SUSE Real Time Linux

Novell today announced the availability of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, the latest version of Novell's enterprise-class, open source real-time operating system for running high-performance, time-sensitive, mission-critical applications. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, financial organizations can respond more rapidly to changing markets and new information, get greater application reliability and predictability, and identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks. This will allow them to increase revenue opportunities and improve service to their customers, even while reducing computing infrastructure costs.

"In order to win in today's increasingly competitive global markets, companies need to be able to respond quickly while delivering superior products and services," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "Companies that leverage technology such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 to improve responsiveness and availability of critical business services will be better able to compete and grow their own top-line revenues."

With Novell's real-time technology, customers can segment portions of their processors for high-priority mission-critical workloads, as well as ensure that other system processes and tasks do not interrupt them. That means these workloads deliver predictable performance in time-critical environments. Fully supported by Novell®, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is the only open source, enterprise-class real-time operating system available in the market today.

Enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 include the latest enterprise-hardened open source technologies that reduce system latency or delay and improve predictability, such as CPU shielding, priority inheritance, sleeping spinlocks, interrupt threads, high-resolution timers and the latest OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution for commodity high-speed interconnects, OFED 1.2.5. As a result, customers gain time advantage over competitors to make more money or avoid financial losses. They can also increase the availability of their mission-critical applications to ensure quality-of-service targets and service level agreements are met, even while cutting hardware costs.

Read the Full announcement Here.

Skype 2 ( Beta ) On OpenSUSE

I got a mail, asking me how did I install skype 2 ( Beta), with Video support, on OpenSUSE 10.3.
I replied to him and then did a google search to find out any page detailing the procedure. Strange I could not find any.

Though installing the latest beta version of Skype is very trivial, but the fact is that no document exists to let new users know the procedure. Here we go.

1. Go to the Skpye 2.0 beta for Linux Page.
2. There are several packages listed for various distributions, Select the one for OpenSUSE 10+.
   
3. Click on it to install -- thats it. Job well done. YAST2 will take care of the remaining things. You would just require to fill in your super user password and click the install button. YAST2 installs all the required dependencies ( if any not already installed). Just for information. Skype 2.0 lists Qt 4.2.1, D-Bus 1.0.0, and libasound2 1.0.12 as dependencies.

After the install, Skype was able to auto detect my Creative web cam and correctly configure it. Though like normal skype, I can still configure both video and audio.
I use KDE as desktop, hence, Skype is auto started on each login and I am auto logged in. As with normal skype, I get all the alerts about my contacts being online/ offline and I can start chat/call/video call with them. I was able to video chat with my wife who has skype on windows. No issues of operating system compatibility. Best thing about skype is that unlike Kopete, I can set the incoming image to Full Screen and get a more realistic feel of the person I am talking to.

I think that video chatting with a windows user was one of the major restrictive factor in Linux, which Skype 2.0 beta video has successfully eliminated. Wish that Skype Video for Linux gets a stable release soon, even better, Skype for Linux becomes open source !!!

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OpenSUSE LiveCD results in blank Screen

I have just installed a Nvidia 6200 256MB graphics card in my desktop and suddenly all install/Live CDs have started behaving funny with me.
First I tried Ubuntu 7.10 LiveCD and got a blank screen with the Monitor power light turning "Amber". I then did a hard reboot and this time tried the "Safe graphics Mode" and was able to get a XServer desktop.

However, in OpenSUSE 10.3 KDE Live CD, there is no such option such as "Safe graphics mode". Hence for novice users like me there is no option by which I can boot through this CD and get a graphical desktop. I searched a little and found this workaround.

1. Select to boot from SUSE LiveCD and enter "3" in the Boot Options. This ensures that "init 3" mode is selected and the Live CD boots in text-only mode; hence, no GUI server is started and we get a login prompt.
2. Login as "root" with no password.
3. Run the command "sax2-vesa". This starts the SUSE configuration utility and select the default graphics driver "vesa". Just select the default option, that should work for most hardware. This was will not be able to use the full functionality of my card, but will be able to get a GUI.
   
