It’s true.. I’m completely smitten. In love, head over heals and all misty eyed.
Novell have just done something I didn’t think anyone could really do. Bring a viable Linux solution to the dekstop.
World, meet Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Dekstop 10, SLED 10, meet the world.
Oh how I love your snappy GUI, your clean minimilist lines and your OS X like 3D accelerated desktop.
Now, I am the first to admit I don’t like fast women, however Novell have managed to tweak SuSE Linux to run damn fast, doubly so in the 64bit build.
Right now I am listening to flawless streaming audio, building a new version of the single best ever open source media player for linux, Helix Banshee, hauling down some files and writing this very post and she’s not even hit her stride yet.
If you’ve not yet experienced what a true Linux operating system can be like, read any of the many different reviews on SLED 10 I encourage you to do so.
Sure she’s a little hard on laptop battery supplies and has a few minor niggles, but that just gives her character and room to grow.
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of os, software, suse.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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Jul 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Even though I’m happy with Ubuntu, I am intrigued by the look of SLED and might have to fire it up in a virtual machine or on a spare hard drive, except that it costs money which makes it less appealing to try. Is OpenSuSE at all comparable or is SLED way different?
Jul 23rd, 2006 at 9:31 am
Are you running the test version or did you invest in the retail version? How’s the docu if you bought the retail version?
Btw you have a double http in the first two review links ;-)
Jul 23rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Novell’s SLED 10 is built on SuSE - Open SuSE is the, obviously enough, open source version but doesn’t include the tray or any of the Novell applications.
SLED10 bundles the 3d accelerated X server - they provide a 60 day licence which allows one to install the ATI/ Nvidia accelerated Xgl server. Simply sign up for an account - the only limitation of the trial is the lack of continued updates after 60 days, the OS is not limited in any other way (indeed if you were careful, you could use Open SuSE updates to continue keeping updated).
SLED 10 seamlessly takes the often ‘fractured’ nature of Linux and pulls it all together.
As for the doco - it’s pretty good. Beagle (the search engine) rocks, think OS X’s spotlight for Linux (Windows has nothing on it). It’s integrated into many applications which makes finding anything (including documentation) a cinch.
To be honest, after 60 days I’m likely to fork over the $50 US needed for the full years worth of updates. Yes, imho it’s actually that good.
SLED 10 isn’t perfect, but it’s 90% there already - another release or two will see it becoming a genuine alternative.
We’re all used to Linux being free and there are certainly many good free distros out there, like Ubuntu for example. However I’m not likely to have a problem paying for the option of SLED 10 for a year.
It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than Vista will be. :)