Muftasoft TM

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
DesktopLinuxDefinedSUSELinuxEnterpriseDesktop10

From : http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&opt=printable&id=7150

Desktop Linux Defined: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Posted by: Adam Doxtater on 07-05-2006.

"They say that lightning never strikes twice, and for all I know, it never has. But will it? The question on my mind right now is whether or not it counts if lightning strikes once at home and once in the enterprise. That's the dilema of the day. Let’s put it this way… outstanding bugs aside, Novell hit a home run with SUSE Linux 10.1. There is no question that it is one of the most impressive desktop Linux distros ever released. Currently, it’s the second most popular desktop Linux distribution in the world (according to DistroWatch.com page hit rankings) with Ubuntu coming in at #1 and Fedora at #3. Those three distros, in my opinion (and apparently everyone else in the world), are at the top of the desktop Linux heap."

Hot on the heels of their popular free desktop release, Novell is unleashing their professional-grade desktop on the world this summer in the form of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED 10 to the techies. They like their acronyms), and all signs point to it being one hell of a release… according to the feature-set alone. It will be the first commercially offered desktop distro to offer XGL as an option, as well as including applications for remote desktop and published apps, VPN, multimedia apps (with working MP3 playback out of the box), Macromedia Flash, Sun Java, VoIP client, and Beagle desktop search to name just a few. The full listing follows, but if you give me a few minutes of your time I will take you on a journey through this fine desktop and let you decide for yourself if lightning is actually capable of striking twice.

Features (as of this writing)

    * Linux kernel 2.6.16.16
    * X.org 6.9.0 (XGL/Compiz is also included)
    * GNOME 2.12.2 / KDE 3.5.1 desktop environments
    * gcc 4.1 / glibc 2.4
    * Novell Evolution 2.6 email/collaboration
    * Mozilla Firefox 1.5 web browser
    * OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 Novell Edition
    * Citrix ICA Client 9.0, rdesktop, and TightVNC remote connectivity tools
    * Beagle desktop search tool 0.2.3 (with Firefox and Evolution integration)
    * Banshee music player 0.10.9
    * Gaim 1.5 instant messenger
    * RealPlayer 10.0
    * Macromedia Flash Player 7.0
    * Sun Java 1.4.2
    * LinPhone 1.2 VoIP client
    * Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.5
    * GIMP 2.2.10 image editor
    * Seamless Windows networking (including Active Directory support)
    * MP3 support out of the box
    * Bluetooth and wireless networking support

System Requirements:

    * Pentium III 500MHz or higher (Pentium 4 2.4GHz or higher, any AMD, AMD64, or Intel EM64T processor recommended)
    * 256MB RAM (512MB recommended)
    * 800MB of available disk space (2.5GB recommended)
    * 800x600 display resolution (1024x768 or higher recommended)

Installation One of the most mundane chores with any operating system has to be actually installing the thing. Seriously. The only time it came close to being even remotely exciting was when Caldera introduced Tetris to the mix. Even then it was only fun for a select few geeks who had nothing better to do. Most of us start installs and walk away. In the case of Microsoft Windows, this is virtually impossible because it stops every now and then with questions we must answer. Maybe one day we can watch a sitcom or two while installing our distros, and then again, maybe we don’t care enough to worry about such things. Either way, OS installation is one boring topic.

Ever since I started using Linux many moons ago, I was able to identify the leaders in the installation category. The faces have changed slightly over the years, but my list contains SUSE, Red Hat, Mandriva/Mandrake, Linspire, Xandros, and Corel. The latter is long since gone, but the still deserves a place in the list, even though others (ahem) were spawned from it. The most interesting thing is that each one is excellent for a different reason. For instance, if you put SUSE up against Linspire in the installation category, you would learn very quickly that they are totally different beasts… but both are excellent in their own right. Linspire is designed for the new user and approaches the installation with that target in mind. It asks minimal questions of the end user (even when using advanced features) and can install a working, usable system in less than 10 minutes. SUSE, on the other hand, gears its installer toward the intermediate to advanced crowd. I’d even venture to say it’s damn near close to being usable by a complete newbie. Granted, there are a ton of options available to you during installation, but everything (and I mean everything) is explained and documented to the point of being overdone. You are never left alone during the process, and if you have a question about an option, it’s answer is never more than a mouse click away.