4. Restart the GUI server by entering the command "init 5".
   

The default OpenSUSE 10.3 KDE desktop starts and I was greeted with this beautiful screen.


The OpenSUSE 10.3 LiveCD contains, for the first time, an icon to install the distribution to the hard disk. The install is as convenient as a Ubuntu install, only difference is that OpenSUSE install offers more flexibility.
Enjoy your OpenSUSE KDE LiveCD.

NOTE: This works well for any video card that is not supported by default by the LiveCD. I have learned from friends that they followed the same trick with their ATI cards and were successful.

Is Eye Candy bad for Ubuntu/Linux ?

I came across an Article on the relevance of Compiz-Fusion in Linux particularly in Ubuntu. The Author, Matt Hartley, has published two different articles Here and Here to emphasize the same thing. His main argument is that Compiz makes Linux Complicated.
The Ubuntu GNOME looses its very foundations -- its simplicity.
I think he might be right on certain points but overall I do not agree with him.
Lets look at some of his points

1. Ubuntu Looses Stability with Compiz enabled. Now some people still claim Compiz Fusion to be an unstable software, but for home users it is fairly stable. I just started using it on my SUSE KDE 10.3 and have found it to be very stable and an eye candy. Though I surely results in a decrease in performance or the snappyness of the system, but stability wise I have no complaints. I believe Ubuntu should be equally good too.
   
2. Compiz-Fusion is too Complex. If you read my post mentioned above and an addition to it regarding some easy configuration, you can see that Compiz is easier to setup and use than configuring a XOrg Server. Its a one time configuration using GUI tools and I never had to check it again. Where does the question of Complexity comes ? If Matt refers to the various options offered by Compiz, well those are options -- use only the ones you like. Also by default some options are enabled which might be good for most users.
3. People should try Linux for reasons other than Compiz. This is a debatable topic. If people can try Linux for its stability, for it being virus-free then why not for its eye-candy ? Lets agree that Linux does not support all the hardware supported by Windows, Windows have better applications and Windows have better games. If Linux can claim that it has better eye candy, then whats the harm in this ?
   
4. Is Running Compiz-Fusion An Insult to GNOME's Mission? No Comments. I am no expert on GNOMEs mission or its simplicity- heck I don't even use GNOME. I am a KDE Guy, but strongly believe that a beautiful desktop is a beautiful desktop -GNOME or KDE.
   
5. Metacity Allows for Duplicable results. Not sure what does he means, but if he means that by running Compiz we give more options to user, then is it a bad thing ? Linux is all about option. We have options in form of Window manger ( KDE, GNOME, XFCE, E17, Fluxbox etc.. ) Web Browser ( Firefox, Konqueror, Flock, Opera etc.. ) then why not have an option to beautify our desktop. If all it takes to have beautiful effects is a few clicks in a GUI Configurator then options are good. Well !! even for a beginner.
   
6. Following Vista/OSX/KDE is not good. If Vista has some good points, I see no shame in duplicating the same on Linux. People love Vista/OSX looks. gnome-look.org has many Vista/OSX themes. Even a project called mac4Lin exists and is a huge success. People love eye candy. If Compiz Fusion saves them the trouble of manually doing these things then following XXXX is good.
   

Stability is a very big factor for me, I have even bashed SUSE when I had some stability problems with 10.3. However, we should not forget that we install the latest SUSE or a Latest Ubuntu the day it is released. We want the latest softwares. Here lies the catch.
Now if we go for the latest software some bugs are destined to crop up, however, Compiz is to be used on Home Desktop and not production Servers, hence some slight problems should be OK. Some problems are found even in the Latest versions of Firefox, Should we revert back to Firefox 1.X and look for stability. If we are so stability conscious then we might try Debian sarge with Linux Kernel 3.1 instead of the more contemporary Ubuntu.
All this apart, I have not faced any stability problem with Compiz-Fusion on my SUSE, else I would definitely have mentioned in this blog.

