eWEEK Labs Examines SLED 11, the Microsoft-Friendly Linux

In SLED 11, the Evolution mail client gains support for importing messages stored in Microsoft’s .pst file format. This feature worked for me without a hitch.

SLED 11’s mail client also gains support for Microsoft’s proprietary MAPI (Messaging API) protocol for communicating with Outlook Exchange. Unlike my experience with the .pst support, I haven’t yet managed to get our Exchange server talking to Evolution.

Through Novell-Microsoft collaboration around Mono, the open-source implementation of .NET, the companies have made available WMV codecs for use on Linux—including on non-Novell Linux systems.

Moonlight, the Mono equivalent of Silverlight Version 1, broadens access to certain rich Web content. If Silverlight becomes more widely deployed, this could come in handy.

Novell’s version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 includes improved support for Microsoft Office macros.

As a subscription-based product, SLED 11 must be activated to access bug-fix and security patches.

SLED 11 makes use of the multidistribution PackageKit project to check for available updates.

One of the best things about PackageKit is its integration with PolicyKit, another multidistribution framework for bringing finer-grained system privilege management to Linux.

In this picture, taken from Novell’s SLES 11, PolicyKit settings clash with the GNOME desktop’s desire to automount removable media.

For SLED and SLES 11, Novell is introducing the concept of additional support modules for functions such as server application hosting via Mono. These development packages appear to fall outside the terms of my evaluation SLED subscription.