The one thing that stops it from being completely newbie friendly is the partitioning tool. Linux file system structure is foreign to users from other operating systems and they will have absolutely no clue what /home or / are supposed to mean. For this reason, SUSE will do its best to automate the process and attempt to make choices it believes are the best for your scenario. For instance, if you have Windows already loaded on the system and have available unpartitioned space, SUSE Linux will set itself up in the unused space, leave the Windows partition untouched, and configure the bootloader to dual boot without any need for configuration from you (unless you choose to do so of course). So all is not lost. The only thing I could see happening here is for the partitioning portion of the install getting a bit more friendly to new users.

All of the hardware on every system tested was detected properly, just as it was under SUSE Linux 10.1. Removable media such as thumb drives and cameras were detected and mounted after the fact on the desktop as well. I had zero problems with hardware, including the monitor on my main review machine. This has been a sore spot for years because I always have to configure it by hand. No distro, up until SUSE 10.1 came out, was able to autodetect my Viewsonic LCD, and even if they properly set it up to where X would run, it would be at 800x600 it seems. SUSE Linux Enterprise not only detected the monitor, but also configured it for the monitor’s optimal resolution of 1280x2014. I was impressed by this fact alone.

L to R: Installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Something else I should note about the install, due to its importance in the enterprise, is AutoYaST. You will note the option to create an AutoYaST profile at the very last stage of installation in the form of a checkbox. If you choose to create an AutoYaST profile, tick this box and it will create one for you, placing the resulting XML file on your newly installed system. What this allows you to do is create identical machines based on the choices you made during this installation. In essence you will be cloning the machine, which is handy on large networks. Alternately you can always create an AutoYaST profile of any existing SLED 10 machine by running yast2 autoyast from the system you wish to clone (or you can run YaST from the desktop and run the Autoinstallation applet from the Miscellaneous category). Once it loads, choose Tools > Create Reference Profile from the menu to create the XML config file you will use to autoconfigure other machines. I suggest placing the resulting file on a web server accessible to your network, so that installing new systems is as easy as typing autoyast=http://PATH_TO_XML_FILE at the boot prompt of the system you’re cloning to configuration to. Note that PATH_TO_XML_FILE is the path to the XML file you created on the source machine. You can clone pretty much everything with AutoYaST Including the software to install, drive partitioning, root password, and so on. This is a must for installing more than a few systems of like configuration. You can read more on AutoYaST at this location.

For those who might be interested, the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 installation routine is organized as follows. Note that there are two different portions of the installation that require user input: the Preparation and Configuration sections. The Installation section does exactly as it says it does. It verifies with you that the choices you made are indeed correct and then actually performs the physical install. If you would like to see the installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop up close and personal, you can do so by clicking the image below…

Preparation

    * Language
    * License Agreement
    * System Analysis
    * Time Zone

Installation

    * Installation Summary
    * Perform Installation

Configuration

    * Hostname
    * Root Password
    * Network
    * Update Configuration
    * Online Update
    * Users
    * Clean Up
    * Release Notes
    * Hardware Configuration

Click Here On The Desktop If there’s anywhere SUSE has excelled since day one, it’s been on the desktop. Nobody that has ever used the SUSE Linux desktop in any form could seriously argue that fact. Their Enterprise offering is no different, and I’d say they’ve even taken it one step further than the free release. For one thing, they’ve completely redesigned the GNOME interface (more on that in a moment), and integrated Beagle desktop search into the distro so completely that you wonder how you lived without it before. The desktop itself, as far as aesthetics go, is one of the best in the business. Granted, SUSE has always been beautiful, but let me assure you this version keeps the tradition alive and well. For those of you who have already seen and/or used SUSE Linux 10.1, you already know well and good what I mean. The included screenshots will help as well, but you really have to experience it to get a good feel.

The first time I logged into SLED and started digging around the desktop, I noticed how absolutely responsive the system had become since the last time I did a review on it. Keep in mind the last distro I reviewed was SUSE Linux 10.1. Also keep in mind that in that same review I mentioned how fast that release felt to me after years of reviewing sluggish SUSE versions. So, not only did they trump everything they’ve ever done on the free desktop, they’ve just outdone themselves again. Granted, it’s still no VectorLinux or Gentoo in terms of raw speed, but damn this thing is smoking hot.