For any Distribution the first appealing point is its Looks, thats the reason almost all leading distributions have screenshots on their sites. If Linux can impress a possible convert with the help of Compiz-Fusion I think its a job well done.

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Compiz Fusion results in borderless windows

I have just installed the beautiful eye candy on SUSE 10.3 and I think its simply great. I specially like the cube rotation and the Fire Effects. Configuring Compiz Fusion was really easy with the help of compizconfig-settings-manager.
As recommended I was using the kde-window-decorator as Display manager.
There was one big error in this arrangement -- All the windows were borderless and I can't move them. This way I was missing on many cool effects which appear on moving/resizing a window.

How to solve this ? Easy!! use Emerald manager instead of the default kde-window-decorator.
The Emerald Theme manager also offers some cool themes. I selected Vista-q and now I have Vista like glossy window borders. I must say the buttons look beautiful and I get to move the windows, tilt them, resize them, bend them ( yes it is possible with Compiz) and get all the cool effects. Soon I will be posting the beautiful Compiz effects on my elegant SUSE 10.3.
Stay tuned.

1-Click install of GIMP 2.4 on OpenSUSE

The 1-Click install is turning out to be really productive. People are adapting it for installing many softwares.
The latest version of Gimp, version 2.4, is also available for install via the Community repository.
Install it using the Following links

For OpenSUSE 10.3

For OpenSUSE Factory.


Copied Shamelessly from James Ogley.

My Distribution is the most updated.

October is generally the month when major distributions like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva etc make a release. I wanted to check which of the major distributions keep themselves updated and the release of Gimp 2.4.0 on 24th October 2007 ( two days ago) gave me this opportunity. In this article I will list the version of Gimp present in various common distributions, the source of different versions is Distrowatch.

Here is the table I made by getting data from Distrowatch.

Distribution	Latest in Official Repositories	Released version with the Latest ISO
OpenSUSE	Factory(2.2.17)	10.3 (2.2.17)
Mighty Ubuntu	Snapshot (2.4.0rc3)	7.10 (2.4.0rc3)
Fedora	Rawhide (2.4.0)	8 Test 3 (2.4.0rc3)
Mandriva	Cooker ( 2.4.0)	2008 (2.4.0rc2)
FreeBSD	7Current (2.2.17) 6Stable (2.2.17)	6.2 RELEASE (2.2.13)
Gentoo	Unstable(2.4.0rc3) Stable (2.3.19)	2007.0(2.2.14)
Arch	Current (2.4.0)	2007.08(2.2.17)
PCLinuxOS	apt (2.4.0)	2007 (2.3.16)

As we can see that of these FreeBSD has the least updated version of Gimp and Arch, PCLinuxOS, Fedora and Mandriva have the latest versions of Gimp 2.4.0. Others have an in between versions.
However, the latest version of Gimp in Fedora and Mandriva is present in their testing repositories and not release in their stable repositories.
Hence we have only two distributions which have the honor of having the latest GIMP in their stable repositories ARCH and PCLinuxOS. Hats off to both of them for keeping the distributions fully updated and enabling people like me to work on the latest version of software ( Gimp in this case).

One more reason why I Love PCLinuxOS.

DISCLAIMER :: I have tried to stick to some common distributions (which I have used in the past) and this comparison is solely based on Gimp version in the repositories of various distributions at 9:56 AM IST on 26th October 2007 as reported by distrowatch.

The SUSE impression fades a little

I was in total awe of SUSE 10.2. I liked its stability, performance, improvements to OpenOffice, YAST2, security, default fonts and above all the default theme and artwork. I was all praises for SUSE in my comparison of SUSE with Ubuntu. My only problem was package management in 10.2 which resulted in several broken packages and finally me shifting away from SUSE to a lesser knows distro PCLinuxOS

A lot has changed since then, PCLOS has replaced Arch as my default desktop OS. However, the love for SUSE still remains in my heart and when 10.3 got released I simply had to try it. SUSE 10.3 came with a bag full of goodies, notable among them are

1. Guru repository merged with Packman ,
2. Novell enhanced OpenOffice 2.3; it should be noted that even a later released Mandriva 2008 supports OpenOffice 2.2.1,
3. Giver - file sharing utility,
4. 1-Click install for non-OSS software, and above all
5. The improved YAST2.

