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Analysis of SuSE Linux Desktop
pdajames writes "ZDNet UK has a look at the new SuSE Linux Desktop, running Microsoft Office. They seem to think Linux is just about there when it comes to desktop users, although their words about StarOffice are not so kind. It seems like some of the reality of desktop Linux is starting to match the hype." Not being an Office power user myself, I felt that way a long time ago, but it's cool to see projects like Evolution get some more street cred.
...has certainly improved immensely over the last few years. My install of Mandrake 9.1 was lightyears ahead of the install I did of MSDOS 6.22 / Windows for Workgroups last week for playing those tons of old LucasArts CDS that barely run on XP.
The desktop might be polished, but they complain about a notable lack of polished apps. Essentially the author says that Evolution is about it. And, if you are going to run MS Office, what's the argument, again, for not running it under Windows?
Still, this is a nice step forward. But don't read too much into the article - there is still a long way to go.
Problem with that updates is that you can't make some updates if you don't wan't some of them you might not be able install other ones.
btw. XP updates are automatical and made as stupid as possible. You get a zillion of Updates listed in Add/Remove software but no info what it was updated and most when it was updated. In more then one try when you uninstall one of them system crashes with no recovery possible. At least the recovery that lies on the system CD should not be called recovery, it's just a base install over (being surprised that I lost most of working applications everytime I run that sucker).
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
It is all about consistency. Consistent menu layouts, consistent hot keys/key combinations, consistent dialog boxes, etc. Unfortunately two of the core apps that make up the backbone of most office distros (mozilla & openoffice) are very losely integrated with the desktop (gnome/kde). I am not sure how feesible it would be, but it would be very cool to see the core technologies of these projects abstracted from the interface. Have a team of interface experts integrate the applications into the window managers (consistent dialog boxes, hot keys, icons, look and feel, etc..) Seems like there is a huge lack of desire to do this from the core developers of these various projects.
As others pointed out, you can do an FTP install for free. Leaving that aside, I prefer SuSE's business model for my purposes. Red Hat makes money by charging for easy updates, and SuSE makes money by charging for easy access to ISOs. In my case, I have several computers I install it on, so I'm glad to pay the $70 once and get easy free patches without having to register with the vendor. (Not to mention I don't feel like babysitting my CD writer while I burn 5 ISOs.)
Plus, SuSE Professional 8.2 comes with just about the coolest CD packaging I've ever seen. It has 5 CDs and 2 DVDs in this cardboard foldout pack that flips open in various directions. The feel of flipping through that thing is almost worth the price by itself :).
Ive used a SuSE linux desktop for work for years and evolution takes it several steps closer to being perfect for the average office user to use.
... added a backup fileserver share for everyone without anyone asking where it came from ... the desktops are really the only objective left to conquer.
I've already replaced one XP/winroute gateway machine (dont ask me) with a linux box without anyone seeming to notice
Squad move out!
Yes sir!
*DrugCheese rants*
> I know that many businesses do implement significant modifications and applications using VBScript for the Windows Office Suite.
:-).
You are not wrong there. I have worked for a number of very big Wall Street banks and some portfolio managers run practically their whole businesses on Excel macros (no wonder their advice is so bad
At one place they pulled share information from four exchanges down from a mainframe, ran beta calculations using a macro, sent portfolios out to a Barra engine to calculate risk and then displayed the whole thing as a nice report for a fund manager. All this off a single button in Excel. Excel was being used as some almighty scratchpad to do all the calculations.
Doing anything with these kind of applications is a nightmare, they are built up by mathmaticians who don't have the first clue about programming over a number of years. They are rarely documented and are incredibly brittle.
To be honest, Windows applications are like a cancer. Get one in your company and they will eventually eat the whole body from the inside out.
No one can write anything but a dirty hack in VBA, it _just isn't possible_!
This is SOOO wrong. Bad developers write bad code in VBA (and any other language), good developers write good code in VBA (and any other language). All VBA does is make bad developers out of people having no business coding in the first place because is't so accesible, but their code would be just as awful in any other language.
All you should need is a clean, open API into your business logic which should be destinct from the application suite and centralised for version control and efficiency, which can then hook into a _real_ database for data security and integrity. None of this half assed scripting rubbish that so many people get away with, even for enterprise applications :o(
Scripting is good for (at least) one thing - to act as "glue" between the business logic API you describe (and I agree there should be one), and the user interface. Look at ASP or PHP - they both provide wonderful vehicles for doing "gluing" of business logic to web pages. Scripting is not necessarily bad, you know.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
It got so bad recetly that i had to reinstall my mandrake 9.0 syatem with 9.1 just to use gaim
Then you don't know what you're doing. That sounds harsh, and is. It's easy to get confused by Linux software installation. There are people working on making this a lot easier, but it's not there yet. Until it does, please don't extrapolate your mistakes into "problems with Linux" which don't actually exist.
Also just try using mandrake 8.x .. hardly any precompiled packages off the web will work fo you.
That's due to the fact that developers use the latest versions. You can always compile it yourself. In fact over time with increased awareness of how to compile in a portable fashion, this problem should decline and eventually mostly disappear.
Its really sad becasue all of the resinatlling and crashing drove me to the point that i swotched to OSX so i sould use a satble desktop.
