LinuxForums reviews SUSE 10.1, and concludes: “Everything worked perfectly and the system seemed to be very stable. The boot splash, the login managers, the installer and the desktops were customized with a unified SUSE look and feel that made them beautiful and very professional. The YaST installer in particular impressed me a lot, and I was amazed to see how SUSE succeeded in making a great desktop operating system, both with Gnome and KDE, offering a lot of software, a lot of options, a lot of configuration tools without making it hard at all for the user. This release also comes with great new applications such as Xgl, Xen and AppArmor. Everywhere I looked, I saw really nice things, great ideas and a beautiful presentation.”
Sorry but this is an marketing campain, not a review lol. I haven’t seen a perfect product in all my life, and the words that I most remember are: great, impressive, beautiful, nice and so on. I am not saying that it is otherwise, but where are the bad things? this is a Suse Ad… lol
So called “reviews” for various OS distributions have been like that for many many years, so get use to it.
What you always see is:
1. Install/Update
2. Gnome
3. KDE
4. Conclusion – “it seems to be very stable”.
Done.
Unfortunately, the pro reviewers are not really interested in Linux
For sure, only closed OS shills get paid.
So true!
After an incredibly painful (unreadable on an LCD monitor, constant freezes, unexplained crashing) and slow (OpenBSD would have been installed, up and running on a 486 before Suse got to the license screen on a Pentium IV!) installation and even worse configuration experience (with the real error messages hidden away to make troubleshooting impossible), I just gave up.
Perhaps I’ll give it a shot again over the weekend and find that the product is great after these initial steps, but how anyone could praise Suse’s installation and configuration is beyond me. Is there no quality control at OpenSuse/Novell? What went on during the beta and RC periods?
Everyone’s computer is different.
This is why it’s handy to have several distributions. If SUSE doesn’t work out for you, you can try the new Ubuntu version that’s due out soon, or you can try another new release.
I’ve never had every distribution work on my hardware, but I’ve always had several that would.
Well, I also tried suse today on my Compaq EVO N400C ( 512 MB RAM, Mobile Pentium 3 850 MHz, IBM 30 GB HDD built in 03/2005 ) => too slow with Gnome/KDE, rather unusable for such an “old hardware”.
Back to archlinux where Gnome is running fine
So, what’s the fastest distro? (with KDE and any important services).
1. *BSD (might be the fastest, but painful to configure / bad hardware support)
2. Arch/Gentoo (My vote goes to arch since it has become my best friend recently. It is binary, and i686. It is NOT as easy as ubuntu/mandrake whatever >insert GUI install n00b distro< to setup though)
In arch KDE is as snappy as xfce on any other i386 mammoth distro.
i tried 10.1 on my pentium 3 800Mhz
and kde 3.5 are fast
i removed some services and is faster….
it’s clear i can’t have 15 program open….. but i can use kopete, konqueror, kmail, koffice in same time without speed problem
I know this is gonna be a little bit offtopic but since alot of people complain about SUSE performance, i think this can be interesting.
Well, we all know that SUSE and other user-friendly distributions like Fedora are, in most cases, slower than more primitive distros like Slackware, DSL, ect. This is just normal. The beautiful eye-candy that you get when you’re using SUSE/Fedora comes at a price. But I don’t think the eye-candy is the real bottleneck.
Even if you’re using a more primitive distro, you can feel that Gnome/GTK+ apps are not quite fast. It’s just a long standing issue (same apply to KDE/QT apps). However, since you’re barely getting eye-candy from your distribution, the end result is very acceptable.
Thus said, you can’t blame SUSE/Fedora for the lower performance. I doubt they can do better really and there’s a need for “user-friendly’ distrubitions.
Finally, here’s an interesting observation I made last week while making a Java version of a tool we use quite often here (initially made for Linux using GTK). Since some people use Windows, we thought it would be nice to have a Windows version of that tool. However, that would force us to maintain 2 versions. We then decided to try making a Java/Swing version of that tool that would work on both platform. At first, some people (including me) thought it would be really slow. But when I first tried it on Windows, it felt very snappy (faster than the old Linux version). Obviously, on Linux it wasn’t that fast since Java is way more optimized under Windows. However, what caught my attention is that the Java/Swing version under Windows was way faster than the Linux/GTK version, mostly while dumping alot of stuff on the screen. This clearly shows how GTK, for example, needs optimization.
