As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged competitive concerns about Linux on the desktop in a letter to customers last week, the software giant is facing its most serious challenge to date on the desktop with the pending release of corporate enterprise Linux desktops from SuSE, Ximian, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems.
At the Enterprise Linux Forum last week in Santa Clara, Calif., SuSE demonstrated its first enterprise corporate desktop designed for large IT infrastructures. SuSE Linux Desktop costs $598 for a five-user license and comes with a five-year maintenance contract, said Holger Dyroff, general manager of Americas at SuSE. It offers a corporate GUI and a choice of running Sun's StarOffice 6.0 or Microsoft Office and starts shipping today.
Meanwhile, Ximian also demonstrated at the forum its enhanced Ximian Desktop 2, expected to begin shipping today. The Linux GUI is based on the GNOME 2 platform and incorporates an edition of OpenOffice.org that features support for Microsoft Office file-compatible documents.
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