There's no doubt about the general fabulousness of OpenSUSE 10.1. UK magazine Linux Format rated it "the perfect distro for everyone" while Mad Penguin reckoned it was "one stellar release". That's led to high expectations for its corporate follow-up, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 – or SLED 10 to its friends.

There's no doubt about the general fabulousness of OpenSUSE 10.1. UK magazine Linux Format rated it "the perfect distro for everyone" while Mad Penguin reckoned it was "one stellar release". That's led to high expectations for its corporate follow-up, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 – or SLED 10 to its friends.

Like Red Hat's Fedora project, OpenSUSE is the precursor and test bed for ideas that find their way into the commercial release. Novell purchased SUSE three years ago and have since become one of Linux's biggest stalwarts, throwing shovelfuls of money into OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Beagle, Banshee and many other projects. The result, along with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, is SLED 10 – the US$50 desktop.

I have to warn you; SLED is huge. Not in terms of disk space consumption or application count but in terms of functionality. For the typical user it has everything a desktop should; web browser, office suite, collaboration tools, instant messaging – all, I have to say, focussed on seamless interoperability with its Redmond rival. Novell's participation in OpenOffice.org for example has yielded full compatibility with Excel Visual Basic macros. But where its hugeness really shows is in the way the back-office boys will love it. It connects to and interfaces with everything. Just tick the boxes; Microsoft Exchange [tick], Novell GroupWise [tick], any other collaboration server using IMAP, SMTP and POP [tick], Lotus Notes [tick], Active Directory [tick]...

Then there's the desktop user treats not immediately apparent on start-up. XGL, SUSE's glorious graphical 3D interface, (which I've covered before), and Beagle, a friendly looking mutt but a killer application. In fact Beagle's become this man's best friend since I switched to OpenSUSE almost a year ago.

Prosaically renamed Desktop Search, Beagle sits in the background indexing... well... everything in your personal desktop space. Files, emails, instant messages, appointments, web pages, PDFs, and even the contents of zipped archives. Results are displayed complete with a snippet that encompasses your search string so locating stuff's a doddle. Honestly, once you've used Beagle you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Personal Grievances

SLED's default Window Manager is Gnome. I've never been a Gnome fan. I know that it's supposed to be good for newbies, that it's safe and solid and reliable. But it's also bloody boring.

My demo HP laptop, came with a glorious 1920 x 1200 display containing 2.3 million pixels, each of them capable of showing any one of 16.7 million colours. So why does Gnome only use five of them? Gnome graphics developers apparently think khaki's the most exciting colour on the planet; they use an awful lot of it. Compare these two icon sets from the OpenOffice.org menu. The Gnome one is functional but dull, drab and dreary. See if you can guess which it is...

Yup, you got it. It's an icon set called "Industrial". An entirely appropriate name since it's about as exciting as an industrial suburb. Unfortunately this schema isn't just restricted to OOo. The whole installation's infused with it.

There are least zillion flashy wallpapers available for Linux, so why have the SLED team settled for a default best described as blue-blah? Walk through a computer showroom and Windows XP machines are instantly recognisable. Macs seem to beg attention with their bright bouncy bottom-screen icons. But if you were to stick a SLED machine in there with them, no one would notice. Your eyes just slide right past it.

Menus have been around for thousands of years. The idea is to give the customer an appreciation of the full range available in a simple, organised format. I don't go into my local Chinese and open up the glossy pages expecting to find only the five most popular dishes. Nor do I expect to have to ferret under the table cloth if I happen to fancy something different. But that's exactly what you have to do in Gnome.

You may not think appearance is important. You'd be wrong. Microsoft – always savvy marketers – are currently suggesting design guidelines for the outside of Vista machines so that users are drawn to them even before switching them on. And yes, yes I know all these things can be changed and that Linux is the bee's knees when it comes to alternative configurations, but this is the default. I reckon a default should show your best side, not your backside.

Installation Woes

My demo machine came ready-running. It also came with an installation DVD and the advice from my Novell handlers that I could do anything I liked with it. Resisting the temptation to take a $4,000 laptop swimming or use it to drive in nails, I settled for something I thought might be a less demanding; reinstalling the operating system.

What I really wanted to see was how good commercial Linux installations had gotten, especially with that perennial bogey, proprietary hardware. Oh dear...!

Right after you choose to install SLED everything goes dead – or seems to. A branded blue-blah screen appears  with no indication of any activity from the machine whatsoever. Years of Windows use have taught me to regard stationary graphics and no response from either mouse or keyboard as a crash. But don't be fooled. After 70 seconds of this Blue Screen of SLED – I timed it after [blush] rebooting – the DVD spun up and, after a further 25 seconds of at least audible activity, signs of life appeared with the opening of the graphical installation menu.

