SuSE Linux Office Desktop is intended for small companies looking for an easy, preconfigured desktop — as well as for personal users with little or no Linux experience. The product is based on SuSE Linux 8.1 and it costs $129 USD. ITWeek already has a mini-review.
SuSE Linux Office Desktop Announced
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“Con: Windows users may need some retraining.”
Duh… it’s a linux distro, not some Windows version, of course it’s different and you need to get used to it if you switch from Windows and yes… this asks for some retraining.
I know these companies need to stay afloat but I have noticed that the recent batch of “Windows-Killers” have been quite expensive.
Xandros – $99
Lindows – $129
SuSE Office Desktop – $129
Incidently I’m not sure of the licensing here, can we get these for free minus support and gossy manuals? Whatever it doesn’t help the Linux TCO argument when the most commerical Linux distrobutions cost this much, especially when the public has been told that Linux is free.
I’m not sure exactly how much cheaper SuSE Linux Desktop would be over an equivalent Windows setup, but they seem to have designed it for people who can’t let go of MS Office and MS Office isn’t too cheap.
Still I have faith that it will be a quality product. SuSE make a very consistent and complete Linux, I hope people buy it.
But of course it makes this SuSE a good transition product for people who have already paid for MS Office and don’t want to use an alternative or waste the money they spent.
And when you include the cost of Codeweavers technology it is cheap (comparatively), of course it would be cheaper if it had multiuser licensing — I could find no mention of this and have a feeling you have to buy one for each box due to SuSE’s own bits and Codeweavers..
Crossover Office is not the only commercial software included, also includes StarOffice 6.0 and Acronis OS Selector. What they don’t state is whether based on SuSE 8.1 Pro or Personal.
Although it is nice to have all the extra software nicely packaged in one box, I won’t be buying it unless the upgrade to the SuSE 8.2 version is greatly discounted. SuSE 8.2 can’t be very far off the horizon.
Instead of paying this much, go for Xandros, which is cheaper and yet is easier to use.
Linux distros should look at redhat, which dropped it’s price (standard version) to about 40 bucks from 60.
i’m sure they would probably sell ten times what they do now, if they just sold it for say u$s 40 …
I have tested both, SuSe (normal release) and Xandros. Xandros is by far a better solution to me. IMO there’s no reason to pay for SuSe as it’s RPM based and RH is the best RPM based distro (if you are planing to instal extra stuff not present in CDs you know what I’m talking about, if there’s a new RPM driver guess what distro is first compatible…). To sum up, I would install RH and pay for CX if it is needed. SuSe LOD is useless to me.
On the other hand Xandros is deb based, Debian stable 100% compatible and it includes CX for 99%. But the strong point is that it has his own file manager lot more windowslike and easy install for newbies (and lazy debian users like me).
I only see a window killer out there and it’s Xandros, however they should release a cheaper distro without CX to be a real option, as you said 99% it’s too expensive.
Anyways it’s great to have options.
Oh come on. How can you call $129 pricey? To answer your question the full version of WindowsXP Pro is $299. K…let me see $129 vs. $299. The normal SuSE pro version is generally cheaper ($79 full $49 upgrade), but it doesnt include the third party apps that cost money (codeweavers, acronis, staroffice)
I think one reason they are more expensive than you might expect is that the open source NTFS resizer code isn’t yet stable, so distros have little choice but to bundle a commercial product. Xandros won’t say where it gets its code from, Acronis etc will charge. Hopefully the NTFS project will get the resize code stable soon and the prices might drop.
Maybe.
The comment about SuSE and RPMS concerns me. Somebody is saying they’d rather go for Redhat due to no fault of SuSEs but because it’s harder to find RPMs. That sounds suspiciously like, well, not lockin, this is Linux, but the playing field isn’t exactly level let’s say.
I hope we actually can replace RPM. This packaging nonsense has gone on long enough.
“I hope we actually can replace RPM. This packaging nonsense has gone on long enough.”
Agreed.
Everyone should just adopt debs,apt,and most importantly
Debian packaging policy. And in a way, they all ready are.
With synaptic, apt4rpm, urpmi, etc, those distros saddled
with Rhat’s troublesome, (the number one cause of hair
pulling induced balndess) packaging system are trying to make the switch.
In time, they will be rpms in name only.
God speed to that day.
>>To answer your question the full version of WindowsXP Pro is $299. K…let me see $129 vs. $299.<<
The OEM price for a full version of Windows XP Professional is $136 at SuperDealsOnline (http://atl.aitweb.net/cgi-bin/ait-detail.asp?product_no=369&menu_no…)
Not like anybody would ever have to pay that. If you get Windows with a new machine, you’re probably paying much less than that ($100 or less maybe) and if you have a machine that has Windows already on it, you pay the upgrade price. Very few people would ever have to purchase the full version.
