One thing is for sure – this is going to be a roller coaster ride for Novell execs and employees. Novell actually has a lot of cash relative to its revenues so it was only a matter of time before someone would go raiding. Elliott is in it for a flip profit … and the financials are lined up perfectly. (or someone behind Elliot who is in it for other reasons ;-) This is a savvy move, but also as Andy says a potentially dangerous game – if they win and overpaid.

If you’re reading any analysis of the situation, make sure you read Andy’s take in the link below. At the end of the day, the GPL, Suse, the technology, etc won’t matter – this is going to be a nasty game billion dollar chicken game for profits.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20100304051547830

I haven’t seen any article yet, though,  that describes in detail how the high stakes game of tender offers is played, and how the usual process maps (and doesn’t) to a high tech company like Novell.  So I thought I’d provide an overview for those that haven’t had occasion to follow a tender offer in the past, and also my thoughts on what may happen over the next several months in this particular game of cat and mouse.

You can read the full announcement here: http://news.opensuse.org/2008/03/11/announcing-the-official-opensuse-forums/ 

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
6:30pm-8:00 PM
IBM
590 Madison Ave, 12th Floor
corner of 57th Street
** RSVP Closes at 4:30pm the day of the meeting (sharp!) ***
Please RSVP for EVERY meeting at this time.
Register at http://rsvp.nylug.org/

PLEASE NOTE: This meeting is at IBM, not Google!

Jim  Gleason – on – The Next Wave of Virtualization

Kernel-based Virtual Machine and its impact on the desktop Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a Linux kernel virtualization infrastructure and open source hypervisor that provides both full and para-virtualization capabilities for Linux on commodity x86 hardware that contain the virtualization extensions from Intel and AMD.  KVM is currently implemented as a loadable Linux kernel module.  In late 2006, it was first included in Linux kernel 2.6.20 and and first shipped with OpenSuse 10.1 and Fedora 6.

Since KVM is part of Linux, KVM leverages the scheduler, memory management and other key resources in the Linux kernel, unlike VMware and Xen which must create their own custom mechanisms. Thus, KVM development focuses exclusively on the next-wave virtualization, while Xen and VMWare must also maintain these ‘forked’ non-Linux resources.

All of the core KVM developers, including Avi Kavity, work at the firm, Qumranet, which launched a desktop virtualization solution called Solid ICE that leverages KVM.  Qumranet is the creator, maintainer and global sponsor of the KVM Open Source Hypervisor Project.  Other high-ranking Linux kernel developers such as Rusty Russell and Anthony Liguori of IBM, Ingo Molnar of Red Hat, and Andrea Archangeli formerly of Novell, devote most of their time to KVM development.

What is the Next Wave of Virtualization?

Qumranet has gone beyond conventional server virtualization and application streaming by completely virtualizing end users’ desktop machines.  From a browser on a thin client or PC, users access their desktop work environment over the network via a virtual machine running on a centralized server.  The end result is a seamless end user work experience, just like a physical PC on a LAN. This is a high-level talk which will focus on the breakthrough Linux technology KVM, and its impact on the virtualization market.

About Jim Gleason:
Jim has been providing emerging technology to early adopters in the Financial Serivces Sector for the past ten years.  Widely regarded as the person who brought Linux to Wall Street, Jim sold the first production Linux cluster to Goldman Sachs in 1998.  Jim was also an early Internet pioneer having closed deals for the first official web sites of Charles Schwab, VISA, and all of Hewlett-Packard’s original web sites in 1993. Jim is also the Founder of the NY Linux Users Group and currently works at Qumranet in the capacity of Vice President of Sales.

Meeting Location:
Please note that this meeting will be held at IBM, 590 Madison Ave, 12th floor, corner of 57th Street, and not at Google.  This is the building with the IBM logo on the front of the building.

Map:
http://tighturl.com/m

Books!!!
Our friends at Prentice-Hall kindly provide us with review copies of various new titles.  One of these could be yours, all you have to do is agree to review the book within a reasonable period of time.

On the downside, OpenSuse still has not figured out how to integrate proprietary nVidia drivers, proprietary codecs, YaST is still slow, and it was a long install. However, the desktop is simply beautiful. Very polished, very refreshing and I love the evolution of the start panel. OpenSuse is the best “menu” on a Linux desktop to date (Ubuntu could take some lessons here even).

Users will also find a full suite of AppArmor utilities, Windows integration GUIs, and all around, the most well covered admin-from-a-gui experience around. If you’re looking at desktops or no-charge servers, you may want to try this one out.

