Tom has reviewed the Novell Linux Desktop, a new desktop for enterprise customers.
Novell Linux Desktop reviewed
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I found it similar to Suse. The option for installing KDE and Gnome is atthe very start select KDE/ Gnome desktop and the detailed selection select the other desktop. I faced problems mainly where I had to remove RIVA support for Bootsplash to work.
“This reviewer wonders however about the decision to include Openoffice.org in a product for enterprise customers when it could have easily negotiated an attractive price for StarOffice from Sun Microsystems.”
~~~~Novell bought Ximian… accordingly, they use the Ximianinzed version of the office package. The only practical +’s for StarOffice would be a nice dictionary/thesaurus… and the database functionality. But not many seem to care about this… most corporate users are fine with spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing.
Why did the review decide to change around the default settings before reviewing the distrobution? Each screenshot has a different look and feel, as the author decides to change themes and move around panels. It seems to me that the default install might just be the way to go when first reviewing a product such as this.
I thought the review went ok with introducing NLD. He did miss iFolder however, especially he’s a Novell Cert Eng
this is my novellized fedora linux desktop
http://img119.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img119&image=desk4.png
http://img103.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img103&image=desk2.png
The fact that they allow the Ximian people to continue to spread FUD about it speaks very poorly of Novell and its internal policies…When I see a company using Gnome, I know that they are not serious about the Linux desktop…
Coming a little close to FUD yourself, eh? Seriously, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but must we resort to badmouthing one project just because we prefer another project?
I’m not getting into an argument over whether Gnome or KDE are better, but I can certainly see why, on each side, the people who prefer one DE prefer it. The ximianized version of OpenOffice and Evolution, for example, are quite good. But by bashing Gnome while you criticize others for bashing KDE…. well, you’re not exactly taking the high road.
Personally, I’d like to see people continue to support Gnome, KDE, and any other good project that comes along (xfce, for example). I don’t see why it has to be an either or sort of thing.
KDE is today by far the better desktop.
According who?
I totally agree.. he was not the typical user. He changed the product before he showed it..
Anybody now what server did I need to use on the redcarpet configurations?
I now this is an evaluation version, but I now I have 30day to upgrade my system for free but how? (I do not made any upgrades on the installation)
I really expect more from this distribution! In three differents disc with two download image of cd numer one got three package installation fails! Perl,kdeartwork and openssh another problem was that I can’t choose a password for root when installing neither create users, maybe because og one of the fail packages.
I got erros too on openoffice “Failed to execute child process”
From the Novell support forums:
https://support.novell.com/data
Mine didn’t activate properly at first either, but I haven’t had any of the problems you are describing….maybe try reinstalling?
I don’t see what the point of the article was to be honest, other than the NLD is somewhat less than spectacular. The article doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Gnome or KDE, it makes no difference. I just don’t see what motivation someone is going to have to go for this in the markets Novell are targetting.
Enterprises will not install this wholesale, no matter how much they want to get away from Windows. They want stability, and to do that they need to see an installed base. Chicken and egg. The best way of doing that is to target SMEs, give them a totally integrated server/desktop solution and back them to the hilt once they’ve installed it. To do that they need to look at distributions like Xandros, Lycoris and even Linspire as to what is required in terms of functionality and usage. The only problem with these companies is that they don’t have the reach Novell have. If only they would use it.
Having installed this my verdict is, yer, it looks reasonable in parts, but it provides nothing over a normal stock Suse install. People talk about an integrated desktop, but it’s a heck of a lot more than having even one desktop. It’s how things work, and how one application complements another. Certainly in development terms, no Linux desktop has achieved integration in that way. On the KDE side at Suse certainly, I would look at talking with Trolltech and signing a deal to make Suse/KDE a totally supported development platform. Despite Qt being used in KDE, and Suse’s support for it, they are anything but integrated. That’s the difference.
I agree with his comments at the bottom that the YaST and some of the Gnome integration looks like a car put together from a junk yard. However, he’s under the impression that the JDS is the real deal, and on that he definitely needs his eyes tested.
the use of programs with different widget sets who have different themes really make it look like crap :S
QT, GTK1?, GTK2 and some I don’t recognise.
In my opinion all apps should look the same no mather which widget set is used
>>…the lack of an option to use a single window for browsing the network…
What?!?!?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v64/super_science_monkey/network_…
mark, your’s looks better than theirs 🙂
Actually, I recently switched from a KDE desktop (SUSE) to the allegedly inferior Gnome desktop (Ubuntu) and I haven’t looked back since. It’s personal choice. That was my whole motivation for ever coming to the Linux platform.
