Focusing on the best desktop candidates for deployment in enterprises, this article takes a look at Novell Linux Desktop 9.
Novell Linux Desktop 9 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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..well, someone had to say something
I installed Novell Linux Desktop 9 once. It generated massive amounts of USB related errors after installation. When installing, it doesn’t load any USB drivers at all. No mouse was accessible during installation. -_-
In bringing Linux to the people and building a business on that. Now they have this SME offer which basically is a head on vs. Windows SBS for small enterprises. They advertise on radio and in papers and mags. I even get digital newsletters from distributors with the Novell msg.
Despite the absence of Novell on the marketingfront for some years, the brand still has a lot of power. Many people trust Novell, because in the past they have proven to be a partner with great business ethics.
Good to that they are coming back and this time they are bringing a vertical solution.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=194&slide=2
> because in the past they have proven to be a partner with great business
> ethics
Not being ethical in business was always going to be Microsoft’s undoing in the end. They shafted too many people and got too cocky. Novell present themselves as a viable AND ethical alternative and people will come to them in droves.
That screenshot of the NDL Launch Menu sure does look nice and very Windows like.
How do you manage to write a review of NLD and not even compare it to RHEL, let alone MDK Corporate Desktop or some of the smaller distros? This is a product competing in a clearly defined and easily covered market, not covering its competition is nuts.
(oh, and you can tell it’s meant for the business crowd…it says “utilized” when it means “used”. Pointless overcomplication of language ahoy!)
I got NLD and installed it, expecting a Linux that would integrate well with our Windows network.
Surely, since NLS is touted as a Windows desktop replacement, it would easily integrate with Active Directory, right?
It did not have any visible tools or wizards to set it up to authenticate against Active Directory, nor did it have any tools to allow users to auto-mount SMB drives.
Sure that stuff is all possible, but you have to do it yourself, editing text config files. That’s just fine (if you know how), but it definitely doesn’t set NLD apart from any other distribution.
I find Fedora Core 3 to be superior. The only thing I miss from NLD is YaST.
On top of that, the Novell support forums are a complete joke. They are low activity, and virtually all of the posts are people asking for help.
If a user is going to be on their own, they might as well be using a distro that has a strong user support network.
I tried SLES9 and SUSE 9.2 Pro, I preferred 9.1 Pro to them both actually! Personally I find Fedora3 to be far superior as both a desktop and a programming base, especially when you consider it’s *actually* free (as in beer) not just as in speech.
I’ve not tried either as a server so far, for that I use Redhat9 and CentOS3.
YAST is pretty good, for program updates etc. I hated it for configuring stuff, but I’ve never been much of a Control Panel person, I prefer to just edit .conf file. YUM is still my favourite updater though, with up2date being the worst and APT being somewhere in the middle.