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SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0 Reviewed
LinuxLasVegas writes "SuSE announced a new release today titled "SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0". The distro is built on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.x technology and comes with Crossover Office 2.0. Mad Penguin has the first review of this release. From what I read, it seems like a good release, but for the $600 price tag, I'm not sure if it would be worth the jump..."
I don't care about the price tag as much as I care about the philosophy. OSS is primarily about free as in speech, not free as in beer. Same as Red Hat Enterprise, the price tag allows them to offer you support and stability, things they don't have the financial resources to provide without charging for the service.
This is aimed at the enterprise customer who is looking for culpability in their vendors and a certain level of support. Hats off to them... I hope Linux becomes a profitable offering for the vendors pursuing it.
--madgeorge
I don't know how you can say this is fine. So, this includes 5 licenses of Crossover plugin. That is about $250 extra bucks for the SuSE product.
Guess what pal. Windows XP does not need the Crossover plugin. It runs Windows apps... natively. And businesses don't pay for more than $150-200 bucks for XP PRO when they buy volume for enterprises.
In other words, this SuSE product is just stupidly expensive at $600. They shouldn't have created that particular product in the first place, because it can't compete price-wise with the Windows or even Mac equivelant. I don't know what SuSE is smoking, but unless the IT managers of these enterprises are Linux fanboys, SuSE won't sell.
Pay once and use it throughout your enterprize...? That WILL happen. Beats the shit out of a Windoze site license!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
And it is available essentially for free, preloaded on hardware from all major manufacturers.
THose manufacturers charge you in the cost of the machine for the Windows liscense.
There is really no reason to use anything else
How about preference, tco, reliability, etc.
said nicely: stfu
Do the math $600 for 5 PCs (if you bother to read this is a 5 copy bundle for businesses) is only $120 per box.
So if your in a small business $120 is not that bad compaired to the Microsoft price of $521 per box.
Although I am a linux sysadmin and I'd still prefer to do it all myself but not everyone has skillz.
Well, to a certain extent, you're right.
Corporate users and decision-makers are particularly averse to "free" things, because of the perception that things that are free come with some sort of gimmick, trick, or legal gotcha.
Offering the same product to them at a sizeable price tag (it looks like the OS itself is $99, whereas the maintenance add-on is $500 more) gives the illusion of value, or addition, or more importantly, accountability.
In the corporate world, it's all about who you can blame when the shit hits the fan. If your whole windows network goes down, and your group loses 5 days of work time, you can say "microsoft is to blame! sue them!" and your boss doesn't fire you. If your whole *nix network goes down, and you downloaded the OS for free, you have no one to blame, and you get a pink slip.
The most important piece of the SuSE corporate invasion is the fact that decision-makers now have someone to call or point the finger at when something goes wrong.
--My other sig is a ferrari.
Ohoh. But businesses buy $299 XP Pro. 299+342 is *gasp* 641. For ONE computer!
Vote for global prefs bug
As a german I can only agree, it's kind of a leftover IBM mentality of sorts. Profesisonal solutions are only acceptable if they're expensive and they have to come from megalomaniac companies. If it doesn't cost enough, it can't be worth very much...
But SuSE is not one of those companies! Actually, the cited 600,00 price is for a package including support costs for five clients for a year, so you'll find that for an office solution it isn't that expensive. (But I would still prefer the "normal" 8.2 version.)
The way I see it, the maintainance service is an integral part of the product. If you don't need this service, I would suggest downloading SuSE 8.2 for free from their FTP server and install that. This Desktop 1.0 product seems really geared for the small/medium the enterprise market where capable Linux admins are not very common, so a company wants to buy the all-in-one-everything-will-be-taken-care-of package. With this product, SuSE is offering those needed services in standardized packages. That's all.
actually, you should multiply your MS figure by 5.
SUSE come with 5 lisences.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, I have my doubts about the crossover plugin as well (but it's still nice to be able to run Photoshop), but for 600 $ this comes with a lot of software that you would have to buy seperately if you're using Windows. Besides, the price includes 1 year 5-client technical support, enterprise-grade, which is the main selling point.
