giving that any change will create a little bit of resistance, it’s just human nature, then the cheaper the entry price for a supported Linux, the easier it is to move an organization of this nature to Linux.
Powered by suse 9.1, so i could grab those sources and build gnome 2.6 + ximian and try it myself with suse pro
I’m from Brazil. Here we are third world. The government has been working to move all proprietary software to OPEN software. What does it means? It means that we don’t have to pay for license and all the saved money will be redirected to equipments in schools, public hospital, research, etc. I don’t know how much will be saved, but I know that OPEN software is a great opportunity to apply in equipments, training and so on. And better !!! You won’t pay $1 to any company. Only this can justify its use.
“Linux apps are quite poor in quality” … Gimme a break! I work at school and I haven’t saw any good commercial educacional software. Please, keep using your M$ application. You should live in Brazil, Africa or something to else to discover the real value using free software. Do you know what it means for a brazilian poor boy have an old computer where he can applications without paying anything? Or imagine the same boy not using this same computer because he has to pay a lot for a license, or has to upgrade his Windows 98 to XP because his new application won’t work out to his OS. Think about free software not as a great chance for your company increase their sells, but think about free software a great oppornity to be included in digital life.
“I don’t give linux companies much a chance in the long run, BUT i would say the odds of Novell doing ok are pretty good. Novell allready makes some nice software, and Ximian is about the only open source software maker with a clue and actualy makes nice stuff. If Novell brings out a solid linux distro, suse is a good start, then builds on top of gnome using Ximian products and their own they will probably come up with some nice stuff. Not sure if this will be using gnome or not though, i think suse uses KDE. But if they get rid of KDE for gnome and make it a nice clean spartan desktop that users will like to look at and is easy to use, they really could have something.
Why dumb down the interface? Users dont like being treated like idiots, thats why alot people are using linux instead of windows. Control over your own environment and computer, remember! if you want a spartan interface, go and use windows 2.0, 3.11, or even older things like quickmenu.
KDE might show a bit too much icons, but at least believes users have brains. and it can be adjusted by yourself or a distribution to actually do things. it could use better, saner defaults, here and there – but gnome doesnt show much progression imho, except for being almost the only OSS project getting slower and slower every release.
Not that it’s a matter of orders of magnitude, but…
(50 Desktops) * (5 Years) * (50$/Desktop/Year) = 12500$
Or 50 Desktops and $90 for the Full Term license means a larger initial outlay of $4500 vs $2500 but no further outlay for future years.
I’d say $4500 is a good price to install on 50 desktops, considering it’s $319 RRP for Windows 2000 meaning an initial outlay of $16000.
Personally I’m behind Novell on this one and hope it helps Linux achieve a higher desktop market share in the corporate sector.
I think it’s the first step of Novell to drop down SuSE and Ximian brands.
“I’d say $4500 is a good price to install on 50 desktops, considering it’s $319 RRP for Windows 2000 meaning an initial outlay of $16000.”
The RRP of Windows is not the real question is not the real question for the cost difference of an original bulk installation. The question is how much less a bulk purchase of OSless corporate sesktop systems is than for the same systems with Windows installed. Anyone got experience negotiating with Dell or another supplier on this
When you’re talking about saving money in the enterprise, you’re talking about support. Yes, you can save big by switching to Linux from Microsoft on per seat file server, exchange, sql, office, etc., licenses — but even with all the cash laid out for those licenses you get basically no support from Microsoft. The paid per-incident from Microsoft is great, but you either pay or waste hours coming up with solutions on your own — this is not cool when Exchange crashes and your boss says she is sending people home early because the IT infrastructure suddenly is important to core operations, the fate of the world suddenly lands on the IT department’s head, and you do not have a budget for more paid incidents.
On the quality of Linux software: yes, there still is Linux software that sucks, but improvement is inevitable as the momentum behind development is tremendous and growing. Every few months my Linux Desktop improves dramatically in hundreds of small but overall significant ways.
Only Ximian will be dropped or better already is. The SUSE brand will stay.
> Are they still giving users a choice of both KDE and Gnome
Yes, and neither is preselected as default desktop.
$4500 is a much better number, but that wasn’t stated in the article. I am going to have to get in touch with Novell and get a quote from them so that I have real numbers to work with in the future.
Do you have a link for the $90 per license? And is that for five years of support?
