SuSE 9.3 is the most polished and easy to use release from SuSE. It goes a long way in dispelling the notion that Linux is not ready for the desktop. It is a comprehensive release with enhanced hardware detection and configuration and an exhaustive suite of available applications.
Kongratulations for having found your way to SUSE and KDE. KDE the leading Desktop solution for Open Source.
SUSE is really good but as long as this happens
The system rebooted with a greenish bootsplash theme after the download and install. The startup went fine till it was time to fire up X, the screen flickered a few times and kicked me back to the text console. I logged in as root and tried to figure out the reason for the strange and obnoxious behaviour. While debugging, I remembered that the installation of the libexpat library was skipped. I still cant call it a newbie distro..
No newbie can around this problem himself…Of Course he may register on a forum and ask this question and get a complicated workarounds [Resorting to terminal commands is complex enuf for newbies]…but then that kills the effectiveness of the *painless* installer.
Honestly, I suspect this was a once off: I’ve installed SuSE 6.0, 8.2 and 9.1 and I’ve always had no troubles getting X to start (though back in the 6.0 days YaST was text-mode only)
It’s worth bearing in mind that fixing driver issues with Windows is no walk in the park either, how many users know to press F8 when the computer starts to get into “Safe Mode”, or to use the device manager to install, uninstall or revert drivers.
The Linux console may be more complicated, but it’s not significantly so. In fact, once you know the console, it is easier to fix serious driver failures in Linux than in Windows. The reason being all drivers come pre-installed with Linux systems so you don’t have to root around for CDs or try to find the driver download page on the manufacturers website.
While my range of experience is limited, I imagine this benefit of Linux also translates to other Unix based operating systems like FreeBSD, although with non-Linux Unix-based operating systems you’re more likely to find that a piece of hardware is completely unsupported.
i would have to agree with you i have always been impress with the ability of linux fan to say that a release is ready for desktop use by the general public because of a nice desktop and full suite of application ,dont get me wrong i think linux is wonderfull but if i look at my mom or my father in law who allready find it complicated to work around the command less window xp interface i cant imagine them falling in front of a colorless black and white command window and having to fix there problem true it untill the day where linux will acquire the ease of use for the general public of windows ,yes you eard me good, i do not think it will make it on the desktop market ,i mean if you want to make something better then the other you have to atleast make it as good or better then the other and for now i doubt that its better as for as good well its getting there but its not there yet
That’s what I was thinking too. But I’m going to guess it had something to do with the ftp install. I’d never recommend Suse over ftp; always get the 5 discs: Course I’ve never recommended Suse because of this buggy behaviour.
Anyway, I don’t think skipping expat is a common behaviour. But the install should have bombed out, or told him to kill it and restart it when that happened (it may have too).
Anyway, not a very good review. Far too short.
the only SuSE version ( I use suse since 7.0) who freezes after instalation on my system!
First off, I am not bashing suse. I honetly don’t understand what people see in rpm based dists. My experience over the years has shown me time and time again that these dists tend to be bloated, messy and limiting in some respects. Every so often when there are pretty big changes over time to these ‘major’ dists, I download them and give them another fair try. I honestly want them to prove me wrong, to show me things have changed. Things have not changed much on that level. I am dissapointed time and time again. As far as major dists go there are pretty much a few original. Dists based off of Redhat, Debian and Slackware. Out of the three, I find it hard to understand how anyone can prefer an RPM based dist over the superior makings of a Debian system. Even Slackwares simple package managment and clean base is superior. Do people flock to these RPM based dists because of the small limited graphical tools usually supplied by the dist? Or is it the usually highly graphical installation programs? Is that what it is all about? Is ths why people choose an inferior dist? Maybe they just don’t know that there is truly better options out there.
PS: I am not bashing suse. no flames.
Honestly, I don’t understand the big difference between ‘RPM based distros’ and ‘APT based distros’. I new to using yum and all that, but I have found it very simple to use with YUM extender, and even from the commandline. I don’t see how an apt-based system can be any simpler than an rpm-based system. Is it because of the highly graphical (whatever that means) tools used to interface with the package management system? What makes an apt-based distro so superior to a rpm-based system?