Here comes Novell trying to feed us a whole bunch of proprietary junk again via opensource Linux. I guess they didn’t learn their lesson from the last time. We already have great proprietary directory services from Sun and Microsoft. And I can say that at least these two companies had the decency to develop their software from the ground up. Shame on Novell for doing this. It’s obvious where they stand in the open source world. Why doesn’t Novell give us something trully revolutionary, like a fully functional directory service? I hope Novell gets run into the ground by RedHat, Sun, and Microsoft.
“In fact, I’m a Southern Evangelical Republican”
HEY! It was funny. Now your saying things that are just bad taste. Please. No more.
Well, I just browsed to the Windows PC in the other room via smb:/// in nautilus, double-clicked on a .avi file, and Totem opened up and started playing it. Is this something new in GNOME 2.8? Is it one of those Mandrake patches Eugenia hates so much? Or does NLD just suck? What is it?
KDE’s technology is superior, but it’s interface is inferior. Couple that with a bad QT license and you have the reason that Gnome is dominating the corporate desktop.
Novell seems to want to play both sides of the fence when it comes to the desktop, when everybody knows that they are going with Gnome. But instead of going all the way they throw out a half-assed looking desktop. They should take a clue from Ubuntu and stop monkeying around with this KDE integration when they know it’s a dead end.
Go here to get the latest theme from NLD9, feel free to use it with any distro!
http://hypatia.ca/files/
novell was smarter in releasing the desktop than sun was.. but sun has done great PR to market and sell a desktop that has old packages installed
In two differents downloaded CD1 isos and three CD1 burned I got problems with the same packages, today I download CD1 from the other mirror Dublin, Ireland, EMEA without packages problems!
With “…great proprietary directory services from Sun and Microsoft” I assume you mean NIS/NIS+ and AD. FYI Novell’s NDS predates AD by at least five years. And it runs nativly on linux, try that with AD.
See this for one comparison: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,67249,00.asp
I have too little experience with NIS to comment, other than that from what I’ve heard NIS is very insecure and NIS+ is really complicated.
– Peder
Anyone care(s) to inform readers on which distro has the best fonts out of the box?
There’s nothing wrong with QT’s licence at all.
The author suggests that Novell should negotiate with SUN and Codeweavers so they can integrate StarOffice & CrossOver Office.
SUSE did this with their enterprise desktop product and IMHO it didn’t work well. A better option is releasing an NLD supported version of these products (like SuSE Pro Office). To be honest even that doesn’t work well because it is too tightly coupled (e.g. SuSE Pro Office only works on SuSE 8.2 (or thereabouts)), so when you upgrade your OS you have to throw-away your office software. Also, OpenOffice is a better product than StarOffice IMHO as it is updated more regularly and can be customised to match the desktop more easily.
There’s nothing wrong with QT’s licence at all.
Only the small detail of paying $1500 per developer.
Only the small detail of paying $1500 per developer.
Which is actually a good thing because it makes it harder to write closed source software and the ultimate goal of the OSS community is still to create a completely free operating system including applications. If I want a commercial OS with commercial software, why should I not buy Windows or MacOSX and use the commercial applications on this plattforms?
Which is actually a good thing because it makes it harder to write closed source software and the ultimate goal of the OSS community is still to create a completely free operating system including applications. If I want a commercial OS with commercial software, why should I not buy Windows or MacOSX and use the commercial applications on this plattforms?
First of all, an enterprise is not Robin Hood, they don’t care if it is open source (maybe a few of them) of if is going to promote some trolls dream of see his desktop on the top.
They care about results and cost, if they need a Windows application QT would be the last option, they would pick .NET or JAVA instead because is even cheaper.
Now imaging the same in the Linux world, Imaging Novell trying to sell a his desktop saying, “it is cheaper as $50” and after the “btw, if you need to develope an application for your bussines will cost yuo at least $1500”
Is all about strategy, there’s where you separate Linux for the trolls from Linux fro the bussines.
Now imaging the same in the Linux world, Imaging Novell trying to sell a his desktop saying, “it is cheaper as $50” and after the “btw, if you need to develope an application for your bussines will cost yuo at least $1500”
I once did an internship at a big company and they had lots of JBuilder licences to develop in Java. JBuilder Developer costs $500, JBuilder Enterprise $3500. (I think they had JBuilder Professional, which is in between, but I can’t find the price now). Why should companies buy lots of JBuilder licences but not want to spend money on a high quality toolkit with excellent support and documentation if it makes them much more productive? A programmer probably earns at least 50.000 Euros a year, do you really think that $1500 for a QT license do actually matter? What matters is that QT makes a programmer more productive and this pays off. A company will save much more money then $1500 doller if a programmer can finish a programm 10% faster because of QT.