Will the iFolder client work in KDE as well? I certainly hope so, but I would love to hear from anyone who’s currently testing or using the product.
I have been using the Novell Linux desktop for a few months now. I feel that it works very good. When you install it you have an option to use Gnome desktop as your default or KDE as your default. One of the big pushs that Novell is pushing, is your freedom of choice. As an Administrator you can choose the best environment for your needs. Also, Ifolder does indeed work with KDE. Another great feature is Red Carpet, the updating tool. It is simple to use and very powerfull.
Miguel,
Thanks for your answers
I am going to set up a test-lab next weekend. Is the iFolder client part of the standard installation? In other words, are there any additional fees for using it? How reliable has it been in your experience?
What version of Suse/Novell are you running on the server to be able to use the iFolder synchronization? Is it possible to establish synchronization between clients in a peer-to-peer fashion without a server?
From what I’ve gathered, Novell Linux Desktop is based on SuSE 9.1. Is there any reason anyone other than a business would want to go Novell Linux Desktop over SuSE 9.2 Pro?
Can someone post up some screenshot please? Thanks in advance.
There is ALOT OF EXCITEMENT GOING ON. People are downloading this like crazy today. Ifolder is part of the product you will receive yes. No additional fees. It is very very reliable and very very cool. I can access my files from anywhere. If you have any additional questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. I am pretty familiar with this product.
“Microsoft to pay Novell $536 million settlement” should help Novell keep the lights on for a bit longer.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5442389.html
Quick tip – writing your email address in machine-readable format on a public website is a *really* *really* bad idea. Hope you like Cialis adverts…
Notice that you have a choice: you can use ZenWorks if
you are a large organization with lots of requirements
for software distribution.
But if you are a small shop, you can use the open source
server Open Carpet (www.opencarpet.org). In fact, even
within Novell we use opencarpet to distribute some of
the development tools (Mono Destkop Extensions and the
Desktop Toys channels for example).
You can still mix and match.
As for your server needs, you have a choice from products
and providers. If you want a pure Linux solution, you can
have it. If you want to interoperate with an existing
corporate network of Exchange or Groupwise servers, you got
that option as well.
If you are a large company that wants to have a one-stop
shopping experience, Novell can assist you there, if you
choose to put together the pieces yourself, we will also
be glad to assist you with interop.
Miguel.
My opinion on this matter: Ximian was a small brand
recognized for its technical software developments, but
we are now part of a larger company, so you will see
that we have changed the names of products `Ximian Evolution’
is now `Novell Evolution’.
People are more likely to recognize the products `Evolution’,
`Mono’, `Red Carpet’ by their names than by the `Ximian’
prefix.
SUSE on the other hand is a strong brand as a distribution,
and the various subproducts are just specializations of the
product, so it makes sense to keep the SUSE name around
as a brand for the Linux distribution.
Notice that the product is called `Novell Linux Desktop,
powered by SUSE’, which in my opinion is a great name:
it is clear that the underlying distro is SUSE and that
this is an offering from Novell, which targets the Novell
customers that have certain expectations of enterprise
support.
But this is just my personal opinion.
Miguel.
Oh, and NLD comes with Mono pre-installed and ready to
use for your favorite Gtk# applications.
Enjoy!
Miguel.
Thanks Miguel for the update!
I for am excited about the Novell still giving users the option of choice if anything NLD offers choice more than anything Zenworks or Open carpet, Gnome or KDE, pure Linux environment or mixed Netware or Windows with a bunch of tools to integrate across the board. How can you not be ready for NLD.
Does this not include the client novell bought from n-ix?? can’t find any mention of it in the documentation. if not thats a real bummer
I am a Windows user lets get that straight, but to tell you the truth, it looks like Novell has thought this one out very much. The Integration of these opensource applications, such as OpenOffice, FireFox, Ximian into one package really makes this distribution look very attractive. I like how the NL9 desktop and interface looks too, very clean, simple, familiar and welcoming compared to what I have see out there in a lot of distributions.
I think Novell has a winner on their hands and will probably take some maket share from major distributions such as RedHat. Windows, I don’t know yet, but I believe there will be a lot dual boot configurations with this release from Novell, I am surely one of them. The price is great too, $35, I can’t beat that. Its really worth a try from what I have seen, I will probably wait to purchase untill they integrate the full 1.0 release of FireFox. I also notice that the OpenOffice included in NL9 looks a bit enhanced.
