In September 2004, Microsoft said it would pull WinFS (the Windows File System) from the Windows Vista release due later this year. WinFS is a next-generation storage subsystem that allows advanced data organization and management, while improving the storage and retrieval of files. WinFS will be released sometime after Vista ships, Microsoft officials have said.

While Novell officials have previously said the target audience for its Linux desktop was not all Windows customers, but rather groups like transactional workers, special-purpose roles and replacements for high-end Unix workstations, Mancusi-Ungaro said the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 "dramatically" changes that.

In Novell's favor is the fact that the SUSE desktop will be out and in the market long before Windows Vista is released. It also has integrated search, good usability and rich technology solutions like its F-Spot photo-management tool, which will have more functionality than the photo-management tool in Windows, Mancusi-Ungaro said.

The SUSE Linux Desktop 10, with Novell's edition of OpenOffice.org, will also have a macro interpreter that is conversant with the Visual Basic macros in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheets, while the pivot table in OpenOffice.org would have the DataPilot function and a fully functioning import module.
"So, now when you open up a spreadsheet in OpenOffice.org 2.0 and it has a pivot table in it, that table is translated into the OpenOffice DataPilot and it opens, it reads and it runs. Those are two big barriers we have overcome, along with a lot more work in file fidelity between the Microsoft formats and the Open formats, so that reading and writing files back and forth is really much better now," Mancusi-Ungaro said.

On the collaboration front, the new desktop continues to support Novell's GroupWise and has an open-source connector in its Evolution client that supports Exchange.
Also, IBM has announced that the plug-in to its Workplace client technology would allow e-mail, calendaring and notes access to users who use Firefox, he said.

The SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 will also continue to support both the KDE and Gnome graphical desktop environments, but Gnome will remain the default. The SUSE desktop will also work with existing and some legacy hardware, while Windows Vista will probably require a hardware upgrade as well, he said.