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Novell Businesses Software SuSE IT Linux

Novell to Help Port Applications to Linux 610

Posted by CmdrTaco from the people-still-use-novell dept.
An anonymous reader writes "eWeek is reporting that: "Novell announced the program at its European BrainShare 2004 tradeshow in Barcelona, Spain." "Under the initiative, leading software and hardware vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Intel Corp., Oracle Corp. and Scali Inc. will work with Novell help their software partners deploy their platforms and solutions on SUSE Linux, according to Novell Inc."
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Novell to Help Port Applications to Linux More

Novell to Help Port Applications to Linux

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  • Good news for Suse... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom@NoSPaM.thomasleecopeland.com> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:21PM (#10269629) Homepage
    ...and to help more people get a crack at running Suse, if you've got some spare bandwidth, fire up a BitTorrent client and head over to The Linux Mirror Project [tlm-project.org] and help mirror the Suse torrent.

    The tracker shows lots of leechers [tlm-project.org] for that distro... if you can, hop in and help out!
    • Which SuSE version is this ? Because apparantly SuSE aren't happy about their stuff being copied:

      http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie =U TF-8&threadm=qcMw%249AoBeSBJACh%40candt.demon.co.u k&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Duk.comp.os.linux%26ie%3DUTF-8 %26hl%3Den

  • Who could use some help (Score:5, Funny)

    by DaveInAustin ( 549058 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:23PM (#10269649) Homepage
    Maybe they could help MS port office.

    • Re:Who could use some help (Score:5, Informative)

      by rainman_bc ( 735332 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:34PM (#10269811)
      You mean like Crossover Office [codeweavers.com]?

    • Re:Who could use some help (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SunPin ( 596554 ) <slashspam@@@cyberista...com> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:40PM (#10269916) Homepage
      Screw Office. Everyone uses office for one reason: The Microsoft marketing department.

      Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access--especially Access--are not valid reasons for parting with your money.

      Microsoft represents everything wrong about the world consumers have to deal with. Since there's no profit in a _solved_ problem and a _stable_ solution, everything in this country is built to break.
      • We use Office because all our company's documents, dating back years and years are all made in office. It would be time consuming and usually not very good looking to convert them to another format. Also most documents we receive from customers and partners is also in Office format, don't want to convert back between different formats all the time. No, I don't like this one bit, but so far nobody has an adequate solution.
        • That's not the whole story. Theoretically--and at one time enthusiastically touted by Microsoft--you should be able to send all your documents into XML and open them anywhere without losing any formatting. Microsoft doesn't support anything open (sources or standards) when it interferes with their bottom line. That should be motivation enough to begin the breakup with Microsoft. It won't happen overnight but it will happen if you want it to.

          I don't mind Windows XP. My problems with Microsoft surround

        • Re:Who could use some help (Score:4, Interesting)

          by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @05:41PM (#10272076)
          Welcome to vendor lock. That's exactly the way MS wanted it to be. Congratulations you are unable to switch to a lower cost alternative!.

          It's like those monkey traps you hear about. You know where you make a hole in the box just big enough for the monkey to put his hand in and grab a fist full of peanuts. The problem is that once the fist is full of peanuts the monkey can't get his hand out. So he sits there until the hunter comes by, trapped by his unwillingness to let go a handful of peanuts.

        • Re:Who could use some help (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mvdw ( 613057 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @05:45PM (#10272102) Homepage

          I don't believe that this is necessarily a valid argument anymore. Abiword will open Word documents, Gnumeric will open excel documents, and openoffice will of course open both. You may lose some formatting and/or images, but many files will open correctly in these free softwares. You can even convert your word documents using wvWare, another free piece of software.

          Do you have to edit them, or are they read-only? If they are read-only, you might want to try "wvPDF" and a small script (for f in find / -name \*.doc ; do wvPDF $f $(basename $f .doc).pdf ; done)

          Note the script is not tested, but it shouldn't do anything *too* bad to your originals...