These in themselves are overwhelming; add to it the legacy of SUSE and the time proven stability and we have a winner. These were my thoughts when I had set myself the task of installing SUSE10.3. I had some initial problems with the install ( mirrored on ITWire.com), but I could live with them considering the usage experience I was about to get. Luckily for me SUSE 10.3 did not disappoint me on most of the accounts. I have just used SUSE for three days and I strongly feel that this is too short a time for me to write a review, so I'll only mention some of my experiences. I might write a review after two months of SUSE usage.

Performance:

SUSE has a huge list of processes which run in the background. I was assuming that this might make it sluggish, but SUSE surprised me with its performance. All the resource hungry ones like OO, GIMP, Firefox, Digicam open in no time. I was astonished to find that Firefox too has minimal "hangs". By Firefox hangs I mean the time when one tab of Firefox is loading some graphic intensive site, entire Firefox seems to hang for a few seconds. This is common to Linux and Windows. However, on SUSE this hang was minimal.

Software Included:

Its SUSE, so I can be rest assured that all my required software will be present. I , however, was a little taken aback by non-inclusion of kompozer in SUSE repositories. Kompozer is a modification of nvu and presents a better user experience. That apart SUSE has every software I need. I could easily feel the improvements in YAST when I downloaded and installed Quanta Plus. YAST is better looking and much faster than before. 1-Click install is as easy as publicized.

System Admin:

SUSE has YAST2, what more can I ask for. It is a one stop solution for managing my system. Now some people might find YAST lacking in many fields and options but I found it to be perfect for my needs and I believe that most common users will find YAST as per their liking.

Artwork:

Another area in which SUSE has always excelled. This time too their artwork is simply impeccable.

System stability:

The SUSE I remember, was the most stable distro of its time. With SUSE 10.3 things have changed a little. I faced these two problem which I can recreate any time.

1. When connecting to the ftp website, Quanta Plus crashes. Not sure if this is a problem with Quanta or SUSE, but the end result is a process crash.
2. If a single process crashing was bad, imaging how bad the entire X Server crashing could be !! Whenever I try to play VCD with kaffeine, the XServer crashes and logs me out. Then I have to re-login only to find that my unsaved work is lost. Now I can understand that due to certain issues Kaffeine is not able to play VCD, it can be plugins issue or any other. I can also, upto some extent, accept kaffeine crashing. However, XServer crash is too much for me; it means loosing all the unsaved work which is an extremely negative point.

I faced only these stability issues, but these are reproducible.

I always put stability as the most important factor while judging a distro. I was extremely impressed by the stability of SUSE 10.2 and thats the reason that I am more depressed with SUSE 10.3. I have done the online updates, but still the crash problem is there.

The stability problem apart; SUSE is the most polished distro we have today. Everything simply works out of the box, they have very comprehensive HOWTO's and the system feels very responsive. I think SUSE has again impressed me, but there are some issues too.

NOTE:

By SUSE I mean openSUSE.

Why SUSE Why ?

NOTE::
This article describes my experiences when I tried the KDE install CD, now the KDE Live CD is released which has install option and most of my problems reported in this article are resolved by the Live CD.
RELATED ARTICLES :

1. 1-Click Compiz fusion on OpenSUSE.
2. Compiz Fusion results in Borderless Windows.
   
3. Multimedia Codec installation on OpenSUSE 10.3.
4. Skype 2 on OpenSUSE.
5. The complete OpenSUSE 10.3 Setup.
6. OpenSUSE 10.3 Live CD results in a blank Screen.
   

