| Linspire to wrestle Red Hat, Novell for enterprise desktops |
Oct. 04, 2005
Linspire will release its first enterprise desktop product, "Linspire Professional," by the end of this year, CTO Tom Welch told DesktopLinux.com Tuesday. The product is currently being tested at the State of Indiana's Access program, Welch said.
Linspire Professional, aimed at challenging the enterprise desktop Linux market leadership of Red Hat and Novell SUSE, will not actually be a new version of the company's user-friendly Linux distribution. Instead, it will offer enhanced, enterprise-oriented features relating to the use of Linspire's popular CNR (Click 'n' Run) software delivery subscription technology.
CNR normally enables end-users to locate and download both open source and proprietary desktop Linux applications, as well as Linspire OS security updates. The Linspire Professional version of CNR will enable administrators to lock systems down and manage them from a remote location.
Asked how else Linspire Professional distinguishes itself from other distributions, Welch said: "There are many ease-of-use issues that are almost imperceptible, but very significant. For example, we work very hard to ensure mimetypes are all handled properly (office, media types, etc.). We make sure all installed packages conform to a common menu system. We unify as much as possible the printing systems (lpr vs. cups).
"We add multimedia tutorials that are targeted to a non-Linux person," Welch continued. "We enforce a common document storage location. We focus on business productivity type add-ons such as MailMinder, Hot Words, and Lassist. Those are some of the things a user would see."
"From the IT manager's side, however, Linspire Enterprise will have a very rich set of tools to manage deployments of new packages, updates and patches over an entire enterprise all through an easy-to-use web interface," Welch added.
Welch said the main business reason for enterprises or SMBs (small and medium businesses) to buy this version, as opposed to a regular Linspire distro, is that the "managed mode" offered with Linspire Professional is much more desirable for an IT manager.
"With a regular Linspire distro, each user is in charge of updating and installing applications on his/her machine," Welch explained. "This quickly becomes unmanageable in a business environment. Enterprises and SMBs will like the fact that they can 'lock down' machines and centrally administer them. They can push updates, install new packages, remove packages -- all remotely."
Another benefit, Welch said, is that enterprises and SMBs will gain the ability to manage their licenses.
"For example, they can see how many VirusSafe licenses they have and when their subscriptions end. This licensing monitor can track time based licenses (such as virus safe) as well as product-based licenses (such as Star Office)," Welch said.
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