          Alternatively, if you would like to edit the files later, try wvLatex (then edit using Lyx later), wvDVI, wvAbw (edit using abiword), wvRTF (edit using openoffice), or to just extract the text use wvText. Or you can do a combination of a number of them (generate the pdf and the RTF source, for example). No guarantees, YMMV, IANAL, etc etc etc, but for the 1/2 hour it take to get it all running, it may well be worth your time.

        • Back in the 80's, I worked for Lotus, and we heard much about how much many of our customers had invested in spreadsheet models implemented in 1-2-3. I saw it myself, when I provided some assistance to our town accountant in submitting a report to the state that was to be filled out using a 1-2-3 template.

          Through some combination of Lotus mis-steps and Microsoft strategy, Microsoft was able to wean the market off their dependence on 1-2-3. OpenOffice is a good start (not quite there yet) in providing pa

      • Re:Who could use some help (Score:4, Insightful)

        by timmyf2371 ( 586051 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @04:25PM (#10271359)
        I almost agree with Access, but in honesty it's perfect for those small database-enabled functions I require without having to spend ages setting up the relevant database and access pages using PHP/MySQL (which I use for larger database projects.

        Now, let's look at Excel - Excel in my opinion is a fantastic application. It's great for calculations, supports copy and paste from other applications with figures etc, and is a really handy application to have around - possibly even more useful that Word itsself.

        Powerpoint is the bain of my existance. Suffice it to say, it empowers PHBs with capabilities to create huge, annoying, awful-looking documents with information which could be distributed in a two-line email.

      • Screw Office. Everyone uses office for one reason: The Microsoft marketing department.

        Huh? That's not why I use it. Maybe you should speak for yourself rather than telling me why I use something.
    • Maybe they could help MS port office.

      Bad idea for a couple of reasons, off the top of my head -

      #1, ms will fight tooth and nail against the idea of giving ms office users more choice of OS on which to run ms office since obviously, some will choose an OS other than ms windows.

      #2, the ms office port would divert resources from the excellent alternatives such as open office.

      Rather than rushing in to prop up the faltering ms office monopoly, we should be support the increasingly capable ms office alternat
    • How about a good working alternative to Outlook. Does Ximian natively do the e-mail and calendaring, and keep the message store on the exchange server?
    • Screw Office, their first priority should be to port NWAdmin. ConsoleOne is too buggy, bloated, and clumsy, and why for love of Jeebus do they have to have their own JRE for it.

  • saw this coming... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:23PM (#10269653) Journal
    What, did you think that Novell threw all those millions of dollars at SuSE for fun? Oh no, SuSE is the core of the next NetWare.
    • I keep telling people that by this time next year Novell will rule the world. This is just another example of how that is going to happen.


      Novell, if you are reading this, fast user switching unkay? :-D I will switch from drake to you for that.

      • Re:saw this coming... (Score:5, Funny)

        by jhoffoss ( 73895 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:58PM (#10270187) Journal
        No, no, no. You have it all wrong.

        Linux will rule the world through Novell. Novell will be nothing but our puppet.

        <insert evil laugh here>

      • ummm Novell here.... you'll have to rewrite that in German please. Anyone that could even start to think about that is in Germany....unless you count the Ximian guys.... I guess they could get Gnome to do that for you, but then you could just run Gnome on any distrobution.

    • Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @04:58PM (#10271668)
      All OS vendors provide services like this (ie assistance getting your apps going on their offering). MS, IBM, HP,... all do. DEC and all it's long-dead cronies did too. So do middle-ware vendors like Oracle.

      This is particularly important for companies like Novell who are targeting corporate customers, most of whom run tailored software for their business purposes (as well as the office stuff for their admin, and other general purpose software).

  • I wonder if they will help me port Space Invaders from my white Comodore Pet.

    Now if only I could find that tape...

  • color me n00b (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:24PM (#10269658)
    but arent linux apps supposed to work with all major distros? and if not, why?

    • Re:color me n00b (Score:4, Insightful)

      by robla ( 4860 ) * on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:42PM (#10269942) Homepage Journal
      Because the major distros come with different:
      * versions of X Windows
      * versions of GNOME or KDE
      * versions of glibc
      * versions of the ABI
      * package management systems

      When you are distributing your software in source code form for developers to compile themselves, it's no big deal. When you are trying to release a binary that works in a supported way, it's a hassle.