My 0,02$
Your maybe your “Linux/GTK” code needs optimization?
GNOME is very snappy on my desktop (Debian etch). If you disable half the services Fedora enables by default it also feels a lot snappier.
I won’t argue that GTK may need optimization.
But I recently moved my desktop from SUSE 10.0 to Slackware 10.2, and can say with confidence that Slackware is noticeably faster out of the box.
Upgrading Slackware to a 2.6 kernel made the difference even more noticeable, and makes it a more fair comparison, as the SUSE install also had a 2.6 kernel.
XFCE under both setups.
I keep trying these distros every couple of years…just got done w/ a trial-run w/ FC5. After having the speed & control of Gentoo I just can’t find the want to use anything else.
Fedora was just slow…especialy after running multiple apps, it just couldn’t scale to the workload I’m used to my Gnome desktop handling…even w/ most things disabled, including SELinux.
The last SuSE I used was 9.x and it was absurdly slow, especially YaST. It sounds like it’s still sluggish according to other comments.
I’ve got as far as SuSE 10.1 RC3 updated as of last Sunday. If you want a full-up Windows replacement, SuSE is hard to beat, imho, and that’s been true for a long time now. However, you will need a beefy desktop machine with plenty of ram.
On my ageing lappy (p3/384 m ram), though, SuSE is far too unwieldy. Ubuntu + xfce has proved a killer combo on that.
So: horses for courses. SuSE is excellent in some situations, and particularly if you are a KDE person. But in others, a different distro is better. This rather uncritical “review” doesn’t help in this regard.
I just installed OpenSuSE 10.1 today (in fact, I’m typing this in SuSE). Now, I’m a diehard Gentoo user, but I must admit that SuSE 1.0 is very nice. The install actually went pretty smoothly given the complexity of my bootloader system (MBR -> NTLDR -> GRUB on a boot partition -> SuSE’s GRUB…) and partioning scheme. The only problem I had was that for some reason the installer marked the root partition as active, so I couldn’t boot the first go round. That was easily fixed and I imagine this wouldn’t be a problem for people using a more sane booting scheme. It did autodetect all my other OSes and even copied over kernel boot parameters from the grub.conf for Gentoo!
I have a T43, which does have some newer and/or strange hardware. The installer and configurator autodetected everything perfectly. I get DMA on my harddrive and my DVD drive, which I couldn’t get working under Gentoo. The display settings were configured perfectly, same with networking, etc. I find YaST and the GNOME control panel to be very well done, although there are a few rough edges (this is Linux, after all). The only big issue was getting my fonts set up the way I like. I turn off anti-aliasing for most fonts as well as the autohinter (which sucks). I had to dig around in some config files to get that to work. Everything else has worked beautifully. The performance is in fact on par with Gentoo. I find the GUI to actually be very snappy, which is a step up from the previous SuSE I tried. Programs load quickly and they are responsive. I must say I’m impressed so far. And I’m not easily pleased with Linux distros (I was, for example, very disappointed with FC5 and Ubuntu).
I love these Linux “reviews.” I think this should become the defacto standard for all industries.
Imagine how helpful such a review will be in helping you decide what car to buy next. Discovering details about how difficult it was to buy the car from the dealer, how difficult it was to turn on and off the car are sooo useful. Also it is very nice to include text on the side of a photo of the car describing to you briefly the contents of the picture.
Furtheremore, imagine how helpful such a review will be in helping you decide what cpu to buy next. I think such details as the level of difficulty in installing the CPU and heatsink are paramount in helping you decide what processor to buy next. The only additional needed information to cement your decision would be whether the person was able to start and shutdown the system.
Really, I do find these reviews extremely useful.
I thought one of the biggest points of installing this new release is to see the infamous new XGL advanced GUI? I get SUSE installed with Gnome and no XGL to be seen. I have a fairly new PCI-Express video card installed so I was hoping the install would detect that to run it. I then did a little snooping and found that it was not installed by default. Needed to add it in YAST. After that was done and rebooted still nothing new. Am I missing something here? I really wanted to see this feature being that this is a HUGE selling point for Novell to help compete with OSX and Vista on the GUI side in Linux OS’s.
