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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."
Luis Villa's blog has some more interesting information and links as well. (He's a Novell, former Ximian guy).
You can download an "eval" copy, after some registration, it's 3 ISO files, but is the full version according to Luis.
Novell has also released the source.
Unfortunately, it's still Gnome 2.6 and some updated KDE stuff, but one of the most interesting things built in is Novell's new iFolder, an interesting way to share folders remotely, including over different OS's.
It's based on Suse 9.1, but it will be interesting to see what changes the Ximian guys have added to it. The timing seems a bit weird though as Suse 9.2 just came out. Novell's strategy will be something to watch, to see how they position Suse Server, Suse 9.2 and Novell Linux between homes and offices.
It may not be. One problem plaguing distro's is that they throw so much into the distro that QA is sacrificed. This is true for SuSE as well. I've been using SuSE for about a year now and see many of the same issue I saw with RHat. There are menuitems that don't work, configurations that won't take, and clutter. A slimmer desktop might be in order. I've said for years that a distro company would do well to have a group sit down and actually test each feature and app that they include on a distro but evidently few do. Maybe someone has with Novell Linux and this is the result. We can hope!
... freshly installed evaluation copy of Novell Linux Desktop 9. Well, nice startup screen, nice Ns everywhere.
Uhm, and Firefox came with Slashdot already bookmarked.
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.
Let's all try the "eval".
Yes, let's all reward Novell's efforts in releasing a new Linux distribution by simultaneously attempting to download 2 Gb of data.
I wonder what that means to those folks who claimed that "Novell is placing their bets on Gnome! KDE is going down!". Open mouth, insert foot, eh?
Well, the people who made those claims seemed quite often to be connected to Ximian... Either they were astroturfing/spreading FUD, or they didn't know what their company was doing.
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not the consumer version. This version is for use in big business by general knowledge workers. It's features are maintainability and stability of pachages, not end-user featuritis. In other words, it's for corporate desktop drones. It's designed to work best in a corporate environment, of course complementing Novell's upcoming Open Enterprise Server. It's timed to match the upcoming release of that product.
SUSE Linux 9.2 Pro is the geek version, for home and mobile users mostly.
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.
Perhaps Novell can help in providing more legitimacy toward linux desktops to the Corporate World. It's not that linux desktops geared toward corporations haven't been around, but more the lack of a Name Brand company to trust purchasing it from. I'm being hopeful, but any amount this release can cut into Microsoft's market share is good for us all.
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Unless I'm overlooking something that's a very attractive package. Anxious to see how it sells. If this takes off it's going to hit MSFT's pricing model fairly hard.
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Word of warning though Ubuntu may not be the best option for dual boots on Dell Laptops (more correctly it seems to be the debian installer). It nuked my win2000 install on one and refuses to see any partitions on the other and will only accept the whole device.
:-/
:-P
Hmm, what does Dell have to do with this?
Just curious, since it sounds like a nice distro I'd be interested in. Also looking for 1 CD stuff; they certainly don't need to have many more apps included than Windows XP... I still have a choice if I want to use some less used tools, it's called Internet.
I'd rather see coders spending time making extraordinary good and easy installers and uninstallers for said downloadable apps instead of looking how to include as much as possible on the CD. Isn't Internet pretty common by now, anyway? And no, Gentoo is probably not the distro for me since I'm not sure it's for amateurs. I'm not even looking for a processor-optimized distro, although it would be a nice bonus of course.
I never got the idea with mega-sized Linux distros. "Choice" doesn't necessarily have to mean "cram stuff into a lot of CD's to confuse a user". You have software choice even if you don't do this, right?
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I like RHEL because I don't have to worry about upgrading every 12 months to remain current. It's a stable base for software vendors to aim for that will be good for years. Security patches are backported to prevent version conflicts. Red Hat finally started moving in the right direction with RHEL, although it still needs polishing (needs ReiserFS in the default kernels instead of just ext3 IMHO).
Personally I'll continue to just use Debian, but for enterprise servers, RHEL is a good compromise.
The corporate world started way back when with Windows PCs and Microsoft Office. Any Unix desktops are specialized applications, such as Graphics Design and Virtual Simulations (Unigraphics, HP-UX, SGI, IBM AIX.) They pay for these systems (in the 10 thousands each) because they are good at what they do and there is a company that stands behind them. If it weren't for these systems, everything would be running MS Windows. And it would be safe to say, any company running Macs will not migrate to Linux, because Macs are now more affordable (as compared to their Unix counterparts,) Unix based, and are already in niche markets.
So I would say, if they are going after corporate desktops, they are going after MS Windows, because this is where the PC is. Linux will also allow better integration with existing and vested Unix and Mac systems.
No, they are going after MS Windows. Their "not-going-after-Windows" statement is for investors and people who manage tech, but not into tech and understanding tech from the ground level, so as not to still certains waters that Microsoft is monitoring.
Yep, using pam_auth_ncpfs to get a Windows desktop to login to a Novell server would be crazy amounts of work. Fortunatly, they have this thing called the "Novell Client" which is for windows. It takes all of about 5 minutes to install. Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and all later versions, are specificlly built to accept network client drivers, like say, those from Novell.
Or do you mean it is crazy amounts of work for Novell to write a widows client? I doubt it. For Windows, Novell currently has two clients, one for 95/98 and one for NT/2000/XP. The "log into the server" part is a minor component, trivial in comparision to every thing else it does, ZENWorks integration for one.
And this is not Windows NT or Netware 3.12 days. You login to the network not into a server.
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.
Next time you're quoting me, don't cut out context just because it doesn't support your point. The "more than enough money" section you quote was about what they see from me. I don't see why _I_ need to support them any more than I already do.
And putting up with me downloading free copies of their distribution is one of the payments they make for the fact that THEY DISTRIBUTE CODE I WROTE.
In addition to this, SuSE had somewhere in the region of $500 directly because of me making recommendations to my clients over the last 2 years.
And, despite all of this, you're calling ME a freeloader? Go and get a life.