I really think it is much more expensive for a company to use one of the completely free toolkits like gtk because the documentation is not as good as QT’s, the RAD tools are not as good (compare glade to QtDesigner), the IDEs are not as good (compare Anjuta to KDevelop) and it is generally a bad idea to wirte GUI software in C and it is certainly more time consuming.
In my opinion, saying $1500 dolar for a QT license will stop companies from using it kust shows that you never worked for a large company and you actually don’t know what is important for those companies.
I would like to note that this issue is fixed in CrossOver 4.0, released today. The menus should work now (SuSE in the past used a custom menu scheme for GNOME, whereas in NLD it doesn’t).
Which is actually a good thing because it makes it harder to write closed source software and the ultimate goal of the OSS community is still to create a completely free operating system including applications
The goals of the miniscule OSS community are irrelevant to the vast majority of developers who don’t consider software a religion. By the way, is OSS linux only? I don’t see the windows sdk download at the Trolltech site.
Regarding your second post…
You can justify the per developer/per OS licensing cost all you want and I think Qt is a fine toolkit and C++ is way more productive than C for doing GUIs, but at the end of the day there are reasons that Sun, RedHat, and Novell are going with Gnome and one of those reasons is the QT license.
Once linux grows up, there’s going to a lot more closed-source software out there for it and the small developer (especially from non first world countries) is going to have problems justifiying $1500 per OS for and SDK that is given away for free without licensing costs for every other platform.
Qt is a fundamental part of a platform, like glibc is. Just think if glibc was controlled by some company with similiar licensing terms as QT. Linux would be basically worthless except for the hobbyist.
The goals of the miniscule OSS community are irrelevant to the vast majority of developers who don’t consider software a religion. By the way, is OSS linux only? I don’t see the windows sdk download at the Trolltech site.
The goals of the “miniscule” OSS community may be irrelevant to the vast majority of developers, but they are what Linux is about: free software, the GPL, the possibility to obtain and change the source code, to fix bugs. Giving up these goals would just turn Linux into another commercial OS like MacOSX, Windows or Solaris.
Personally I actually think it is a good thing that there is no free version of Qt on Windows. Porting all the good free Qt/KDE applications from Linux to Windows would probably not help free software because people would less likely change to Linux if they can have all the good Linux apps on Windows, too.
Qt is a fundamental part of a platform, like glibc is. Just think if glibc was controlled by some company with similiar licensing terms as QT. Linux would be basically worthless except for the hobbyist.
What makes Linux the great OS it is today is free software like KDE, GNOME, OO.org, Gimp, Scribus, K3B, Quanta, xine, mplayer etc. If glibc would be controlled by some company and dual licensed like Qt this would not be a problem for these programs because they are all GPL. What kind if software are people using today on Linux? People mostly use free software and there is just no need for commercial programs because there are a lot of really high quality free applications. There are certain areas where no free programs are available, but I am sure that this will change over time. E.g. I just installed an experimental version of KPDF and it just looks awesome and I am quite optimistic that this will replace acrobat reader sooner or later. There will be less and less need for commercial software and I guess we will never see a lot of commercial software on Linux just because there is so much high quality free software and there will be more and more free software, so what is the point in porting Windows applications to Linux that you cannot sell anyway because there are free alternatives? And actually this is a good thing and I’ll rather have a free program that is not quite as good as the commercial one instead of an unfree one where I cannot get the source.
The goals of the “miniscule” OSS community may be irrelevant to the vast majority of developers, but they are what Linux is about: free software, the GPL, the possibility to obtain and change the source code, to fix bugs.
And this is where you are _totally_ confused. The people that use the Linux kernel have numerous reasons for using it and not all of them are in line with the “touchy-feely GPL community utopia” that fanboys gush over.
Personally I actually think it is a good thing that there is no free version of Qt on Windows. Porting all the good free Qt/KDE applications from Linux to Windows would probably not help free software because people would less likely change to Linux if they can have all the good Linux apps on Windows, too.
There aren’t any QT/KDE apps that would cause windows users to switch over anyway, but if you feel that way then forget about calling QT an open-source crossplatform toolkit.
