I recently downloaded and took a closer look at Novell Linux Desktop 9. While it is certainly aimed at the corporate environment, it’s also somewhat suitable for home users. Read our review to find out what experiences I had with it and whether or not it might be right for you.
I also tested Novell Desktop Linux 9 and wanted to buy it (by download). It seems to be mission impossible
Hehe, i didn’t read the review but i’ve tried NDL9 and found it to be pretty good. Its like Suse (obviously) but with a bit more polish!
“I encountered several errors installing packages.”
Same here, but I figured that the online updates wouldtake care of that… and it did.
“CD3 mostly takes care of the configuration of your system, such as setting up a username and registering your license.”
Activiation did not work for me during install… but I did manage to activate it later.
Here are some problems that I ran into:
– I had to do the dmix trick in order to get my crappy onboard sound card to work properly
– I had to download development tools and the kernel source in order to install the nvidia driver (and even after “sax2 -m 0=nvidia” I still can’t get my monitor to display past 60MHz)
– I followed the instructions to install MPlayer packaged codecs for xine / totem, but I still can’t play any DIVX or XVID movies (and MPEG movies are all black and white)
The article concerned itself more with the installation process, rather than the functionality available to the user after installation. As a newbie, I had no trouble at all installing the product… I am having trouble configuring it …
As a typical office person, I need to know that I can play games on it 😉 That is why I need the hardware accelerated video driver and sound mixing working.
Same with me. Maybe we´re simply not allowed to buy it becauae we are no companies and/or have no Novell account contact.
NLD 9 is the Corporate version of SuSE 9.2 Personal/Professional. It can only be purchased through your “local Novell retailer”. It is 100% geared toward the corporate user.
That is the reason why you see Red Carpet for the updates as well as Yast. This desktop is designed and built to fully integrate with Novell’s ZENWorks management suite. The main visible component of this is Red Carpet.
In the corporate environment, the IT staff would disable/hide Yast, lock down the the desktop settings, and use Red Carpet to distribute updates, install new software etcetera. They will also be able to do remote management, inventories (hardware and software), remote control, etc.
Living in a corprate environment that runs ZEN, I can’t wait for this product to be available. It will present an opportunity to introduce a viable non-MS product that is as managable as XP. In a corporate environment, managagability and life-cycle management are much more important than cost. (6 IT guys, 20,000 desktops, 184 sites). Software costs represent about 5% of the total cost of maintaining a desktop in a corporate environment over the life of a PC (YMMV of course).
The ability to remotely control, manage, maintain, migrate, etc without needing a desk-side visit is what will make Linux a viable alternative to MS, not the cost of the OS and applications. There will always be users who can’t be migrated for one reason or another, but a large percentage of most users would be eligible to be migrated to NLD9 in a managed environment.
That’s why the $50/year (MSRP) for the annual cost of NLD9 is not a big deal considering all the applications it comes with and the manageability it will provide for the corporate IT environment.
For the home user, i’d stay away and go with the 9.2 personal or professional. I actually use Linspire on my main home PC – cause I just want it to work and don’t want to doink around looking for new software and maintaining my installed software (love Click -n- Run, and I have very little free time) and I run XP/SuSE 9.2 on my laptop. I have NLD9 (both KDE and GNOME versions) running in my lab.
Just my $0.02.
It’s quite a bargain to see another distro. Another superb chance for applications not to install correctly! I also love the trend of recent distros to have limitations.. Click ‘n Pay through the nose, registration of your first born, etc.. Tweaking the windowing environment and slapping your brand on some menus is what I crave really. Paying for bug fixes is just icing on the cake.
That’s funny… I would like to think that there can be as many admin tools not hidden away as there may be, because: Who do you think has the root password..?! The secretary?
Hi,
Kinda OT, sorry, but does anybody know if Beagle can be made to index NTFS partitions?
Thanks,
Victor
Because users are EVIL :-). No, really, its a whole cost thing. If there is any kind of check box, utility, etc, that can change in any way how the desktop looks, works, or feels, end users will do it, then call in to the help desk about how thier PC is “broken” and they “didn’t do anything, it just stopped working”. So that requires a visit, or time to figure out or both…now multiply that by several hundred calls a week..you are talking several additional FTE’s to handle the additional calls at a national average total cost of over $60,000/per employee (Salary/benefits, etc). This does not even take into consideration the lost productivity of the affected usr.
In large corporate environments, the vast majority (95%+) of end users are pc-idiots. In those environments, you must lock down the machines as much as possible, giving the end-users just enough access to do their job, and not one whit more.
(We actually had a situation where we had the network client have a “Workstation Only” box on it. They were told to never check that as you would not get network access. It was there in case an engineer had to do local work – special password all that. Well, 4,000 calls later with people checking the box, and then not being able to log in, gain access to resources, etc, we had to re-enginer the product and push out a reg hack to remove that box. Total estimated cost: $90,000 (Time to diagnose, time spent taking the calls, lost productivity, re-engineer time,,etc))
If you are talking developers, engineers, tech types – that’s a whole different story – wide open, no restrictions: You break it, you fix it, don’t bother me..These types aren’t the problem, its the cube-dwellers who want 5 IM clients, want to download everything in the world that must be crushed…errr…managed 🙂
Those distros aren’t meant for you then..choose one of the hundreds of other ones that meet your needs.
