eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Clicking on the Hard Drive button in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10s new main menu (foreground) brings up GNOMEs System Monitor, complete with a new tab (background) inspired by Windows System Properties dialog.

SLED 10 sports a Beagle desktop search window integrated into the desktops main menu. Here, eWEEK Labs searched for SLEDs application for installing new software.

The search for SLEDs software installer that wed kicked off from the systems menu-integrated Beagle search box led us to four software installation-related applications–in addition to some other possibly relevant documents on our system.

SLED ships with a simple software installer, in addtion to the classic Yast software install tool. We could authorize a non-admin user to install packages and updates from our configured repositories, without future admin invervention–a good idea for opt

We were suprised to find that SLEDs software repositories did not carry Mozilla Thunderbird, which, as a Windows/Linux/OS X-compatible mail client, fits in well with Novells heterogeneous customer environments. Companies can fetch these and other packag

SLEDs program menu is an addition other GNOME distros would do well to imitate/replicate. We could scroll through a menu of applications installed on our system, drill down by category or search by keyword.

SLEDs software update applet sat in the task bar and alerted us of available updates. Security patches came marked by a yellow shield–another design element that Windows users should recognize.

When we first launched SLEDs XGL Desktop Effects config utility, the tool not only told us wed need new graphics drivers but also offered to launch the software installer to fetch them.

After some initial trouble getting our SLED client to reach a test Windows Server 2003 domain in our lab, we used this Yast dialog to join the domain.