What makes an apt-based distro so superior to a rpm-based system?
It’s dpkg vs. rpm.
Or apt vs. yum vs. yast vs. urpmi vs. whatever else is out there.
Thanks for correcting me and for pointing out some more package-management tools.
To restate the question:
What makes a dpkg-based distro so superior to a rpm-based distro?
And will you enlighten us in what way Debian’s system (dpkg) is so “superior” to rpm?
And why the eff should anyone care about the package format when users install software with tools like yast, urpmi or apt which automatically solve dependencies and download and install packages from both local and remote sources.
‘First off, I am not bashing suse.’
You are bashing all rpm based distros. And SuSe is one of these.
‘ I honetly don’t understand what people see in rpm based dists.’
Well, in SuSe many people see most polished distro with great hardware and etc. support.
‘My experience over the years has shown me time and time again that these dists tend to be bloated, messy and limiting in some respects.’
Can you explain this FUD, please. How come that SuSe is bloated, messy and limited?
‘Every so often when there are pretty big changes over time to these ‘major’ dists, I download them and give them another fair try. I honestly want them to prove me wrong, to show me things have changed. Things have not changed much on that level. I am dissapointed time and time again. As far as major dists go there are pretty much a few original.’
What kind of changes are you talking about. Hardware detection? Configuration tools? Graphical user interfaces? XFree & Xorg? You are either blind or don’t understand anything. There has been huge changes in all distros in the past 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years. And no matter if distro is RPM or Deb based. RPM has nothing to do with improvements made in all distros. RPM is, for your information, if you have not figured that out, just a way of installing packages.
And which distro is in your opinion original? They all ship with KDE 3.4 and Gnome 2xx, and most of them with Xorg 6.8.xx. What kind of originality do you expect? What are you talking about.
‘Out of the three, I find it hard to understand how anyone can prefer an RPM based dist over the superior makings of a Debian system.’
You can do some research and googling before spreading more FUD, and than maybe you will understand why some hard working and intelligent people chose RPM for package management.
‘Do people flock to these RPM based dists because of the small limited graphical tools usually supplied by the dist?’
Small and limited? Have you ever heard about Yast and Sax?
Dear friend, people choose SuSe exactly because it is ‘supplied’ with Yast and Sax. And because it’s stability, great support etc.
‘Or is it the usually highly graphical installation programs? Is that what it is all about?’
Yes it is. That is what is all about. Can’t you understand that people don’t have time to be the slaves of the operating system. People want to be productive, and not to spend days in figuring out how to get X, or ethernet card etc. to work. Get a life.
‘Is this why people choose an inferior dist? Maybe they just don’t know that there is truly better options out there.’
Again, do some research and than you will find out that many Linux developers use SuSE, and that many of them are employed by Novell (SuSe). Tell them that SuSe is inferior distro. LOL. You must be 12 years old.
FUD FUD FUD FUD… god, please, he was just voicing an opinion and asking for other points of views. If I hear FUD one more time I’m going to scream.
‘Again, do some research and than you will find out that many Linux developers use SuSE, and that many of them are employed by Novell (SuSe). Tell them that SuSe is inferior distro. LOL. You must be 12 years old.’
You should treat people with some repect. By the way… many people involved with Novell projects such as Mono use Debian too… It’s really not surprising that Novell employees use SuSe, as it’s not surprising that apple employees use OSX.
RPM its a good tool to build a distro, but i think it’s not so good to distrubute software because the dependencies problems. Maybe a solution like autopackage is better for that, even better that deb packages and apt.
> RPM its a good tool to build a distro,
> but i think it’s not so good to distrubute
> software because the dependencies problems.
If
> RPM its a good tool to build a distro,
> but i think it’s not so good to distrubute
> software because the dependencies problems.
If program “abc” depends on “libxyz.so.0”, it depends on it, period! Not even something like the very much hyped and advertised autopackage can change that.
I think that the autopackage authors and advertisers have only the best in mind, but autopackage seems to be _very_ quick and dirty. Recently I learned that it tracks dependencies by grepping /etc/ld.so.cache.