The rest of your argument boils down to there is no need for closed-source commercial software. Let me clue you into something. The vast majority of people don’t care about plunking down $50 for high-quality software if it’s gonna get the job done. The vast majority of people don’t view software as a religion and don’t get the warm-fuzzies knowing that there is C/C++ code at their fingertips for the software they are using. Lastly, if you think that open-sourced software is gonna fulfill all the needs for people then I guess you are also happy with Linux on the desktop being relegated to the hobbyist niche and the locked-down corporate workstation.
once did an internship at a big company and they had lots of JBuilder licences to develop in Java. JBuilder Developer costs $500,
Theres no way you can compare JBuilder to Kdevelop or whatever or Java With QT.
There are light years of quality and power.
And this is where you are _totally_ confused. The people that use the Linux kernel have numerous reasons for using it and not all of them are in line with the “touchy-feely GPL community utopia” that fanboys gush over.
People may have numerous reasons for using the Linux kernel but most of the Kernel developers probably develop Linux because of “touchy-feely GPL community utopia”. And the Kernel hackers are the ones that created Linux and made it sucessfull, not some companies that use the Linux kernel because it is for free (as in money).
The rest of your argument boils down to there is no need for closed-source commercial software. Let me clue you into something. The vast majority of people don’t care about plunking down $50 for high-quality software if it’s gonna get the job done. The vast majority of people don’t view software as a religion and don’t get the warm-fuzzies knowing that there is C/C++ code at their fingertips for the software they are using. Lastly, if you think that open-sourced software is gonna fulfill all the needs for people then I guess you are also happy with Linux on the desktop being relegated to the hobbyist niche and the locked-down corporate workstation.
On the one hand you keep saying that companies will not pay for Qt licenses, on the other hand you say that people don’t mind paying for quality software. I think here you really contradict yourself.
I really hope open-source software can fulfill all the needs for people, at least for home desktops and corporate desktops. Why should this relegate Linux to the hobbyist niche and the locked-down corporate workstation? Right now there is hardly any commercial software for Linux and Linux is not relegated to the hobbyist niche or to the locked down corporate desktop. Open-source software will improve and there will be more and more open-source software that replaces commercial software. The quality of commercial software is probably often still higher then the quality of open-source software, but there are already counter examples like Firefox/Konqueror and Internet-Explorer or Evolution/Kontact and Outlook (here the main problem are the closed protocolls MS is using). Also in some areas there are just no open-source programs and one needs commercial applications. But personally I think the quality of open-source programs increased tremendeously and KDE/GNOME are definitely already ahead of Windows in some areas. In my opinion the gap is getting closer and closer and in a couple of years there will be no gap anymore.
Maybe I am an idealist, but I do think that the most important aspect of Linux is free software, open source and the GPL. This is what distinguishes Linux from other operating systems. If I would like a nice operating system with a nice set of commercial applications, I could just use Windows XP or MacOSX. In the case of Win XP I would probably not even have to pay for the OS because it is delivered with every new PC anyway. And MacOSX is probably as good as Linux from a technical point of view. And MacOSX also uses a free kernel and a free BSD layer, so it is probably what you want, a free OS + commercial software.
People may have numerous reasons for using the Linux kernel but most of the Kernel developers probably develop Linux because of “touchy-feely GPL community utopia”. And the Kernel hackers are the ones that created Linux and made it sucessfull, not some companies that use the Linux kernel because it is for free (as in money).
Wrong again. Kernel hackers hack on the kernel for various reasons including a learning experience, to scratch an itch, to get some hardware running, they are paid to do so, etc…, but I doubt that they are hacking for some altruistic “GPL, touchy-feely community utopia”.
Who is this “community” anyway? Just because people use th e same operating system doesn’t mean they all have the same goals.
On the one hand you keep saying that companies will not pay for Qt licenses, on the other hand you say that people don’t mind paying for quality software. I think here you really contradict yourself.
I don’t contradict myself at all because there is no comparison between some random end-user app and a library/SDK that is a core component of a major desktop. The glibc comparison still stands. Besides, it’s not good enough that I distribute my app for free, I have to provide the source along with it.
The rest of your comments are about your idealism I guess. That’s fine, everybody is entitled to their ideals, but I hope you realize that not everybody that uses Linux shares your ideals and you can’t lump everybody into a “community”.
P.S. I think the KDE/QT framework for developers is superior to Gnome/Gtk+. Kdevelop is a fine piece of work. I think that KDE just needs to work on the overall “busyness” of their apps. I would love for someone like IBM to buy out Trolltech, make the developers uber-rich, LGPL the library, and allow them to hack on QT/KDE without having to worry about money for the rest of their lives.