SUSE 10.3 was released and I had to try it. All geared up, I started downloading the torrent of the KDE version. I realized that it was not just me who was eager to download and try, but a whole lot of other people were also downloading the same torrent. I had 736 people as seeds and more than one thousand as peers. That's some numbers, SUSE definitely has a big fan following. The 700 MB iso took some 4-5 hours of download time on my 256 mbps connection and I was all set to install.

I already had Linux Mint on my system, so instead of bothering to burn a CD, I just followed the excellent tutorial on SUSE site to install from hard disk. I thought that hard disk install would be the fastest as accessing files from hard disk is much faster that that from CD, unfortunately SUSE install was determined to prove me wrong. When I booted from the SUSE iso, the first thing that hit me was that the install CD was just an install CD. Come on, in today's world where we have beautiful Live CD's which also function as install CD, why does SUSE still has just a plain install CD. Look at install CD's from PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu and Linux Mint, they all double up as Live CD + install CD. This option makes the computer usable even when the install is going on, apparently SUSE does not believe in this.

When I test a distro, I always accept the default options -- i.e just keep pressing next till the install is over, except for hard disk partitions. In my Mint install, I just had two partitions the root (/) partition and /home partition. I had copied the SUSE iso on the /home partition and booted from it. During partitioning the SUSE partitioner never allowed me to designate my existing /home partition to be mounted as /home because the current iso was present on that. I had no other option but to have my SUSE home on the root partition itself. Not a big issue, I can fix it when the install is over.

Next the installer asked me if I wanted to configure my networking, Cool ! why not. The installer got the settings from DHCP and went ahead with configuring online repositories. All well, or was it really well ? Installer gave me an option to confirm the install and I did. On the install screen I saw some download going on, why download when I have the install media on hard disk ? However, the download rate was too fast and I realized that even getting files from hard disk is termed as download. Still OK, suddenly the download rate dropped to snail pace. I then switched to virtual terminals from 1 to 6 but did not see any indication that any files are actually being downloaded from Internet. Back to the GUI installer, I saw that SUSE will install around 2GB from the hard disk and around 600MB from the online OSS and non-OSS repositories. Now SUSE 10.3 was released just days back, so there is no chance of 600MB updates, hence why install from Internet and make things slow.

Unfortunately it was too late by now, the install had started and it was going to take its time. I had also formated my Mint root partition and with it went the grub, so I cannot even restart the install. The download took a sweet 6 hours and I was watching TV to while away my time. This 6 hours also highlighted the need for a Live CD, at least I would have used the desktop. Maybe taken some screenshots or even written this blog from the Live CD itself, no such luck for me.

Further Shocks :

During the install I noticed that the java version being installed was 1.5, why install an old version when java 1.6 is already released and this is a spanking new version of SUSE.

At the end of six long hours, the installer asked me to reboot, reboot now when I can see on the left side menu that many things including setting a root password is remaining ?? Anyhow, I had no choice but to reboot. After the reboot, the installer continued the remaining tasks to having the root password and further configurations. This reminded me of another six years old desktop OS, which does a reboot during install -- Windows XP. However, that's a six or seven years old OS.

Here on for every configuration, I had to click a button. SUSE does not believe in minimal intervention from users. I think in total I pressed more than 15 click during the install.

Conclusion:

This article is purely from the point of view of initial install and does not cover the usage. I know still I have to add the packman repository and install the video codecs etc.

I think this the the worst install experience I had in last one year. I was spoiled by the likes of PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Granular and Mint Linux. I feel that even the text mode install of Arch Linux presented a better experience than SUSE.

I know that usage wise SUSE is one of the best, but SUSE developers have to understand that installing the OS is the first part of the total experience.

RELATED ARTICLES :

1. 1-Click Compiz fusion on OpenSUSE.
2. Compiz Fusion results in Borderless Windows.
   
3. Multimedia Codec installation on OpenSUSE 10.3.
4. Skype 2 on OpenSUSE.
5. The complete OpenSUSE 10.3 Setup.
6. OpenSUSE 10.3 Live CD results in a blank Screen.