Follow http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Xgl_on_SUSE_Linux
Check the control center, it has an option called “Desktop Effects Settings”. From there you can enable Xgl. It will even download the packages for you.
Make sure opengl is supported with your video driver though.
I must say i like xgl alot. Imho it improves the general feeling of the desktop alot. However, it still has its drawbacks.
So I tried to start some sdl code that i have laying around and it looked weird. Same for some OpenGL stuff. Ofcause it will be fixed in time, but for now it’s a drawback that we will have to live with.
But for the normal browsing, mailing chatting etc.. dont let it stop you!
I would have expected these issues in the article.
Nothing that could not be learned from looking at osdir’s screenshots. Does anyone know why 10.1 does not have that cool gnome menu, the one with beagle search built-in?
I really dont understand what everyone loves about it so much. Hardware detection is at *least* as good on half a dozen other distros, so it can’t be that. After the initial install/configuration, the only thing you would really use anyways is the “Software Managment” panel, which is hands down, the worst I have ever seen. Adding “sources” takes a completely and totally unacceptable amount of time. I’m talking 2-3 minutes on a 1.2 ghz celeron. Granted, the hardware was garbage, but 2-3 mins is beyond all realm of reason, especially since apt/synaptic works so well on the same box. The synaptic clone is a bit better, which is really not saying much. It actually stores the local package cache in a db or something, because search results are instantanius (like locate), but I found load time to be in the realm of a minute (unacceptable compared to synaptic), and the dependancy resolving to be needlessly pedantic.
If all that existed was the situation we were in 5 years ago when I started messing around with linux, this would be a great distro. It is a solid KDE, good ideas with the installer, real nice framebuffer/bootsplash eyecandy, etc. But I find YaST to be totally unworkable, and would never recommend it, even to a total newb, which (aparently) is what this distro is geared for.
You are making the mistake of thinking that because something is fairly easy there must be something wrong with it. SuSE is intended to be a full-up Windows replacement and is also intended to be fairly easy for nine out of ten Windows users, not the small minority of technically sophisticated users.
In this regard, SuSE seems to do extremely well, imho. The package manager is a distinct minus, but that should come right in the coming weeks. In the long term it is distributions like SuSE that will bring new users to the platform. It will not be distros primarily for developers like Debian and Gentoo with their tiresome cult of the newbie.
That said, SuSE is a beefy distro that needs a beefy PC. On my ageing laptop, Ubuntu and xfce is a far better bet.
I don’t understand you’re complaints against YAST. You mention apt/synaptic which is more geared for the “Geek” with knowledge of scripting and less for the common computer user. A large majority of desktops used by consumers currently are running Microsoft Windows (XP, etc) due to their monopolistic measures with vendors. Knowing this a typical Windows user should find SUSE Linux’s YAST Control Center a close likeness to Windows Control Center both for simplicity and toolset offered. Laying blame on any developer for your choice in low end hardware or ISP bandwidth is not anyones concern but your own. I have not had any issues adding YAST Sources to maintain updates for software or use YAST which Novell provides detailed instructions that don’t require an I.T. certification to understand. Anyway, I tend to offer SUSE Linux as my first recommendation for a distribution especially for newcomers to the Linux community. Though I do also provide alternatives such as Mandriva Linux. With all the people I have provided Live (demo distribution) CD/DVD to they’ve all come back with good comments for Novell’s SUSE Linux. The main response was that they were surprized how easy it was to migrate from Windows to SUSE Linux. Ease of migration is an important issue for Linux developers to work towards. I believe as a former Windows user that YAST provides this ease of migration. Unfortunately like most things in this world developers can’t make everyone happy.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAST
http://www.novell.com/products/suselinux/easeofuse.html
Edited 2006-05-13 04:12
I don’t understand you’re complaints against YAST.
I think the complaints are directed against the “new” backend Yast is using for package management, and they are totally valid. Package management was the primary reason for the delay in this release. It’s intuitive enough to use and works as well as it has in previous versions, once it’s loaded and ready, but having to wait several minutes for sources to refresh or for the software mangement window to open is simply unacceptable, especially with no feedback or indication that the application hasn’t actually crashed. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it is much improved from how awful it was in the later betas, which was in itself an improvement on the earlier betas where it did not work at all. Suse Linux took a bullet here for the benefit of the upcoming Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop.
