I installed the beta of SLED 10 on a Fujitsu LifeBook P5010 notebook, my stock torture test for new desktop Linux distributions. The P5010's Intel-based hardware is standard enough to warrant support, yet funky enough that it throws Linux a few curves. No Linux install on this machine has ever passed with flying colors -- until now, that is.

In the past, Linux distributions have always needed a special patch to support the full resolution of the P5010's wide-aspect LCD screen. Not SLED; it accepted my custom screen resolution without complaint and booted to full widescreen glory.

Wireless networking was similarly painless. After I had selected my access point from a convenient GUI menu, SLED prompted me for my network passphrase and I was online, my connection secured with full WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) encryption.

SLED's Gnome desktop environment offered easy plug-and-play access to removable media. New volumes appear and disappear on the desktop as they are connected and removed, just as users expect from Windows or Mac OS systems.

The desktop environment itself is clean, attractive, and free of clutter. Novell claims to have done extensive user testing to refine SLED's UI, and it shows. This is not your average, stock Gnome system.