“Think about free software not as a great chance for your company increase their sells, but think about free software a great oppornity to be included in digital life.”
EVERYONE should be included in digital life! Remember the OSS approach to having more eyes looking over the code? Just where do you think those eyes come from? I bet some poor boy in the third world does more to contribute to open source than those of you complaining about free software advocates not paying for commercial software.
It sickens me how so many people have a “comfortable” lifestyle yet they don’t think anyone should get anything for free. Some people can’t make as much as you can make in your comfy job. Maybe they didn’t have the educational opportunity, maybe there are no high paying jobs close to where they live, or maybe they are just lazy. No matter what the case I think they would more valuable to humanity if they were given clothes, food, shelter, electricity and computers/’net. Then a little free education and encouragement will go a long way. Let’s include eachother in this digital life.
These distros need to get beyond a kernel+GNOME/KDE+tech support. Otherwise its difficult to see how they beyond the free distros (Fedora etc) long term.
The distros are still playing it safe and playing nice with each other, but the user is not reaping the rewards of competition. Come on guys, lets see you try to knock the crap out of each other. Give me a reason to choose your desktop over the others. That doesn’t mean you have to release closed source code, maybe its better services.
“The Integration of these opensource applications, such as OpenOffice, FireFox, Ximian into one package really makes this distribution look very attractive.”
Yeah, because, er, no other distribution includes OpenOffice, Firefox and Evolution.
Oh, wait! They all do…
I might be biased, but NLD features Red Carpet, which is
a much better software updating solution than anything
available out there (specially for the enterprise market,
where things like roll-backs, installation sets, scheduled
upgrades are necessary).
Then we ship Mono and Gtk#, which simplifies the use of
any of the emerging Mono-based technologies.
They are all open source technologies.
You might very well have other reasons to use other
distributions, if so, feel free to send us your feedback.
Miguel.
rpm has roll back features and up2date supports it too. scheduled up2date is even more easier. mono is not yet seperated into ecma and non ecma components and I wont go near it without you guys doing something about the legal uncertainity. red carpet has a nice interface. thats a advantage.
Miguel,
I wanted to attend one of the seminars that Novell is currently offering, but you guys are not stopping by South Florida at all. Any chance to add South Florida to your list of destinations?
I would love to have a look at the product and to get answers about the product directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
If this isn’t possible, create a forum to ask questions about features, particularly with regards to software deployment and desktop configuration.
I want to know what tools I would have at my disposal to manage desktops remotely. In KDE I have kiosk, is that Novell’s official tool? How about for Gnome? What are you guys offering there?
Thanks for the great work.
Novell Linux Desktop is based on SuSE 9 server (sles 9). The SuSE 9.2 Pro has been marketed more of the home users not the corp enterprise.
Has anybody been able to get the full download? Mine keeps bombing out at 102MB on the first CD. I got the second CD okay.
Anyone know if the rest of us non-enterprise types can/will have a chance to buy a single copy of NLD?
Downloading the free 30day eval now.
Anybody else tried downloading this, the download page states that the filesize for the first CD is 650MB, but when I try to download it, it only offers me 410MB.
Hello,
Am not on the desktop team, but I read osnews.com, I will
certainly pass the information on South Florida to the
guys in the team.
If you have specific questions, you could post them here,
or email me privately and I will forward this to the relevant
people. As I said, am just an NLD user and I work on Mono.
Regarding up2date and Red Carpet: if you are happy with
up2date, all the better for you. Every time I use it I have
a problem with it (I guess am just used to Red Carpet just
working all the time ;-). And I am subscribed to lots
of third party channels myself (all integrated, and resolved
from the same UI).
In any case, Red Hat users were amont many of our main users
of Red Carpet, as it has always been a better product.
About Mono ECMA vs Non-ECMA: the split in Mono has existed
forever. Just get mono-core.
Patent-wise: we believe that most software patents today
are bogus (like the FAT patent overturn showed). Our
strategy as we have it outlined on our FAQ is to prove
that there is prior art in any are covered by the non-ECMA
parts, if not possible, to rewrite the piece with a non-
offending piece of technology and if not possible, to remove
it.
Are software patents a problem? Yes.
Are they a problem limited to Mono? No, every piece of
software that you have in your computer is probably
infringing in a bogus patent.