It’s a small but not inconsiderable blemish on an otherwise impressive release. Which I’m quite happy using, I should add too.
you mean packaging a great desktop OS
http://www.novell.com/products/suselinux/
“SUSE Linux is created by the openSUSE project, a Novell-sponsored community project dedicated to driving Linux adoption everywhere. Through openSUSE.org, you may download a free version (unsupported) of SUSE Linux from any one of over 100 mirror sites worldwide.”
If you people want out of the box XGL/Compiz + Funky GNOME menus + Extras, you’re waiting for SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop Not that you can’t get some of them with this.
Edited 2006-05-13 04:45
The only interesting bit in fact of this review, the thing I’d have been interested to hear gets a single line, the second last line of the entire thing.
“This release also comes with great new applications such as Xgl, Xen and AppArmor.”
Ok, so tell us about the great new applications… ahhh no, you’ll end. Job done. You told us that :
1. It installs
2. It has 2 desktops
3. It’s great!
Ugh…
…if he’s serious about making Kubuntu a first-class desktop distro.
The review is fairly useless, focused as they always seem to be on installers, default software and desktop layouts. What it doesn’t impart is the feeling of “polish” you get with using Suse daily. As much as I like *buntu, it just doesn’t have it.
To me, it’s the touches like:
o WPA support built into the network config GUI transparently using wpa_supplicant without manually editing config files
o Hardware detection that not only works at install, but recognizes new hardware since install and offers to configure it (yes, like Windows)
o Outstanding laptop support, particularly for ACPI support, including the ability to use loadable DSDT files for those with broken implementations (no kernel recompiling required) and powerful utilities for implementing Suspend (won’t work for everyone, of course, but it certainly improves the probability of success)
o Built in documentation via Suse help
o Yast, love it or hate it, configures everything you would need to for an average system; eliminates the need to manually edit config files, and even provides guidance for tweaking granular system settings, and includes an ncurses interface for terminal use with all the functionality of the GUI. Yast is the reason many “newb” users could run Suse linux without ever having to touch a command line, as offensive as that may seem to some *nix purists
o knetworkmanager as a kde-specific front-end for network manager, allowing simplified wired/wifi management including WPA support
o Beagle desktop search integrated into KDE without the excess Gnome baggage, including kerry as a kde-specific front-end search utility and the ubiquitous kio-beagle for konqueror/file dialog searching goodness
o Even better, they’ve actually made Beagle work OOTB in a KDE environment without dragging the system to a halt or eating all your available resources
o Bootsplash for purely superficial aesthetic reasons (though I had to disable it due to nvidia’s inability to co-exist with framebuffers active)
o Profiles for “compartmentalizing” your config files and service settings and easily switching between them at boot or while operating, I’ve found this really convenient with my laptop since I have a docking station at work with it’s own wired connection and an external monitor for dual-head
Basically, Suse is a well established distribution with a solid foundation. Maybe it’s past history as a commercial distribution dictated a stronger emphasis on fit and finish, or maybe that just evolved over the years, but whatever the reason it shows. For KDE users it is simply one of the best distributions available. The work Suse has done with knetworkmanager and with isolating beagle and the mono dependencies from Gnome in order to better integrate it into KDE are proof enough that KDE is far from dead at Suse/Novell… particularly since these will be implemented in SLED as well. Gnome may be the “default” now, but KDE users are *not* second class citizens as they are on many distros.
Sure, it’s not perfect, there will always be people unable to install it, with hardware incompatibilities etc. And the current package management is a black-eye for them, though I’ve already posted on that and won’t belabour the point.
If you’re looking to find things wrong with Suse, you’ll find them as you will with any distribution. But this is the one distro I’d feel comfortable recommending to anyone as a general purpose, use-every-day, solution.
Er, now I’m gushing, so I should probably stop.
Getting back to my point, if Mark is serious about making Kubuntu a serious desktop distro, they’ll need to focus on the little details to make it shine and stand out. As far as I’m concerned (YMMV, of course), Suse sets the standard for KDE-based desktop distros.
Of course, this is all purely my own opinion, no one distro will suit everyone of course so I won’t even pretend that’s the case here.
EDIT: Typos, I’ve given up looking for more..
