SUSE – Page 4 – Bob Martens

Back in July I took over many of the network and system administration duties for Martin Luther College when my longtime colleague stepped away for a new opportunity as a developer.

Our current systems are a mix of Windows, Linux, and Novell NetWare systems. On the Linux side of things we use Ubuntu, CentOS, and Red Hat across maybe twenty or so physical servers and virtual machines. With a switch from NetWare 6.5 to Open Enterprise Server 11 on the horizon, we will also be adding SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to our fleet of distributions we support as well.

I’ve used Linux on-and-off for coming up on eight years now, but I’ve been heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem for the past few years. Some of my Linux capabilities have atrophied a little bit in that intervening time, and that doesn’t exactly make me feel good.

With the new emphasis on Linux administration for me at work, along with my continual need to make sure I can use all current platforms, I think it is time for a little bit a challenge.

I’m calling it “A Month With Linux”. The idea is to keep my usage of OS X to a minimum (mainly only for work-related needs which can only be fulfilled by an OS X machine) and use a Linux distribution as my main computing platform on my laptops and desktops.

While I haven’t settled on a distribution yet, I’m leaning toward a version of openSUSE. Right now the released version is openSUSE 12.3 with 13.1 currently in active development (as of this writing, Beta 1 has been released) and not due to be released until November (right around the time for Baby #3!), but the inclusion of GNOME 3.10 is a huge “win” for me along with updated versions of Ruby and the Linux kernel.

I’m hoping to also give Btrfs a try as my default file system, but I need to also figure out why I can’t install a stable system with it first (might be entirely my fault). I am also going to try to give Dropbox the boot by trying out some other file-syncing services (first on the list: BitTorrent Sync).

That’s the general outline. I am still going to use my iPhone 5 (obviously), iPad mini, and my wife will still have her MacBook, but Linux is going to be MY only computing platform for a month …

… starting soon. I need to choose a distro first.

I had the pleasure of attending SUSE Linux Days 2013 today at the Marriott at the Minneapolis City Center. I like being able to attend “techie things” in the Twins Cities.

It was a lot of fun. Sadly, traffic was a little crazy on the way up from the south so I ended up changing my plans and riding the light rail into the heart of Minneapolis and walking the rest of the way. The few blocks were a pleasure, even if I forgot my jacket for that early in the morning.

The day revolved around three topics.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Update
SUSE Manager
SUSE Cloud

Each topic melded into each other, and the two presenters did an excellent job of covering a good number of topics, answering a good number of questions, and keeping everyone engaged with what was going on.

The impressive things I took away from the morning about SUSE Linux Enterprise included:

How many companies actually use SUSE Linux Enterprise. General Motors and Ford were called out specifically for using SLES as the backbone of their IT transformation and standardization projects. That’s pretty cool.
How many partnerships SUSE keeps up with. Not just hardware, but software partners as well. I’ve never really kept up with SUSE that much, but they are in more places than I would have thought.
SUSE offers up-to 10 years of support. Crazy. The support windows are very regular, very knowable, and very standardized. That’s rather nice when making decisions.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 is on track for a mid-2014 release. While a roadmap and more information is on the way for SUSECon, one thing called out was the possible use of Btrfs as the default file system. A bold move for sure, but kind of cool to hear about.
The High Availability stuff is cool and useful and SUSE has done a lot of the “thinking” for you. Many of the components are freely available as open source, but having someone pull it all together and support it could be really useful.

I’m most excited to see what is going to be coming with SLE 12 in mid-2014. It is supposed to be based on openSUSE 13.1, which is currently in development, and one thing I will be watching is the inclusion of the new Ruby-fied YaST and an upgrade of the default Ruby installation to 2.0 … please?

I know another interesting development will be whether SLED 12 will move away from the Gnome default of SLED 11 and before and move to KDE. At the moment KDE is the default desktop for openSUSE, but whether the SLE release will move to that is yet to be seen.

The rest of the day was dedicated to SUSE Manager, SUSE Studio, and SUSE Cloud … well, it was actually dedicated to how those three products work together in their private cloud platform. What I was able to see was really good and I want to be able to play with the whole thing because I think that the ability to provision hardware as a part of SUSE Cloud, to build standard images with SUSE Studio, and manager it all from SUSE Manager looks like a really strong combination.

Is it too much for a small IT department at a private college in New Ulm? Maybe. It IS fun to dream.

I’m installing openSUSE 12.3 with the default KDE desktop while I write this so that I can try to keep up with what the future might be bringing. I don’t know if we are ever going to be able to standardize on a single platform at Martin Luther College, but I do think that I will see if there is a more prominent place for SUSE within the organization. What I was able to see looked good, but now I need to actually play with it myself to see how good it actually is.