Submitted by “I’ve tested and/or reviewed every version of this operating system since the first version, and each time I start out impressed but end up walking away disappointed. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is not an exception to this tradition. While it may be a decent desktop operating system, I can’t possibly recommend that sysadmins rely on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in a production environment.”
… you would have to be crazy to deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on corporate desktop and laptop systems … it is an attempt to provide a for-profit version of SUSE Linux for home desktop users … showstopping bugs … totally clueless … difficult to use.
Well, this guy doesn’t pull his punches. Ouch. I wonder what other folks think. Are they enjoying using it? Can’t be that bad, surely.
After testing SLED for the past two weeks, I have come to the same conclusion.
I wish it were different as I have Suse 9.3 widely deployed and will eventually need an upgrade path from it. I am also used to Yast and particularly like the fact that it can be used over an ssh connection.
Unfortunately, they really have some major flaws in SLED -10, such as the very slow software installer, which often just crashes or complains that “zmd cannot synchronize with Yast”. Beagle also works very poorly particularly if you have NFS shares.
And don’t me started on how this whole release makes a mockery of KDE, which is the desktop that my clients have standardized on. For all of the above reasons, I will have to give Novell’s SLED a miss.
Well, this guy doesn’t pull his punches. Ouch.
Touche!
unfortunately SLED is definitely not ready for anyone who wants to customize installation routine.
for example:
disabling OpenOffice disables all KDE (disabling oo.org disables novell desktop which in turn disables whole DE). In other words either user agree on default installation settings, or after reboot will be greeted with terminal window and no GUI. The above happened not only after deselecting OO.org but also few other components.
So if someone prefers different office suite, still has to install oo.org. For enterprise this mandatory setup makes not much sense.
Certainly seems to have done his homework. Almost every distro has an occasional coaster, we never ran redhat 6, see no reason to drop it just for one green release but the next one really, really needs to shine.
A few notes from my experiences….
I’ve been using SUSE products since version 8. I ran Novell Linux Desktop 9 on my IBM Thinkpad X31 for quite a while and upgraded to SLED 10 when it was released last month. The upgrade went flawlessly and everything works as expected. My video card is not support for XGL so I can’t comment there.
I don’t think SLES/SLED 10 is ahead or behind by any meaningful degree of any other distro in terms of hardware support and detection. NLD 9 finally got everything working on my Thinkpad and 10 continues that. I installed 10 on a Dell Inspiron 2650 and that all worked too, no tweaking needed. Any mainline computer should be fine. Video configuration problems noted in the article seem more X-related then SUSE-related.
They mention lack of support for developers. Ok, I’ll give you that one. But the product is not aimed toward developers. It’s aimed at engineers, call centers, and general knowledge workers. At any rate, the tools will come in time. You choose an operating system because it runs the programs/tools you need, not the other way around. If you need something now, use a different OS.
XGL support. I’ll go 50/50 on that one. It’s definately not a required business feature by any stretch. But going up against Windows Vista and it’s new interface, SOMETHING that to go in to the competition that’s similar. Even if you don’t use XGL in your production environment it still gives SLED 10 the cool factor that will help draw users to the platform (just as Areo is making the windows people drool–they don’t care about the rest of the OS).
Fix the upgrade problems… Not sure what he means about that. I upgraded from NLD9 to SLED 10 with no problems at all. openSUSE will take the brunt of the problems and resolutions first and then fixed code will go into SLED afterwards–it shouldn’t be THAT bad (others do it). As far as QA goes, that just sounds like a typical QA gripe.
Synaptics touchpad configuration. Most new laptops I’ve seen with the touchpads have the scroll area marked on it, not really making this a problem. That being said, it would be nice to be more aware of the issue as it seems like your touchpad is flaking out when it’s doing it. Not sure how to better approach that one yet.
New interface. It took me about 45 seconds to figure out the new Computer menu. I agree, “Computer” was probably not a good name for the button, but I think “Start” is not that great either. Knowing that this release is aimed at engineers, call centers, and general knowledge workers, having the people’s main applications on the first click of the menu is really a good idea. (Desktops usually get to cluttered to find anything, and no one wants to go Start/Programs/Folder/Application to start a program every time). I don’t seem to have a 8 application limit on my Computer menu. in 1024×768, I can get 18 icons on the menu (two columns of 9) while still seeing the entire menu from top to bottom. I can add more then 18, but then the bottom of the menu is off the screen. Using this menu system, you should very very rarely need to go to the “More Applications” menu. And if you do, you are probably not familiar with what is there, so the groupings and the search feature is very helpful. I watch a lot of people look through their Start/Programs menu in Windows one by one trying to find some program that they often don’t even know what the name is supposed to be.
