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SuSE Businesses Software Linux

SUSE Studio 1.0 Released 121

Posted by kdawson from the make-me-one-with-everything dept.
apokryphos writes "Novell has just announced the release of SUSE Studio 1.0 — a user-friendly Web service that allows you to create your customized Linux distribution as a live CD, USB, Xen, or VMware image. Users have control over adding any repositories, packages, and files to the distribution. A new user can do the full creation and customization of the software appliance in roughly ten minutes. It also includes a Flash-based 'test drive' service, which allows you to try out your appliance in a Web browser before downloading it."
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SUSE Studio 1.0 Released More

SUSE Studio 1.0 Released

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  • Just say the word... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:12PM (#28919953)
    Oh if she called me Id be there Id come running anywhere Shes all I need, all my life I feel so good if I just say the word SuSE Studio, just say the word Oh SuSE Studio

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Oh if she called me Id be there
      Id come running anywhere
      Shes all I need, all my life
      I feel so good if I just say the word
      SuSE Studio, just say the word
      Oh SuSE Studio

      If I knew who you are, I would come to your house and hit your computer with a sledgehammer.

      • Why hit him? Hit Phil Collins first - after all, he started it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by KingMotley ( 944240 ) *

          He was trying to be funny, as sledgehammer was a popular song released by peter gabriel around the same time that phil collin's sussudio was released.

        • Hit Phil Collins first

          Now, you're talking my language. And with a big-ass sledgehammer.

          If for no other reason than Buster (but god knows there are many many other reasons).

          If it wasn't for his very special drumming on Brian Eno's Another Green World I'd say that Phil Collins should be tried for crimes against humanity. I was once driving on 90 through southwestern Wisconsin and Phil Collins' Groovy Kind of Love came on the radio. My ears bled and made the steering wheel slippery, making me lose control o

  • Sweet! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'll use the service to make a Fedora 11 clone!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by killthepoor187 ( 1600283 )

      I don't think this is to make full fledged distros like ubuntu and fedora so much as software appliances like the gparted live cd.

      "A software appliance is a full application stack containing the operating system, the application software and any required dependencies, and the configuration and data files required to operate. Everything is preinstalled, preintegrated, and ready to run.
      You can think of this like an extreme form of static linking."

      Although an easy way to make a full custom distro would be hot.

      • You certainly could make something that qualifies as a "custom distro"; but it would still pretty much be a subset of Suse's options, along with custom art, prepopulated DB tables, or whatever.

        I'm not even sure what an "easy way to make a full custom distro" would look like, unless a copy of Linux From Scratch and an internet connection qualifies...

  • Nice except.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by praseodym ( 813457 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:12PM (#28919961) Homepage
    "SUSE Studio is currently available to invited users only. Request an invitation on our user sign in page, and we'll send you an email soon!"

    • Re:Nice except.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:41PM (#28920203) Journal
      This sort of service is presumably a fairly big server/bandwidth drain, and not as easy to break up across mirrors/bittorrent swarms as basic downloads are.

      It'll be interesting to see if it is made freely and broadly available, whether there will be any volume restrictions, or whether it will be a pay service.

      • http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Studio_API [opensuse.org]
        http://susestudio.com/help/api/v1 [susestudio.com]

        You can do pretty much everything with curl.

        Also, you can export to KIWI [opensuse.org] from Studio.

        I think some of the questions about feature availability, costs, etc. have been answered by Nat & Team, and should be available in channel logs, along with a bunch of other good stuff.

      • charge for it (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Locklin ( 1074657 )

        This seems like the ideal application for monetizing FOSS. They could easily charge a small fee for this, as you would be paying for CPU/bandwidth costs, and a custom product. It would be difficult for someone to do it for free without a big bankroll, and people distributing the product would not devalue the service (as the service is custom and the redistributions would be simple ISOs).

      • Isn't that why BitTorrent was invented?

        Oh wait, it's a web-service instead of a real application. Well, I call that shooting in its own food, or an EPIC FAIL in new Internetspeak.

      • Somebody fix git's binary performance, and fire up the torrent back end.

  • Wow, customized distros (Score:5, Interesting)

    by icebike ( 68054 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:16PM (#28919989)

    This seems like a big step forward in distro design and customization. The ability to specify exactly what you want included and where you want to run it makes a lot of installations easier.

