Novell Linux Desktop Released 183
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."
Re:Hmm..Novell (Score:2, Insightful)
Age Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:3, Insightful)
don't bother (Score:3, Insightful)
Mirror? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cut down (Score:2, Insightful)
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 of changing many settings that quickly become a nightmare for the support guys.
Both KDE and GNOME are highly configurable. But the fact that GNOME makes it easy to change some common settings but makes it a bit more difficult to change more exotic stuff is a valuable feature for business users (even if some power users tend to be a bit frustrated by that).
I don't know if you ever had to support a large group of users and do that under strict constraints (time and budget) but from that point of view I think that GNOME is more business-friendly than KDE.
Re:Novell needs this, and it could really fly. (Score:2, Insightful)
wtf makes this FUD post anything more then a troll attempt to bash MS??
"Novell has had to remake every Windows version "
since when did Novell make Windows at all??
"Windows is so not network enabled it isnt well suited to be in a network period"
guess you never RTFM...it is very network enabled...
lets see, Linux is ready... "its lacking is zenworks like features with centrally managed menus and common login scripts" Zen has been linux for some time now, but it is a sepperate tool. "The profiles bit is really easy on linux and just needs some simple glue to work seamless" ya, profiles in Novell and Windows are sooooooo hard to do, but Linux is ready as soon as they fix it...
Windows has these abilities, has had them for some time (linux has them too, but some zealots are not as knowledgable as they think)
Stop the bashing, try being constructive.
Stop spouting FUD, try the truth or be silent.
Stop jumping on a hate-wagon, since you have no clue why you are on it other then to "belong" to something (like the majority of hate groups, KKK, White Supremist, etc, etc...).
Slashdot mods and editors should strive to discourge this behaviour, instead of encouraging it. It can only serve to alienate others, and discredit the site as "extremely biased".
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.
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.
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.
Re:SuSE personal? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cut down (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not averse to tinkering with VMWare, I just haven 't gotten around to it. But I don't think I should have to just because for some reason the newest releases of every other Linux distro bork up your windows install. Think for a moment of the amount of flack that would dished out if the next Microsoft OS couldn't be run in a dual boot environment, then hold your favorite distro to the same standard.