SUSE Studio 1.0 Released 121
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."
Wow, customized distros (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Some questions (Score:3, Interesting)
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:2, Interesting)
This is great (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
We have a beta user, impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
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).