I remember when people griped about the price of Mac OS X 10.2/Jaguar. I thought it was a bargain. That being said, this isn't that bad when you consider that I think they are gearing it to business. What would five copies of XP Pro cost? Exactly. Hell, I'm a sysadmin, and I hate to say it but 90% of the workstations my end users use are running 98 SE. With the exception of a couple 2000 boxes, fourteen new ThinkPads running XP, one XP desktop, and my desktop that is running RedHat 9. I need, desperately, to upgrade these machines.. but.. I found that buying new Dells with XP already on them is going to be more cost-effective than just buying XP. That being said, I would be just downright tickled if I could get rid of the several programs we have that require Windows and rid the company of the Micorosft virus. Anyway, when you think of it that way, it makes sense. Cost per user of about $120 for the 5-user pack is pretty dammn cheap.
Everybody is screaming about the price, but its actually not that bad. Obviously SuSE isn't expecting people to go out and buy this instead of their regular linux for the home.
If you wanted to install Windows XP Pro and Office XP on five computers, you can bet its going to cost you a whole lot more than 600 dollars.
All thats left is to see if it works well enough to be worth the money.. I'd say for a business looking for stability and an identical setup on multiple computers, this is perfect.
For at least some of a companies machines, this is very welcome.
CrossOver Office needs to fix some things as the author states, the screen shot of the menu looks plain stupid.
Yea, I need Exchange and it's not there, hope that gets fixed. I've had problems with kmail and authentication schemes as well.
I'd prefer if only ONE browser was presented, preferably mozilla and that anything calling ANY DAMN THING on the web used that one browser. Different browsers confuse some (most) windows users and can be just enough to cause them not to choose the entire OS. Hell even keyboard shortcuts can do that.
Is it MadPengs page that forces a jump back to top of page when you press the back button?
If I could find the time, I'd do a CrossOver Distro (hey crossover SELL THIS! And fix the menus!).
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
$99 for the media. 499 for a 1 year maintenance license for FIVE clients. You only have to buy the $99 media kit once, so essentially its $100 per client for all the crossover stuff.
You left out the key part that it's $100 per client per year. WinXP + OOo is quite a bit cheaper over the life of the OS. Debian/Slack/Gentoo/etc + OOo completely blow it away. Do you honestly expect $99 support to amount to much more than eratta packages, forums, mailing lists and email access to the package maintainers? You can get all that for free without any fear that they'll change the terms on you down the road.
And since SuSE will be charging you annually for update support, at 366 days the SuSE pricetag jumps up to $38079...$6579 more than WinXP. At 731 days SuSE has hit you for $47069...$15569 more than Microsoft. And, of course, you know that somewhere along the line SuSE will change their support terms and price. It may be more, it may be less, the only thing you know for certain is that they're going to expect you to pay for it.
The statement that corporations have always paid "more than software is worth" indicates an interesting, but flawed, point of view. How would you measure what software is worth, if not by how much someone is willing to pay for it? The notion that companies are ignorant and dumb because they are willing to pay good money for software that meets their needs and provides value beyond the initial investment is itself ignorant, and dumb. Don't underestimate the value of good software.
Dude, You should multiply your figures by 5. Five licenses for Windows XP plus office XP will be $2605. This is without any support. SuSE is giving a OS plus a bunch of software (office, image manipulation, etc ) for $600. And this is for 5 licenses, including 1 year support.
So on one hand you have $2605 for office and OS, without support, on the other hand you have $600 for office and OS and a bunch of applications, plus support. I call the SuSE offering, very cheap, and very strategically priced.
--
However -- would you really want phone support if it meant you had to talk to someone in German? with email, they can run it though the computer equivalent of babelfish (Sytran). Their comprehension and some of their answers indicate that the xlation SW isn't that perfected yet...
But I agree...this is especially a pain when Germany is in another friggin' day for the most part. I'm in California -- and even the UK is 7-8 hours ahead of me -- meaning that unless I can manage to get out of bed *and* _be_ _awake_ _enough_ (that's the challenge) at 7am-8am my time, I'm likely going to get a 'closed' please all back during normal business hours -- or maybe an answering services.
But even with email, we're talking, usually 24 hour turn-around -- not ideal for debugging or anything requiring interactivity. Reminds me of Dell's
phone message telling me that I can get faster service by submitting my question via email -- and that the longest hold time is
But the price is the price -- we're patsies^WAmericans -- don't we just pay what we are told to pay and not question service? Qeustioning price and/or service? We, obviously need some more voodoo economics training on spending cash we don't have...and how that'll solve our cash flow probems.
-l
p.s. -- $600? Ouch! Sort steep for a new/untested/unproven product.