The default desktop, as some of you might already be aware, is GNOME, and in this release it’s at version 2.12.2 (albeit a modified version… more on that in a moment). Lately, the choice of desktop environments for the Novell owned distros have been the center of some debate, but personally I could care less at this point. I find GNOME and KDE to both be equally qualified desktops for the task at hand and can switch between them without issue. SUSE was always a KDE-centric distribution, but it seems their enterprise offerings are GNOME-based, and I assume that is for a very good reason. They’re the people will all the R&D money to do usability testing… not me. So who am I to judge? All I ask is that they deliver a usable desktop, and in this case they have. Enough said. The Novell GNOME desktop in this release is a Spartan one. The only icons on the desktop by default are the Computer icon, trashcan, and any other removable media devices you might have in the computer at the time. For me, that meant a floppy drive and CDROM. Past that, it’s a blank slate. Across the main panel at the bottom of the screen (from left to right) is the Computer button (the SUSE equivalent to the Windows Start menu button), Tomboy notepad icon, and the open window list bar (which is, of course, big and empty when you first log in). The far right side of the panel is home to the system “tray”, which houses some commonly used items such as the date & time, audio volume, software updater (which notifies you when updates are available), monitor resolution changer, and network monitor. The network monitor is a cool little applet in that it will allow you to not only monitor what’s going on with your interface(s), but also to adjust settings or perhaps change wireless networks. If there are more than one wireless networks available, you can list them and view their signal strength in an easy to read list right from the panel. It’s all very convenient.

L to R: Default SLED 10 desktop; New GNOME interface

Usability and the new GNOME Panel And that’s all there is to that. The desktop, as I said, is very minimal in its approach, but it also contains useful items in the panel to help us along with our daily work and play. The next point of interest (and it’s a big point) is the GNOME interface changes. Up front, the panel menu seems to have changed, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s not a menu any longer, but a custom application Novell has developed in-house to make your life easier. I fought it at first, but trust me when I tell you that once you get used to it, you won’t know how you got this far without it. To tell you the truth, I firmly believe that this is one of the most impressive, if subtle, innovations on the Linux desktop in quite some time. It might not seem like much, but I assure you it is. Let’s take a closer look and I’ll let you decide for yourself. I’ve also included a short video of it, so keep reading…

Love it or hate it, the original GNOME panel menu wasn’t necessarily focused on productivity. It pretty much followed the same guidelines as every other desktop OS, including Windows and excluding OS X (damn good for nothin’ hippies all of them). The purpose it served was basically to host a list of applications that you could browse through to find the ones you needed. While this is all fine and good, something needed to be done to shift focus to a more task/productivity-driven architecture, and that’s exactly what Novell has done with this release. Why spend time trying to remember where your things are located when it could be spent working or playing. Finally, somebody had the right idea.

You’ve got to admit, the new “menu” is very attractive and uncluttered (screenshots are included of course, plus we’ll be seeing it in action in just a few moments). It is essentially divided into three major sections, which I will outline below. This method of organization takes a little getting used to at first, but after you get the hang of it, I assure you that you won’t be able to live without it. Other Linux distros, as well as Windows, will become counterintuitive and awkward, as they did for me. You can tell that Novell has poured a ton of time into usability research and development for this distro, and their efforts have paid off. Granted, the new design is a completely new way to find and organize the apps and documents we use every day, but it’s very intuitive, and I’m here to tell you it’s much better than the way we’re all used to using GNOME and KDE. The new interface is very inspiring. In the following sections I will go into more detail, so stick with me, kids.

L to R: New GNOME Interface/app browser; Adding a program to your favorites is simple

The power of three As I said, the new interface is divided into three sections: Search, Show, and System. The Search section is basically what you might think it would be… a place to search for “stuff”, and it’s exactly that. Think Beagle desktop search here. You can search for anything Beagle can index, including text files, applications, IM conversations, email, and anything else on your computer you might want to look for. The possibilities are really endless. I used it quite a bit to find documents and to run applications. It really shines for document search and retrieval in this location since it’s so close to the main interface. Once click and I was on my way.

The next area is the Show section. This is what I'd consider the meat and potatoes of the new interface, and definitely the place you'll be spending some quality time. It has three different views, which you can choose from at will:

      Favorite Applications – By default, this is what you're staring at when you first launch the app, and for good reason. The main purpose of the new interface is to provide a convenient place to launch programs and work with documents, so it only makes sense to default to favorite apps out of the box. In a nutshell, applications can be added and removed from this location on the fly from the More Applications menu by right clicking and app and selecting "Add to Favorites", or "Remove from Favorites" for the applications already located in that space you would rather not see there. It's all very simple, really.
      Recently Used Applications – This is probably another view that will get heavily used. Just as the name implies, when you filter your view with this, it will only show the most recently used applications. Strangely, you'd think this would be your favorite apps, making the first choice very redundant... but oddly enough it doesn't.
      Recent Documents – This is the third, and last, view. I didn't use this much, but that doesn't mean it's not useful. Switching between views is insanely fast, so I would usually just leave my view set to "Favorite Applications", and when I needed to grab a recently used document, I would click, roll, and grab the document I needed from the Recent Documents view. Favorite Applications was then just a click and roll away. Again, all very intuitive.