Wow, that’s extremely clever. And what if I uninstall a library and autopackage doesn’t warn me because it can’t? Nothing, it leaves the dependencies broken. A very nice technology.
A little bit less autopackage advertisement, thanks.
I must say that I myself am also impressed by SuSE 9.3. I installed it on my Ubuntu box a few weeks ago, because it got so many enthusiastic reviews.
Now, we’re a few weeks later and I’m still running it, haven’t even booted back into Ubuntu yet. What I specifically like about SuSE over Ubuntu is YAST. It makes up for the fact that SuSE is RPM based.
Definitely recommended!
Out of the three, I find it hard to understand how anyone can prefer an RPM based dist over the superior makings of a Debian system.
I don’t really care if a distro is .deb,,rpm or whatever based as long as most of the apps on my wishlist are supported with the latest stable version.I even couldn’t care less if have to compile everything from source if that would result in a even more stable and allround system.
I have tried them all,mandriva(8.2–10.2),SuSE(7.0–9.3),debian,FreeBSD,OpenBSD,OpenSola ris,Gentoo,LFS,Slackware,Mepis etc..
None is as polished as SuSE 9.3 is and enables you to be stable productive in such a short time period.I hate installing while it’s so trivial and boring.There’s nothing cool about editing config files or spending an enormous amount of time getting everything up and running.All i want is having everything ready in the shortest amount possible.Besides it’s the only distro that comes boxed with two DVD9’s and addresses both x86 and x86_64.Case closed.
I agree with you entirely, this is exactly why I switched over to SUSE on my laptop. It was beautiful how everything is so cleanly put together.
I switched from Fedora Core(using KDE) to SUSE because I wanted a distribution revolving around KDE that tried to be as complete and clean as possible.
I also could care less which package format my software is in since I’ve used about every distribution out there for at least a few months and have never had any problems with RPM, DEB, TGZ, etc that wasn’t caused by my own over-zealous need to have the latest and greatest uncertified bleeding edge package or repository.
I hope to write up something objective about my transition in the next couple weeks so I can share my experience with others.
SuSE is about as similar to linux as RedHat is to BSD. Throw just about anything away you read about linux on http://www.tldp.org unless it claims to support SuSE. Or unless you can read german on the SuSE site. It is nice that they INCLUDE a yp service by default. But still does not work by default. Since it is so great you can hammer that one out by yourself. Hopefully Novell brings them closer to mainstream. They are doing well so far.
Bloated? That is the best the other comments come to? Linux (in general, take FC4) is the fastest evolving OS in the world, ever. BTW, you dont need X for a slim router to work if you are worried about being bloated.
In my experiances with SuSE it is better to install it with the default settings and add other stuff later instead of customising it at install time. The first time I installed SuSE 9.2 I customised it alot, and it broke it, X wouldn’t start and when i finally got it to, my other partitions wouldn’t mount (i got them to work after editing fstab, but it was annoying having to).
I installed it again a few weeks later and used the defaults it worked perfectly, and detected everything (except my winmodem, but i got it working easly)
So suse is one of the best i’ve used, i havent tried Fedora or Mandriva lately, but i used Red Hat and Mandrake at version 9.
I have used both debian and RPM distros and havent noticed much difference except that most pakages you download off websites will be in RPM
One of the best things about SuSE was built in MP3 support, and other propietry stuff, which i like, not having to download extra stuff to do basic things.
I really do, if only for the bleeding edge mono integration. But somehow, every time I install it, it manages to rub me the wrong way and I can’t quite pinpoint why.
well rpm and the tools that use it have came a looong way and now I would say they are very close to functionality
but apt was the first (that i know of) to check and update dependencies and use a lot of information to “decide” how to handle installation dependencies and so forth. Apt is also VERY flexible and fairly smart, using it with pinning and so forth, apt-cdrom, and so on. dpkg itself is a great tool as well… I still dont think anything beats apt when it comes to administration as well as flexability but as I said rpm/whatever is coming into its own and soon I think we will see that both are not only very similar but will probably become one seamless type system where you use whichever…
some of the problems with rpm use to be, dependencies! big time! install a crap load of packages on older rpm systems and watch the dependency errors roll and leave stuff totally broke that you will be lucky to recover from! I have broke stuff with apt but always been able to purge and get back to a clean system to try again. rpm/whatever use to not be as flexible and able to handle various sources and so forth. But one MAJOR problem with rpm was that redhat use to change the rpm tool itself and not be backward compatible so even if you had all the liraries you needed it still would let you install that older rpm package you had!