Couple that with a bad QT license and you have the reason that Gnome is dominating the corporate desktop.
As has been explained to you many, many times in the past the Qt license makes no difference to the people who actually buy corporate desktops (obviously not you) and Gnome is not dominating the corporate desktop at all – this is the sort of crap we’ve all been hearing since about 2000. If Gnome is dominating, why do we hear these comments four years later? Because some people dearly wish it to be true, that’s why.
Given that KDE’s technology is superior, and given the fact that you’ve got to put something up against Windows in which Microsoft can always afford to pour money into technology, guess what desktop is the most realistic to put to the corporate desktop? The technology has to be good, and no amount of “Oh it’s got a better interface” is going to be able to mask that. Top show has done as much damage to Linux on the desktop as it is.
The goals of the miniscule OSS community are irrelevant to the vast majority of developers who don’t consider software a religion. By the way, is OSS linux only?
Blah, blah, blah, blah – software as a religion – blah.
The vast majority of people don’t care about plunking down $50 for high-quality software if it’s gonna get the job done.
And people think nothing about plonking several thousand dollars/pounds/euros down, per developer, for JBuilder etc. licenses if it gets the job done – same with Qt, which can also be use to develop high quality free software. The crucial difference is that you are paying for development tools to create software to sell or increase productivity.
Why should I pay $50 for a crappy bit of software and not pay good money for developer tools – something which I am using to build software for sale or for internal use that will generate cost savings?
Tell me this. Who pours money into a hole to fund Mono development so you can develop your iddy, biddy little shareware applications for nothing? Tell me – how much return on investment do you think Mono makes for Novell? The fact that people still need to be paid to work on development tools full-time proves my point completely here. How do you sensibly fund that development? When you have a working business model like Trolltech’s come back here and give us your enlightened opinion, but no before.
Not understanding this is exactly what will ensure that desktop Linux will never happen. Software as a religion?! Pull the other one son.
Wrong again. Kernel hackers hack on the kernel for various reasons including a learning experience, to scratch an itch, to get some hardware running, they are paid to do so, etc…, but I doubt that they are hacking for some altruistic “GPL, touchy-feely community utopia”.
I think you are right that Kernel hackers have various reasons to hack the Linux Kernel. But many Kernel hackers seem to like the idea of open-source software, even if it is not their main reason to work on the Linux kernel. Or how would you explain the exclusion of binary-only modules from the kernel?
I don’t contradict myself at all because there is no comparison between some random end-user app and a library/SDK that is a core component of a major desktop. The glibc comparison still stands. Besides, it’s not good enough that I distribute my app for free, I have to provide the source along with it.
Random end-user apps and library/SDK are just tools to get a job done. Why should companies that spend $3500 for a JBuilder license not spend $1500 for Qt if they get their job done with it? I think your differentiation between end-user apps and library/SDK is artifical because they are all just tools to get a job done. And actually a lot of companies seem to buy QT licences, at least trolltechs webpage says so. You could argue that it is wrong if a company ownes one of the core libraries of Linux and I can see that this is a reason to not support Qt for some people, but I don’t think that Qt’s dual license is a bad thing, especially if you are a open-source software supporter.
The rest of your comments are about your idealism I guess. That’s fine, everybody is entitled to their ideals, but I hope you realize that not everybody that uses Linux shares your ideals and you can’t lump everybody into a “community”.
Yes, it is my personal opinion and my idealism. Of course I realize that not everybody using Linux shares my ideals.
I use Linux for at least 5 years and the Linux community changed considerabley over the years. When I started to use Linux, there was no KDE and GNOME (actually I think there was a first alpha version of KDE at that time, but I don’t really remember), the people that used Linux where mainly geeks. Today there are many people who are not geeks, who don’t care about open-source software or the GPL, who don’t know how to compile software and who want to have software that just works. There is nothing wrong with that. And I don’t have a problem if companies want to make money with free software. Novell, RedHat and IBM are doing this, but also Apple is using lots of open source software to make money. But personally I also don’t think it is a good thing if companies take open source software, make money with it and give nothing back. The lgpl makes it much easier for comanies to do that. But if the programmers decide, that this is o.k. and they want to release their software under LGPL, they should to it.