      This hassle isn't limited to closed source software. For example, look how many download options Abiword has [abisource.com]. Regardless of what "should" work, there's been enough hassles in the past that most folks want binaries tailored to their specific platform.

      Rob

      • Re:color me n00b (Score:5, Informative)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:47PM (#10270033) Homepage
        Oracle RDBMS 10g installs and runs just fine under Debian Sarge despite Oracle only really wanting it to run on Suse and RHEL.

        Linux "fragmentation" is mostly hype.
        • ...Linux "fragmentation" is mostly hype.

          Perhaps, but Oracle's decision to support their products on SuSE and RHEL most definitely is not hype. Good luck getting support if you insist on running on Sarge!

          • Oracle Enterprise support costs 20% of your upfront licence costs. You pay this ANNUALLY.

            Compared to that, the cost of RHEL or Suse enterprise is a drop in the bucket.

        • Re:color me n00b (Score:3, Insightful)

          by johnhennessy ( 94737 )
          Yes, I would have to agree - fragmentation is mostly hype. But there is one difference. Support. Fine, your latest XYZ product might run on Redhat and Debian but more than likely when you ring up tech. support with a problem on your Debian system you'll probably get a "not supported" reply.

          Which is possibly fine, imagine the costs a ISV would have to incur if they had to support every single OS/distribution out there. In one way, they are probably happy with the MS monopoly.

          On the other hand, this is more
        • >> Linux "fragmentation" is mostly hype.

          And as Flava Flav taught us: "Don't believe the hype"

        • Oracle doesn't care what configuration you run their database on, however they're only willing to support a few. Can you really blame them? Imagine the support calls involved in diagnosing various problems on home-rolled Linux boxes. Ugh.

          Scott
          • This is simply not true. The 10G installation stops you if you are not running either SuSe Enterprise OR RedHat Enterprise or one more (can't remember).

            Heck even their fricking Internet Developer Suite checks now. Yes you can run something like white box linux and get around it, but the way I see it Novell is saying:
            "We want you to port your apps to SuSe Enterprise only".

            I like Oracle, and understand why they are doing but they should pick at least one or two more distros that are free (say like fedora

  • LSB? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cpn2000 ( 660758 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:24PM (#10269665)
    I have not read the FA, but I do hope they port applications to the LSB rather than just to their distro.

    • Re:LSB? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PhilipPeake ( 711883 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:34PM (#10270725)
      I don't want to start any sort of flamewar on this, so just take this a my opinion FWIW:

      LSB is fine, and a worthwhile effort, BUT (you knew there was but coming, didn't you?) it is FAR from a complete standard for Linux. It just codifies what are prety much already consensus and de-facto opinions on standards already present in most versions of Linux.

      This is useful work, but by no means sufficient to develop against. LSB cound be more proactive and push standards where they are needed, but the push-back they would get from "the community" would be intense, and could end up devaluing the good work they currently do.

      Most of the Linux distros out there do aim for LSB conformance anyway. If they don't quite make it, its not by much, and if they don't try -- well, maybe you need to give your patronage to those that do.

      As far as I kno, SuSe are committed to following the LSB, so applications ported to it will naturally be LSB conformant ports - for as far as that takes them.

      • Not trying to troll or anything, but if coding your apps to the LSB does not gaurantee portability (across distros), what good is the LSB at all? I thought that the central idea behind the LSB was to promote a kind of 'write once, run on any (lsb compliant) distro' idea. But if it is not living upto that standard, how does it expect to garner any repect from app developers?

        Is this a problem with the LSB per se., or in the way in which distros are implementing it?

        Note, I am asking this simply out of my i

    • Why should they? They're a for-profit-company, not a charity. It would be nice if they did, but they don't have to.

  • Let's stop breaking Linux up. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:26PM (#10269683)
    "But this is also aimed at Windows software vendors, Unix software vendors, or vendors who'd developed for other flavors of Linux but who'd like run on SUSE Linux, too," He said.

    I love the fact that Linux has the flexibility of having multiple flavors but I really think that making the flavors incompatible is a roadblock for wide acceptance.