Next up: Xen

Please note important RSVP information about this meeting

Jason Perlow, Sr. Technology Editor, Linux Magazine, and Advisory Architect, IBM Global Technology Services, will be presenting a sneak peek at Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” and OpenSuSE 10.3, updated versions of two popular Linux distributions currently under development.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, upon its release in the Fall of 2007, will be the latest incarnation of the world’s fastest growing Free Software Linux distribution. Built upon the technology in Debian, targeted towards a wide range of end users and sporting the lastest Linux Kernel 2.6.22, it will have the latest implementation of GNOME, FireFox, OpenOffice, and other useful Open Source applications, as well as support for a wide array of devices including wireless networking and 3D accelerated video drivers thru open source and “restricted” proprietary device drivers from 3rd parties. Ubuntu, which was first released in 2003 by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, has quickly usurped Fedora as the most downloaded Linux distribution on the Internet.

OpenSUSE 10.3, also due in the fall, is the next version of Novell’s popular Open Source and community-based Linux Distribution. Derived from SuSE Linux Professional, which used to be a commercial product, OpenSUSE 10.3 is both a bleeding-edge technology demonstrator for Novell’s future enterprise products and an end-user Linux distribution for power users that is packed full of software applications, advanced desktop/workstation Linux technology as well as the very latest in Open Source development tools. Distributed on DVD media and engineered at Novell’s research facilities in Nuremburg, Germany, it is the literal Mercedes Benz of Linux distributions.

Further Information:

• Ubuntu: Gutsy Gibbon
• OpenSuSE: 10.3

About Jason Perlow:

Jason Perlow is Senior Technology Editor for Linux Magazine. In the past, his works have been featured in ZDNet, Sm@rt Partner, Smart Business for the New Economy, Maximum Linux, Handheld PC and PalmPower.com. He has run his own integration firm, Argonaut Systems, and is the founder of eGullet.com, a food news and discussion web site. He lives in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City with his wife Rachel and two poodles, Truffle and Bailey. Jason maintains a blog, Off The Broiler where he talks about food, technology, and what’s on his mind. ( podcasts)

URL: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2148775,00.asp

Opinion: When I first saw the list for the eWEEK slide show, Ten Reasons Not to Buy Open Source, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. So here are my answers to these “reasons.”

Without further adieu, here are my answers to the “reasons” not to buy open-source software.

The Free Software movement is dead,” Hilf said, in a typical quip, as quoted in “The Bangkok Post.” “Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even [Linux creator] Linus [Torvalds] has a job today.”

I’m curious if he was just misquoted, but that does happen. Obviously that was a terribly poor judgment as the free software movement is most certainly alive and well, and there are more people working on Linux than just IBM, Oracle, and Canonical. Bill, take a look at who really contributed to the 2.6.20 kernel Bill - there are many contributors (nearly 2,000 had code accepted just into the 2.6.20 kernel). The free software ecosystem is actually growing further – and many of the participants are Microsoft’s own long time partners. And yes, many of them do make a living (it’s hard to code Linux kernel code while wandering and asking for money on the streets). That is actually Microsoft’s real problem – these guys (and gals) are making a living – it’s an economically self-sustaining model. Sure, they are not making $92M/day like others, but they make a living and enjoy what they do.

Maybe that’s what has Microsoft so afraid that they’re reverting to their usual tricks (e.g. not competing on technology). After all, there used to be a huge force of Wintel+Dell, but even that partnership has changed…

Consider this: Google, IBM, HP, Dell, Intel, AMD, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, SAP, Accenture, China, India, Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Avnet, vast numbers of global and local resellers, consultants, ISVs, and system integrators are all making vast fortunes for their shareholders off of Linux. Will the industry just let FUD tricks stand in their way??? Heck no, this industry invented FUD and certainly knows how to defeat it.

The real problem is that the industry is already defeating it. The MS monopoly is under attack from all sides: ODF, Linux Desktop, Linux server, Adobe RIA, Eclipse RCP, etc, etc and I see these latest threats as last resort efforts from a company clearly concerned about its long term growth. That’s a natural response, but another way to compete is to just fix your products and deliver something your customers want.

http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/files/2007/04/44218-linuxdistrotimeline-72.png

Preview:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6944795565.html 

To steal an adjective from the guys over at Redmonk, the “enterprisey” types will find a January, 2007 paper by Forrester’s Brad Day quite interesting. It’s called “Why Choose Linux on a Mainframe” – a very compelling question. It’s common to be asked here, “why would anyone want to do Linux on a mainframe?” I was intrigued and read the paper.