P.S. I think the KDE/QT framework for developers is superior to Gnome/Gtk+. Kdevelop is a fine piece of work. I think that KDE just needs to work on the overall “busyness” of their apps. I would love for someone like IBM to buy out Trolltech, make the developers uber-rich, LGPL the library, and allow them to hack on QT/KDE without having to worry about money for the rest of their lives.
I am not using GNOME but judging from screenshots GNOME looks quite polished and probably makes a good corporate desktop. OpenOffice and Firefox also integrate quite good with GNOME and gtk is lgpl, so GNOME probably makes a good corporate desktop. KDE might be technically more advanced in some areas, but GNOME’s usability is probably better for novice users and non-geeks, which is more important for the corporate desktop. So I don’t really see a reason why someone has to buy Trolltech and release Qt under LGPL. Maybe IBM and Co. should just invest their money in improving gtk and GNOME?
Personally I like KDE because it is more a hobby project where everyone can contribute code, because there are no strict rules what features can be added and what features cannot be added because of usability. I am also comfortable with the many options, even if KDE sometimes looks a little bit cluttered because of that. I used every version of KDE since KDE1 (I even used the alpha and beta versions) and I even contributed some code myself. I think KDE improved tremendously over the years and I think it will continue to improve in many ways, even if it is not becoming the Linux standard gui. Maybe it is really a good thing if GNOME is becoming the Linux standard GUI because GNOME is just less geek-orientated then KDE. As long as people continue to work on KDE this is fine with me.
i didnt write down the serial number of the ISO’s i was downloading and now can’t figure out how to activate NLD at the Suse site. anyone else had this?
My experience with it so far has been positive (apart from the serial no issue) and it actually has better OpenGL (glxgears) framerates compared to some of the other distros i have currently installed (i have a multiboot system with XP, BeOS, Mdk10, slackware10, Ubuntu, Yoper 2.1 and now NLD). Surprising actually, although Yoper is still the best so far.
I quite like this Novell distro but like to see a comparison between it and the commercial Suse Linux Desktop 1.
Anyone up for it?
cheers
peter
Can’t you login at Novell and have the code again displayed?
I wish to thank you Michael-I for one appreciate your reasoned response-it is a pleasure to read a thread here at OSNEWS where inflated rhetoric and polemic does not end up ruining the thread.
Regarding NLD:
I hope that the Novell opens up eDircetory and Zenworks. In contrast to something like YAST, which is so specific to a particular distribution that porting it to other distributions prooves more difficult than righting such from scratch, these applications/services could gain widespread usage amongst the broader Linux community. Novell can and will remain the experts in regards to these applications/services-rightly seen as the source for support and implementation issues surounding these products. But releasing these products as opensource would allow for all Linux distributions to benefit from this technology and preclude these products from forming vendor lock-in. I am firmly convinced that Novell can realize profit from these applications/services in how they integrate them into the final product. The key to profitability in the OSS world is not through exclusive monopoly control of technologies-the key lies in the integration work, support and implementation.
As regards GNOME in NLD, and other Novell/SuSE products I trully wonder why all of their releases are always at least one generation older than current GNOME offerings. SuSe, even prior to the acquisition, always used the bleeding edge of KDE, including much from kde-cvs, but always used an outdated versions of GNOME. Indeed Ximian also pursued this policy-lagging many, many months behind the offical GNOME releases-and of coures Mono just recently got in sync with the GNOME-2.6 release. I can understand some lag time-time for additional QA and bug-fixing. But it would seem as if 6 to 10 weeks should be sufficient time though.
Beyond Novell open sourcing more of their stack I would love to see some work from Novel towards a freedesktop standard virtual file system. Novell has many bright and talented developers-from KDE, from GNOME and kernel developers. As it stands now gnome-vfs is attempting to duplicate the functionality of kioslaves in KDE. In addition to this we also have various kernel based vfs systems-lufs,automount,shfs etc. Transitioning the kernel-space vfs to userland, not unlike udev vs. devfs, and combining the combined functionality of gnome-vfs and kioslaves in a freedesktop standards based vfs could profoundly improve the the state of networked filesystem usage in all desktops environments. The goal would be a transparent vfs system-where smbfs,cifs,shfs,sshfs,ftpfs,cefs,cardfs,gnetfs,
locasefs,nfs,autofs and others are all seamlessy present in the local files system and accessible from all applications(both GUI and CLI).
I know its a pipe dream but heh-it would be great,)
It seems like freedesktop.org is housing fuse_kioslaves…Combining avfs, fuse, kioslaves, and fish….maybe my pipe dream isnt just reams of smoke;)