New SUSE service pack, review, deals and the birth of another PC that runs a Xandros derivative

Early reviewers of the latest SUSE release are not entirely satisfied
SLED and SLES 11 have been released. Selected journalists appear to have received copies of it in advance, specifically for reviewing purposes. What did they think? Let's find out.

Novell today is rolling out the newest edition of its flagship enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11. The new releases are the first major updates since the SLES and SLED 10 releases in July of 2006 and are the first enterprise Linux distro's to ever support Mono - .NET on Linux

Novell is offering a sneak preview of the forthcoming Suse Linux Enterprise 11 server (SLES) and desktop (SLED) versions to download. SLE 11 contains current software, including kernel version 2.6.27, X.org 7.4, Gnome 2.24 and KDE 4.1, Apache 2.2.10 and Samba 3.2.5, PHP 5.2.6, and Python 2.6.

Novell released SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) at the same time it rolled out SLES 11. We found that the desktop bundle (which we tested on an HP EliteBook 2530p notebook system) includes features that render a look and feel similar to past versions of Apple's MacOS as well as some parts of Windows 7 beta we've tested.

Novell is working on a successor to SUSE Moblin which will use components of the Nokia and Intel driven MeeGo operating system. It's expected that SUSE MeeGo will be available pre-installed on consumer devices within the next 12 months

Novell’s GNU/Linux business may not be flourishing, but there are some deals and contracts which we ought to at least keep track of.

Novell Inc. has added support for VMware Inc.'s Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2, which Novell says will make SUSE run faster on VMware's ESX hypervisor.

This struck me as a very interesting figure, because after firing up XCalc, I figured out that if indeed just 475 customers have received these coupons, then Microsoft has essentially subsidized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) deployments an average tune of US$505,263.16 per customer.