I’ve discovered at IBM, mainframes are not a dying technology, in fact the longer I’m in IBM watching what customers are doing, the more I’m realizing that mainframes are actually a window into the future of where other platforms (x86/RISC) are heading. Sun, HP, Intel/AMD, and even the other IBM server lines watch what’s going on with mainframes and try to build those technologies/features into their products. It’s an odd thing having personally grown into the x86 culture thinking that the whole point was to get those outdated UNIX/Mainframes to x86 b/c of price points…

Anyway, this is a shameless plug for IBM-wares and I apologize, but I’m finding the customers using mainframes are doing some of the most interesting work and proof points around having 1 OS that runs and is supported everywhere. Most of these customers end up deciding Linux should be their strategic OS and once you have moved to Linux – workloads are ‘floating’ – they are not tied to any one type of hardware (within reason). Nationwide.com migrating their entire mission critical web infrastructure off a mix of 700 x86 and Unix servers was just the tip of the iceberg.

And if you think this is just a “couple guys out there” doing zLinux, Brad Day cites some of the metrics from LAST YEAR that still show how many customers are doing zLinux:

According to IBM, the Q2 2006 Linux/System z business closed out the quarter with more than 1,000 Linux customers on System z, 19% of System z revenues coming from Linux, and being deployed with 28% of System z customers and more than 800 System z Linux projects in production.

Unfortunately I can’t find a link to this paper other than one on Forrester’s website… If you’re ‘enterprisey’ then I’m sure the $279 won’t set you too far back (or you may have a subscription already).

On another note, for those of you concerned about observability, SystemTAP for Linux now has S/390 support for mainframe Linux (RHEL and SLES) ;-) Observers have to remember stap has enabled features built into the architecture to assist different types of users. Recently it seems the question on some minds is “why have a guru option at all” and “doesn’t that imply the architecture is unsafe”? I don’t necessarily speak for the developers (you can ask them though, they’re very open and engaging on the mailing list) but I’ll try to give my view.

In normal, user mode, stap is no different than other observability tools and it’s restricted like other observability tools to those things that could never crash a system. I’m told quite clearly, safety is not a goal; it’s a must. But, you have to understand the community users to see where a guru mode comes in.

SystemTAP guru users are the types living on the edge not caring what they do to a system and these users are going to try one set of things that you wouldn’t want to do on production systems. They are not the ordinary user – some are testing bleeding edge code and inevitably find bugs. Others are using stap and finding bugs in other code. The switch to manually/explicitly allow stap to execute a script with embedded C code is -g. I wouldn’t expect to see many, if any -g type users in production environments… it just wouldn’t make sense – and many can’t use -g even if they tried on a production system b/c compiling the embedded C code on a production machine requires gcc (which production deployments don’t – at least shouldn’t – have). Without gcc, the script would simply exit.

To use -g on a production system, you’d have to compile your script on another system using the new stap cross-compile feature and then run it on your production system… that’s a whole different class of user who 1) knows where in the kernel they want to look, 2) is dangerous enough to know they can write embedded C code to find that probe point, 3) knows how to cross-compile a script on one environment for another (and setup the test environment correctly), and 4) has the access to run it on a production system… not to mention that if they get to point 3), they’re going to test it on that system and work out any bugs there before running it on a production system.

The main point of having a guru option is that this one technology has the capability to do whatever someone can imagine (and I know of a few customers with great imaginations, just like those who imagined ways to save millions by running Linux on a mainframe). The way I see it is this: the Linux kernel is open source and even in the kernel developer crowd – who’s going to tell them what parts of their kernel they can/cannot have access to?

SystemTAP is architected for different goals than other tools b/c it’s architected in an open community. Just as Linux is modular by design to be open and adaptable when some others felt monolithic/prescriptive was a better path. When development happens in a closed environment, you get what someone else wants you to get.

Ironically, observability features first appeared way back when on the mainframe. It’s great to see that today as features evolve in an open community, an observability tool like SystemTAP can be used across all of the major system architectures: x86/64, RISC/POWER, and now S/390 mainframe. It’s still relatively early on for SystemTAP, but the project is definitely making strides and I’m impressed by the number and diversity of users I’ve seen so far. Just think about this: one observability tool can be used across your entire enterprise environment on an OS that runs on all hardware architectures… I wonder where that could lead?