Edited 2006-05-13 05:54
In my ThinkPad I got better results with this, comparing to FC5:
– Intel Wireless NIC: Detected but need manual configuration in FC5. Automatically detected and configured in Suse 10.1
– Network Connection: Asked for “keyring password” – each time I wanted to access my wireless network in FC5. No “keyring password” needed in Suse.
– Hibernation & Sleep: Quite bogus in FC5. Works in Suse.
– Beagle: Had to start indexing after each reboot -tried to apply the hack posted on developer’s web page without success-. Works fine on Suse.
– Desktop 3D effects: Unusable on FC5, faster on Suse but still not for everyday use.
Overall both are great distros but on my particular hardware configuration Suse wins so far.
Is it possible to install SUSE Linux 10.1 on a usb disc (external hd)?
Yes, indeed that is what I used to do.
You only need to make sure your computer can boot from the external USB HD.
Be carefull with the boot looader options during installation if you do not want to mess your original configuration.
My mind is completely blown. I installed it this morning, I got Xgl working and I am completely stunned. This is a sign of things to come from Novell. I will declare it now, Novell *is* the leader of high end desktop linux.
The Operating system is flawless, I installed skype, got the addon disk of proprietary stuff downloaded, and made sure I clicked the check box during install to have addon disks during install enabled. After doing the cd flipping a couple of times I got everything working.
I am speechless.
Screenshot http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1332/803/1600/linux-5-13-06.png
Edited 2006-05-13 17:22
Today, since I finally had some free time, I gave 10.1 a shot.
First, I tried the update option as I was running 10.0 before – no go. It installed correctly but for some reason after it reached the “pre-login” state during boot (where the screen is filled with that grey/black pattern, just before the login is supposed to show up) it just stayed there. This probably has something to do
with the fact that I had many things installed/updated in my 10.0 setup… don’t know. Bottom line: it didn’t work for me.
Without wasting time on trying to figure out what’s the cause I did a clean install.
First impression? Very good, everything looks polished and professional. I really like the new bootsplash and Gnome theme.
I’m also impressed with how Xgl is handled in 10.1: before it required editing config files – now you just click a button and you’re done. Great, except it still doesn’t support dual monitor setups so it’s useless to me (I ALMOST wish I had only one monitor 😉 ).
On the other hand I had a rather unpleasent experience with ATI drivers install/config. The installation procedure without package generation didn’t work for me, and the config that SaX provided coupled with what comes out after you run aticonfig thru it gave me a reason to finally try out the failsafe boot option – after starting x there was lots of garbage on the screen. Luckly I had my old config generated by fglrxconfig (no idea why the decided to drop this for aticonfig…) saved so I managed to get it working right (using the old config + installing drivers from .rpm).
IMHO it’s a solid update from 10.0. Doesn’t include everyhing I’d wish for (like gnome 2.14), but overall I’m pretty happy with what i’ll be running until 10.2 comes out 🙂
I noticed in the screenshot you have Gnome desktop running. How do you find Gnome compared to previous releases for SUSE Linux? Are there any major improvements over previous releases other than the toolbar being placed at the bottom of the screen?
I’ve tried to use Gnome with each SUSE Linux release but felt restricted and more frustrated than when using KDE. I also felt it made the transition from Windows to Linux more difficult. So if Novell or at least the Gnome developers have done something to improve ease of migration for former Windows users or those working in a cross network with Windows then that would be good.
There are major improvements in Gnome. You can tell that the Ximian people had their hands in this release. Unlike 10.0 Gnome is not neglected at all.
As for major improvements, Beagle and Fspot are included as default both running flawlessly without configuration needed. I noticed that Beagle is supported throughout the system. Also unlike previous Suse release I would recommend using Gnome instead of KDE.
It’s a very polished desktop in this release.
Also unlike previous Suse release I would recommend using Gnome instead of KDE.
It is sad, but I must agree that KDE did not receive that much polish as Gnome did. Worse, Novell (intentionally?) messed up quite a few of things in the default desktop. Both issues are mentioned in the original review article.
There is the absolutely clueless set of desktop icons. Ie. no “My Documents”, but there is “Printers” and the stupid “Welcome” icons.
The menu structure also appears to be completely neglected.
I filed a bug about the “Home” folder icon during the beta period. The response was completely dismissive.
Not everything is sunny there.
