NEW MANAGER

Before Novell acquired Suse, they reached the headlines in the summer of 2003 by taking over the reins of the well-known Ximian software company. Novell integrated Ximian’s system management software, Red Carpet, into their ZENworks family to create ZENworks Linux Management (ZLM). The new owners continued to build on that Ximian foundation, releasing versions 6.5 and 6.6, but the tool’s Red Carpet history was still clearly visible. ZLM showed few signs of progress until the recent appearance of Version 7. ZLM 7 (Figure 1) reveals increasing evidence of Novell’s influence, including a new administration interface, architectural changes, and many additions to the feature set.