From then on it's plain sailing. You need only supply your preferred language, time zone, the installation type (new or update), tick the license agreement and add any installation extras (I added KDE). Within 30 minutes it you're adding users and choosing a root password.

There was a nice touch at the conclusion of this. No need to reboot; the system just opens up.

It was a good job I'd seen Novell's installation otherwise I might have believed the HP only came with an 800 x 600 graphics adapter. The YaST system tool correctly identified the relevant hardware and even encouraged me to change the resolution – right up to a staggering 3200 x 2400 – but no matter what I did the changes wouldn't stick.

No matter what I set it on, no matter how much I tested it, the SAX2 display configuration was locked on 800 x 600 @ 47 KHz.  

Now I'm no Linux newbie. I knew I needed a driver, and the system obviously knew I needed a driver because it wouldn't let me set beyond the defaults. So why the hell couldn't it tell me? (Note to SUSE Helpdesk: you're going to get a lot of calls about this so you might like to set up a pre-recorded message....)

The installation notes mentioned an additional step for installing XGL. Knowing this would add the needed ATI graphics driver, I followed them. Or tried to. Selecting Novell Customer Configuration from YaST's Software menu produced this gloomy warning...

...which, after a minute or so, turned into a "Couldn't connect to host" message. Novell assured me this was because I was looking at SLED prior to release and that the servers were still being configured. Fair enough. Next day the connection worked just fine and I was finally graphically satisfied.

One natty nicety was plugging and unplugging a network cable. The machine automatically switched between wireless and wired connection, preferring the latter if it was available. And the range of wireless reception was impressive too. I discovered a couple of wireless LANs near my office that I didn't know existed.

Not so nice was the battery/mains power switching. It worked on Novell's installation but not my own. Or rather, it worked after a fashion.

The status indicator warned me the battery was getting low so I plugged it into the mains. The indicator switched to show it was charging. 

I unplugged it again. It continued to show the battery was charging. I logged out of KDE and started Gnome. Still charging...

Concluding that the SLED team had either mastered the art of wireless charges or that there was a fault, I left the machine running. The result – what one might call the Black Screen of Extinction – unfortunately proved it was the latter.

There were other problems too. Dropping an audio CD into Gnome played it just fine. Under KDE I had two player choices, KsCD or Kaffeine; neither worked. The former played to all intents and purposes but just forgot to actually output any sound while the latter threw up its hands muttering something about missing codecs.

DVD movies fared even worse. Gnome simply treated them like file systems while KDE's Kaffeine at least recognised their potential but continued to lose its lunch. My expectation that a commercial release would at least include the necessary codecs was dashed by my Novell minders. If you want those extras you've still got to go to Packman.

Conclusion

I really wanted to enthuse about SLED 10 – there's a lot to enthuse about – but in the end it left the desktop user in me a little disappointed. Not, I hasten to add, from lack of features or functionality, but if I've got the best damn desktop of the market, I want a little bling too. SLED's default is like having a Ferrari/Humvee cross; a high-performance, immensely capable, comfortable, rugged work-horse that some idiot has stuck in the body of a Toyota Starlet. Instead of an interface that makes people go "Wow! What's that? Can I have a try?" Novell have managed to produce one that'll put shoulder jockeys to sleep. Maybe that's what corporate stiffs want, but it won't draw new fans to Linux, and it's not what the opposition are producing.

My installation troubles also left me leery. I was hoping for a DVD that I could throw at any non-Linux using techy and leave them to it. Like Linux through the ages, this is almost there but not quite. And to leave out the CD and DVD codecs – without even the option of adding them through official Novell channels – is just plain stupid.

The price though is fantastic. An utterly complete desktop system with all these features, back-office connectivity and support for US$50 is stunning. But it leads me to another beef; lack of local resellers. That means that small New Zealand businesses – the ones that make up most of our business economy and the ones that stand to gain most from SLED's security, robustness and ROI – are unlikely to learn of it.

(And while I'm on the subject, notice to Americans: NEW ZEALAND IS NOT PART OF AUSTRALIA! Sorry for the shouting but according to this link – Novell Resellers and Distributors in New Zealand – you'll find NZ agents in Melbourne, Croydon, Sydney, Asquith...)

Read more about SLED's features here (PDF file).

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop10 is available by eLicense here. A one-year, one-device subscription costs US$50. Three years costs US$125.