Can someone bring you down with a bogus patent? Yes,
the cost of litigation over bogus patents can quickly
turn more expensive even if you get to prove its bogus.
The solution is not to run scared, like a girlie men,
but to fix and fight the system.
Like Novell has said: Novell will use its patent portfolio
for defensive measures, not for offensive ones.
Miguel.
Hello enloop,
My understanding from the web page is that you can buy
a single copy of NLD, I do not see why not (but I have
not tried to buy one myself).
Miguel.
Everyone should be able to buy single copy of NLD from Novell’s web site on Friday.
I was hoping you could comment on Chris Stone leaving. Eweek, which I don’t assume has all the facts, suggested this had some to do with you and Nat??
Thanks, Miguel, Cody. I’ll check the “How To Buy” link on Friday.
You suggestions sound dangerously like forking Linux. Differentiation is defenitley still there, look at Novell’s solution. They have the core stuff, done up how they like, and then they’ll pack a lot of their know enterprise services. Not much similar there…
I apparently can’t type, spell, or articulate my thoughts
The NewsForge article was partly correct; Joe Sixpack won’t be surfing ebay on Linux with Novell, it’s never gonna happen, hence, no downfall for MS/IBM. I predict that the Novell stuff will work great, and be *very* easy to use because large enterprise and high security enviornments will form the bulk of their user base, it’s gonna have to. Longhorn will work well too because in the consumer e-commerce space, it’s gonna have to. MS will lose some business in the government and large enterprise space, but that’s not where the’re headed anyway.
The real danger is that independent Linux (FS) users not covered by indemnification (service and support) as an authorized user/developer could find themselves outside the castle walls. It’s not the safe place to be should IBM decide not to slay the SCO dragon (think RIAA).
Um. I don’t quite get this argument. No hurt to MS/IBM. Why would this every hurt IBM and how won’t this hurt MS if it does catch on at all in the Enterprise space. This isn’t a retail product but an Enterprise product and the Enterprise space is where the most money is.
Indemnification is also really only needed for Enterprise customers. They’re the ones in danger, not single user no matter how SCO spins stuff.
And finally IBM will never “decide not to”. If they don’t beat SCO they’re down billions.
I seriously cannot see the reasoning behind creating Novell Linux Desktop when you consider that consumers whether home or business users want options. Consumers already get this with SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 with Gnome and KDE as their desktop choices. Novell previously released SLP 9.1 as part of their Novell Linux Resource Kit so as to attract businesses to that distribution. Even Novell with the recent release of SLP 9.2 made their first attempt to unify some of the handy tools like YaST and implement it into Gnome not just KDE for their customers. Though they could of done a better job on the over all look for things like icons
Even though SLP 9.2 comes with only 3 months technical support there’s nothing stopping a business from purchasing a longer maintenance package from Novell. Novell could change the 6 month release date on SLP and extend to releasing annually. They could then focus their development on the three distributions SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, SuSE Linux Professional, SuSE Linux Personal and scrap Novell Linux Desktop. Maybe then Novell would also focus more on keeping their customers happy by resolving the video codec issue so users can play popular codecs (ie: wmv, mov, mpeg, avi) instead of restricting to the less used Real Networks media or having people such as myself help others configure their players to play those codecs found on most sites.
I read the relating news at german heise.de and my understanding ist that the only limiting factor on the “evaluation” download is that the updates will only last for 30 days – after that, you should be able to use it as you wish, only, you won’t get updated anymore… but this should be fine for people to temper with it… is that correct?
Correct, The support will stop after 30 days. For those thirty days you will get the updates, and installation support.
The product will function just fine.
and be *very* easy to use because large enterprise and high security enviornments will form the bulk of their user base
What large enterprises? Seriously, I’ve been hearing this for five years or more. As much as any large organisation will want to move away from Windows, they won’t. I just wonder who on Earth they’re going to sell this to. The only people downloading this, and who are going to buy it, are going to be individuals and Linux enthusiasts, and at a push, people who install this within small network environments. That’s why the Suse Linux Desktop is the most popular Linux desktop to date – there just isn’t the market, or the basis of one, for anything else. You have to wonder what the point of the NLD is.
The target market is the medium and large business arena.
