LWN: Comments on "A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9"

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

garloff — 2004-11-15T12:35:34+00:00

> Also, this is the first release of what will eventually become Novell's
> main, fully supported Linux distribution, with SUSE LINUX reportedly
> being turned into a "community" project, à la Fedora Core.

I've not seen any announcement by Novell about the transition from the
SUSE Linux Professional distribution into a "community" project.
To the best of my knowledge, no such plans exist.
Where did you find this information?

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

cross — 2004-11-12T20:09:19+00:00

> I love WindowMaker but I think it is misleading to call it a GNUStep app.

You're probably right, I'm just a humble user and also speaking specifically about the very polished WindowMaker environment from SuSE. I can say that the "About" dialog thinks it's GNUStep, it says:

GNUStep
WindowMaker is part of the GNUStep project. The GNUStep project aims to create a free implementation of the OpenStep(tm) specification which is a [sic] object-oriented framework for creating advanced graphical, multi-platform applications ...

and WindowMaker's homepage says

"Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP[tm] user interface. ... Window Maker includes compatibility options which allow it to work with other popular desktop environments, namely GNOME and KDE

I read that as making it a NeXT like desktop environment based on GNUStep (including "Cocoa" extensions from Mac OS X) with good support for Gnome and KDE applications. That's what I use it as anyway. Whatever, we're well off-topic now.

I'm delighted to hear that it is still well supported in newer versions of SuSE.

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

stuart_hc — 2004-11-12T18:01:45+00:00

The SUSE 9.2 LiveCD is 1.4GB while the DVD from a SUSE 9.2 boxed set contains 8GB of software. The WindowMaker rpms are indeed available with SUSE 9.2 and you can set your session type to WindowMaker amoung a number of other windows managers (GNOME KDE FVWM BlackBox IceWM MWM Openbox TWM)

suse/i586/WindowMaker-0.80.2.20030506-200.i586.rpm suse/i586/WindowMaker-applets-1.0-649.i586.rpm suse/i586/WindowMaker-devel-0.80.2.20030506-200.i586.rpm suse/noarch/WindowMaker-themes-0.1-239.noarch.rpm

Per per year seat license valid?

jmalcolm — 2004-11-12T15:01:29+00:00

One thing that really interests me about NLD is the Novell edition of OpenOffice.org. Is this included on the trial version of the download? Any legal problems with moving this onto another distribution like Fedora? I was going to try it later and discover the technical problems on my own. :-)

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

jmalcolm — 2004-11-12T14:58:18+00:00

I love WindowMaker but I think it is misleading to call it a GNUStep app. Both WindowMaker and GNUStep were inspired by NeXT and as such WindowMaker seems like an obvious WM for a GNUStep setup but the projects do not share a common technical heritage. WindowMaker does not use the GNUStep libraries, is not an OpenStep app, and is not coded in Objective-C. This means that it has little to do with OS X or Cocoa although I am sure it has been ported. I think that WindowMaker is coded in C++ although I should really do some homework before saying so.

Per per year seat license valid?

kay — 2004-11-12T11:34:03+00:00

You can by (download?) a copy of NLD and install it on every machine you want. The 50$ are a bundled 1 Year of basic Support for one Seat like in Installation Support in SuSE Linux.

Kay

Per per year seat license valid?

cdmiller — 2004-11-11T23:15:15+00:00

What pieces are included that allow the $50 per seat per year? Is that just for support? Why can I not legally buy 1 copy and fill a lab with it as per the GPL and various Open Source licenses for the software?

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

cross — 2004-11-11T18:46:12+00:00

> 'dropped from NLD' != 'dropped from 9.2'

True, but the LiveDVD is SuSE 9.2. It's not on that and the website doesn't mention it. I'm surprised that WindowMaker isn't more widely promoted, the Mac OS X compatibility (GNUStep is essentially a Free implementation of the Cocoa application framework http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/) is a useful thing.

Pricing

ccyoung — 2004-11-11T17:14:02+00:00

the $50 per set per year seems quite reasonable

however, how much are the associated servers?

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

louie — 2004-11-11T16:09:38+00:00

'dropped from NLD' != 'dropped from 9.2'. NLD is 3 CDs, 9.2 is 5 CDs, and about 1,000 other packages on the DVD. So clearly some things in 9.2 didn't make it to NLD.

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

jayavarman — 2004-11-11T14:07:57+00:00

Have you looked at ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/forge/nld/source/ ? A simple search there and it seems there's no WM related pkg.

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

cross — 2004-11-11T12:58:14+00:00

As a paying SuSE customer of many years standing and currently on SuSE 9.0 I use WindowMaker (which is based on GNUStep) as my desktop. This is very well supported in SuSE, and seems to be the semi-official second choice after KDE. I've perturbed by your comment "GNOME 2.6 and KDE 3.2.1 are the only two desktop environments available". Is this literally true? Has support for WindowMaker been dropped since the Novell takeover? I've downloaded the Live Eval DVD and sure enough WindowMaker is notable by it's absence, but as it is a live demo I don't expect it to contain everything that's in the full boxed set. I can't find any mention either way on Novell's website. If WindowMaker support is dropped, my next upgrade past SuSE 9.0 won't be to Novell it will be to Gentoo, so I'd like to know before shelling out the money for SuSE 9.2.

A First Look at Novell Linux Desktop 9

maceto — 2004-11-11T12:02:50+00:00

Why can`t a big Linux company like Novell or for that matter Suse have working menus in their gnome version.
Stuff listed 2 times, or what about the applications that are under gnome 2.6 suse 9.2= none..

Rest is good, but well it dos not give a good first impression