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Novell Linux Desktop Released
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 08, 2004 08:50 AM
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
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."
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SuSE personal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this going to be the same? Or have they stopped you from doing this?
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:2, Interesting)
They let you download a free trial for 30 days, after that software update support ends unless you buy a license.
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:SuSE personal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:SuSE personal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Novell Desktop Released (Score:5, Interesting)
You can download an "eval" copy [novell.com], after some registration, it's 3 ISO files, but is the full version according to Luis.
Novell has also released the source [novell.com].
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 [novell.com], 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.
Re:Novell Desktop Released (Score:2, Informative)
iFolder 3, the p2p one built on mono, the one that looks
Cut down (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cut down (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Re:Cut down (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cut down (Score:5, Interesting)
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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Re:Cut down (Score:3, Insightful)
How exactly is that lame? In a corporate environment that has a heavy windows install base, dual-booting is a reality. Between web apps that only run on IE and home-grown apps that only run on windows, I'll never be able to do my job on a linux only machine. For someone like me my choices are pretty much limited to dual boot and VM.
I'm not averse
Re:Cut down (Score:2, Insightful)
Posting from... (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhm, and Firefox came with Slashdot already bookmarked.
Re:Posting from... (Score:5, Funny)
So it is an unproductivity suite?
And they call it perfect for corporate environment?
I think thar Balmer was right about Linux TCO. We will stick with windows.
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Re:Posting from... (Score:5, Funny)
2: and Firefox came with Slashdot already bookmarked.
Anyone else see the irony here?
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For those of you who are too lazy to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:For those of you who are too lazy to RTFA (Score:2)
Yeah, they're not going after Windows *directly* (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, from the screenshots, it looks an awfully lot like a hybrid between Windows, MacOS, and MacOSX.
So, it has KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Important to have both! (Score:2, Interesting)
BUT, Gnome and KDE need each other in order to improve, just like Linux need MacOSX and Windows.
Gnome and KDE steal idea from each other, and often improve them in someway.
Think if we only had Mozilla and IE. Oprea invented tabbed browsing, and the idea to have search bar in the toolbar among MANY other neat features, that FireFox now have.
Re:So, it has KDE? (Score:3, Informative)
This offering from Novell however seems to default to GNOME but includes KDE, unlike SuSE which defaults to KDE.
The flash animation shows off GNOME, and their OpenOffice.org-version is GNOMEified, with GNOME-icons and the new GNOME file-selector.
Their main applications are a gnomified OpenOffice.org, Evolution (gnome), and Mozilla Firefox (uses gtk widgets), GAIM (gtk/gnome), Red Carpet and Ya
Re:So, it has KDE? (Score:3, Informative)
My conclusion: this is a Gnome-centric distribution. Yes, you can run KDE on this distro, but it makes as much sense as running KDE on Red Hat or Gnome on SuSE.
Re:So, it has KDE? (Score:2)
Re:So, it has KDE? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you ever have to support a group of more than 50 users in a corporate environemnt, then you should be able to see how GNOME is more business-friendly than KDE. It is easier to set global policies in GNOME than in KDE, for example. Also, the fact that only the basic configuration options are available by default (the other ones requiring some knowledge of the configuration editor) means that most users stick to the basic options instead
Re:So, it has KDE? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the Enterprise version (Score:5, Interesting)
SUSE Linux 9.2 Pro is the geek version, for home and mobile users mostly.
Trim corporate drone desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Novell's sales folks are clueful. (Score:5, Informative)
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).
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Re:Trim corporate drone desktop (Score:3, Informative)
When and if these home users DO care, they can always switch to a full-featured disty.
And hopefully this will make it a bit more average-hardware friendly. TCO goes out the win
Age Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't see the price on the Novell site (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
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Mirror? (Score:3, Insightful)
GAIM Supported? (Score:2)
Not Going after MS Windows? Yeah, right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not Going after MS Windows? Yeah, right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell is going after the "low hanging fruit" in much the same way that Red Hat's biggest efforts to date have been in convincing Solaris customers to switch to Linux. What's the sense in attacking Microsoft outright when you can make more money somewhere else.
The folks at Novell know that over the long haul an inexpensive, secure, and stable no-frills desktop is going to make a market for itself just about everywhere. However, Novell is absolutely right in pointing out that for right now the obvious application is in locations where a minimal set of applications is needed.
To give you an example, I used to work in a french fry factory. The factory had about 90 PCs, but less than 20 of these PCs were used by office workers. The rest of the PCs were out in the plant and were used mostly to let people out on the floor view data. The machines out on the plant floor could easily have been running Linux, and it would have saved the company a substantial sum of money.
Novell knows that there are lots of businesses like that french fry plant, and they also know that in the long run once these locations get a little bit of experience with Linux clients that essentially run themselves that the IT folks are going to start looking at ways to migrate the remaining office workers to Linux. More importantly, when they buy or build new applications they will be far more likely to create the applications in a way that is portable to Linux.
Which brings us to the second part of Novell's master plan. Novell plans to use Mono to entice existing .NET developers into creating cross-platform applications.
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Ximian Desktop (Score:2)
Re:Hmm..Novell (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm..Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Hmm..Novell (Score:5, Informative)
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Interesting that you say that... (Score:2)
Re:ya, but do you have a Novell license? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is long awaited... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, let's all reward Novell's efforts in releasing a new Linux distribution by simultaneously attempting to download 2 Gb of data.
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don't bother (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Novell needs this, and it could really fly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Novell needs this, and it could really fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
While not preinstalled, Windows has come with a Client for Netware Networks for as long as I can remember. I know that Novell recommends its client, but I have not had any issues with the MS client whenever I have used it.
Anyway, Novell was king of the network hill for a good while. It should have leveraged this position while it had it to put out its own desktop back then. It will be an uphill battle now.
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