Novell News

by Meike Chabowski, product marketing manager, SUSE Linux Enterprise

In June and November of each year the Top500 list of supercomputers is released. Each year, based on the list, the key operating system for supercomputing is Linux. Linux is cheaper to run and its excellent scalability features, along with its robust security and performance, make it an ideal choice for high performance computing (HPC) systems.

The recently released November Top500 list once again demonstrates that Linux dominates HPC – nearly 90 percent of the Top500 systems run on Linux. Three hundred and ninety-one of these systems are running an unspecified version of Linux. Sixty-two of the supercomputers are proven to run some version (including such variants as UNICOS/lc and CNL) of SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell. Red Hat and its derivatives, including CentOS, comes in a distant second with 16 supercomputers.

The world’s fastest supercomputer, the Jaguar XT5, built by Seattle-based Cray Inc., runs on a version of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Jaguar, which is located at the Department of Energy’s Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is used by the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) for simulation and computations for environmental, chemical and material science, nuclear energy, astrophysics and particle physics. Jaguar literally has “blown away” its competitors by bringing the theoretical peak of performance speed to 2.3 petaflops: one petaflop/s refers to quadrillion calculations per second — second place Roadrunner from IBM in comparison just reaches 1.3 Petaflops. All the Jaguar computer nodes somewhere run a version of  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server — lightly-customized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on the service nodes, and Compute Node Linux (CNL) which is Cray’s version of the SUSE Linux Enterprise operating system with a tuned Linux kernel.

Why is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server the operating system of choice on most of the world’s top HPC supercomputers in use today? Since 1993, SUSE engineers have made significant contributions to the advancement and tuning of the Linux kernel and key kernel-related performance technologies. Moreover, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was the first Linux OS in the market to support 64-bit chip sets and is synonymous with high-performance Linux running on 64-bit and mainframe systems. Because of its continuous early support of newer chip sets, including 64-bit, this drove and still drives the success of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on HPC technologies.

The HPC market is maturing from high performance to high productivity. While the world’s fastest supercomputer Jaguar is devoted to solving scientific questions, there have been significant changes in the high performance computing landscape during the last few years. Many businesses today are adopting HPC for financial analysis, portfolio management, digital security, surveillance, data warehousing, line-of-business applications and transaction processing. And while HPC has been primarily limited to large enterprises, R&D firms, and academic institutions in the past, that is changing. Mid-market companies are also adopting HPC, due to the availability of affordable and open solutions, which supplant the costly proprietary solutions of the past.

Today Tech Data, one of the largest global distributors of technology products announced Open Tech, a new channel for open source independent software vendors (ISVs) to market and sell their solutions to thousands of resellers nationwide.

This is a great step for Tech Data to recognize the cost reduction and performance optimization benefits of open source solutions.  SUSE Linux Enterprise is a robust platform that, combined with Novell’s entire product portfolio, empowers companies to build, manage, secure and measure mission-critical applications with a low cost of ownership.  A recent market survey, conducted by IDC and Novell, revealed that more than 72 percent of respondents are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009, with more than 68 percent making the same claim for the desktop.

Additionally, independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are demonstrating tremendous support for the SUSE® Appliance Program from Novell, the industry’s first, complete, end-to-end appliance solution that enables ISVs to rapidly build, update, configure and go to market with fully supported software and virtual appliances.

We’re pleased to support Tech Data Open Tech with dedicated Novell PartnerNet training programs and our world-class solutions. Our participation will help our developers and reseller partners become more profitable.

This week Novell launched Mono Tools for Visual Studio, a revolutionary add-in module for Microsoft Visual Studio. Mono Tools lets .NET developers build Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X applications without leaving their familiar Visual Studio environment. By allowing .NET-trained developers to leverage their existing expertise and ecosystem of .NET code, libraries and tools, Mono Tools slashes the time and costs of developing multi-platform applications. But don’t just take our word for it – check out Mono Tools for yourself. Download a free 30-day trial here. Try it and let us know what you think.