    People who develop for Windows are going to look at Linux and say, "but if we want to reach everyone we have to deal with RedHat, SUSE, Foo, and DoubleFoo."

    Shouldn't companies that want to support Linux as a viable alternative be pushing for a standard to be followed?
    • Why yes [linuxbase.org], we probably should.
      • Yeah, LSB is great and all in theory but when a major Linux player isn't really doing much to advocate it I don't see what good it is going to do.
        • <i> Yeah, LSB is great and all in theory but when a major Linux player isn't really doing much to advocate it I don't see what good it is going to do.</i>

          That's the problem with cartels (OPEC, NCAA, etc.)

          They work only when everyone feels like cooperating. They fail in dramatic fashion when one or more members smells money.

        • Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jhoffoss ( 73895 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:48PM (#10270041) Journal
          First, let's correct your previous statement. Novell and SuSE are one, and so there's not as much for a developer to struggle to conform to. Second, as was announced on /., the WSJ, and several other sources a few days ago, IBM, Novell, HP, and several other very major vendors all announced support of LSB-2. Whether they're posting placards and advertising everywhere or not, if I'm a developer for Linux tools, I'm going to code to LSB-2 spec, not to a platform (RH/SuSE/FC/LM/etc.)
          • First, let's correct your previous statement. Novell and SuSE are one, and so there's not as much for a developer to struggle to conform to.

            First let's correct your statement. SuSE is one Linux distribution that a developer would have to develop for. RedHat, Debian, Slackware, Foo, DoubleFoo are all other distributions that would have to be developed for. Yeah, we have the LSB/LSB-2 out there and in active discussion. Yeah you would support one or the other... Neither has really materialized and you
        • One of the good things going for LSB is that HP, and IBM support it. Its in THEIR best interest to have a standards base because it makes their support job easier. While Suse or Redhat might only care about supporting their specific customers, each of them being different makes the support job tougher for major system vendors. My guess is that HP and IBM pressuring the linux companies will make them pretty compliant on the LSB front and force the linux vendors to differentiate on additional features that

    • Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:03PM (#10270278) Journal
      Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a Windows fan, so your mileage may vary.

      That said, you know, actually they're not that incompatible.

      I've ran for example WebSphere and Eclipse on SuSE, Gentoo, and a coleague installed them on RedHat too. My brother runs them on Mandrake. Binaries too, no recompiling needed. No problems there. I also don't recall having to get a different binary version of, say, OOo for different Linux flavours. It runs just as crappy on them all.

      It's not yet perfect, yes, but differences tend to be minor. E.g., where they put their scripts or some config files, or whether KDE and Gnome go into /opt or into /usr. Nothing that a desktop application really needs to know about.

      Linux still has compatibility problems of its own, in the form of the DLL hell. (Well, .so but same idea.) Each F/OSS app seems to want its very own version of some library, which in turns requires a bunch of other libraries to be in a whole other version than what you have on the system.

      But that's hardly something that has to do with distro fragmentation. You're just as likely to run into that problem on any distro.

      • Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up. (Score:5, Informative)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @04:19PM (#10271300)
        You're just as likely to run into that problem on any distro.
        No, you're not -- it's a package management issue, and different distros have different package management. I've never run into "library hell" with Gentoo, because there's a single repository, and so everything it tested to work together. I presume Debian and BSD would work equally well. God help you if you're using Red Hat or something, though.
        • Point well taken, if you actually recompile everything under Gentoo, and occasionally recompile everything for a new library or framework, you don't have compatibility problems. Unfortunately:

          A. Not everything is available as source code. E.g., God help you if you want WebSphere's sources and you're not working in the WebSphere team at IBM.

          B. Compiling everything is not always an economical or comfortable solution. While, again, I'll admit that it fixes pretty much any compatibility issues, a full recompi
          • Re. A: I mentioned Gentoo because that's where my personal experience is. You could use Debian instead, and not have to recompile. The point is that ideally, you want all your software tested together, and a central repository is a good way to do that.

