One of the first news from CeBIT comes from Novell. He revealed today their new Linux Desktop, who is a comprehensive, full-function dektop containing technology innovations and usability breakthroughs including enhanced power management, integrated desktop search, high-performance graphical interfaces and numerous application improvements based on open source innovation.
The price of the desktop hasn’t been disclosed yet, but Novell says that it costs only a fraction of the same model from Microsoft and it has the same features and technologies as the one from their competitors. The only difference it’s the SO, in Novell’s case it’s SuSe Linux.
“Although the momentum behind Linux continues to be strong, until today, general business users have not really been a part of the story,” said Gary Barnett, research director at Ovum. “With today’s introduction of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, Novell is keeping a promise it made last year, to invest in delivering a desktop that is designed for the business user, rather than for experienced Linux users. Novell deserves credit for addressing the issue of usability head-on, by delivering a desktop that really can meet the needs of the basic knowledge worker.”
“With Novell Linux Desktop 9, Novell delivered an outstanding solution for transactional and fixed-function desktops,” said Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Novell. “With its successor, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, we are now positioned to serve the sweet spot of the market, the general office worker. This desktop is already generating great interest in businesses of all sizes, and it represents a tremendous new opportunity for Novell.”
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the first fully supported enterprise desktop to deliver OpenOffice.org 2.0, the leading open source office suite. OpenOffice includes a powerful spreadsheet program, business presentations tool and word processor. It means it has everything you need for a desktop. And because it supports OpenDocument format, which is a public standard, it means it can be viewed and modified in any OpenDocument application.
More, it is designed to work with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange. Perfect. What more do you need for a desktop?
Nat Friedman, vice president of Linux desktop engineering for Novell, said, “Every IT administrator in the world should be eager to evaluate the improvements and functionality in this Linux desktop, and the cost savings that come with it. When we started work on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, we didn’t want to build the best Linux desktop for business, we wanted to build the best desktop for business, period. By listening to users, we believe we have created a business desktop that leapfrogs the market.”
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop will be available in the summer of 2006.