I actually cut over to RHEL5 Desktop (IBM’s latest Open Client offering) last night to get on a supported Notes OS and keep up with the latest releases. I’m quite impressed with the look, feel, and performance of RHEL5 Desktop. It’s FAR better than the RHEL4 WS (shudder) and I’m impressed enough so far to say it may just be better than SLED as well. I shouldn’t knock RHEL4 WS – it has been around forever, and it does what it was designed for well. It’s tough to say “it’s better” knowing SP1 for SLED is on the way with new improvements, but for a first release, RHELD is definitely nice. I’m not sure yet what happens to the pkg mgmt when you mix in the bleeding edge Fedora repos, but you can be sure I’ll find out soon. That’s one area where Gentoo excels and I have yet to find a distro to keep up – Ubuntu is the closest if you want my opinion, but .. try installing Beryl 0.2 on Feisty… see what I mean.

Yesterday over on #redmonk I got the news that yet another beta tester tried to run it on Ubuntu… unfortunately that is not one of the beta platforms supported. If you’re using Ubuntu and want to try it out, I’d suggest running the beta on RHEL/SLES in VMWare on Ubuntu. It won’t be the ideal experience, but that’s one way to get it working. I’ll ask around and see if there any .deb’s in the IBM locker for the beta…

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9887927101.html 

Also, “how should we support you?” Very interesting set of questions – I’d be interested in the results myself. I voted for Ubuntu and must disagree with them listing it as “non-commercial” – ever here of Canonical? No Gentoo offered (shocking…)

Pre-Installed Linux Options

It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.

As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don’t want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.

To read about the recent addition of Latitude notebooks to our n-series family, read Direct2Dell from one of Dell’s Linux solution architects, or visit www.dell.com/linux and www.dell.com/nseries.

Like I said, I’m using OpenSUSE 10.2 for this but for some reason could only find packages ready for FC6 or Ubuntu… odd. Anyway, there are two ways to install: 1) tarball and 2) svn. I used both b/c I followed version 1) and then decided I’d rather get the latest version from source to fix a couple bugs I found. I would recommend path 2) to anyone capable. Both paths are actually very simple if you already have XGL working.

BTW, during this entire process, I quickly realized why I’ve held onto Gentoo for so long… I’d rather watch OpenOffice compile from source than spend 1/4th of that time using YaST. I guess if you’re ‘new to Linux’, YaST is probably awesome, but despite being impressed by the performance speedups, over time, YaST has become bloated to the point where I can go get a snack while I start it up. Anyway, back to Awn.

Steps to setup on OpenSUSE 10.2:

1) Download tarball here

2) Unzip it: # gunzip -c avant-window-navigator-0.1.1-2.tar.gz | tar xvf -

3) cd into directory # cd avant-window-navigator-0.1.1/

4) C-M-MI as root: # ./configure then, # make, then # make install

* Note: I had an error at configure to install dependencies (gconf-devel and libwnck-devel) although the error doesn’t specify that you need the dev versions (I already had both non-dev binary packages installed)

5) cd into data dir: # cd data then type: # gconftool-2 --install-schema-file=avant-window-navigator.schemas and you should get output indicating success

6) Click on the Computer (start) button, choose “More Applications” and under newly installed, you should see “Avant Window Navigator” or type in # avant-window-navigator in a terminal as your desktop user. To set preferences, in a term type # avant-preferences as your user.

—— Subversion Method —–

Another option is to install from svn – this gets you the latest bits (which I recommend):

1) # mkdir [svndir]/awn

2) # svn checkout http://avant-window-navigator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk awn

3) # cd awn and then as root # ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr && make && make install

** Note: I had to install intltool, gnome-common, gnome-desktop-devel, gnome-vfs2-devel, and libgnome-devel with all their dependencies to proceed… miss portage…

4) exit root, cd into data dir: # cd data" then type: # gconftool-2 --install-schema-file=avant-window-navigator.schemas.in and you should get output indicating success

5) Click on the Computer (start) button, choose “More Applications” and under newly installed, you should see “Avant Window Navigator” or type in # avant-window-navigator in a terminal. To set preferences, in a term type # avant-preferences.

Tweaking Awn: You can tweak Awn settings using # gconf-editor then going into /apps/avant-window-navigator and in there you will see a number of options to tweak. One that you may want to start with is the launchers key under “window_manager” -> that is where you can setup all the default icons to appear in Awn at start.

http://www.dellideastorm.com/ 

http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/compare-to-vista.html

Analysis — At the Paris Solutions Linux show on Jan. 30, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-largest automobile manufacturer, and Novell announced the signing of a multiyear contract for the deployment of up to 20,000 Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop installations plus 2,500 copies of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.