Like NLD9 but don’t want to pay for it? Download SuSE 9.X for free..Problem solved.
Don’t want a distro that uses a pay model for automated software distribution/maintenance? Use a distro that doesn’t provide that feature, or provides it at no cost. Problem solved.
Wonderful thing Linux..you have CHOICE as to what distros and what features you want to use and pay for…or not.
“I encountered several errors installing packages.”
I have yet to encounter any problems installing NLD9 on multipe boxes in my lab (Dell’s, home builts, etc), but I do run either major manufaturer boxes, or home-builts with major name-brand pieces/parts. For that matter, I’ve never had install issues with any of the distros I’ve tried – Linspire, Ubunutu, SuSE, Mandrake, etc.
Just because a few people have issues doesn’t mean the distro has flaws, it’s usually something much more simple: Bad CDs or unsupported hardware. Heck I haven’t read of any distro where some people haven’t had some sort of install issue. I just keep scratching my head cause I never seem to have install problems….knock on wood.
I’m thinking it’s your CD burn that is bad again – I’ve seen that a lot, especially if burned at a high speed, or burned onto cheap media. Slow burn speed/High-quality name brand media may work better.
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Yea, it’s a slow day at work today..lots of time on my hands 🙂
Happy T-Giving all
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I haven’t taken the time to do proper research, but I was interested if there’s any sort of proper client software to login and authenticate to Netware servers? If not, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they can own or produce three seperate distros but can’t make a client for any of them yet.
There really is no need for a client per se. You can run NFS on your server and just create a mount point. If you are in a non-NFS environment, you just need to set up ncpmount, ncpumount, etc to your system (I believe most distros should have these on the CD’s..if not find em on the net). It’s then just command line stuff. If you really want a graphical front end, there is a GUI that is on sourceforge that will do the trick. It’s pretty cool, but I find that a single script sitting on my desktop that will mount every volume of every server with a single click works best for me
It takes a while to wrap your mind around “no client” for Netware..really wierd
I tried to install NLD but on the first reboot it went to a black screen with “GRUB” in the top-left corner and stayed there. Tried a couple more times….same thing. Tried using LILO but that errored-out even quicker (while still in the install GUI). SuSE 9.0 and 9.1 install fine…
> NLD 9 is the Corporate version of
> SuSE 9.2 Personal/Professional.
Actually it’s based on SUSE 9.1 Personal/Professional. And judging from my experience it’s inferior compared to SUSE 9.2 Professional in terms of hardware detection, bugs and polish.
I just installed NLD on my laptop, works pretty good but I like Suse 9.2 better. It’s too bad they are only using Ximian desktop with NLD 9, I would love to see a Ximian Desktop for Suse 9.2, yes I would even pay for it!
That’s funny… I would like to think that there can be as many admin tools not hidden away as there may be, because: Who do you think has the root password..?! The secretary?
You hide YaST because the person doesn’t need it. You’ve already mentioned that they don’t even have the password for it, so why clutter their desktop with it.
I’m betting they are working on XD for 9.2. What I REALLLY need to see from Novell is:
– ConsoleONE and ALL plugins working for ZEN
– RconJ for Linux that works
– DNS/DHCP Console for Linux
– NWAdmin for Linux – though they don’t even own the code for this so it will NEVER happen.
That or if they’d just get iManager 2.02 working with all the pieces/parts and wrap a desktop installer around it, I could live with that..oh well maybe one day I’ll be able to use a Novell product to manage my Novell network..until then, I’m stuck with XP at work, or forced to live with XP running inside of VMWare.
I also tested Novell Desktop Linux 9 and wanted to buy it (by download). It seems to be mission impossible
Don’t bother asking – you’re not its target customer. There’s going to be a 50,000 desktop deployment of this anytime soon now…..
Novell Linux 9 is fantastic. What it lacks is I was[not only me, I found that later on there news group site] not able to install Ximian Desktop! I had to really hack to start its installation GUI and later i had to quit because it was unable to understand the OS/Distro I was using!!! I can understand this type of behaviour with other distros but not with Novells own OS!
What it lacks is I was[not only me, I found that later on there news group site] not able to install Ximian Desktop!
To my eyes the GNOME desktop in NLD is pretty much XD2, less some of the artwork.
As I understand it, the current version of the Ximian Desktop is what you see with NLD’s Gnome. Otherwise, there’s hasn’t been a new Ximian release for a few years. If memory serves, it wasn’t avaiable for recent distributions. (I can’t verify that because http://www.ximian.com is now redirected to a Novell site, which does not provide links to down XD.