Review Of The New Novell Linux Desktop

dave writes "Tom Adelstein has published a thorough review of the new Novell Linux Desktop, complete with plenty of notes and screenshots. An excellent review to read for those following the newest desktop Linux offering."

Comments

after reading such a thorough review...

[kayen_telva]

I still have a lot of questions, like
why does this distro matter in the least when I cannot even download it (please dont point me to the eval)
are there any improvements over SuSe ? Partioning ? Hardware support ?
good grief. The review ended before it began.

yada yada yeah I know a corporate product and you are paying for support yada yada

Re:after reading such a thorough review...

[maskedbishounen]

Improvements? Try brand name.

You know how PHBs are, don't you?

"SuWhaat?! No, we're not putting that on our servers. We're better than that; no up-start, no-name company products for us. We'll use, uhh, Novell!"

And there you go. That's, more or less, it.

Re:after reading such a thorough review...

[Gleng]

I tried out SuSE 9.2, and its implementation of Gnome 2.6 is almost identical to the Novell Desktop. Complete with red N in the top corner.

I think the Novell Linux Desktop is basically a cut down version of SuSE 9.2 which will appeal greatly to PHBs.

Darn good corporate desktop distro

[invisik]

Hey all,

I've downloaded and installed the NLD product (also have seen the SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 product) and it looks to work quite well for a corporate desktop environment. It has all the essential apps for corporate use. Sure, you enthusiasts won't like some of the app choices they made, but it's not an enthusiast distro-it's a corporate cookie cutter distro. And it's a first step in taking back some Windows desktops, offering a similar operating environment so employees can more easily switch (even if Novell doesn't say they are trying to do that).

It's got all the hardware drivers and guts of SUSE 9, which runs great on standard hardware as well was fancier stuff (like my IBM Thinkpad X31 which is also found in corporate environments). I think they hit the bar on that one and it was something lacking in SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 product.

$50/year for updates in a corporate (Even mom and pop) environment is a reasonable amount to charge especially considering your low up-front purchase cost. When you look at Windows XP Pro and MS Office Standard or Pro and other apps like that, the cost is like apples and oranges. OpenOffice and other applications are great if not 'good enough' to put on the corporate desktop. Novell themselves prove that it can be done.

GNOME vs KDE, I won't argue that here. I think GNOME is offered in this distro is a very clean, easy to navigate interface with everything where a Windows user might expect it. It also keeps enough advanced customization options away from the user behind a root password in YAST. The reviewer (of the slashdot article) must have been trying way to hard to get a desktop running--just needed to click GNOME or KDE and it did the rest in typical SUSE fashion.

All in all, I'm happy with their release, as the first Novell-packaged corporate offering. I can see larger installations switching departments of people over and some smaller companies using it too (high functionality, low cost benefits).

-m

Re:Novell Desktop Linux or Fedora Core ?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

When I look at NDL and FC3 the difference seams small

The target markets are very different. You'd be better off comparing NDS and Redhat Enterprise Desktop.

NDL is a stable product, and is intended for home users and office environments where people need the software to remain mostly the same for a long period of time.

Fedora Core is intended for people who want cutting edge features. They release a new version every quarter or so, breaking compatability with previous releases... support quickly dwindles for any previous release--- too fast for my old bones.

Re:Novell Desktop Linux or Fedora Core ?

[M1FCJ]

Actually you can argue that they did. United Linux was essentially Suse SLES8 + a custom selection list. Vendor-based application selections were limited almost to none. As a result, SuSE managed to make SLES an industry standard (just like RHEL). Oracle supports four modern distributions from two company. Guess which ones. They also support some ancient distributions from two companies. Guess what? They are SuSE SLES 7,8,9 and RedHat RHEL 2 and 3. Gentoo is not in their list, neither is FreeBSD.

Review is kinda confusing

[SmallFurryCreature]

The reviewer seems unable to make up his mind as to wich type of customer he is. Every review of a product needs to be made from the viewpoint of a type of customer. So if I review a car I can review it as family and look at space for kids and ease with wich the driver can turn around and beat the bawling kids. I can look at it as a sales person were I care little about the size of the backseat but a hanger for my suit jacket is very important.

Is this guy reviewing the desktop as a system admin, a user who admins his own, or a desktop user who does NOT have the root password?

He mentions there being 3 package systems available. But is this bad? A system admin might like that he can just use the one he likes best. If the package systems are aware of each other so actions in 1 are reflect in the others then this just is choice for the admin. Admins ain't supposed to get confused by simple choice.

For a user supposed to admin his own machine it might be confusing but the user without root will never even see it.

See how the perspective changes? 3 package systems represent Choice, confusion, don't matter, depending on who you are.

Does anybody in a big business install their own OS? Or setup things like ntp? He complains that novell has not prepopulated the list with working ntp servers. However a big company might not want all their thousands of desktops going outside to get the time. The ntp server might also have a thing or two to say about it. Makes far more sense to setup their own ntp server inside and be able to block of another port on the firewall.

What I totally missed in the review of a desktop aimed at mass business installs is how easily installs are automated. Can I create an install setup wich just creates the same desktop over and over and over? I really don't want to have to configure a thousand ntp clients.

I presume it is there, other linux distros have it, but the reviewer who never made up his mind how he is going to review the product totally ignores this.

This seems like one of the many home desktop reviews out there. This is not a home desktop. I think NLD is meant to be installed unattended with all the defaults set. After wich a user will use the installed applications and every bit of configuration will be done by the support staff.

What matters here the following things.

• Can every needed option be pre-configured so that during a rollout you don't need support to log into a thousands of machines to set the web proxie in firefox?
• Can it integrate with the existing sytems? File shares, databases, file formats.
• Can it be remotely administrated. If I call the helpdesk and they can just login and do their stuff while I am working (should be possible with linux) then that is a lot better then windows. (were you need reboots and can't have admin and user at the same time).
• Can the user be kept from doing harm to the system?
• Is it reliable?
• Is the desktop clear enough for people to do their job. Most people use only a tiny handfull of applications, you would be suprised how many people get by with just their office suit. Can the desktop be setup to just work for them?
• Is in an attempt to make the desktop user friendly not the mistake being made of making the system hard to admin? The 3 package managers might be confusing to a user but an admin should find it refreshing to be able to use his favorite.

Questions on KDE vs Gnome don't matter at all. The powers that be will decice the install and the user will just have to live with it. Just as millions still have to live with NT4.

Next time split the review into a setup/admin part and an end-user part because that is how this desktop is supposed to be used.