so can you rpm/whatever upgrade your whole system?
can you simulate upgrades to see what will happen? can you downgrade with rpm/whatever?
can you mix and match with rpm?
please someone correct all this fud i am spreading
so can you rpm/whatever upgrade your whole system?
I’ve done it with both smartpm and yum.
can you simulate upgrades to see what will happen?
I seem to recall both yum and smartpm running a test install before doing the real thing.
can you downgrade with rpm/whatever?
try the –oldversion switch
can you mix and match with rpm?
Sometimes. I could say the exact same thing about deb based distros.
as i said rpm/whatevertool gets better everyday, plenty of info contained in rpms to make use of and handle things better but it has taken time to get rpm up to where it should be…
So did you do this a year ago? three years ago? i have been doing all this with apt for years…
so can you go from say for example mandrak 9.2 to 10.1 using rpm? then if you dont like can you go back down to 9.2? can you mix some stuff from 9.2 with 10.1?
that is the functionality i am talking about!
how scriptable is rpm?
and there are tons of tools that go with apt/dpkg like deborphan to find packages that you no longer need, apt-cacher whichh is a great tool to use which basically downloads a needed apt package one time and then other machines on your network automatically get the package from that machine if it needs it instead of hitting the internet and does all this tranparently for the most part…. i could go on with my fud but as I said rpm is getting betetr everyday….
> so can you go from say for example
> mandrak 9.2 to 10.1 using rpm?
Yes.
> how scriptable is rpm?
Very much, it’s even programmable (rpmlib).
First, I am using SuSE and really like it. It’s a polished and very complete distro, and a KDE-centric one. There’s nothing wrong about that, simply because most customers want it this way.
But anyway, there are some things that are really annoying. SuSE replaced yelp by khelpcenter, even in GNOME. SuSE replaced gnomesu by kdesu, even in GNOME. The effect is that there are many actions in GNOME that take forever because, let’s face it, KDE starts up incredibly slowly.
KDE’s centralised architecture means that nearly the whole desktop needs to be loaded in order to start a single small application. Nobody notices it inside of KDE, but it’s extremely annoying in GNOME.
I don’t even understand why they did that. gnome-help is usually a symlink to yelp, but SuSE replaced it by a perl script that does some odd things and then calls khelpcenter. Why didn’t they add a grep on the output of ps in order to find out if gnome-session is running and in that case use yelp?
I know that it’s easy to restore the original symlink to yelp, but I’d prefer if SuSE had used a better solution by default. And it’s quite interesting who did this change: According to the changelog of the gnome-vfs2 package, it was someone @novell.com, i.e. ex-Ximian, and not @suse.de.
> so can you rpm/whatever upgrade your whole system?
Yes.
> can you simulate upgrades to see what will happen?
Yes.
> can you downgrade with rpm/whatever?
Yes.
> can you mix and match with rpm?
Yes.
> please someone correct all this fud i am spreading
Read “man rpm” on an rpm based distro.
Sorry, it’s obvious that you never bothered to find information.
I use windows most of the time but, i think if i go back
to linux it will be SUSE, i really don’t like taking time
to configure this and to configure that. yeah i hear the hype about ubuntu, it will not even install on my main
computer. all my computers are old
mostly windows boxes,it is a hobby– and for me after slack, mandrake,
redhat, fedora, etc… SUSE is by far the best if you
want to use linux. like i said windows now, SUSE soon.
p/s YAST & sax are the best tools out there in the linux
world
How do you pronouce it?
is it SuSE as in Caboose
or
SuSE as in Su-say
or
SuSE as in Sus-Ah
Does anyone know for sure?
