Just wondering what kind of experiances people have had with the switch to Novell.

I just threw their distro (essentually a re-vamped suse 9.2) on my averatec laptop, and am actually pretty pleased with it, especially the boot times. It shaved about 20 seconds off my boot time (compared to suse 9.1).


2 complaints:
1: the main menu does not give users the ability to shutdown a machine, it has to be done in the shell.
2: there is no "greeter" to unlock the screen after being "locked" so it refuses to lock the screen. I have searched the packages and can't find any such app.


Any other opinions on the change?
good... bad...


Any new problems?

Ok..

First, Novell Linux Desktop != SUSE Linux Pro

They are SEPARATE and both VIABLE products.

Novell Linux Desktop is (expensive) and designed for corporate networks. It is closer to a SUSE Linux Desktop (not Professional) in what it contains. It is more SLES9 based than SUSE 9.2 based (so it's more like SUSE 9.1 if you just have to compare).

With that said, the ability for just any old user to shutdown a 24x7 enterprise level OS is considered a security violation. This is the default with NLD, but can easily be changed to be less secure (ala SUSE 9.2 style).

I can't say for sure what is happening on #2... there are some bugs with the screen locking process in general though.

When I lock the screen, as in turning on the laptop after suspending to disk, the screen is blank. Moving the mouse brings up a dialog to unlock the screen. Is that what you refer to?

cj- In June Novell Linux Desktop didn't have a price yet. Bought it awhile ago (November) and it was well below the 100 dollar mark for 2 licenses and media
traetox- to shutdown Novell Linux Desktop in Gnome use the System Tab and then Logout, choose the Shutdown option, and down it goes. in Kde same thing choose logout and then the shutdown option.