Novell

ZDnet has an interview with Michael Meeks about the status of OpenOffice and where it is going. Michael is well known in the GNOME community both as someone who has done numerous talks about the GNOME desktop, but also for his work on integrating OpenOffice with the rest of the GNOME desktop. The interview covers recent events such as IBM's commitment to OpenOffice and current development focus.

OpenSuse.org has interview with JP Rosevear about GNOME in the latest OpenSuse release. Article covers things like Banshee and F-Spot and the interview cover topics such as GTK+ YaST and the future plans for Open Suse.

The GNOME project also made good use of the Better Desktop Initiative data. According to Dave Neary, Chairman of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, "usability studies have always been an important part of the GNOME project, whether they have been sponsored by Sun, Red Hat, or Novell, or have been independent efforts like OpenUsability." He points out that each project only has a certain level of resources, but that "GNOME developers care deeply about the user experience, and as a project we have always worked hard to make common tasks easy, without making advanced tasks impossible."

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Compiz, the OpenGL window/composite manager, has been released following David Reveman's talk at XDevconf yesterday.

"Compiz is an OpenGL compositing manager that use GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap for binding redirected top-level windows to texture objects. It has a flexible plug-in system and it is designed to run well on most graphics hardware."

Also, a new video demonstrating Compiz on XGL is now online. The video displays numerous previously unseen effects such as 3D objects on the desktop and animated backgrounds.

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"A preview of Novell Linux Desktop 10 (NLD10) was shown to an audience at the Solutions Linux conference this week in Paris. We have a selection of videos which display a variety of amazing effects through the use of XGL, including transparency, wobbling windows, a 3D Cube for desktop switching, and a task switcher which displays a preview of windows."

Download the videos from here.

Update: More info here complete with more videos and screenshots...
Novell is announcing its contribution of the Xgl graphics subsystem and the 'Compiz ' compositing manager to the X.org project. These enhancements open up a whole world of hardware acceleration, fancy animation, separating hardware resolution from software resolution, and more. As a result, Linux desktops will become more usable, end-user productivity will increase, and Linux is firmly positioned at the forefront of client computing technology.

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Nat Friedman posted a story in his blog that he and Novell have hired David Reveman, creator of Xgl.
Xgl seems like a very interesting development being an X server built on top of Glitz(OpenGL). Combining this with GTK+ moving to Cairo which is also built on top of Glitz you get a very strong combination. Be sure to read Nat's blog for the details and the code.
This could be a huge step forward for GNOME.

Novell has released their Novell Linux Desktop 9 this past week. An evaluation copy is available for download for the price of signing up for a Novell login. It's a small price to pay to get your hands on what is certainly a true Linux business desktop, well suited for the business class end-user and well-supported by Novell's Ximian Red Carpet Service.

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Nat Friedman is interviewed about the Novell Linux desktop strategy. The interview focuses on broad plans and the integration of Ximians technology into the Suse Linux product. The interview provides some insights into the ongoing efforts at Novell.

When Novell made its surprise announcement last week that Ximian Connector was being released under the free software GPL license, I began to wonder if it marked the end of the Ximian era. Connector, after all, was the centerpiece of the Ximian strategy to make inroads into the corporate desktop market by providing full compatibility with the widely used Microsoft Exchange mail server. The answer? Novell giveth and Novell taketh away.

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OSNews had an interesting discussion with Miguel de Icaza about all things Linux and Novell. Miguel talked about the general patent problem and how this will become the one single stumbling block of widespread adoption of Linux in USA, while he asserts that Longhorn uses some 'new' technologies already found on Gnome and elsewhere. Miguel believes that poor countries will be the first that will adopt widely Linux, and as long the EU won't adopt a similar system to US for patents, Europe will follow soon after, leaving no option to USA but to eventually adopt Linux as well in the long run (despite potential patent problems). Another strategy Miguel discussed was about moving as many F/OSS applications as possible to Windows in order to familiarize the casual users with open source. Among many other interesting tidbits he also mentions that Quark is now using Mono on Mac OS X.

Born in Mexico City, Miguel de Icaza was the driving force behind the creation of the Gnome free software desktop, and co-founded the open source company Ximian, bought last August by Novell. In July 2001, he helped start another ambitious project, Mono: a free implementation for GNU/Linux of Microsoft's .Net framework. He talks to Glyn Moody about Mono's progress, how Ximian was bought by Novell, and why he is so scared of Microsoft's Longhorn.

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When I published the note the first time, many people asked me about BitTorrent links and a stable mirror, I'm glad to announce we already have it :)
LGIS GNU/Linux is a Ximianized version of RedHat Linux, you can see some screenshots here. You can find the ftp, http and BitTorrent links on the project page.

The ISO images contains many more updates than in the first announcement, and I've added the mono packages to the installation. Of course, you can update all the thing through Ximian's Red Carpet.

P.D. Yes I'm working on the Fedora based version already :)

Saludos,
mikelds

The Ximian Build System, Build Buddy, is now available to the community, in GPL form. This is a very
exciting moment, and one that many of us at Ximian have been hoping would come.Build Buddy is a
cross-platform packaging system designed with flexibility, reproducibility, and automation in mind. It
features...

Join Ximian's Robert Love and read his interesting interview by ArsTechnica's staff. Robert gets to talk about Project Utopia, Linux and Gnome on the desktop and even goes deep technical about I/O, the scheduler and other kernel-related performance topics.

Parts two and three of the recent interviews at AlwaysOn are now available. Part one of the interview that was covered here can be found here.