Recently there have been a lot of one sided bashing of Novell’s open source credentials on Planet India. I have no particular liking/knowledge of the politics/business big corporations engage in, here is my take on the matter.

* Novell got M$ selling Linux (cancer?) to it’s own customers!! this has to be one of the biggest win of Linux. Whatever IP peace of FUD they might be talking about, the crux of the matter is M$’s customers wants Linux and they are willfully obliging.

* All Novell owned patents are pledged to OIN : Open Invention Network is an intellectual property company that was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment. Novell is one of the founding members.

* Novell is supporter of some of the largest open source projects, it open sourced many of its own technology too, here is a list of projects that benefit from Novell’s contributions.

* Battled SCO - Novell owns UNIX, another brownie point to them.

* Novell employs a large number of open source developers, including some of the brightest and long time open source stalwarts.

* Many innovations on the Linux desktop we see today are result of development happening for SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise), XGL/Compiz, Nomad, Banshee, Beagle etc.

* openSUSE Build Service, an innovative platform benefits many distributions not just Novell/SUSE. Another web-based tool http://studio.suse.com is on it’s way, that aught to change the way we look at “distributions”.

* openSUSE community also drives innovation, see 1-click installation for example.

* Last but not the least, they send me goodies(more goodies) every now and then to distribute for open source events. Who am I to look gift horse in the mouth?

Even if some “activists” are right that Novell is sold out to M$ and wants to bleed the community that is life line of their business, shouldn’t the community have faith that foundations of free software community is strong enough to face any challenge “evil” Novell can come up with? So dear Activists, please highlight good things about the community and stop being paranoid, world is not ending anytime soon.

This is not a defense of Novell, may their top management go to hell if any of the FUD generated by likes of boycottnovell has any bit of truth, I as a member of openSUSE community is proud to be working with some really nice people and happy to enjoy all the goodness they are sharing.

Completed “Linux” module for one batch of “LAMP” course students at the Computer Center, MS University of Baroda.

Tested the SUSE studio, a most comprehensive and easy to use web-based distro builder tool out there today. It is not open to all yet, but from the shape of what I tested it looks quite ready to rock’n'roll for everyone. It was great to testdrive openSUSE-Edu live CD created by Andrea(anubisg) directly online even without downloading anything.

Updated to openSUSE 11.1 B5 on my desktop and SLES 11 B5 in VirtualBox, both are now shaping up to be really good releases.

Tested NOMAD on KIWI-LTSP, works out of box. Local disk and sound does not work though, it is yet to be implemented in NOMAD.

Even though NOMAD patches going in openSUSE 11,1 Compiz packages are breaking a couple of things like emerald and some buggy plugins, hopefully we will have Compiz+NOMAD working fine in the final release. The good side to it is that we(free software world) are getting innovative new technology(NOMAD) driven by requirements in enterprise product(SLES).

Yesterday, did a workshop on OpenOffice.org for everyday use, these were the participants, nice to see a couple of girls in there. I shamelessly used the training material available on Copsa website.

Also found time to meet friends and see a lignite(coal) mine, first time I saw any kind of mine.

We are planning a one full day workshop on OpenOffice.org covering
wordprocessor, spreadsheet and presentation. The workshop is aimed at
users new to Linux and OpenOffice.

The workshop is tentatively scheduled on Sunday 16 November at our
office. As there are limited seats(10 only) participation will be by
free registration on a first come first served basis.

Register here.

While I was away on vacation, Andrea Florio has been talking about openSUSE-Education and KIWI-LTSP at Brindisi’s Linux-Day (Italy). The project also showed up in local press.

Jan Weber, this year’s GSOC Easy-LTSP developer also created an Easy-KIWI-GUI for easy-kiwi-build,simple front-end to create live CD/USB from predefined images.

Last but not the least, congratulations and welcome to first community elected openSUSE Board.

Here are some pictures

From Himalayan Safari