I’ve heard people pronounce it as both suzee/suzy and sousa/souza. I think native english speakers favour the former, germans the latter, however I’m not sure which is ‘correct’ (although being originally german it should be the german way by definition).
I seem to remember (but I’m too lazy to check) that the pronunciation changed when the spelling changed from SuSE to SUSE.
n/t
> so can you go from say for example
> mandrak 9.2 to 10.1 using rpm?
Yes.
How do you do this? i would like to try it out…
SuSE is a very polished and nice distro. Unfortunately, I found that it is extremely slow on P4 computers, compared to similar installations of other distros on the same computers. If anyone out here noticed such slowness ?
started with SUSE 9.1 Pro.
now using SUSE 9.3 Pro.
great prodcut.
it’s MY desktop OS
https://secure-www.novell.com/community/linux/techkit_order_form.php]https://secure-www.novell.com/community/lin…_order_form.php
this link seems to bypass the old-boys-only network:
https://secure-www.novell.com/community/linux/order.php?email=suppor…
For an RPM distro, I reckon it’s the best of it’s kind (Played with it on campus after trying Fedora and Mandrake at home)
yes it is slow, but it works quite well if you like
linux
yes it is slow, but it works quite well if you like
linux
Slow? Not really,but on x86 it’s compiled for i586> which means PII>.Iwould trade speed for stabillity anytime if i could choose.On x86_64 SuSE runs just as fast as every other x86_64 ported distro.Obviously on x86_64 compiling from source hasn’t a benefit other than compiling specific applications with specific options,everything is amd64.
SuSE runs quite well on my PIII 667GHz 512MB box.No impression of slow fox or whatsoever.
i586 is the original in-order Pentium, while i686 is the architecture is the out-of-order architecture first sold as the Pentium Pro that has now developed into the Pentium M.
Because of their out-of-order pipelines, optmising for a particular modern processor doesn’t make nearly as much difference as it did in the days of the 486 or Pentium.
In particular, it wouldn’t help much with the two areas were SuSE is most noticeably slow: booting and Yast. 9.3 has made some progress over 9.2, but really they need to throw out init and all that rc.d mess and bring in something like Apple’s launchd.
I was asking about P4, neither x86-64 nor P3. The fact is I have two computers, P4-3.06/512M and P4-3.2/512M. They have different brands, motherboards, even memory types (RDRAM vs. DDR). I have installed SuSE-9.3 prof on both and now CANNOT work. Everything is nice and shiny, BUT switching windows, opening dialogs, compiling, even editing plain files, all run extremely slow. I thought I have installed the OS incorrectly or my hands works somewhat wrong, however, on the same computers both RHEL and FC1 were working just fine. Services? I run those I need. Recompiling kernel? Is it worth troubles?
If it were a German word, it would be pronounced “Zuza”, as S is pronounced like Z at the beginnning and middle of a word, and like S at the end and when doubled.
The Suse9.3 LiveDVD started the installation splash screen where you chose LiveDVD. Then it says “Initializing Hardware…” with a cute gekko and stays on that screen for hours. Everything was fine with the download and burn process. Oh well… so much for a Suse 9.3 DeadCD. R-I-P… “No you didn’t keep your promse.” 🙂
Recompiling kernel? Is it worth troubles?
Not at all.It’s not recommended and causes mostly more havoc unles you know you will have to in order to get support for a certain device which you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.
switching windows, opening dialogs, compiling, even editing plain files, all run extremely slow.
That’s serious something i don’t get.I don’t have any of the issues you described and hence i work with a PIII 667GHz 512 DDR.What graphics card do you have?
As I know, the issue is noticed exclusively on P4, not on P3. I have ATI 9200 SE on P4-3.2, NVidia 420 MX on P4-3.06. In both cases I have installed the drivers downloaded from the manufacturers. However, compiling must have nothing to do with the graphic card, must not? And, as I previously noticed, other distros were working on the same computers just fine. My guess is that P4 mothercards (chipsets) are scrowed up somewhrere, and the kernel recompilation with unswithching irrelevant chipsets might help.