Why didn’t Novell release a Live (demo) distribution disc in CD or DVD prior to releasing the full OS and included software on 5 CD? Note to those unaware Novell will be releasing the DVD version around May 18 in time for the retail release. Anyway, being able to try the software prior to buying let alone installing it is important to consumers.
It is indeed not a review. How can you claim that “everything works”? I installed it, and just like 10.0, bluetooth fails, for instance. I knew it would. On the same machine, my Ubuntu partition picks it up right. The reason Ubuntu is so popular is that there “everything just works” plus the great community behind it. That’s lacking with SuSE. SuSE has the most impressive eyecandy, and Yast, but there’s this huge “piss-off factor” that, ever since I used it from 6.x onwards, always had one or two crucial everyday things not delivering. Years ago I claimed my 90 days of technical support with a question about a particular boot parameter for my motherboard, and they said “it wasn’t covered in the 90 day support arrangement”.
I’m glad I didn’t pay for SuSE since.
By the way, the download and install took the better part of the day… Compare that to Ubuntu.
SuSE is always on the conservative side with Gnome and KDE, but why for crissake still include Gnome 2.12?
On the plus side, the cd with “commercial” add-ons is fine, java, acrobat and flash are integrated in firefox. (just don’t understand why you have to keep reinserting this cd during install). VMware installed easily.
I like SuSE, overall, it breathes a certain quality and eye for detail, I just think that Fedora and Ubuntu have a much better user/developer feedback to iron out bugs.
I just installed SuSE 10.1. I can’t say I’ve seen an easier or better-looking installer ever. I didn’t have to do much, I just had to partition things myself because I didn’t like the defaults, but apart from that, it went really smooth. The hardware detection didn’t recognize my tv-card, though, but I can’t blame it. Not a big deal, really, since even I don’t know what it is =P (Haven’t even gotten the chance to try if it works at all) I just came to think of something: it would be nice if ATI/nVidia provided some tool for general distro use to detect all the attached displays, and perhaps configure them properly. That way the installers would immediately allow you to configure TwinView setups and so forth, and in my case, it would have noticed I got no monitor at all, just a TV. I don’t think it would really be such a big burden for them to release such tool, and it would help general adoption of their hardware, too.
Oh, forgot to mention that now I have to find out how to install fglrx drivers and get TV-out working, or I won’t be able to use X at all…. =/
Uhm the open source driver will work baring the fact that you won’t have 3d. But X will still work.
Bye.
Actually, 3D works just fine with the open-source drivers. Believe me, I have tried quite a few times. But you didn’t notice that I was talking about tv-out. It doesn’t work with them.
I just don’t understand how not having tv-out would render X unusable, that’s all.
As I said, I only have tv connected, no monitor.
Anyway, I did finally get ati proprietary drivers installed and working, to a degree. But no network, though it worked during inmstallation. After a while I learned that apparently I need to add “irqpoll” to kernel parameters to make it work. Strange, Gentoo didn’t have any trouble. And then, I booted, got my desktop up and tried to launch FireFox. Well, it launched, but just as it was about to show the window, the whole machine locked up. I tried this several times with various programs, but it always locks up, rendering the whole thing unusable. I am a bit disappointed, but maybe SuSE will work better on my other PC.
Many people have questioned with 10.1 comes standard with Gnome 2.12 and KDE 3.5.1, since newer releases of both DE’s are available.
Unfortunately those newer releases came out after the version freeze, and the beta cycle was extended delaying the release due to the package management issues. Breaking freeze and implementing newer versions of major core systems like Gnome or KDE would have required extensive testing and would likely have delayed the release further.
I would imagine now that 10.1 has been formally released, updated versions of Gnome and KDE will likely appear shortly in the supplemental sources and will be available for upgrade, although officially “unsupported”.
Basically it was just a case of timing. If 10.1 had been released on time, it wouldn’t have seemed as strange that the newer releases were not included.
Remarkable how they manage to include very nice artwork.
10.1 is even better than 10.0
Thanks for AppArmor full!!!
When I updated my 9.1 install of SuSE to 10.1 I was dismayed to discover that my master boot record wouldn’t execute when booting from the hard drive. Puzzlingly, if I boot from the first install disk and select “boot from hard drive” it works beautifully. I checked Novell’s bugzilla site and the problem is being worked on at least.