Crossover Office has no real advantage for Windows users because if you can actually use Crossover, it probably means you already have MS Office, which you can run on Windows without the Overhead of Crossover.
This idea of a “hybrid” OS, trying to use Codeweavers to run MS apps is ridiculous, and costly. It makes more sense to continue to develop Linux Apps to be more user friendly, and (like it or not) more like windows “clones”. This is already happening at a great rate of speed. Openoffice, Evolution, Mozilla,and KDE are all stable and highly usable apps. Codeweavers will be battling forever against MS. Not a pretty picture. Time consuming, and not “FREE” or “CHEAP” either. A little retraining never hurt, and it’s alot less costly than Microsoft software. It’s bad enough now but wait for LONGHORN or the next MS-OFFICE!
It may be true that the educated consumer would not pay a hefty price of, say $299.00, for Windows XP. However at $136.00, the buyer only gets the Windows XP with limited function Wordpad. At $129.00 for SuSE Linux, the buyer will get a operating system plus a large number of useful common applications like StarOffice. To do spreadsheet, for example, the Windows XP user must also purchase a spreadsheet application.
Moreover, the Windows XP user has to pay for virus protection once the subscription expires. It has been lately that the virus definition has to be update frequently, at least a couple times a week in the case of Norton AntiVirus. Either that or cross their fingers and hope their PC never got hit by one. As proof, two people I used to work with recent got hit by the virus rendering the PC useless. A complete reinstall of Windows was done to return it to usefulness.
So price alone is not a determining factor. The user must evaluate their needs and find the solution to fufill those needs.
You are forgetting that StarOffice, OpenOffice and tons of freeware and shareware is available for Windows also.
But does StarOffice or OpenOffice come free with Windows? Does Office?
for $129 you get StarOffice, Kdevelop (quite possibly the best IDE available for linux), numerous games, plus tons of free software.
I don’t care what there is available for Windows, I care about what comes with the OS Distribution that I choose. To me, SuSE is the far better deal.
Moreover, the Windows XP user has to pay for virus protection once the subscription expires. It has been lately that the virus definition has to be update frequently, at least a couple times a week in the case of Norton AntiVirus.
It’s called LiveUpdate and it can be scheduled to run in the middle of the night. But even if not, a couple of manual virus updates a week (by your very liberal estimates) and hitting Windows Update once or twice a month is fairly trivial compared to what one would have to put up with using Linux. (ie: When running rpm – “Can’t find lib.so.glibc.upyours.kissmyass.thisossucks.bigtime.whatever)
Sometimes, people fail to look at the bigger picture.
>>But does StarOffice or OpenOffice come free with Windows? Does Office? <<
If Microsoft included Office with Windows Sun would sue, as would IBM (Lotus SmartSuite), and Corel (Wordperfect Suite).
You hit it to a tee. To get free software for Windows, you just double-click to download it, and double-click to install it. When Linux gets that easy, it’ll be ready for primetime. Downloads.com has lots of free software for linux, but very little of it is easy to install. It also has tons of free software for Windows, most of it easy to install. Linux would suit a work-station user pretty well, but not the home user who is always trying out stuff they download off the internet. If Linux is going to be as expensive as Windows, then it better get alot easier to use. If you want a great free office suite for Windows, get 602 Software Office Suite.Free download—double-click to install.
Exactly my point, though the responses to these problems by Linux zealots is usually “Just use apt”, ignoring the fact that the distros that do use apt have at least a half a dozen other issues that would make things a pain in the ass for Joe User.
While one distro may have great hadware detection, another great fonts, another a great package manager, another a great ‘click and run’ interface, another a great user interface, it doesn’t seem as though there will ever be the ‘jack of all trades’ distro that finally does it all right. And even when/if that happens, there is still Linux’s lack of ‘specialty’ apps to deal with, as most zealots seem to think all Joe User does is surf the web and write letters with his computer. But the minute he attempts to go out of the ‘Linux sandbox’, it’s all over.
My XP laptop doesn’t have any AV programs, and haven’t got hit with one virus so far. Hmmm, not bad. Considering the people using it most are computers dumbos.
The solution to the packaging mess is autopackage if you haven’t all forgotten.
http://www.autopackage.org/
That’s what Wine is for
It’s not possible to recreate every app in the world, so API emulation will have to do until they’re all ported by their owners 
Wine? LOL!