Re: Anybody Tried Novell Desktop Yet?

From: David Wright (david_c_wright_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/09/04 

Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:23:14 +0100

Joerg Cassens wrote:

> David Wright wrote:
>> B Gruff wrote:
>>> Does this mean that, in addition to security updates (like Pro/YOU)
>>> you also (if you subscribe) get application upgrades to newer
>>> versions?
>>> e.g. It comes with Firefox 0.9 (say). Would one automatically have
>>> Firefox upgraded to 1.0 etc as it becomes available, unlike Pro/YOU?
>>
>> No, it means if you don't fork out the $50 for the support licence, you
>> don't get any updates - security, new versions or anything. This is where
>> it differs. It is aimed at corporates, who will pay out for the support
>> licence per desktop per year.
> I'd like to add some thoughts to that topic.
>
> As for new versions of a SW, the reasoning for not providing newer
> versions of a program e.g. via YOU is explained very well in this entry in
> the unofficial SUSE faq http://susefaq.sourceforge.net/faq/software.html
 
Yep, I agree with you, sorry if I wasn't clear in my post on that front. The
point I was trying to get across Bill, was that it doesn't come with any
patching ability without the licence - whether it be security packages or
upgrades.

> I think it is highly unlikely that Novell is going to offer version
> upgrades for NLD as a default. And if I were to deploy a large number of
> desktops in a corporate environment (which is the target market), I would
> highly object such a policy. Backport security patches, but don't upgrade.

You are, I think, correct, in that NLD will not offer package upgrades
during the lifetime of the product through an equivalent of YOU. It is
there to provide a long term, stable environment for the corporate desktop.
Which is a place where users are not normally allowed to install their own
software or upgrade packages themselves; it is all done in a controlled
release manner centrally.

Having worked at companies where they were considering rolling out Windows
95 SP1 when Windows 2000 was being released, some of them can take it to
extremes; there is a difference between a controlled release and being
dangerously out of date! ;-)

> Besides that, SUSE *does* do a good job in proving *unsupported* upgrades
> for SUSE Linux Pro (and Personal). Just take a look at the /projects and
> (especially) /suse/<arch>/supplementary directories on your favorite
> mirror. These packages are usually of very high quality.

Agreed. With SuSE Linux Professional, there is an official, supported update
path for those that want a stable and supportable environment, and then
there are the plethora of unsupported additional packages and upgrades for
the more adventurous. It tries to offer the best of both worlds, and
succeeds to a reasonable degree - just many users forget when they start
using unsupported packages, there is no guarantee that they will work with
their installation.

> If you want to get a nice, integrated update/upgrade tool, I recommend
> taking a look at http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/
>
> apt-get is a very powerful, flexible, and highly configurable tool which
> makes software install management quite comfortable. I generally prefer
> apt-get to YaST/YOU as well as red carpet (to be fair to red carpet, I
> should give newer versions a try since my experiences date back a while).

Yep, I have been using it since installing 9.1, although "it"* caused a mess
of my Gnome installation, which still doesn't log on properly, displaying
all sorts of error dialogs - but as I rarely use Gnome, it isn't a big
issue.

* I did an apt-get distro-upgrade, but a couple of the packages gave the
system indigestion and Gnome hasn't worked since, this is more my fault for
making huge changes, rather than apt's for letting me do it ;-)

> From the questions you have asked, Bill, I think that SUSE Pro plus
> apt-get suits your needs better than NLD.
>
> -Jörg

Agreed. As a home or small business user, SLP is a much better choice. If he
is planning on rolling out 500+ desktops on the other hand...

Dave

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