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Novell Linux Desktop Released
KingDaveRa writes "Novell have just released Novell Linux Desktop. Its based on SuSE Linux, but is cut down quite a bit to just include essential apps - perfect for a corporate environment. Novell claim to not be going directly after Windows, but rather pushing this as legacy Unix users. The Register has a take on this too."
Yes, it costs money. $59 USD. There IS an evaluation version available for free. From their site:
NOTE: The only limitation of this evaluation software is the duration you will have free access update.novell.com. Should you choose to license Novell Linux Desktop, you will be provided with a new registration code, which you can easily update in your desktop in order to re-enable access to update.novell.com for product patches and updates.
The last version of SuSE had a "personal" edition, which was 1 CD including source. Very cut down. Had OO.org, Firefox + Thunderbird, KDE but no GNOME, very limited dev tools, but adequate for web browsing & basic office work, which is what I assume this is aimed at.
Celebrate the finer things in life
I hope Novell is very smart in the way they market it.
Yup, they are -- if not marketing, at least sales.
We're probably going to switch to it at my workplace -- we're certainly going Novell's SLES9 on the servers we ship, as soon as I finish handling the technical headaches involved with getting off of RHEL3. (For the workstations, they're currently a very aging, heavily customized RH9 environment -- no longer supported, so we're moving them over too).
And why? Besides the price point, and the goodies SLES9 comes with that RHEL3 doesn't, there's one huge advantage Novell has:
Their "sales staff" has technical people too, and they're helpful and available. We were feeding money into Red Hat, and getting practically nothing back by way of support. Novell, on the other hand, is giving us all kinds of support (and access to goodies like the NLD beta) -- and we haven't even paid them yet!
I have no doubt that Red Hat would do the same thing for a big enough shop -- but right now we're a small, cash-impacted startup. The level of support they've given us already shows an impressive level of dedication. We're impressed, anyhow.
(The first time they visited us, they brought along one employee who was formerly Ximian, one who was formerly SuSE, and one who was a Noveller all along. I took that as Good Tidings as to their directional change, as well).
I've actually noticed that RPM and ISO releases have been released faster with Novell than when SuSE was operating alone. Development and beta RPMs seem to be posted faster, and ISOs (which were never released under a standalone SuSE) are released for their personal product line.
A lot of people seem to get the Personal edition via ISOs or over-the-counter, then point YaST2 to the FTP site where they can install the remainder of the RPMs.
YaST2 treats FTP sites the same as DVD or CD installations as well, so adding/removing/updating RPMs via FTP uses the exact same interface and means as a local media installation. Very nice.
Plus you can hook YaST2 into unsupported releases and get the latest SuSE-created KDE, Gnome and other packages.