All this being said, I think SLED 10 is ready for general use. I have been using it daily for my network consulting work since it was released with no problems or annoyances to speak of (other then DVD playback, which, oddly, the author of the article provides a guide on how to add DVD playback support). I use GroupWise 7 and it runs just fine on NLD 9 and SLED 10. I think micro- and small-businesses will finally be able to implement linux on the desktop with SLED 10, especially for $50/year–it’s now easy enough for anyone to get around in and has solid applications that are needed. I look forward to deploying it in production environments.
-m
“All this being said, I think SLED 10 is ready for general use.”
for general use Yes, for enterprise use No.
If you decipher SLED it will say “Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop” and thus the letter E must be dropped or if you like to keep it call it unsuccessful or 2nd choice enterprise.
Remember that all you talked about was from consumer’s point of view not an administrator’s point of view thus your experience is irrelevant.
SLED doesn’t seem to be for either enterprise or for home users, It’s somewhere in between thus fails to please both. I must stress that some configurations are not acceptable to system administrators in the enterprise sensitive and critical environments; these kind of problems are not visible to home users but is extremely visible and a penalty to time and money.
I thought this was a poor review, and I’ll explain below.
He complains about hardware support while claiming that “Red Hat Desktop” provides a wide range of hardware support. I find it hard to believe that the old RH release supports more hardware than SLED10, but whatever.
He didn’t like the slab menu, so the conclusion is that SLED’s is difficult to use. Well, for this release Novell did hundreds of hours of usability testing to find, among other things, that GNOME’s default layout is confusing for people used to Mac OS or Windows. So they designed something not only much easier to use for the people converting from Windows, but also very interesting in the eyes of many GNOME advanced users.
The menu has unique features you won’t find on Windows XP. For one, you don’t use the file manager with a bunch of wizards. Instead of “My Music”, “My Photos”, etc, you get real applications to provide these features. Instead of haunting for documents on your folders, you simply type something and you will find it. And it will also show e-mails, conversations and web history related to the search terms. So yeah, it might look like Windows except it’s a lot more productive.
For advanced users, you can have as many launchers as it fits on your screen (8 is enough for me). Also, you don’t have to scroll on the application browser; just type enough info to filter your desired app and press enter when it’s the only one visible.
It was pretty clear from this review, but specially from this section, that the reviewer is looking at this product from his own perspective (software developer, Linux enthusiast, etc) while completely ignoring who SLED is actually designed for.
And finally… “Forget XGL”. Oh. My. God.
Yes, I know some of you will claim XGL is useless even though it provides features that make the system more usable. But you’re forgetting Novell not only has to produce a good system, they have to sell it as well. XGL helps *tremendously*. I was at a Vista presentation from Microsoft a few days ago, and they used *videos* to demo Aero. Everybody was frustrated, people wanted to actually see and play with it.
I am greatly dissapointed with the article, or what I would consider his mis-represented opinions
As for the Hardware Detection, I have yet to find a distro (other then Knoppix) that can really claim to detect hardware as SLED does.
Bugs? Sure, YaST may not be the fastest installer in all Linux Distro’s but it sure does have some features that many others don’t have. Sure, there is a small bug when adding repo’s you’ll get the “Zen Updater” error, but that’s easy to live with (You get tons of errors in Microsoft as is don’t you?).
Just because you prefer your start button on the bottom left hand doesn’t mean people won’t be able to find it if it were in the top right.. Wait, that’s where I’ve been running my start button since the days of Win 2K.. Why? It’s actually more useful up there, and you should try it. So you see, Novell moved it for USABILITY.
So, my conclusion is that the article was a horrible representation of someones negative opinion.
I am on the other hand very happy with SLED 10 and have been running it for the last 2 weeks and even PAID for it. Once Lotus Notes is developed for it (coming out shortly) then I will be set to go (I’ll still need a VM for my MMC’s but that’s it).
I agree with most of what the author writes. I consider sled10 as a bug fixed suse 10.1, with a few minor headaches left. Given the price tag, there should be support for wmv files. Installing w32codecs (jemreport has a howto) doesn’t cut it for me: there are problems installing xine. So no perfect multimedia without losing (in my case) much time tweaking.
Then the development thing: there is kdevelop, contrary to the authors claim of no dev tools. It is bloated, but it gets your c/c++ progranming done. I don’t miss eclipse though I spend 50% of my working day behind it. I don’t miss it because I have three versions of it running, depending on which tools (plugins) and version (3.1.2 vs 3.2 vs 3.2wtp) I need. So I make my own bed here.
I do miss anjuta though, installing the sources didn’t go right: although configure runs without a hitch, the make install stops with a libglade error (I have libglade installed, but ..?).
Furthermore, where is Thunderbird? I don’t like Evolution (it’s not intuitive, period).
Then, networking. You have to choose the ifup method to have an internal (network side) ethernet card start at boot (as opposed to manual activation), now that could be confusing.
I tried to install GoogleEarth. I runs, but shows a “missing opengl driver” error. It then came to a grinding halt just as I was zooming in on Fidel’s hospital. Still no sign of Raul, btw.