Lastly, the System section shows up in the form of a column on the far right of the new interface. It has a listing of common system-related tasks such as the Control Center, SUSE Help, software installation, system information and task management, network information and configuration, screen lock, and last but not lease… the age old classic… log out button.

Application manipulation Imagine, if you will, having the ability to upgrade or uninstall applications right from the GNOME panel menus. How useful would that be? I can tell you with one word: immensely. Well, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 has it, and I’m here to tell you it’s one of the features that stood out while writing this review. The ability to upgrade or remove applications from the panel menu and application browser is nothing short of pure genius. Seriously. No other desktop operating systems to date have offered this much flexibility, including Microsoft’s upcoming Vista. All of the hot women at Novell need to come visit me right now! Who needs a hug?

Missing “Places” menu One of the things I noticed missing almost immediately was the Places menu right next to Computer on the main panel. The reason is that it contained common destinations on the computer, such as mounted media and devices. For those not familiar with SUSE at all, this might not be a huge thing, but even in this case there is a definite feeling of confusion when attempting to find commonly used areas such as network browsing, share mounting, and the like.

So help me, if that dog pees on the carpet… At this point, I’m sure you’ve all heard of Novell’s Beagle desktop search and how it can lend itself to a more fluid computing experience. If you’re one of the select few who’s been living under a rock for the past couple years, Beagle is to desktop Linux what Spotlight is to Apple’s OS X. Now, I can understand (and have often fantasized, I must admit) living without a Windows PC, but if that rock living lifestyle of yours is void of Macs then, well, that’s just wrong. So if you’re not familiar with Spotlight I suggest you do some serious soul searching. In any event, let me give you a short rundown of what Beagle does. It’s a memory resident application that allows you to search for (and inside) a wide assortment of files. For instance, Beagle can search the following items:

    * File Systems
    * Documents – OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF, RTF, plain text files, HTML, etc.)
    * Email messages (Evolution, KMail)
    * Web history (Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany)
    * IM & IRC conversations (Gaim, Kopete)
    * Source code (C, C++, C#, Fortran, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Matlab, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scilab and Shell scripts)
    * Images (JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF)
    * Music & video files (MP3, OGG, FLAC, MPEG, ASF, WMV, MNG, MP4, QuickTime, etc.)
    * RSS feeds (Blam, Liferea, Akregator)
    * Applications (launchers and RPMs/ebuilds)
    * Tomboy notes

As you can see from this extensive list (and this isn’t all of it either. Visit the official Beagle site for exact specs), Beagle is built for pretty much anything we can throw at it in our day to day. Beagle has been included in a few distros since its initial development, but in most cases it simply doesn’t work out of the box for one reason or another. That, my friends, is a quick way to get ignored. Novell was the first (at least in my experience) to release a fully functioning copy of Beagle in SUSE Linux 10.1, which required zero effort to get working. All you needed to do was turn on the machine and there it was. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is no exception, and in this case, Beagle goes to 11. Not only has it been included in this release, its been completely integrated into the desktop. It hasn’t just been integrated either… not in the traditional sense. It’s been done well.

Beagle is pretty much the centerpiece to the redesigned GNOME panel menus. Without it, the whole redecoration effort would be completely lost. It starts when you first open the GNOME panel menu and are staring at your favorite application list. At the top of the menu, you’ll notice a search box. You can not only search for applications to run from here, but also pretty much anything Beagle is capable of finding… all right from the panel menu. The speed at which Beagle performs its searches is unbelievably fast, too. From what I witnessed on SLED 10, overhead was minimal and the payoff was lightning fast searches. Past the main menu, Beagle is also present in the “More Applications” menu. When you’re digging for apps in that immense software listing, Beagle is there waiting patiently to serve you. You’ll notice a text box at the top left side of the window labeled “Filter”. Start typing the name of an application (or any part of it for that matter) and Beagle will start filtering out listed software entries that do not match what you’re typing. Again, as fast as you can type, Beagle will filter. It’s amazing how well this all works. Really.