In this recently posted NetworkWorld podcast Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier speaks with openSUSE booster and GNOME board member Vincent Untz, about the upcoming enhancements to openSUSE 11.2 as well as some of the cool work that the GNOME team is doing to improve functionality and increase usability. Also, get highlights from the Boston Summit 2009, the three-day GNOME developer hackfest, and find out how to get involved in improving GNOME regardless of your level of technical expertise. (12:40)

by Matt Richards, Senior Program Manager, SUSE Appliance Program

You might have seen the articles (internetnews, InformationWeek, cnet) reporting that Linux creator Linus Torvalds said the Linux kernel is “bloated”. We think Linus is right.

There are good reasons why Linux has put on the pounds over the years. Linux got big because of it’s tremendous success as a general-purpose operating system that needs to support more and more use cases. Linux is now pervasive – think IBM System Z, x86, cell phones, and my Tivo – but, with that ubiquity comes size. More packages, more drivers, bigger size. And its ease of use also comes with added size. My whole family uses Linux now because it is easy to use, provides a great user experience, and is more cost effective than other options. Yet despite all the bloat, it is still more efficient than any other operating system. If you don’t believe me, just replace Windows with Linux on the same hardware to notice the performance improvement.

The good news is that unlike most other operating systems, it’s very easy to put Linux on a diet. Linux is highly modular, so it’s relatively easy to remove packages, add packages, make changes – essentially do whatever you want. Keep the critical parts, remove the bloat. One of Linux’s great strengths is the ability to customize the OS to address a very specific use case.

You can make these changes using tools that make it fast and easy to create your own fully supported, mass customized Linux. See SUSE Studio for a great example of this capability.

At Novell we think this is the future of Linux. We expect to see more and more customization of the OS for specific platforms, applications, or use cases. SUSE Studio gives users the ability to create their own software appliances in a matter of minutes, test them, then deploy. This level of flexibility will further drive Linux adoption across the board, from cell phones to data centers, to the cloud. And it’s a great diet plan.

Did you know that Oktoberfest begins in September? The start of the world’s largest fair just happens to coincide with the first-ever openSUSE conference happening just “down the road” in Nuremberg, Sept. 17 – 20.

The openSUSE conference is free and open to anyone. The interactive event aims to bring the openSUSE contributor community together to share ideas, experience, learn, hack and help to guide the direction of the project. Presentations, tutorials, birds of a feather and panel sessions will focus on four main areas: System and Toolchain, Desktop, Server, and Community – there will even be a chance to work on the openSUSE 11.2 release and the openSUSE KDE team will be holding a full program of contributor workshops during the conference.

Check out the full schedule here and make sure to leave time for some beer.

In this podcast, Novell’s Community Manager, Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, talks with Andreas Jaeger, about his responsibilities as the openSUSE program manager, the history of the project, the challenges and opportunity of cultivating the community as well as what’s coming up in the future releases for openSUSE. Take a listen.

 

 Andreas Jaeger on openSUSE : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Andreas Jaeger on openSUSE (ogg): Download

The Linux Foundation has announced an update to its paper on who is contributing code to the Linux kernel. A few highlights:
- Since 2008 there has been a roughly 10% increase in the number of developers contributing to each kernel release cycle.
- Kernel growth is high and increasing, with more than 10,000 patches in each recent kernel release.
- More than 1000 developers from around 200 corporations are contributing to kernel releases

Novell has a strong showing — SUSE developer Greg Kroah-Hartman is a co-author of the paper and Novell continues to be one of the top named contributors to the Linux kernel.

Novell’s Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier sat down with Paul Krill, editor-at-large at InfoWorld and Ross Turk, community manager for Source Forge at OSCON in July to discuss the show, what’s happening with open source communities and companies these days and how to build an effective community. They even touch on what open source projects and journalism have in common.

 

 oscon_roundtable.mp3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 oscon_roundtable.ogg: Download

Last week, Roland Haidl posted a note to the openSUSE Project mailing list about the new multiplier team for openSUSE. The team will report to Roland Haidl, who is the director of operations and communities for Open Platform Solutions. This means that openSUSE will have several engineers who are exclusively tasked with working on the openSUSE Project as part of Novell’s strategy to focus on the openSUSE Project as part of the core Open Platform Solutions mission.

What’s even more, this team will be tasked with building the openSUSE community and working directly with contributors. Community building will be a key responsibility, because while Novell is committing resources to the development of openSUSE, it is even more important to cultivate, nurture and encourage its contributors. And at the end of the day the strength of the open source model and the success of openSUSE lies in the size and commitment of the community.