I have some good news for folks who have been wanting a version of the Novell Client for Linux for openSUSE. I just put up the announcement over on news.opensuse.org:

We’re pleased to announce the public beta of the Novell Client for openSUSE 10.3. Novell released the packages for the Novell Client for Linux 2.0 SP1 public beta today.

A number of openSUSE users have expressed interest in having the client packaged for openSUSE, so our developers have been working on building the client against openSUSE. Please download the package and give it a try on your systems.

Novell is also working on a package for openSUSE 11.0, though we don’t have an official timeline for that package yet. We will also post an announcement when it’s available, and will post announcements for any further betas or the final release of the Novell Client for Linux.

Joe Harmon, the new product manager for the Novell Client for Linux, has been instrumental in driving this, and deserves a lot of thanks for his work to get this out the door. I know a lot of people have been looking for this, so please grab the RPM and get to testing!

As mentioned in the announcement, we don’t have a hard date for the 11.0 version, but it’s in the works and we’ll be sure to let the world know when it’s available.

Just a brief note to mention that I’ll be on vacation the rest of this week, and won’t be checking email much Thursday and Friday. No big plans, just hanging out here in Florida and getting lots of personal errands tackled, and making sure we’re first in line to see Wall-E on Friday.

This is a bit of a coincidence… I’m prepping to do a presentation over the phone/Web in a few minutes and ran across this post by Ross Brunson on the SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas blog about “12 tools for kick-ass Web meetings.”

The only problem is, most if not all of the tools are not open source or even necessarily compatible with Linux.

I’d like to be able to do more multimedia presentations for groups that I can’t meet in person, or at least can’t meet at a given date — and I think it’d be a good thing to have a list of online meeting tools for the openSUSE community in general.

I’m not just talking about IRC or IM — though those are very effective as well, and conference calls tend to be a bit lacking without some visual components.

So, I’m throwing this out to the lazyweb: What kind of online conference/collaboration tools do we have available for Linux users that might make it easy to meet and collaborate online? I’m thinking of tools that are useful for one-to-many conversations (presenations) and many-to-many collaboration sessions. Bonus points for tools that are located in the openSUSE repos…

It’s still early after the launch, but I think we’ve been pretty successful in getting the word out about openSUSE. Here’s what I’m seeing on the Internet the Monday after the launch:

• LinuxPlanet’s Dan Lynch takes a look at KDE4 in openSUSE 11.0 and finds it “a good improvement on openSUSE 10.3.”
• An interview over on InternetNews with Sean Michael Kerner.
• Another over on BetaNews.
• Coverage on The Inquirer, noting that the server was “borked” when they tried to reach it. (Try again, guys!) Not surprising, we had huge server load immediately after the official release. (And before, actually — people really wanted a shot at the download…)
• Another write-up on ZDNet.co.uk.
• Builder.au announces the release.
• DistroWatch has some kind words and statistics about 11.0:
  It is illustrated in the table below, which ranks the major distribution releases according to the number of unique hits their respective pages received during the first three days after the release. As can be seen, with over 16,500 unique hits, openSUSE 11.0 is second only to Ubuntu in terms of post-release interest in the distribution among the DistroWatch visitors.
• openSUSE 11.0 also got a glowing review from DownloadSquad:
  OpenSUSE has always been a strong option for new Linux users, and users who wanted a distribution they could grow with. We always had a few reservations about recommending it, mainly because of speed and package handling issues. OpenSUSE has made monstrous strides in these areas between the 10.3 release and today.
• Also a nice review on Linux.com:
  openSUSE 11.0 is a fabulous release. The pretty new graphics set the stage for significant improvements under the surface. All the time and energy put into the package management system has paid off. Including KDE 4 is not as big of a risk for openSUSE as it might be for other major distributions because of the conservative and intuitive way KDE 4 is set up. openSUSE has given me hope that I could actually like KDE 4.

There’s quite a lot more out there — I’ll be posting more comprehensive roundups shortly.Feel free to leave links to coverage in the comments — I don’t want to miss anything!

Today is the big day. The world will get to take a look at openSUSE 11.0 in its full glory — and I think it’s going to go over very well. The openSUSE team has really done an amazing job with 11.0.

I’ve had the good fortune to be using the final release for several days, and though there are no major surprises between the betas/RCs and final, I thought I’d mention some of my favorite things in the 11.0 release…

Banshee 1.0 has much love from me. It’s doing a really good job of managing music off of my iPod, and I can’t wait to get back to a decent (non-hotel) connection to play with the Last.fm features.

The package managment improvements, of course, are going a long way towards making me love, love, love this release — When I want to do something and realize I need to install a package to get it done, I don’t like a long wait time between point A and B.

As I’ve mentioned previously, NetworkManager in 11.0 rocks. I didn’t always have the best experience with NetworkManager in 10.3, but it’s been rock solid in 11.0 and super-convenient with my EV-DO card.

My favorite thing about 11.0, though? It’s released! The anticipation has been astounding — we’re getting tons of feedback from the press (which I will post about later tonight) which is really positive. I’m also hearing lots of love from community members and others who have given it a shot.