    The time to download a .iso, then install, then add packages and repositories was always a significant portion of any new distro testing/adaptation.

    I especially like the ability to get a pre-loaded VMware image, because that is where I test new releases.

    • And this is why Linux will eventually win (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @05:17PM (#28920437)

      One day. Sheer flexibility in licensing and usage. Loading up Windows 7, it doesn't even want to pretend that you might want to dualboot. No repartitioning of existing partitions or anything.

      Linux is the equivalent of a contortionist acrobat and Windows is a quadriplegic that makes everyone's life hell if you don't accomodate it's needs just right. Which would you rather marry and hang around all day?

      • The quadriplegic's hot contortionist sister?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by w0mprat ( 1317953 )

        One day. Sheer flexibility in licensing and usage. Loading up Windows 7, it doesn't even want to pretend that you might want to dualboot. No repartitioning of existing partitions or anything.

        Not true about Windows 7's installer, which does now give you the option to resize partitions in the GUI, the console is also accessible which gives you partitioning tools (which was always available on a windows installer disk). No support for ext and other file systems of course.

        The new windows bootloader BCD is very powerful and a delight to work with, it *can* actually boot other OSes including linux. If grub is not in the root partition you need to ins

        It would seem Microsoft is under pressure wit

        • If grub is not in the root partition you need to ins

          Argh, don't keep us in suspense...that's like the slashdot equivalent of blue balls.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rliden ( 1473185 )

        Do you even know what you're talking about or are you making up a bunch of spin that will make you sound good?

        When you install Win 7 you can repartition, format the partitions, and select the partition you want to install to. You can dual boot if you choose and it's no more difficult to get running than it is with Linux and GRUB (or your other favorite bootloader). The ease of setting up dual-booting is subjective but that is my opinion.

        So why do you have to make up weird stuff that gives you some illusio

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      oh, like you have been able to do with Freebsd for a while now with the FreeSBIE port ( at least the customized version angle )

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by icebike ( 68054 )

        It seems like this goes way beyond Free, in that this will deliver a working virtual machine, Live CD, or installation CD already with the additional repositories attached, and packages installed.

        When it gets enhanced so you can select hardware of interest simply by clicking machine make/model from a list it will be sweeter yet.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by xtracto ( 837672 )

      I thought something like Jigdo [wikipedia.org] could be used to achieve just that.

      An online web page which let you select what you want your system to have and then created a "jigdo" file containing such downloads will be a powerful tool.

  • KDE is very promising but needs polish with the 4.3 release. Now here is my request:

    Let's focus on making the default KDE install not only beautiful but also functional to the fullest extent KDE allows. In other words, we need meaningful defaults.

    I am doing my part helping out with KDE help files.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by netdur ( 816698 )

      Nat, the guy behind SUSE Studio, is GNOME developer... so your wish may not... you figure out

  • Easily in the Top 5 innovations (Score:5, Informative)

    by itomato ( 91092 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:25PM (#28920061)

    I have been using this through Alpha and Beta, and it is the answer to many of the challenges I have faced when using tools like Debian's live-helper.

    Less need to roll your own solutions to things like setting up repos, setting up a virtualization server, routines to handle changes/versioning (to some extent), storage, etc.

    I have used it to pull out some demo environments to land a job (or intimidate the interviewers out of one), and grease the wheels on personal projects - things like a Live environment for Retail POS terminals, a LiveCD that boots into a 68K Mac emulator, and a playground for virtualized IBM s/390 and zSeries hardware with Hercules.

    Seriously great tool. Nat Friedman and team have put a tremendous amount of effort and energy into this project, and they continue to be willing and open to lend a hand on IRC.

    Hooray! I'd tele-cheers with a beer if I could!

    This tool will hopefully end up on someone's short list of major Linux-related innovations of 2009.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cbuhler ( 887833 )
      I've played with it some too. Great way to make a custom live cd with My Stuff. Suse and team do really need to get recognized for this.

    • a LiveCD that boots into a 68K Mac emulator

      Now that is a neat idea. That'd make a really nice gift for some people I know, if you're willing to overlook the fact that the ROM isn't free.