Click Here At home in the office? All of this is just fine and good, but how does SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop perform in an office environment, where it was meant to live? Well, to sum it up in one word: Excellent. First of all, most of the networks across the world consist predominantly of Windows desktops and (yikes) servers. There are exceptions, but I’m going with what we might consider the norm for the sake of this review. After all, the ultimate target audience for this desktop would be, as far as I’m concerned, to replace Windows desktops in the workplace. So is Linux capable of replacing a Windows desktop? That’s a very good question that has been floating around the tech world for a long, long time now. Until now, very few desktops could claim that they could easily replace a Windows workstation and that’s a fact. It might be a bit hard to swallow for some, but I’ve worked with desktop Linux in large-scale corporate environments in the past, and it can be one giant migraine after another. It can work, but not easily, and certainly not by anyone lacking intimate knowledge of Linux.

Times have changed, my friends.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is able to integrate into the Windows world with an ease never seen before on the Linux desktop. During installation, the option to add to a Windows domain or Active Directory is there (as it was for other releases), and it actually works. Not only does it work, it worked flawlessly for me during the review period on all of the machines we tested. SLED successfully joined the domain and presented a listing of available domains in GDM while logging into the system. It would create account directory structures on the fly and did so fairly fast. We’ve finally achieved single-sign on with SUSE Linux. With that being said, there is no need to add the machine during installation if you don’t need or want to. It can also be done from YaST after the fact at any time you desire.

L to R: Network and VPN settings; SUSE notifies you of network status in real time

L to R: SUSE System monitor helps maintain processes and monitor disk space

Once you are logged on to the Windows domain, you can browse and mount remote shares without a hitch, and there are plenty of applications tailored to the corporate environment to keep the desktop useful enough. Citrix ICA Client is available for connecting to “thin” sessions (which I have had to use on numerous occasions in the past for published applications not natively supported on Linux), as well as the standard KRDC RDP/VNC remote desktop connection tool, which I prefer for support tasks. OpenOffice.org (Novell Edition) is there with added support for VBA (Visual Basic for Application) macros, which are important for adoption by Microsoft Office users. Considering Office is dominating the work desktop, this is a necessity.

Granted, SLED will not be for everyone. Every place I’ve ever worked has utilized specialty applications that will only run on Windows, so those users will ultimately be tied to that operating system until whatever apps they require are ported to other platforms. This is an inescapable fact of life, but we can work around it easily enough until the tipping point occurs and more developers code for something other than Windows. For now, we’ll make do. As it stands, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, at the very least, can replace the desktops for office assistants and those who primarily use apps such as Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, photo editors, and the like. Believe it or not, that group of people makes up a larger percentage than what you might think, and at $50.00USD per license, the cost savings will be tremendous. Keep in mind this includes not only the operating system, but all of its applications as well. Good luck finding that kind of savings on any other platform, including Macintosh. For general usage machines, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is the way to go. Hands down.

Configuration Configuring SUSE Linux in any form has always been a very pleasant task compared to other Linux distributions on the market. Their answer to system setup and configuration, YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool), has been around since the beginning and has only gotten better over time. If you were to compare it to the Windows Control Panel, or Mac’s System Preferences, it’s closer to OS X in terms of look and feel, but trumps both in functionality. YaST can do pretty much anything and everything you need, including everything from software and hardware management, to networking services, security, and core system settings. One thing that I quickly noted while using SLED 10 was that YaST was noticeably missing from the main user interface. Going a menu deep, or clicking “More Applications” from the main menu would reveal it’s still there, but Novell has hid it from the main view, and I think this is actually a good thing. Let me explain further…

Aside from YaST, there is another configuration facility put in place by the good people at Novell called the Control Center. What? Two configuration tools? Yes, you heard me correctly. There are two, and it’s actually not a bad thing in this case. When I recently reviewed SUSE Linux desktop 10.1, one of my complaints was that in the main menus there were two configuration tools listed: Control Center and YaST. While they technically are used for two different things (Control Center is primarily for user-controllable settings, and YaST is more suited to settings an administrator might be responsible for), I felt they should not be listed side by side. Reason #1 is that to a new user the name YaST is meaningless. The term Control Center makes much more sense and would be the first place someone might look for working under the hood. I suggested at that time to include only one option for Control Center and, when it was launched, to allow the end user to choose whether they wanted to make changes to their own environment or to the system. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 cures this issue entirely. With this version, there is an option for the Control Center only, and that makes for a less confusing experience in my opinion. Once you are in the Control Center, YaST is listed near the bottom as a component of the Control Center itself. When launched, it prompts for a root password (as do a few other tools which might require elevated privileges).

