SUSE 9.2 Released

peterprior writes "Novell have issued a press release announcing SUSE Linux 9.2. The new version comes with kernel 2.6, KDE 3.3, Gnome 2.6 and features (amongst other things) enhanced wireless support as well as Evolution 2.0 with Groupwise / Exchange connectivity. The WYSIWYG web development tool Nvu is also included. The new release is expected to hit the retail shelves in early November."

Comments

Exchange ?

[mirko]

I guess this one very feature might begin to frighten Microsoft : it's remained their most private app for a long time...

Re:Exchange ?

[Timesprout]

It is indeed. I think many here overlook the influence exchange servers have had on the desktop. The Outlook - Exchange combo makes a formidable partnership. I know Outlook gets a lot of grief here but it is an excellent email client and PIM, and capable of almost infinite extension, its easy to start building workflow and management systems on top of them, a feature which proved extremely attractive to the enterprise.

Re:Exchange ?

[T-Ranger]

While true, you miss the point.

Outlook runs on Microsoft Windows. You have to pay Microsoft for Windows. Outlook is sold as both a standalone product, and as a component of Office. You have to pay Microsoft for both of those.

If Linux - anything that is not Microsoft - replaces a Microsoft product, they loose twice. First, they loose money from not having the next upgrade, and far more importantly their strangle hold gaurenteeing lots of money from future upgrades is loosened. The later (long term revenue) is so important that they have often given away the former (quick money from a license today). Think IE. Think all the features of Windows, that they could have charged for, that they give away -- things that prevously could be had by 3rd party vendors.

If any non-Microsoft product replaces a Microsoft product then the whole system starts to fall apart.

Re:Exchange ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another "I don't have a use for it so nobody must have a use for it" post. When you work in a department with 160 people and you have schedule meetings for say 20 of those people it is extremely difficult without Outlook/Exchange. With a click of the button I can find the optimal time to have the meeting so that everybody can attend.

Assistants can also maintain their boss's calendar, managers can assign tasks for their staff, storing everything on the server makes upgrading to new machines easy, and having everything together in one app just makes sense.

Now the benefit for a 40 person small business is pretty much zero but for once you get over 100 people the per person cost really isn't that much considering the savings in time and aggravation. You can piss on a lot of things from Microsoft but Outlook/Exchange (especially Outlook 2003) and Excel are two areas I will defend to the death (ok maybe not literally).

Re:Exchange ?

[cwiegand]

Simple. Shared calendars.

No open-source solution has shared calendars on the desktop. Oh, sure, if you want a separate web app, you can go to lots of apps. And email? IMAP allows sharing folders, no problem. LDAP takes care of contacts (so long as you're willing to hear your users complain that they can't update the LDAP directory themselves, or don't care to use umpteen billion tools which are badly UI designed in order to do so). But iCal/vCal, for whatever reason, just hasn't (yet) taken off as the protocol to store shared calendars on a common server. That's the only argument my CEO was able to give me that actually had water when he wanted to switch from Cyrus IMAP to Exchange 2000. And so he won.

Even these days, Evolution still doesn't seem to support having a calendar folder that's also stored on the server, although it does appear to at least support reading iCals (I think). And we do still run Windows, for the most part, here. I'm seriously looking to GroupWise as we are slowly migrating to Linux, and it'd be nice to have something cross-platform.