Free Software Linux

   Customers, Partners Run Top Supercomputers on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing Press Release World’s three most powerful supercomputers run SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell WALTHAM, Mass.— 11 Jun 2008— Supercomputers around the world are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell®. According to TOP500, a project that tracks and detects trends in high-performance computing, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the Linux* of choice on the world’s largest HPC supercomputers today. Of the top 50 supercomputers worldwide, 40 percent are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise, including the top three – IBM* eServer Blue Gene at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, IBM eServer BlueGene/P (JUGENE) at the Juelich Research Center and SGI* Altix 8200 at the New Mexico Computing Applications Center.

Press Release: The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 11.0 — everything you need to get started with Linux on the desktop and on the server. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE Project provides free, easy access to the world’s most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE. The 11.0 release of openSUSE includes more than 200 new features specific to openSUSE, a redesigned installer that makes openSUSE even easier to install, faster package management thanks to major updates in the ZYpp stack, and KDE 4, GNOME 2.22, Compiz Fusion, and much more. Read More.

With all the smaller players in the Virtualization game suddenly feeling like extras on the set of a badly-animated Godzilla movie, VMWare has fired it’s visionary CEO and looks to lose one of it’s most valuable engineers (her husband) all at a time when Microsoft is spooling up it’s Hyperbole-V engine to take on VMWare directly. Best article about this so far is from the Register: EMC CEO’s Ego Has Cost Investors Billions, where the situation is laid out along withe resulting consequences for VMWare.  Basically it looks like VMWare’s CEO was axed by EMC’s CEO over personality differences, with Paul Maritz (Yes, THAT Paul Maritz so recently of Microsoft) taking the helm.

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

Well after some googling and a little hacking myself i was able to come up with a proceedure for all the openSUSE members on how to get VMware Workstation 6.0.4 running on openSUSE 11.0. Follow the Outline below step by step and you will be up and running in no time. 1. Download the latest VMWare Workstation 6.0.4 from here ( The rpm version of course ) 2. Install VMware Workstation 6.0.4 rpm. 3. Download this patch for vmware-vmblock from here 4. Extract it with the command # tar xzvf vmware-vmblock-patch.tgz 5. Change your directory to vmware-vmblock-patch with the command # cd vmware-vmblock-patch 6. execute runme.sh with the command # ./runme.sh 7. Now you can run vmware-config.pl ( of course make sure you have your kernel-source, gcc, make and the like installed ) Enjoy!

Simon’s a great guy, so I almost couldn’t quote this article this way, but the headline won out…

From the article:

Many open source developers remain sceptical of Sun because their memories of the company focus on Sun’s interactions with the community in 2001/2002, which Sun’s chief open source officer Simon Phipps concedes was a period where Sun “screwed up”.

Speaking in a recent interview with Builder AU, Phipps explained the situation in which Sun finds itself.

“Open source developers have been much more sceptical of Sun, a lot of open source developers don’t remember the fact that Sun was pretty much the first open source start-up in 1982.

“All they can remember is what happened in 2001/2002 when, to be quite frank with you, we screwed up. We alienated a large group of open source developers by the attitudes we had of the community back then,” said Phipps.

Source:

What?  Give Up My Precious Windows? Fancy yourself a crusader? Think Green all the time? That’s going to help with the environment, but do you want to make a real difference in the world of computing and the Internet? Then uninstall Windows and install Linux. No. Seriously. Oh you’re probably saying “It’s those silly Linux guys bashing Microsoft again”, and normally it’d be true. I’ve been known to tweak the nose of our loyal opposition/beloved partner now and then, but this time it’s truly different.  I recommend people to get off of Consumer Desktop Windows for the same reason I also recommend seatbelts and stopping smoking.  It’s not IF you’ll have a problem, it’s WHEN. A Little History - What’s a BotNet?

From the article:

The notional value of Europe’s investment in free/libre or open source software today is €22bn, representing 20.5pc of the region’s total software investment, a senior UN researcher will tell an intelligence briefing on open source in Dublin later this week. Rishab Ghosh, a senior researcher at the UN University in Maastricht, will tell the Open Ireland conference in Dublin that the spend in the US on free/libre or open source software (FLOSS) stands at €36bn and accounts for 20pc of software spend in the US.

Read More.

Greetings…
Its been awhile since i last posted. I have been on Travel for Novell and have not had much time to make any posts.. but hopefully this will redeem my lacking from the past weeks.

I have been Working on creating a YaST module for supportconfig.

If you are unsure about what supportconfig is then you can read about it here
Also if you want to install it and check it out for yourself go here, and of course you can search for it on the openSUSE software search here

Here are the screenshots of my mockup as of today.
Wizard Style YaST Module

Where can I find…. As usually happens, I get an IM or email with a request for a piece of information and either I have that info in a bookmarked or easily referencable location, or it’s time to put on the derby and become Network Jones and the Lost Files of Wendy.  (If you get that reference, you’re as old as I am and love that cartoonist too…) All nostalgia aside, someone recently asked me a question that before a month ago I would have faked a network connection problem or a heart attack to avoid having to be involved in:  What Oracle products are certified and supported on SLES, all versions. A Brighter Day

I was just sitting down to write all about this, when I found David’s article explaining the new Extended Support Policy, so here that is instead, nice work David! From the article: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or shortly SLES is a Linux distribution widely deployed by many enterprise environments. The first version SLES 8 was released in April 2001. The successor SLES 9 was released three years later in 2004. And the latest available revision SLES 10 was released in the middle of 2006. The prepared SLES 11 is planned for the current year 2008.

I have created a Cool Solutions here which outlines how to mirror the Security, Optional, Recommended and Kernel Only for ZLM, but they have changed things in ZLM 7.2 IR2…They have removed the command line option for the –category from the zlmmirror command, and moved it into the mirror-config xml as a tag under the catalog section, which at this time does not work. Refer to bugzilla #333347 to the status. According the end of the bug they are slated to move the command line option back in and have this all fixed by ZLM 7.2 IR2 Hot-Patch 1. Enjoy!

As covered in earlier posts, SUSE Linux Enterprise has many new features and bug fixes. It is now available for download! SLED http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=O4laI0St6AA~ SLES http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=xWohTS2zkSs~ Have a lot of fun

There’s a fairly funny and irony-splattered article in BusinessReviewOnline that takes some exception with the latest Aberdeen Group State of the Market Research Report, asking why companies like Symantec aren’t above companies like Skype, etc. Anyway, Novell came in 48th, a respectable showing, and since the author is taking exception to the orderings of the report, then I’m sure Novell ranks much higher as a result. Enjoy, RossB

“The Register” reports NASA is working with SGI on acquiring a massive SGI Altix ICE supercomputer to assist with jobs for future manned missions and other aeronautical research. Read on.