[Klug-general] An alliance is announced

[Karl Lattimer]

On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 10:05 +0000, Michael. E. Rentell wrote:

> Good day all,
> 
> This just in from a friend who said - click this:
> 
> http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/15914222.htm
> 
> Anyone know anything more?

Last time i spoke to Rev. Ted the stance appeared to be that they could
already run windows in virtualised environments, but they could run SLED
on SLES in paravirtualised mode which means that an application can run
on a different kernel/server but appears on your desktop X server. He
was saying that they wanted to get the microsoft paravirtualisation
working so windows applications could run on a SLED desktop without
wine. 

The other things they were working on was active directory/eDirectory
working together to provide all AD services via eDirectory and Heimdal
kerberos. The idea with this deal is to make these things easier and to
do so without infringing microsofts patents. The craziest irony of this
is that microsoft believe that they'll be offering virtualised linux
workstations or a mix or visa versa from a windows server but the
reality is that this enables novell to put microsoft in a
paravirtualised bottle. In the enterprise they are more inclined to use
novell directory services, because they are better at it but exchange
(roll on hula!!) and microsoft office are still a requirement for many
businesses.

The fact of the matter is that linux has had microsoft running scared
for a few years now, and with vista looking pig ugly and increasing the
training requirement (anyone seen ribbon in IE7? thats the thing that
replaces the file/edit menus) and Linux desktops with AIGLX and
Xgl/Compiz/beryl and other goodness microsofts desktop architecture is
moving toward home users at the same time alienating them while the
desktop infrastructure in Linux is improving toward all user
demographics. 

In the next few years you'll see some work concentrating on beryl,
eDirectory, hula and Xen while open office still lags behind it will
hopefully get a boost in the near future. Interoperability has killed
microsoft in the EU so they need to get some of that market back, they
believe that working with novell will boost their customer base in the
enterprise. Eventually we'll be able to run a windows kernel inside a
Xen bottle with applications running on that kernel appearing on the
linux desktop. Apple are already working on this, and it'll be nice to
have the same kind of functionality in Linux.

K,
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