That’s totally the wrong target market. The only way to get desktop Linux moving is to market it cheaply and effectively to SMEs in particular, build it up, respond to demand from it and get an established userbase replacing Windows where the barriers to entry are lower. Then you have a basis to move up to larger organisations. It’s a step by step process that is going to require some thought and the ability to engender trust, not the ridiculous and directionless hype we’ve seen. The keys are going to be those small insignificant features in Windows and with Microsoft Office software that are not fashionable or hyped, but are essential to getting anything working well. Hype about desktop searching doesn’t cut it.
Novell Linux Desktop is not about the wholesale replacement of your Windows systems, but rather it’s about identifying where and when an open source desktop can be a sensible, cost-effective alternative. In our pragmatic view, the time is now for specific desktop users to reap the benefits of open source.
Then honestly, why bother? If you take this line with people then that’s exactly what you’ll be asked. If there are a few dozen desktop machines around that could have Linux put on them and fulfil their functional requirements, then honestly, a company will simply save themselves the hassle and pay for a handful of Windows and Office licenses. Sad but true.
If you’re going to sell a desktop you’re past the point of no return.
Novell Linux Desktop 9 eliminates the need for customers to pay much higher desktop license fees charged by other vendors.
If you’re only trying to fulfil a limited set of functions, then the savings are going to be non-existent and you’ll never get a foot in the door. In a customer’s eyes it also proves Microsoft right, even thought they may not believe or even like Microsoft.
and functionality to the Linux desktop to attract enterprise customers
Forget the enterprise customers. They’re not going to go near this thing without an existing userbase they can see. That’s a problem no one seems to have picked up yet.
Nat Friedman, vice president of Linux desktop engineering at Novell and a co-founder of Ximian, said, “People want to tell a David and Goliath story, but we’re telling a much more targeted story. In certain key markets, it’s viable.”
Where? Medium sized and large organisations are just not viable markets. Tentatively targetting existing Unix workstations (those people will already be using Linux, and the NLD will provide nothing to them) and “one of those PCs in the corner that doesn’t do too much” will get Novell and others absolutely nowhere.
That’s what I’ve worried about with desktop Linux. The technology may get to be half decent with some omissions that will really be show-stoppers, but the level-headed thinking about what functions it will fulfil and who will be using it still has not materialised. It clearly isn’t going to.
Well, this is just a bad thing. I really was surprised (positively!) when I heard that one could donload those ISOs. I also understand the purpose of the 30 days eval but stopping updates after 30 days is a bad strategy for sure, people will keep running unpatched systems which is nothing that Novell can be interested in because it will earn linux bad security reviews.
Face it, Novell will earn their money with company deals, volume licensing and support stuff. Take any proprietary software out of the free/unsupported version but let the people get software updates after those 30 days. I don’t know what exactly “updates”, if there’s system management a la redhat network you can terminate this after 30 but give people access to the updates via ftp.
Does it work with Virtual PC 2004?
Sorry posting from my palm pilot because I am installing NLD. I seemed to have caught bug early. Tried installing NLD on my extended drive after first reboot grub shows with no option for Linux . Tried Knoppix CD to add entries in grub but ther was no kernel files in /boot yet. Trying again, By the way does NLD stop working after 30 days or updates stop anyone please clarify and what is the price for a single licence.
Re: Silly FOB (fresh off boat) person
By Victor Hooi (IP: —.nsw.bigpond.net.au) – Posted on 2004-11-08 08:46:25
Oh man, please tell me this dude isn’t Australian…*shudder*, he’s giving up all a bad name =).
And dude, what the hell’s with the FOB (fresh off boat) speech – from one AZN to another, please learn some english. I am (or rather was) an ESL – I learnt canto/mando first, then English, so for the love of god, please, please go to TAFE or something. Your english is nearly as bad as my chinese =). I mean, if you attend Swineburn (bloody Melbourners, hehe), doesn’t the Aust. goverment *pay* you to learn English?
*end of anti-fob rant, begin ignorance rant*
Mate, I seriously hope you’re joking – your arguments have more or less already been systematically torn apart by the collective stupidty that is osnews =), so I’m not going to waste electrons reiterating them. Not only is your english appaling
Personally, I think Novell is as much a money-hungry, faceless corporation as any other (IBM, HP, Sun etc.), but hey, if they want to throw a bit of weight behind Linux then that’s cool. Of course, if they try to screw us over (which IMHO they will undoubtedly attempt to), they we’ll sick the /. and osnews attack dogs on ’em. Let em weep *grin*.
Bye,
Victor