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."

Timing..

[peterprior]

Hmm... Nicely timed with Chris Stone leaving...

*tinfoil beanie on*

SuSE personal?

[julesh]

I've got a system at home that I installed with the SuSE personal ISO image, and then upgraded by downloading SuSE professional RPMs to have all the useful stuff.

Is this going to be the same? Or have they stopped you from doing this?

Novell Desktop Released

[Silwenae]

Luis Villa's blog [tieguy.org] has some more interesting information and links as well. (He's a Novell, former Ximian guy).

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.

Cut down

[Clappingman]

There should be more versions of the kernels and so on, with almost no packages to download of all the *nixes, those large ISOs are a big turn off.

Re:Hmm..Novell

[jav1231]

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!

Re:ya, but do you have a Novell license?

[julesh]

Why do you say that? I see nothing in Novell's documentation that suggests you need a "Novell network" (by which I presume you mean a NetWare server) to take advantage of this.

Posting from...

[Hanul]

... freshly installed evaluation copy of Novell Linux Desktop 9. Well, nice startup screen, nice Ns everywhere.

Uhm, and Firefox came with Slashdot already bookmarked.

Re:SuSE personal?

[Anonymous Coward]

This Novell Linux Desktop is to Red Hat Enterprise WS as the Personal Edition of SuSE is to Fedora (or the old line of Red Hat linux releases).

They let you download a free trial for 30 days, after that software update support ends unless you buy a license.

Yeah, they're not going after Windows *directly*

[Laebshade]

Novell claim to not be going directly after Windows

Yeah, from the screenshots, it looks an awfully lot like a hybrid between Windows, MacOS, and MacOSX.

So, it has KDE?

[10Ghz]

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.

It's the Enterprise version

[MrCranky]

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.

Didn't see the price on the Novell site

[HangingChad]

The Register said it would retail for $50.00. That's a good entry price point, very competitive. Especially considering it comes bundled with OpenOffice and Evolution with the Exchange connector.

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.

Can I ...

[Anonymous Coward]

does novell linux have YaST and if so can I install packages from SuSE ftp sites?

KDE or Gnome?

[datadriven]

I thought Suse was supposed to be a KDE distro. The swf animations shows a Gnome desktop.

Re:Cut down

[Jugalator]

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.

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. :-P

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?

Re:SuSE personal?

[AKnightCowboy]

So that explains why Red Hat libraries are old crap, and we can't compile anything unless we almost rebuild the entire OS from scratch. Cos they want to lock us in a pay-per-update license.

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.

Trim corporate drone desktop

[truthsearch]

A trim desktop for the corporate drone is exactly what the market needs. Sun is sort of trying to do it with JDS, but they're selling it as one desktop for every kind of corporate user. The lean desktop with only necessary packages that's easily maintainable is what a lot of companies need if they're going to slowly switch away from Microsoft. It eases headaches and drastically cuts administrative costs. I hope Novell is very smart in the way they market it.

Novell needs this, and it could really fly.

[miffo.swe]

Anyone who has used Novell much has noticed how Novell has had to remake every Windows version to even work as a network enabled desktop should. Because Windows is so not network enabled it isnt well suited to be in a network period. The amount of work they have had to put into Windows just to get it to log into a Novell server is staggering for anyone who has used pam_auth_ncpfs on linux. A linux desktop is ready today for Novell, all its lacking is zenworks like features with centrally managed menus and common login scripts. The profiles bit is really easy on linux and just needs some simple glue to work seamless.

Linux gives Novell what it wanted back in 95 when it instead got the steaming pile of sh*t called Windows 95. I really hope they get it toghether and working perfectly real soon because of the breathing room given by MS eternal vapourware called Longhorn.

I run all my linux servers against Novell for user managment and it works perfect today, this gives the same advantage to the non techies.

Not Going after MS Windows? Yeah, right....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Important to have both!

[julie-h]

I am a true Gnome lover, and of course hope that Novell will go for Gnome in the long run.

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?

[inc_x]

Never tried it with GNOME but KDE's Kiosk Admin Tool [kde.org] makes supporting large groups of users and setting different policies a snap.