L to R: YaST; The new updater

L to R: SLED 10 Control Center; User profile editor

User Profile Editor Perhaps one of the more interesting included tools for networked systems available in SLED is the new User Profile Editor (or sabayon, not to be confused with the cooking sauce). Developed by the folks at Red Hat, this tool has two purposes in my opinion, and those are creating mandatory profiles for groups of like users and creating locked down profiles for “kiosks” and any form of public usage terminal. In either case, creating profiles for users on demand is tedious and a huge waste of time (and in business terms: money). In today’s computing environment, creating individual user profiles just doesn’t make sense. Enter SUSE’s User Profile Editor, which is a graphical tool designed to manage user profiles in a way we never dreamed possible before on the Linux platform. With this tool you can…

    * Create, name, and manage user profiles
    * Assign the profiles you create to individual users
    * Edit existing profiles on the system
    * Duplicate existing user profiles
    * Edit GConf settings
    * Monitor the history of user profile edits

While it may seem that no two users are alike, upon close inspection you will find that they can be very similar. In a large organization, users can easily be broken down into groups. Traditionally, groups are generally thought of as something tangible, or geographic in nature. For instance, you might break down your organization into groups such as Marketing, Finance, Legal, Executive, and so on. This is the logic way to do things, and generally it works well when setting out to permission users or assign them access to network resources such as departmental drives because that’s what you know they need without a second thought. Creating mandatory user profiles by grouping function is a slightly different matter. While you might have 20 people working in the Marketing department at your company, not all of them perform the exact same job functions. The use different applications for different reasons, and simply have different requirements. The User Profile Editor in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 will allow you to not only group your users departmentally, but in job functionality as well, giving them access to the things they need and preventing them from seeing/using what they shouldn’t. The same holds true for public access terminals such as Internet kiosks. With the User Profile Editor you can lock down your systems to your heart’s content. In a large-scale enterprise environment, proper user profile management tools are crucial, and SUSE Linux delivers the goods.

Click Here In Conclusion Make no mistake; Novell has hit a home run with SLED… and in reference to what I was saying during the introduction to this review, I do believe lightning has struck twice. There’s no doubt about it. Of course, time will inevitably tell (since SLED 10 hasn’t officially been released yet), but I firmly believe what they’ve created is very capable of competing with anything Microsoft has ever release, or is capable of releasing in the near future. Let’s face it, Novell is releasing two stellar distros back to back. First it was SUSE Linux 10.1 and now SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Microsoft is getting to release Windows ME 2.0 (which includes all of the features of OS X and Linux, so no need to run to the stores when it’s released. You’ve already got it), so no worries there. Novell is in a good position to steal away some of the enterprise desktop users if they play their cards right, and I hope they do. Perhaps advertising this desktop might be a good idea… print, radio, and television maybe? Thus far, nobody has done this, and at this point I think Novell has created a product worthy of advertising to the mass public.

And as always, their attention to detail is second to none. Everything from installation to the desktop not only worked as advertised, but exceeded my expectations. This is amplified by the fact that the package price totals $50.00USD… the OS, apps, and endless hours of usability research and development all for the less than you might pay for a single application anywhere else. The attention to detail is evident at every turn, right down to using the right icons for mounted devices. For instance, if you were to plug a white iPod into the system, and then plug in a black one, you will see two icons: One depicting a white iPod. One depicting a black iPod. See what I mean?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is a very capable, industrial strength desktop which is ready to take on basic desktop chores in the corporate environment, and for the price you simply cannot go wrong. Superb hardware support, ease of installation and configuration, mass deployment and profile management tools, business class applications, cutting edge visual technology, and rock solid performance make this distribution a no-brainer for business desktops around the globe.

Two thumbs up to Novell for redefining the way I look at the desktop operating system.

      OVERALL RATING
      Target Audience: Enterprise customers
      Features: Excellent
      Performance: Excellent
      Hardware Support: Excellent
      Usability: Excellent
      Management: Excellent
      Documentation: Excellent

      Total Score:


      Product name: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
      Manufacturer: Novell
      Suggested retail price: $50.00USD per machine
      Availability: Summer 2006

      Reviewed by: Adam Doxtater – Founder/Chief Technology Editor/Head Cheez, Mad Penguin Las Vegas

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.