Jack Messman is out

Well, I don't know all that goes on at Novell, but I have high hopes for the company now.

I just have to say, Novell Zenworks is a awesome product. I have spent the whole week working with Zen for Servers. I must say, there are some very advanced features in the product. While it's not polished in areas that it should be, yet no other product on the market has the power that ZFS has.

Software Developers live in a bubble

All to often Software Developers do not use their own code

I have seen many times new software, being written by some small shop, go down hill as the company becomes large.
When the software was first written, there was a clear need and the developer was able to test functionality easly.

Novell SuSE AutoYaST
Thus functionality has been around for some time, but needs to be improved. The functionality is a lot like MS Sysprep in that the OS, when restored, using some sort of cloning software, is tweak to be specific for that machine. Problem with AutoYaSt is that you cannot launch the AutoYaSt process after the OS has been installed. AutoYaST is made to be used while installing the OS from a software installation location. This totally breaks any kind of imaging solution. I propose that the process be allowed to be launch as normal, setting insserv first boot, touch /etc/system_config, and then on reboot, at least stage two and stage three be read and obayed.

Mass deployments of SuSE Enterprise Desktop to Students
I just finished a engagement with a customer to develop a method to deploy Novells SuSE Enterprise Desktop to their 450 laptops for students and faculty. The project was a huge success. The desktops authenticate against Active Directory at login, drive mappings are created for users, and many other custom network needs are met. The school was a all Micrsoft shop, but felt that the cost of providing laptops to students was such a great cost, that another solution was needed. SuSE Desktop met this need. Citrix is still used for some Windows only applications, but for the most part, the students don't want to even use the MS equivilent application.

First post of the blog

Yup, all first posts are lame. It's just another blog in a large world of bytes and bits.