Novell Says SLED Is Better Than Windows Vista

Published: January 30, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Novell may have inked a landmark deal with rival Microsoft concerning the distribution of Linux by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean Novell is not competing with Microsoft. It also doesn't necessarily mean that Novell is much of a rival to Microsoft, particularly on the desktop, when you look at installed base and revenue. But with the launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 this week, there is not going to be another opportunity to take some market share like this for at least another five years.

So Novell has been ratcheting up a marketing campaign to promote its SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, or SLED 10, variant of the Linux platform, aimed specifically at Windows and Office users in business and at home. In this case, the marketing campaign consists of a few Web pages--one of them cleverly designed to emulate the new Vista blues on the Microsoft site--an offer to let people try SLED 10 for 60 days for free (including the tweaked version of the OpenOffice 2.0 suite), and a whitepaper that compares the economics of Vista to SLED 10.

As a cursory review of Novell's financials will show, for the past 15 years, the company has not had the kind of budget to put together a shindig like Microsoft did yesterday at the first phase of the Windows Vista launch in New York City. (See Gates, Ballmer Wow NYC with Vista Windows, Office 2007 Shindig for our coverage on that event.) So Novell has to make-do with the numbers, and hope that a percentage of consumers and businesses, who are facing making a substantial investment in new hardware to support Vista and Office 2007. With more than 800 million PCs in the world running Windows and not everyone willing or able to move to Vista, even a small piece of that pie would be a huge increase in Linux on the desktop.

Of course, the Novell whitepaper is using data from July 2006 that says it is comparing Vista costs to SLED 10, but is estimating those costs to customers--at the street level--from what real end users pay to have a stack of Windows XP software. In that analysis--which is somewhat dubious, and given that Vista is now out there, should be updated--Novell says that a license to Vista is expected to sell for $299 with $86 a year for maintenance, yielding a three-year cost of $557. (These are not upgrade prices, which a lot of users will pay, or OEM prices, which will be in effect on new PCs and which are also less costly.) By comparison, SLED has a $50 initial subscription fee and an annual maintenance fee of $50. If customers buy a three-year maintenance contract for SLED 10, the total cost is $125. That's a factor of 4.5 more software and support fees for Windows Vista/Windows XP compared to SLED 10.

Then, Novell adds in the cost of Office 2007, which Novell says will average $400 to $500 per user (again, this is not the OEM or upgrade price, but the single unit, whole license price). SLED 10 comes bundled with OpenOffice 2.0, which Novell has tweaked to support popular Visual Basic macros and which the company says provides 90 percent of the functionality of the Office.

Other Vista features that Microsoft is touting as important to consumers and businesses are also added into SLED 10, says Novell's whitepaper. Both sets of applications were designed and tested with real users, and tweaked based on their substantial feedback. (Although Microsoft wins hands down on the number of beta testers, at 5 million.) Both have integrated search capabilities--Beagle on SLED 10, Integrated Search on Vista--and both have upgraded browsers--Firefox 1.505 and Internet Explorer 7.0, respectively. SLED 10's multimedia support stacks up well, with RealNetworks's RealPlayer, Adobe's Macromedia Flash Player, the Helix Banshee player, and the F-Spot photo management program. Microsoft stacks up the Windows Media Player 10, Photo Editor, Movie Maker, and RealPlayer against this. SLED 10 has some 3D effects on the desktop with support for XgL and some rotating cubes as a new interface, and Microsoft has what is arguably a slicker 3D interface called Aero Glass. Vista has Outlook Express for an email client, and SLED 10 has Novell's own Evolution client and the Tomboy client.

When you add it all up, a Vista/Office 2007 stack will cost $700 to $800 per user, compared to $125 per user for SLED 10/OpenOffice 2.0 over a three-year term. And they can compete, at least on the data sheets, more or less feature for feature.

Such feeds, speeds, and pricing comparisons are how any two products are marketed--whether inside the IT business or not. But the unquantified number lurking in these comparisons is this: What is the economic cost, in time and discomfort, of moving to a new platform? For all the comparisons, and for all the work that various Linux vendors and projects have done to make Linux more like Windows, it is still, nonetheless, not Windows. It is a very different animal, and a lot of Web-based applications (many of which we use at home and at work) are not supported in Linux because ActiveX controls don't run in Firefox on Linux.

This is why last summer my son, Henry, said to me in whiny frustration that "Linux sucks, Dad." He was 4 at the time, and I had a dual-boot Windows XP and SUSE Linux 9.2 Professional laptop that he often used. But Henry had a point when he said "Linux sucks." If he can't play games on CartoonNetwork, what is the point of having a computer? Of course, Hank got into the guts of Windows at some point and completely trashed the set up, and I retaliated by installing SLED 10 as the sole operating machine on that Sony laptop. I have thereby made it unattractive to him--although he does like many of the Linux games. And in concept, he finds the idea of making Linux-based games very appealing, and is looking forward to the whole open source movement in his future. But, in the meantime, he just wants to play his Windows-only math games and surf on NickJr and CartoonNetwork. I can't get into some applications I need for work because of ActiveX controls, too. So, in a way, I agree with Henry's assessment. Still, I am going to make an effort to learn SLED 10 and see what I can do with it--and what I can't.

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