The openSUSE team has put tons of work into 11.0 and it shows. I hope all of the folks involved are feeling good today (not to mention taking a little time to relax) because it’s well-deserved. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun the last few months have been!

Enough about me, though — what’s your favorite thing about openSUSE 11.0? What should we be looking at for 11.1?

The day has finally arrived! Fire up your torrents, your download managers, or whatever and head over to software.opensuse.org. openSUSE 11.0 final is now available for download!

Need something to do while you’re waiting for openSUSE to download? You can read the full announcement over on news.opensuse.org, and then make sure you check Digg regularly and help vote up stories about openSUSE 11.0’s release. Blog about it, tell your friends, and help let the world know about the release!

“Will Linux Users Miss Out on Firefox 3?” by Sean Michael Kerner talks about the release process for Firefox in Linux distros — basically taking note of the fact that distros repackage Firefox and thus it may be a bit of delay between the official Firefox release and when it shows up in distro updates. The headline is a bit misleading, I think — if you’re skimming Google News or a bunch of RSS feeds, the impression is “oh goodness, Linux users might not be able to use Firefox 3?” That would be news, if it were so, because I’m sitting here typing into a Firefox 3.0 RC while reading it…

It’s also a shame he didn’t talk to anyone on the openSUSE team or with Novell about our policies for Firefox…

But no, Linux users won’t “miss out” on Firefox 3. They might start using it a day or two later, assuming they’re running Firefox using the packages supplied by their distros instead of the tarballs from Mozilla. (Right now, I’m running one of the RCs using Firefox’s tarball myself, on top of openSUSE 11.0…)

I think the article presents the delay as something of a hassle or detriment to users, but doesn’t really take note of the fact that the distros do testing of Firefox updates to make sure they’re not passing on any problems via the update.

Also, I might add, it could be pointed out that Firefox’s update mechanism is necessitated by the fact that Apple and Microsoft don’t distribute Firefox — so their update mechanisms don’t do anything for the third-party software (like Firefox) that their users run.

Linux distros, on the other hand, have streamlined the update and distribution channel for thousands of applications — it’s entirely possible for users to get most (if not all) of their software directly from the distro, and avoid worrying about when and where updates are coming from. A single update mechanism will bring in all the required updates for software packaged and shipped as part of the distro — which is way more convenient.

I don’t think this feature gets nearly enough attention when Linux is discussed. (And I don’t just mean openSUSE here — to be fair, you get this advantage from all of the major distros…) About 98% of the software I use right now is directly available in the openSUSE repositories, so I don’t have to install and track it separately.

This week I’m working off an EVDO connection while I wait for Verizon to get FIOS set up in the townhome I’m moving to. (Just moving across town.) Now, a few weeks ago I blogged about setting up EVDO using wvdial on openSUSE 10.3, so I thought I would mention the process for 11.0.

I hadn’t used the EVDO card in a few weeks, so I plugged it in on my big green laptop that I’m running openSUSE 11.0 RC 1 on. Under GNOME, when I plugged in my EVDO card and went to NetworkManager, it had already recognized the card and all I had to do is click “connect.” No need to give any information (I guess the card stores it all?) — just plug it in and go.

This isn’t just “user friendly,” this is significantly easier than using the same card under Mac OS X or Windows. No (extra) software to install (the management software is a PITA on OS X), it just dials up and goes. Beautiful!

It’s unbelievable how far Linux has come since I went to using a Linux desktop full-time in 1999. From “stable but hard to use,” to “stable and easier than other OSes,” in just nine years.

Update: Should point out that NetworkManager works the same way for users with UMTS, so the network goodness is not limited to EVDO. Anyone have a UMTS card that they’d like to lend me next time I’m in Europe? I think I should test this extensively… (and having a convenient network connection while I travel would just be an added bonus…)

Looks like the openSUSE GNOME team had a very successful bug day yesterday. I was chatting with Christopher Hobbs about it while it was going on, and he said he’d write up a Bug Day Guide — which is already up on his blog. Good stuff, if you’re interested in running bug days, he’s got a few good tips for doing so.

Oh, and I fully support this sentiment: “Gobby has considerably sped the process up, my only complaint is that it doesn’t have vi keys.”

All text editors should support vi keybindings, just as nature intended.

The forums announcement went out yesterday, and within a day (give or take), we’ve gotten more than 700 people signed up for the new merged forums. That’s not bad at all, and I can’t wait to see how the forums grow over time and in sync with the openSUSE 11.0 release that is just a bit more than one week away.

Since the forums launched we’ve already been covered by Download Squad, Desktop Linux, and a slew of blogs. (I think a few more pieces are in the works as well…) And, as promised, we have a shiny new podcast up on Novell Open Audio.I had a lot of fun doing the podcast (not as much fun scheduling it — getting five people from different timezones all on the phone at once is a bit of a challenge) so download it and give it a listen when you have some time. It’s great to listen to Keith, Rupert, Kim, and Wolfi talk about their roles in the project and where they want the forums to go.