You've gotta be kidding me. OS X doesn't know the meaning of binary stability. Mac users regularly find that they have to upgrade their entire OS because application packages start requiring minor point releases of the it. The lack of any real core API sideloading makes the problem about a gazillion times worse than it is on Linux or Windows.
Let's see what you think the "major problems" are.
1. Gcc changes - s/changes/change/, which only affects C++ apps. This is a one off, and the problem disappears if you compile from source.
2. Glibc changes - glibc always preserves binary compatability. The only time things break is when the apps were broken and relying on wierd facets or bugs in glibc (postgresql springs to mind). Wine is something of a special case, in that before NPTL Linux threading was too primitive to support it, so it had to take a back route.
3. libpng changes (2 and 3 are not compatible on the same machine) - they are actually, what you mean is that major versions 2 and 3 conflict when loaded into the same process image. Recompile the application and the problem will disappear. This one is due to the quirky scoping rules of ELF, and problems like it are extremely rare.
4. people using beta perl or X11 versions to compile - then don't use their packages! Nobody forces you to use packages built by people who clearly aren't interested in compatability.
Only one desktop on GNU/Linux and other free NIXes... I can't think of anything worse.
It'll also never happen.
Please remember that all this software is mostly coded by volunteers who do things because they find them interesting, and add pieces here and there.
Sure, there's been a lot of commerical interest in them lately, but at the core, they're still for the most part "just" things being done for fun by volunteers who do it because they like to code things.
With the OpenDesktop standards, programs should be moving more to a place where they have standards that both desktops can use. THIS is what we need - more standards so that things can interoperate. Not just mandating one desktop.
And what we also need is less people "pushing" for GNU/Linux to take over the desktop. It'll happen. Quit being in such a hurry. Sit back, code, and enjoy the ride. And check out XFCE4. It's a slick little desktop, complies with the OpenDesktop standards, and looks slick to boot.
i ave never used StarOffice. however, my P3-933/512MB running RH9 loads OO.org in about 9 seconds. and it runs fast. and the menus are all anti-aliased. and i have never had a crash. and since i'm a teacher, i use OO.org for tons of things.
this desktop thing is really getting stupid. linux is so ready for the corporate desktop. and even the educational desktop. and lots of home users.
if you hired someone who "knows" Word, and they can't figure out Writer in a few minutes, they are idiots, and you hired a moron. this whole retraining things is pure bullshit.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
"hat alone says a lot about consumer trust of Linux over MS."
It says a lot about Linux zealousy. Any feature can have a good side and a down side. For example, a single mouse button is good because it's simpler and more intuitive to use. Good job Apple for figuring that out! 3 mouse buttons are better than one measly mouse button because you can be more productive with it. Good job Microsoft! Apple, you suck!
The same thing's happening here between Windows and Linux. Lotsa growing up needs to be done.
Incidentally, the Automatic Update that Microsoft does is the answer to the call to make IE less exploit prone. There are lots of 'dumb people' as it's been put before who don't install service packs. Well this feature takes care of the updates as they come along. That's bad?
While we're on this topic, it also explains some of the EULA terms you all were getting your panties in a twist about. The same term that made a lot of people here say "That means they can snoop on my hard drive!" really means "MS can detect the apps that they have updates for and correct them."
Sorry for the rant, It just bugs me how MS hate fogs the mind.
"Derp de derp."
There have been plenty of security vulnerabilities in Open Source Software that were discovered, not by peer review, but by black hats.
Some security holes aren't discovered by the good guys until an attacker's tools are found on a compromised site, network traffic captured during an intrusion turns up signs of the exploit, or knowledge of the bug finally bubbles up from the underground.
Why is this? When the security company Trusted Information Systems (TIS) began making the source code of their Gauntlet firewall available to their customers many years ago, they believed that their clients would check for themselves how secure the product was. What they found instead was that very few people outside of TIS ever sent in feedback, bug reports or vulnerabilities. Nobody, it seems, is reading the source.
The fact is, most open source users run the software, but don't personally read the code. They just assume that someone else will do the auditing for them, and too often, it's the bad guys.
Old versions of the Sendmail mail transport agent implemented a DEBUG SMTP command that allowed the connecting user to specify a set of commands instead of an email address to receive the message. This was one of the vulnerabilities exploited by the notorious Morris Internet worm.
Sendmail is one of the oldest examples of open source software, yet this vulnerability, and many others, lay unfixed a long time. For years Sendmail was plagued by security problems, because this monolithic programs was very large, complicated, and little understood but for a few.
Vulnerabilities can be a lot more subtle than the Sendmail DEBUG command. How many people really understand the ins and outs of a kernel based NFS server? Are we sure its not leaking file handles in some instances? Ssh 1.2.27 is over seventy-one thousand lines of code (client and server). Are we sure a subtle flaw does not weakening its key strength to only 40-bits?
SuSE needn't be "free" in the way you mean. I tried a basic SuSE install via FTP (free, of course) and enjoyed it so much I bought a boxed copy of 8.2 Pro. It was worth the investment: lots of extra software on convenient CDs and helpful documentation. I've rocked between distros for a while, but will probably settle into SuSE for a long time.
So SuSE *is* free. If you want the extra programs and polish, you can pay for it. It's a deal at $75.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.