“If there is one thing I can say about SuSE Linux, it’s that they know how to put together a desktop distro. This has been evident for quite some time, and nothing has changed. Their new Office Desktop release is built upon the solid foundation that is SuSE’s desktop expertise.” Read the review at MadPenguin.
A Review of SuSE Linux Office Desktop
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The menus in the Assistant screenshot appear to have written by Elmer Fudd. “Webbwroser”…
Linux ? Well, Suse ? it’s rocks !
f*#’]@, this is really tiring.
Linux is a pure marvel for an OS ingineer. honey candy will be more precise.
Linux is also a wonderfull demonstrator of the capability of open-source.
And finally Linux is an incredible and powerfull tool to make available all the internet informations for a very low price ( just the hardware, and cheap hardware is running well ).
But for the standard “user” which is “targeted”, let’s name him “a Windows TM user”, Linux is a pure b*****t. Suse or not Suse. And all this kind of _lie_ will just make somebody not ready to test and claims for the next twenty years : Linux is not good. And remember that this guy is a sheep, and when a sheep bleats out, the whole flock follows… This is the only result predicable with such “advocate”.
To finish, call those empty papers “review” in front of a system with no less than 1500 softwares on the install CD is a pure joke. But a very bad one.
Hey Xavier, don’t blow a fuse.
I use both Windows and Suse. I like Suse better, but some things I need Windows for. Fine, I can dual boot.
Some users can use a Linux desktop out of the box with no problem. Depends on what the user is trying to do. Sure the review is very optimistic, but I’m sure there are Windows reviews that are just as optimitic about Windows XP. Yes, XP is one of the better releases from Windows, but it sure ain’t perfect. Same goes for Suse on the Linux side.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Nobody is forcing you to use _any_ software (though Microsoft does try :-).
In fact SuSE is the only Linux distro I have ever used so other distros might be just as great or greater for that matter.
However, for a complete Linux novice SuSE 7.3 was a dream: Insert CD1, follow the onscreen instructions and you are an efficient Linux user in ten minutes.
And now (one year later) I also run my small business on SuSE 7.3. Everything always works out of the box, except that like the reviewer I’m not particularly fond of YOU so I use apt4rpm for updates.
Olav
I would not trust a review that
a) has no author mentioned
b) is posted on a site featuring these meta keywords:
… xxx, XXX, nude, Nude …
c) has no idea what he is talking about. ‘Frontpage’ is _not_ part of ‘MS Office’.
(http://www.microsoft.com/office/evaluation/fastfacts.asp)
Before accusing others of lying that guy should check his facts.
monty
P.S.: If I were picky, I would also mention the 152 DTD errors the validator finds on that page – oops …
Frontpage is bundled in some Office Versions. So you can say it is part of MS Office. It gets installed with MS Office. Of course you can buy it also separate, but you can do so also with Outlook, Excel etc.
If you look, it says: Posted by madpenguin.
Also Frontpage is part of Office XP, I don’t know about older versions, but my Office XP includes Frontpage. That stuff about Codeweavers is really weird though since Codeweavers is very clear about the fact they do not support every app that comes with MS Office.
I’ve been using SuSE for a long time now and I really like it.
I don’t think $129.00 is expensive for a package that includes SuSE 8.1, StarOffice 6.0 and Crossover.
From article: “# CrossOver Office needs work – CodeWeavers needs to work on their product to get all of MS Office working before I would ever shell out a dime for it.”
You know, I’d be happy to even have a WINE that doesn’t complain with “ATAPICD not implemented yet” on FreeBSD (and then croak later on with “what exactly are we supposed o do here”, that’s only from msmedia player installer). If it were anything up to par I might be able to get those plugins running myself on wine. It is so much geared towards linux that even the mose basic things seem to break in terms of portability. They need to work on that first before spending months haunting officexp’s newest etc IMHO.
Depends on which Office Suite you are talking about. The Developer as it is called now, used to be called deluxe includes it.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/howtobuy/choosing.asp
At first I was skeptical about the keyword thing you mentioned. I wonder how on earth those keywords got in there.
Seems like this release is a step up from Suse 8.1, which many on this site have said was not quite up to par with 8.0. I’m interested in hearing about other people’s experience with this release.
Also, according to the article, the reviewer was able to get Access working in Crossover? If that’s the case, this is a HUGE thing for some of us, since Linux really doesn’t (AFAIK) have an Access equivalent outisde of MySQL, which really doesn’t cater to the same userbase, as discussed in previous threads.
Sure, Access is shit for enterprise use, but it’s perfect for keeping track of your porn collection
Not everyone is aiming Linux at the totally clueless. SuSE, in particular, is not meant for mom and pop. It is meant for business users. Business users have IT support staff (and as someone who has worked IT support, I’ll tell you that people need it anyway even in Windows!) and don’t do any configuration themselves. As a result, Linux is often a very viable choice for business desktops.
PS> What exactly are your complaints about Linux? Do you have a specific thing you’re having trouble doing in a modern distro, or are you basing everything off the fact that RedHat 5.0 was hard to use. And if this is one of those “RPM’s are hard to install because I’m living in the 1990’s and haven’t figured out that I’m supposed to use urpmi or redcarpet instead of manually downloading them” I’m going to scream.
PS> Yeah, I know, don’t feed the trolls. But some people are just too much…
For ah, your um…multimedia collection…you can try Rekall, which you can find at http://www.thekompany.com I haven’t used it, but I’ve heard good things.
Don’t know what you meant by ‘multimedia collection’, but …
Based on what I saw on the website, Rekall is merely a database frontend; there are lots of those, but that’s not the problem.
The problem is that none of these frontends are databases themselves, but merely frontends for things like MySQL, which is what we’re trying to get away from. Why? Because a MySQL database isn’t portable (as in mobility, not cross-platform), so you can’t (AFAIK) build a custom frontend with database support, burn it to a CD, and carry it to another computer and run it without the need to connect to a MySQL server somewhere.
I currently use SuSE 8.0, and I must say that the menu
organization is plainly horrible, for either a newbie or an expert.
I’m surprised they haven’t improved in this area. There are icons
missing, mixing of gnome and kde apps which do the same thing, etc…
I think they should reconsider their current approach to the menus.
Furthermore, I use the online update in 8.0, and it works fine with
me. Sometimes there are “hanging” issues when the server is over worked,
but this has happend to me with Red Hat’s up2date as well. In fact,
I can’t understand why they (anybody coding such a thing)
don’t issue a timeout in case the server
doesn’t respond. That is just the ethical thing to do — use good coding
practice.
There are issues I have with SuSE’s user interface design in yast2.
There are many areas when you would expect yast2 to give feedback
to the user, and it doesn’t. The yast2 GUI is far from polished,
but it’s still probably the best configuration tool out there.
I wonder what the author was talking about in terms of the file system
organization. I find SuSE’s organization to be quite good, and they
are LSB certified. It is different from Red Hat’s organization, but that
doesn’t make it wrong. It makes sense to have kde and gnome
under /opt. This kind of isolation makes it easier to update the
system or add newer desktops in case you’re on the cutting edge.
Otherwise, I’ve been a SuSE user for a long time — since the 5.0 series.
I also use other distros such as Red Hat and Mandrake, and I would
say that SuSE is the strongest of them all — it is rock solid.
I feel that they can still improve much, and they have been improving
throughout the years. I’m glad they released the Office Desktop.