Novell's Linux Road Show Makes A Good Impression

LXer Feature: 15-Jul-2006 Novell Linux Road Show attendees seemed pretty impressed by the introductions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Desktop.

On last Wednesday morning, I attended the Novell Linux Road Show. On Thursday morning, I was posting the announcement that they are in hot water over the timing of filing some paperwork. That's unfortunate because the attendees I spoke with at the packed show were genuinely impressed by the solutions Novell presented. The Novell Linux Road Show is a little like a vacuum cleaner demonstration - they present information, demonstrate the technology, and even offer an installfest to help you install SUSE Linux on your laptop. Parking is the only thing that wasn't free. So was the show worth the parking fee?

Even if you don't like Novell, the geeko animation is pretty fun to watch. Geeko is dressed in Samurai attire, and demonstrating his readiness for action. That certainly fits the message that Novell is seeking to communicate - SUSE Linux is ready. Now. As a SUSE user since 8.0, I think they're a little late, but SUSE Linux is more ready than ever to take on the server room and corporate desktops. But I'm a little biased.

Kevin Chin used the first session to take us on a tour of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10. This is where he showed off the Xen virtualization. He walked us through the steps to set up a virtual machine, and pointed out how Xen allows users to migrate virtual machines to different physical servers. That definitely got some "oohs and ahs". Perhaps one thing that IT decision makers will like is the cost factor. The license pricing does not factor in the number of virtual machines - enterprises can run as many VMs as they want.

Chin discussed the AppArmor utility and demonstrated configuring Apache to run under AppArmor. Although one can get up and running quickly and easily with AppArmor, complex configurations or profiles still require some time in a clean environment before finally deploying the application in question. Chin also discussed Yast, and even using AutoYast to simplify deployments. One can even setup pattern deployments. For example, an administrator can setup AutoYast to deploy a database or a set of applications.

The second session covered SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10. Chin gave us a tour of SUSE's GNOME environment, and using Beagle. Additionally, he discussed OpenOffice.org and the advantages of using it over Microsoft Office. I have to give Novell credit. They seriously stumped for OpenOffice.org and the OpenDocument Format. They also hounded on the licensing costs of Microsoft Windows and Office as compared to SLED with OpenOffice.org. At $50 per user on the desktop - before you get into quantity discounts - small businesses and enterprises and save a fair amount of money over the comparable Microsoft solution.

Novell showed how the state of Indiana has increased the time students spend in front of a computer from 40 minutes to six hours per week. They also mentioned the speed record they set running Oracle on SLES, as well as SLES' scalability. They also harped on energy savings, an increasingly important concern for IT managers. O.k., I might have been fairly impressed. But what about the other attendees?

I had the opportunity to speak with a few attendees, and listened to others raise questions or points during the presentation. One attendee mentioned that none of their current hardware will run Windows Vista, other than maybe the basic edition. One could almost hear the death knell playing for Microsoft in the background. Two other admins currently managing about a hundred IBM AIX and HP-UX servers seemed genuinely excited about playing with SUSE Linux and Xen. They weren't the only ones impressed.

One criticism was the lack of demo boxes. Novell brought a laptop for folks to look at, and even offered an installfest using the SLES and SLED DVDs accompanying everyone's information packet. Frankly, I thought the installfest was a pretty cool offer. But some people just want to see the big show, and have more opportunity to push the buttons. I think it would also have driven home the point to show off OpenOffice.org opening some MS Office documents.

IBM is recommending people migrate to GNU/Linux, and partnering with Novell. HP, current scandal aside, is another Novell partner. When you combine the force of IBM, HP and Novell, along with Novell's channel partners, it would seem that good GNU/linux support should not be so difficult to find. I was unable to get comments on the response from Novell in time for publishing this article. Still, I kind of got the feeling that a number of people felt that Novell is heading in the right general direction.