Finally, there should be a zen upgrade to gnome 2.14. I know why gnome 2.12 was included, but we’re past that now.
Now, on the positive side. Hardware recognition is excellent (several machines ranging from amd64 to laptops), hibernation/suspend works flawlessly, as do bluetooth (couldn’t get it to work on suse 10 and 10.1), xsane, usb drives, webcam (after installing spca5xx) and ekiga (pacman repo).
Contrary to the author, I like the menu. It isn’t hard, and even looks nice, polished and solid. Yast can be found easily, and is still a fullblown app.
I haven’t tried compiz on SLED. On suse 10.1 it ruins my desktop beyond repair. But it’s not conspicuous here, so don’t use it if you don’t “need” it.
Don’t fool yourself: Xandros and Mandriva surely have their share of misery. My favorite distro (we use it at work) still is Ubuntu. That’s African for: Everything Works. Suse and SLED should have their Automatix.
My biggest gripe: the almost total lack of community support for SLED. I know, most 10.1 repos work, but given the nature of the beast, it’s not a hackers distro. It’s not meant to be. It’s not a developers distro. But Novell should still make it clear for whom it is meant.
SLED 10 is by no means perfect, but some of the ‘problems’ this guy points out in his review are just plain wrong:
1) Xgl is NOT enabled by default in SLED 10. Although, it is very easy to enable, you have to do this yourself using the “Desktop Effects” tool in the control center. I guess In his hurry to prove how bad SLED 10 is, he forgot that he enabled it himself (or didn’t install it in the first place?).
2) ZENWorks is not the default program for installing, removing and updating software. This is still all done through YaST/RPM/YUM but with the additional ability to connect to a ZEN server as well. Yes, there is a *terrible* new tool in the main menu that for some reason takes years to connect its installation sources, but the same old YaST software installer is still there and fully functional as well.
3) I’ve been using SLED 10 with my Synaptics touchpad for the last two weeks without ANY problems. Maybe this varies from laptop to laptop, but I also doubt this is a SUSE specific problem.
4) Novell is one of the few Linux companies actually investing in usability studies. I’m sure the new ‘Computer’ menu was based on tests like those described at http://www.betterdesktop.org.
In any case, I should mention that I recently moved from Dapper Drake to SLED 10 because I couldn’t do both Xgl and suspend to RAM at the same time under Ubuntu with my laptop. In fact, SLED 10 is the first distro I’ve found that lets me do this out of the box (I guess they didn’t fire all of their QA engineers). Since then, the only thing I’ve really missed is Synaptic/APT package management. Other than that I’ve been truly impressed
Yes, there is a *terrible* new tool in the main menu that for some reason takes years to connect its installation sources, but the same old YaST software installer is still there and fully functional as well.
The old Yast software installer isn’t fast either.
Even with the best package manager,if you don’t have (enough) high availability update servers globally,the whole deal plain sucks.
In any case, I should mention that I recently moved from Dapper Drake to SLED 10
I moved from 10.1 to SLED10 (couldn’t find some packages from dvd) to dapper too FC5.
For me FC5 simply incarnates most pros of other distros and less cons.Although i wish SELinux had the easy point and click configure GUI of AppArmor (a real time saver).Dapper has the most interesting repository (i’m not counting third parties like livna,dries,rpmforge..). but lacks many security features Fedora has.
Errr…. Seems that the author wrote or reviewed too fast . Novell usually delivers a SDK for every release of enterprise products.
Please visit:
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?susesdk
This is available via either downloadable isos or subscription as a zmd catalog.
From the SDK wiki:
“The SDK also contains IDEs, debuggers, code editors, and other related tools. It supports most major programming languages (including C, C++, Java, and most scripting languages).”
This SDK is suitable for SLED or SLES versions.
cheers.
I have been a Mandrake follower, lately I have tested some small systems like Puppy, Beatrix, DSL, and even Kubuntu.
Intalling Suse on the same system as the others I can only conclude: they hate users.
I chose the Network install, and it took long, but worked.
I was initially impressed: the system was complete, seemed to work, even recognised my prism USB Dlink wireless.
But networking is hell. While going samba with all the otehrs seems to work, i had to use something arcane like SWAT to get Samba working.
There was no automatic printer recognition over the network at all.
I gave up when I was trying to figure out where the list of the installed applications is. Suse Out, probably Mandrake back in. I did not like kubuntu, because I could not use my old sound card, perhaps the new version has improved.
If they don’t want to use the available and simple configuration tools, such as those used bu Kubuntu and Knoppix, they will go fast the way of the Microsoft Dinosaurs.
Geert
I completely agree. The reviewer has been one of the few to not get drawn in by the 3D effects and limited menu, and start using it every day for a few weeks.
Certainly, from my experience I agree with what he’s concluded especially from a laptop and development point of view. Beagle still slows your machine down by quite a bit of extended usage.
In short there’s a number of other distros, like Xandros, you ould call enterprise. SLED is nothing special.