  • Some questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by corychristison ( 951993 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:32PM (#28920127)

    1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds.
    2) potential for HyperVM, Virtualbox, etc images? Would be nice to see them.
    3) kernels? what about kernels? Can you config your own? How about patches?

    If it can't do these, it sounds like it's more of a toy for new comers. Not saying that's a bad thing, it just won't be as useful as I had hoped.

    • Re:Some questions (Score:4, Informative)

      by techprophet ( 1281752 ) <emallson@arcIIIh ... inus threevowels> on Sunday August 02, 2009 @04:36PM (#28920149) Journal
      1) It's SUSE, so yes, RPM
      2) Just Xen images right now, but VBox/HyperVM can use the VirtualDisk export option on SUSE Studio
      3) It lets you pick a kernel, and lets you add repos, so you could rollyourown and add it to a custom repo, then install on it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SpoodyGoon ( 1574025 )
      RPM it sounds like you want to build every little piece of it which may be in the future but if you don't like Suse (-uses RPM) then you probably won't like their studio. I have found it to be an interesting idea, I have been trying it out and I have my fingers crossed that it will be a huge success. Let's be honest here, we all want our own custom distro this is not perfect nor is it for everyone but it is an interesting step.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Korin43 ( 881732 )
      I wish there was a "-1 Too High Expectations For the First Version" mod..

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @05:06PM (#28920347)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Some questions (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @06:06PM (#28920807) Homepage Journal

      "1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds."

      It doesn't force anything. No one with a shotgun tells you that you must visit the website, or that you must create your own custom distro, or that you must use RPM. It's all voluntary. If there is any small part of the thing that you do not like, you can leave any time. That is one of the wonderful things about OSS, after all. There is no warning, "By entering this site, you agree to forfeit your soul, along with your first born child, subject to interpretations of law by myriad demans living below Redmond."

      Take it for a test drive, and see how you like it. If you walk all the way through it, download the disk image, and burn it, THEN decide that you still don't like it, well, no big deal. Just flip the CD/DVD image into the trash, and go back to Debian.

    • 1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds.

      Yes, because it produces a openSUSE derivative.

      Fortunately, openSUSE also comes with zypper as high level tool. It's quite like apt is a high level tool to dpkg and DEB packages.
      For a comparison:

      • rpm -i <-> dpkg -i
      • zypper install <-> apt-get install

      Zypper is also just as fast as apt-get. So it may not be that bad after all. :-)

      Secondly the openSUSE build service allows you to search [opensuse-community.org] for an insane number of packages in community / addon repositories.

  • Song? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wasn't "SUSE Studio" a Phil Collins song?

  • first, you can create a bootable thumb drive distro.

    second, you can test your distro in a VM on the website. Though resources are limited.

  • It's nice to see this come from the Suse folks, sounds like it would be a nice tool for the Suse users/admins that don't want to use something like:
    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo [fedoraproject.org] (which can create another distribution livecd)

    The web test drive stuff really looks neat as well.

  • there we go (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 )

    Why has it taken so long for this to exist?

    • Re:there we go (Score:4, Funny)

      by msuarezalvarez ( 667058 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @05:37PM (#28920587)
      Because no one, including you, sat down and did it before.

      • I didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road.

        I suspect it's more to do with storage, bandwidth, and processing power finally hitting the sweet-spot.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by junner518 ( 1235322 )
      It has existed! Slax [slax.org] has had an online customized ISO builder for a few months now.

      • Slax isn't quite there, though.

        What if I only want specific packages? Or more obscure packages?

        I want this to get adapted for Debian and Ubuntu, that way you can roll your own custom version a lot more easily. So that way you could, for example, just make your own version of Ubuntu, but including proprietary codecs + software, and maybe other packages you often use, and remove some you don't like on the CD, no matter how obscure.

  • ... with Red Hat Developer Studio ? No contest.

  • This is great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Orion Blastar ( 457579 ) <.orionblastar. .at. .gmail.com.> on Sunday August 02, 2009 @07:13PM (#28921161) Homepage Journal

    someone can now develop their own Linux application and use SuSE Studio to create a LiveCD for it. They can pick only the things they need to run their program to create a demo CD or use it as a Live Distro that installs their Linux application with it.

    I would like to see someone use it to create a Linux gaming CD with popular open source games on it, to help convert the GameHeads to Linux from Windows. At the very least they can boot the SuSE Studio LiveCD to play the games, if not run it in a Virtual Machine.