            Re. B: Compiling isn't that bad, as long as you stay away from the Windows or Red Hat style "system version/release" mentality -- realize that the system is not a monolithic unit, and it doesn't all change at once. So upgrade often, and only a few packag
          • You do have the same problem, it just manifests itself in a different way. It just shows up as having to use old software, or broken packages.

            Compiling all your software isn't really a useful solution. How many Gentoo users compile not only gnome-terminal themselves, but the entirety of OpenOffice (a 24 hour compile on some systems)? It doesn't really scale. Good support for binaries is really essential.

    • That's why there is linuxbase.org.
      • That's why there is linuxbase.org.

        Oh yeah, an ass-ugly extra runtime environment that costs $3000 to claim compliance with is going to solve everything.

        Just try going to http://linuxbase.org and you'll see what a great plan they have.
        • Oh yeah, an ass-ugly extra runtime environment that costs $3000 to claim compliance with is going to solve everything.


          And claiming compliance with Windows (i.e. the logo; same as with LSB) costs you what? Anybody?

          Bueller?

    • Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:11PM (#10270401) Homepage
      Yes.

      People who develop for Windows are going to look at Linux and say, "but if we want to reach everyone we have to deal with RedHat, SUSE, Foo, and DoubleFoo."

      Mostly it tends to be the Foo and DoubleFoo distros that break compatibility. This is for two main reasons.

      "Boutique" Linux distros are developed are often developed by fanatics who simply don't care if "Application X" works on their distro, because obviously, "Application X" is crap, and possibly not licensed according to their politics. These distros are not for the "mainstream" and will probably fade away quickly.

      Other "Boutique" distros have some very specific uses in mind, such as those that require ultra-stability or ultra-security. I was going to say like dedicated web servers, but I think the *BSDs have that sewn up. With these very narrow focuses, wide compatibility is rarely an issue.

      I know people are going to flame me for writing this, but in The Enterprise, the only real Linux players right now are Novell/SuSE and RedHat. A lot of this has to do with vender support, which distros such as Gentoo/Debian/Slackware and so on do not have.

    • "I love the fact that Linux has the flexibility of having multiple flavors but I really think that making the flavors incompatible is a roadblock for wide acceptance."

      Check out the GPL.

      While there are MINOR differences in the DEFAULT installations of the various distributions, there is NOTHING that makes them "incompatible" with each other.

      Sure, one might (by default) install ext2, another ext3, another ReiserFS, but that doesn't mean that you can't run all of the above on any distribution.

      It might take

  • Three words... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:26PM (#10269684) Journal
    Developers, developers, developers!

    The monkey-boy dance is left up to the end user.
    • Linxoupers! Linxoupers!! Linxoupers!!!! Linxoupers!!!! Linxoupers!!!!! Linxoupers!!!!!! Linxoupers!!!!!!!

      (catches breath...)

      Oh, wait, monkeyboy/man meant.. Developers! Developers!! Developers!!!..., hehehe

      Well, maybe we'll FINALLY see IBM/Lotus ship some sendable code to Novell? Imagine IBM selling off or dual-licensing some "SmartOpenSuite" and getting IBM AND Novell a slew more customers.

      I have things in SmartSuite that, thanks to Word Pro, 1-2-3 and ESPECIALLY Lotus Approach, I simply, utterly, and i

  • The enemy of my enemy ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:26PM (#10269688) Homepage
    ... is my friend, as the old saying goes.

    And so long as they keep the Unix trademark from SCO with the force of a thousand lawyers with lasers strapped to their heads, they're fine by me.
  • not all linux. Dont get this confused with open sourcing everything.
    • not all linux. Dont get this confused with open sourcing everything.

      Well, even if they wouldn't have been specific about a Linux distribution, the article only talks about 'porting' applications, not 'open sourcing' applications.

      And of course Novell is only going to support companies if the final product runs officially on SuSE Linux (in the sense of an officially supported platform). That does not mean that it only runs on SuSE Linux...

  • Divide and conquer (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.

    1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.
    2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.
    3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.

    BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too. ckj

    • Re:Divide and conquer (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:43PM (#10269963) Homepage Journal

      1. All the BSDs are not entirely different, and commonly share code back and forth amongst them.
      2. There's plenty of extra bullshit, but it's in ports where it belongs.
      3. BSD is obscure when it comes to the desktop, but then so is Linux.
      4. Solaris does not have its roots in BSD exactly:
        1. Solaris is SunOS plus Openwindows.
        2. Openwindows has traditionally meant Sun's X11 plus the openlook environment - which AFAIK still comes with the system.
      5. Solaris 1.x contains SunOS 4.x, which is based on BSD.
      6. Solaris 2.x contains SunOS 5.x, which is based on System V. If you choose to install the proper packages you get a bunch of BSD binaries in /usr/ucb or something like that.

      SunOS4 and SunOS5 are totally different and mostly separate operating systems.

      • Re:Divide and conquer (Score:2, Informative)

        by tyrr ( 306852 )
        > 1. All the BSDs are not entirely different, and
        > commonly share code back and forth amongst them.

        And some of it is incompatable with latest GNU programs. GNU is a flagman of Unix development, why else?

        > 2. There's plenty of extra bullshit, but it's
        > in ports where it belongs.

        Ports exist because of GNU/BSD incomatability. You can't just download a GNU source and build it.

        > 3. BSD is obscure when it comes to the desktop,
        > but then so is Linux.

        Linux is GNU compatable. It has well

        • Here, let's make another list. When you're allowed to use style sheets lists are one of the best things about HTML, but they're not bad even in their most classic of implementations, as we find them here on slashdot.

          1. Linux is definitely the primary platform of development for your average free/open software of the day. No argument there. However, the largest projects aim for compatibility and the most important of the smaller projects (and lots of trivial software) is ported to assorted BSDs. As more rel

  • logical next step after acquisition of SuSE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nomad63 ( 686331 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:30PM (#10269765)
    Somehow, someway, Novell needs to make money out of the deal. By basically giving away their product, it is not likely to happen anytime soon. But if they add an arsenal of software which is certified to run on Linux platform, the landscape drastically changes and these changes will favor Novell.

    A big round of applause for this novel (pun intended) idea of Novell...
  • I hope this doesn't include groupwise *shudder*

    The client has to be the worst, ugliest and clunkiest I have ever had the misfortune to use...

    • Have you used the client from GW 6.5? It's been massively overhauled since 5.x and 6.0...
    • Have you used it lately? I resembles Outlook now.
      There are already server and clients of GroupWise 6.5 available for Linux. We have GroupWise as our e-mail system here and wouldn't even think about running anything else.
      • Although there is a GroupWise client for Linux, it is not the exact same client as the one on Windows.

        The cross-platform client doesn't support [novell.com]the Document Management features of GroupWise. They say they're working on it though.

        Some NNLS components (iPrint for instance) and other Linux products of Novell have these same issues. Only fully functional on Windows at this moment.

        I can't wait for the changelog of the next version of NNLS etc, to see if (some of) these issues are fixed.
    • You should take a look at Loathsome Notes.
    • Why would they port Groupwise when they have Evolution? They both have the same goal and Evolution can already integrate with Groupwise servers. That was one of the big reasons to buy Ximian.
  • No mention of Sun Microsystems in that list, hehe...

  • Their 'Software Partners?' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Future Linux-Guru ( 34181 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @02:58PM (#10270193)
    >>"Under the initiative, leading software and hardware vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Intel Corp., Oracle Corp. and Scali Inc. will work with Novell help their software partners deploy their platforms and solutions on SUSE Linux, according to Novell Inc."

    What partners?

    It was in the application space that Novell lost it's market and mindshare to Microsoft.

  • Damn is this big red 'N' ugly! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sorry, but this is really the ugliest and most irritating topic logo. Does it have to be that aggressive shade of red? It hurts my eyes!
    • and now you know why Novell was hated on for so long. Actually, if you used Windows+Novell (which you kinda needed to before AD, if you wanted any kind of sanity vis-a-vis networking and shares and especially granular control of rights) then the hatred goes more to MS: they did everything they could to make Novell as slow and shitty as possible on Windows (so as to make AD seem better in comparison.)

