Report from Introducing Suse Linux Enterprise in Jakarta

I was visiting Introducing Suse Linux Enterprise 10 Seminar on Wednesday, 7th March 2007 in Jakarta and hoping that I can see and learn new features from Suse Linux. The Agenda in the invitation card is really promising, but the time frame is to tight, start from 9:00 AM to 01:00 PM with a lot of topics to discuss. It's weird, but because I'm a big fan of Linux (I use Open Suse at home), so I decided to go.

The seminar delayed almost an hour, just because (I think) the projector didn't work. The seminar start an hour later after the projector was replaced with another one.

Now, the speaker (from Malaysia), maybe because of the delay, start to jump in live demo about High Availability Data Center with Xen and Heartbeat. The speaker doesn't even start with a presentation about it. He talk about if one server having a problem, and the other one will take over and also try to restart to server which in problem (if possible). Most of us never heard of Xen and Heartbeat, so jumping to the live demo is really confusing.

Then he start talk about new topic, Thin Client. This is good topic, and he explain a little beat slower, so most of us can understand, at least I can. Thin clients works similar like Windows Terminal Server, where we can use stocks of old pc to do simple task. The thin client doesn't even need a hard disk to boot, it boot directly from the network, and can be use for simple task like data entry.

The final topic is about SLED (Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop), but in this session he mostly talk about the new 3D desktop (xgl) that I think is direct competitor with Windows Vista 3D. After I see the demonstration, I think that the xgl is far more better than Windows Vista. While not that hardware hungry like Windows Vista, it can produce good and smooth 3D graphics desktop. I'm not sure how improvement in graphical user interface like 3D desktop can help you to enhance productivity, but it's a nice touch.

He also talk about the new Open Office 2.0 that can run VBScript macro. He also give us a demonstration that Calc (similiar with Ms Excel) can run Ms Excel file with macro, and it running fine. If this true, than we really can migrate from Ms Windows to Linux. I have to try this with my own stocks of macro.

One of the best thing about MS Office is their Ms Excel, and the best thing about Ms Excel is their macro.

Personally, I have a lot of macro to help my job, mostly for reporting to my boss. Every month giving the same report, macro is a big help. Without macro, I will spend hours just to prepare a report. With macro, I can finish it less than 15 minutes. If Open Office 2.0 really can understand and run windows macro, at least 80% of it, its really a big help. It will give people more strong point to migrate from Ms Windows to Linux.

The good thing about Suse Linux compare with Red Hat that Suse Linux only have two versions of Linux, Desktop (client) and Server. That's it.
While Redhat have many versions of Linux, there are clients, server, advance server... I lost count. But every linux is good, the different is the support. If you buying linux, make sure that you have a good support.

I believe linux is the future.