    When my father's Windows XP computer had problems, I gave him a Linspire 5.0 LiveCD of mine and he was able to use the Internet for email and web access until I could get back to fix his Windows XP problems. But now I can build an SuSE Studio LiveCD with applications he may want to use as well with it, for example he likes card games and plays virtual pool, I could include those on a LiveCD as well as an OpenOffice.Org to work with his documents and a Scanner program to use his All in One Inkjet Printer, Scanner, and Fax machine. Giving him a LiveCD to use when his computer is down until I can come over there to fix it is a good idea, and I might even dual boot Linux and Windows for him as well if he likes it enough.

    I am thinking of developing business applications for Linux, and this would be a good way to create a Demo CD or LiveCD with the software on it to promote it. It would have to include a database like MySQL or PostgresSQL with data in it to run the Demo, and then when it gets installed on the system the Database would be read/write and work as an actual install. Doing things that way might help a company decide to migrate away from Windows and consider a few Linux workstations to see how well they run next to the Windows versions. I was trying to figure out a way to make the server end with the database easy enough to install for non-technical people and the LiveCD route may be the way to go.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by owlman17 ( 871857 )

      I would like to see someone use it to create a Linux gaming CD with popular open source games on it, to help convert the GameHeads to Linux from Windows.

      This [linux-gamers.net] is one of the best I've seen so far.

      • Thank you. I finally got a SuSE Studio account but when I started to add in games, it told me I had a conflict of libraries that needed to be resolved.

        I'll try the Linux Gamers CD/DVD and see what happens.

  • Reason I ask is there is a similar thing called rPath which I used on a project a couple of years ago. It spun off from RedHat (Eric Troan, Michael Johnson et al). Mr Johnson was kind enough to explain (http://lwn.net/Articles/283070/) that although it used usernames/passwords to control access to the software this was not "DRM", and that it contained proprietary code - I was never quite clear if that meant the source code was available or available only to paying customers.

    So is the SuSE offering complet

  • We have a beta user, impressed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by midicase ( 902333 ) on Sunday August 02, 2009 @09:19PM (#28921987)

    One of our project managers just received his beta login this week and he showed it to me and I have to say it is pretty amazing. He is totally a non-techie type but in one day he had custom ISO's made and deployed (something he had been trying to get another engineer to do for month's). Heck, he even had non-RPM'd tarballs stuffed in there (good for those things you don't quite want to go through learning RPM spec files, but still a temp solution for him).

  • There is a huge difference between Free as in lack of restrictions and Free as in easy access to sophisitcated features. This is a step in opening access up to the more sophisticated things Linux can do (that OSX/Windows can't do), without uncessary complexity and barriers like command line usage. Linux becoming really 'open' in that it is finally becoming accessible to people of all skill levels.

    I'm waiting to try this out. Exciting.

  • Outbreak of distros (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Yuioup ( 452151 ) *
    Great.

    Just what we need.

    A way to create an unlimited amount of distros.

    As if Linux doesn't have enough fragmentation problems already.

    I really really don't see any need for this. This screams SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM to me.

    Y

    • This isn't really intended for people who want to make SuperAwesomeLinux 17, although it could certainly be used for that. It's target audience is software companies, and open source projects, who want to provide a quick and easy way to create virtual machines to run their software.

      It's designed to get around the problem that to get your software into a company at the moment, you need to provide installation instructions, which may or may not work, and could take hours to follow. This is just what's needed

  • something that is by invitation only can be a release.

    In the mean time, I'll keep playing with Kiwi even if it does re-boot my system when I try to make a USB version

  • This looks like it just moves the normal SuSE installer onto a website, why all the excitement?
    I've been able to make a "customized linux installation" since...forever because that's kind of how they come.
    If you wanted to make a basic template system to install in a few different places, you can already do that with autoyast.
    The build and test stage is interesting, but not anything you couldn't do yourself inside of a VM.

    What does this service offer that didn't exist before?

  • honestly, i'm in windows xp right now and using firefox 3.5.1 and trying to choose the Google authentication doesn't work(don't do anything) and using internet explorer 8 shows an error page telling me that browser isn't supported, well i think i'm gonna give it a try in home using ubuntu and firefox/konqueror.

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