      Instead of, you know, making their product better. Novell's mistake was setting themselves up to get the shaf

  • Trend? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:10PM (#10270392) Homepage
    Makes me wonder if Linux is going to stratify into corporate and home user flavors? SUSE and RedHat for the office. And the raft of others for home users.

    I don't think it's bad either way, just curious as to how it's going to shake out. Any Linux usage is good in my book. More apps available is very good. More alternatives to the bloated wares of Castle Redmondore, priceless.

  • How about a program that "helps" hardware vendors (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Featureless ( 599963 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:11PM (#10270406) Journal
    ...release specs and/or open-source device drivers, and become "Linux compliant"?

    I guess if the big companies want to lend a hand, that'd be my suggestion.

    Let's be serious, drivers are one of the biggest issues, crossing all of the common uses of Linux. Why are we, in 2004, still stuck in the 1994 mentality, still begging most hardware manufacturers for specs and open drivers, and still reverse-engineering? I mean, it's probably fair to say Linux is over the hump in terms of name recognition at this point.

    Sure, it's a lot better than it was, but our mindshare in the PC hardware world is abyssmal compared to what it should be. Even hardware vendors that "support" us still often do so with binary drivers; often shitty, scary ones that never get rev'd.

    Can the myth that closed-source drivers, or secret specs, are somehow good for a hardware business still be thriving in 2004? Is it really that much more important than the sales you miss out on when your competitors embrace Linux before you do?

  • Finally a Novel Topic on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jungle guy ( 567570 ) <brunolmailbox-ge ... pAm.yahoo.com.br> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @03:11PM (#10270407) Journal
    Some might not have noticed, but it seems to be the first topic with the "N" logo from Novell. I don't like the company in particular, but you to admit that Novell is betting high on Linux and open source - although they are not abandoning their closed source software like Zenworks, a strategye they call "shared source".
  • I'd like to see more heavy-hitter funding and support for tools for writing cross-platform applications like the mono project (http://www.mono-project.com/ [mono-project.com]) and wxWidgets (http://www.wxwindows.org/ [wxwindows.org].

  • Not easy to port from Microsoft to KDE librairies (Score:5, Funny)

    by effco ( 814121 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @04:14PM (#10271249)
    Here is a replied I received from the UltraEdit peoples :

    Hello Frederic,

    Thanks for your message and suggestion. Ian has looked into this and
    other tools. The biggest barrier here is that much of UltraEdit's
    code is based on MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). Because of this
    porting UltraEdit to Linux is not a minor undertaking as functions
    using MFC would have to be completely rewritten from scratch.

    Thanks, Troy

    Thursday, September 16, 2004, 5:28:25 AM, you wrote:

    fcsb> Hello,
    fcsb> is there any plan to port UltraEdit to Linux ?
    fcsb> If so, you could for example use the Qt C++ framework
    fcsb> from Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com/) to speed up the
    fcsb> process
    fcsb> so that UltraEdit would available under KDE
    fcsb> (www.kde.org), the Linux's most used desktop system.
    fcsb> There is plenty of Linux text editor but none of them has
    fcsb> ever reached the level of quality of UltraEdit,
    fcsb> so I really think you could gaim some market shares up there too !
    fcsb> sheers,
    fcsb> Frederic
    • From the bits and pieces of news and info that I know of wxWindows, porting a MFC app to wxWindows (cross platform) is 98% of the time just a matter of search and replace.

      So technically there is no excuse, however they were responding to a QT framework question.
    • Of course, the KDE project could always write a replacement for Microsoft's MFC. They could call it... wait for it... KFC. [Cue lame joke music, cut to commercial.]
      • Nope, not really. MFC is totally dependent on Win32, it exposes details all over the place like the message passing model, window handles and so on. It's also a disgustingly ugly API.

        I'd love to know how this "porting and migration center" is going to deal with all the desktop software that isn't as easy to port as UNIX server software is. It's not even like OpenOffice can deal with all MS Office documents, in particular the ones where people abuse Excel as a database, have MS Access databases lying aroun

  • where is... (Score:2, Funny)

    by glitch23 ( 557124 )
    Microsoft? They aren't listed.

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