Walter Cedric wrote a favorable mini-review of the desktop side of SuSE PRO 9.
SuSE Linux 9.0 Professional Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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He mentions using KDE 3.2. It hasn’t been released yet, has it?
Nop, but a lot of people are already using beta2
to install KDE3.2-BETA2 on SUSE 9.0 FTP-INSTALL w/o using “-force -nodeps”?
does anyone know some linux 64bit reviews?
SUSE now, not SuSE (rebranding effort, which I’m sure this site has covered).
I had read several positive things regarding SuSE (or is it SUSE? [according to previous post]) so I decided to try it myself. I downloaded the bootable ISO for FTP installation. I had a few problems getting it installed. Apparently the FTP installer does not allow passive mode? Is that correct? Which apparently means if you are behind a router/firewall, you can not install via FTP? I overcame this by using gFTP and downloading the entire FTP archive to my hard-drive. Then I did a local disk install.
I have to say though that I’m personally not impressed. I was just wondering what others thought? Right now my Desktop Linux distro of choice is Mandrake. (Though if I were to do a server install I would probably go with something like Debian.) Mandrake is pretty new to me. I never cared for it in the past when I had looked at it. And I have ignored the last few versions. But when 9.2 became available, I checked it out again for the first time in a while and I really liked what I saw. So much so that I ordered the DVD Power Pack from MandrakeStore.com and I am now running it on my 2 Desktop computers and my laptop. But I’m getting off topic slightly.
I plan to revisit SuSE and spend more time with it. Maybe I’ll have a better experience next time around. But when I briefly spent time with it last week I just wasn’t impressed with the interface and user tools. And to me that is really what makes a distribution. Otherwise they are all basically the same. I mean they have the same kernel, the same desktop managers, the same GNU tools, and so on. So it’s really the distro specific tools and the visual themes that differentiate them. And that’s where SuSE fell short for me. I didn’t like YaST from what I saw of it. And the default theme was almost as ugly as RedHat’s Bluecurve.
That’s my two cents. What are you experiences?
I am using it on SuSE 9 Professional. I had to install a bunch of other packages to fulfill all the requirements and had to remove I think kde3base-SuSE, but in the end it all installed very well. Which errors do you get with rpm -Uvh *.rpm ?
I was hopeing the review would give me some lovely reason to switch but alas alack there were none.
The links to the wine and winex sites are wrong and link to sites for bottled wine not the API they are actually here http://www.winehq.com/ and here http://www.transgaming.com/ respectively.
To be honest I really cant remeber. After I did the install:
1.) Some of the icons were missing
2.) Konqueror would immedatly crash
3.) No sound(adjusting using KAMix wouldnt work)
4.) It would stall for no reason(only sometimes)
I tried SUSE 9 Professional a little while ago, it was very unstable on my system. Which is very odd, considering Windows, Fedora, RedHat 7.3, RedHat 8 and RedHat 9 all run fine…
Of course Debian’s no better. Heck, I can’t even run the Debian installer. Keeps crapping out with script errors 😐
I always install SuSE from behind a router + firewall — there is no problem.
So far, Suse Personal 9.0 has worked really well on my system. My biggest problem so far is that CD burning doesn’t work. The Suse tech support might have a solution, though.
It’s SUSE. The company changed its name shortly before releasing v9, which means that the name change didn’t make it onto certain parts of the v9 distro. But they have kept the small u on the logo for some reason, but in writing they always write SUSE.
Very timely article for me. I got a copy of SuSE Linux 9.0 Personal and SuSE WineRack for Xmas. I am planning to delete XP install them on my ThinkPad at work. (My PowerBook 17 running OS X is already perfect…) The only app I cant live without at work is Word, and I understand that WineRack will allow me to run it no problem. Other than that, I will use native Linux apps for email and web browsing. My last experience was with Red Hat 6, and I was less than thrilled. I am looking forward to a more updated and user friendly Linux.
Why does everybody write the wrong links to wine all the time in all articles or reviews? Wine is at winehq.org not wine.org (thats a site about french wine and news). Winex I dont know the link to, but it cant be winex.com thats also about the drinkable stuff…
relating to wine rack: Office XP installs fine, however, there can be a problem with applying the service packs. So, in order so avoid hassle, make a slip stream installation — I did so yesterday and here’s a good link:
http://www.petri.co.il/office_xp_sp1_2_slipstreaming.htm
This is a double post of a comment (I posted this a couple of weeks ago, but I think it was too late for anyone to notice) but I thought I’d share this with all of you since it comes from the source, and I do think this would very much affect someone deciding to do a rollout of SuSE. I’d been thinking of it myself for my wife’s work (that or Fedora, though I’m more of a Slackware user myself) but didn’t want to charge them licensing fees to keep costs down (apart from me buying an initial retail box for myself). Because the Yast License is a bit murky, I thought I’d ask their sales to clarify the legalities of this for me. You might find their answer interesting, particularly their claim about the GPL:
Dear (my name),
many thanks for your request.
You wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I imagine you’ve fielded this question before, but I’d really like to
know the answer from the source itself. I’m seriously considering
purchasing a copy of SuSE Linux Pro 9.0 soon. I’ve been using the FTP
version of late and have been very impressed with what I’ve seen. My
question though is regarding redistribution. Once I have purchased it,
I would like to be able to make copies for two situations. One, to give
to friends and coworkers so they can also use and evaluate SuSE’s
distro for themselves (I’m sorry but the ftp install is something only
the most eager can handle).
This is perfectly fine as long as no money changes hands.
And the second situation is that I am occasionally asked to help
somebody on their system for which I charge a fee. It is not my main
source of income by any means but is something I do now and then on my own. Soon, I
will likely be installing a Linux distro at my wife’s workplace (ABCD
Child Development Center, which is related to the head start program)
and I will be charging for the service. The question is though is what
distro to install. Fedora may be an option, though I would really like
to be able to install SuSE for them as I feel it would best meet their
needs, with a more intuitive and user friendly interface, as well as
much better multi-lingual support (most of the center’s children and
many of the staff are hispanic). At this point they do really have any
server type needs, mainly client (particularly office type) applications.
I need to know clearly if this is allowed though. I do not want to
charg
e them, or anyone I do these things for, an exhorbirant amount, so I if
it necessary to purchase additional licenses I would likely have to use
a different distro.
>
This is completely & totally illegal. We do offer a reduced price
version of SUSE 9.0 Professional for schools & NPO’s.
Your wife’s school could buy it from our educational reseller:
CCV Software
http://www.ccvsoftware.com
800-541-6078
Anytime you charge someone an installation fee for helping them with
installing SUSE Linux, you must purchase the SUSE OS from our
distributors at the reseller price, and pass that cost on to the client.
Otherwise you’re breaking the GPL, the Yast license, and most state &
local laws for reselling or re-distributing products.
> I have read the Yast license, and I do understand the question of
modifications (something I’m not planning on doing), but please clarify
SuSE’s position on this. As to third party components of the distro,
such as Java, Adobe, RealPlayer, etc., will any of this affect the above?
Thanks for the help you can give.
>
> Regards,
(my signature)
Yours sincerely,
Marissa Krupa (Business-Support )
—
SuSE Inc., Tel (US): 888-8754689 extension 5088
318 Harrison st suite 301 Fax: +1-510-628-3381
Oakland CA 94607 Email: Business-Support
USA WWW: http://www.suse.com
Sorry the subject line should have read “SUSE’s license”, but I hit the wrong keys.
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/17/189239&mode=th…
Are you guys the sUse police or what? 🙂
Have you tried instead building KDE? That way has the advantage that you do not need to mix old e.g. what works and new e.g. what may not work. Maybe Konqueror won’t run as it turned out for you or it will garble E-mails, addressbook or bookmarks or something else.
What I did with KDE 3.1.94 is build it to /opt/kde-3.1.94, add a session entry for it to the login manager, create a new user and copy e-mails, addressbook and bookmarks from the old KDE 3.1.4. Building KDE and KOffice is easy but it takes 8 hours on my AMD 2700. BTW the kde bindings and lanuguage package wouldn’t compile. But they are not showstoppers.
not bad review
SuSE was the first linux distro I tried around 4ish years ago and i found it crap, but something made me try it again at around version 8 on my laptop. Now for my laptop I will not run any other distro for now,SuSE is the only one thats works out of the box for me!!!. My other box is Gentoo but it’s nice just to use something that workes first time without the configuration hassle.
SUSE is bloody awesome, it’s config-tool YAST2 kicks Feodoras configurationtools to the moon and back.
If you want a good Linux experience, run SUSE!
Regards
HC Andersson
http://linuxemu.linuxgames.com
(Have ran most of the other RPM-based distros)
Thanx for the advice. Ill give it a try tomorrow
Heh, that claim about the GPL is obviously ridiculously wrong. But I’m pretty sure that this was just a mistake by this certain support employee and not SUSE’s official position.
Still, the YAST license is indeed the main reason I won’t touch this distribution anymore (the second reason would be the user interface).
Maybe Novell will see the light and change the license. With a tightly integrated Ximian desktop, SUSE might become cool.
I tried SUSE pro for a little while. The distro is very simmilar to mandrake but not free. It was polished but there were a few small things here and there that the free version of Mandrake does better. My advice if you want to spend money is the combination of Mandrake download edition and a mandrakeclub membership. The membership gives you access to many pre-built and tested RPMs. Currently Mandrake+Club is the closest thing Linux has to desktop usable.
I used to be a SUSE users but as soon as I learned about URPMI in Mandrake and realized how it was built into Mandrake’s own Control&Config Center I quickly abandoned SUSE. While I like SUSE’s YAST2 control and config center a little better in some areas I think MDK’s setup is pretty good and URPMI is the icing on the cake. With you URPMI and can add repositories for mandrake rpm’s and install packages without worry or going through RPM hell. With the right repositories and a little critical thinking ( especially if you play with cooker repostiories ! ) you can have a up to date desktop all using a nice GUI frontend. Of course you can eventually upgrade your system to the next version with a few simple commands in the console.
P.S. I would stay away from KDE 3.2 right now unless you are a programmer, geek, or just brave. Wait untill the RC’s come out and then give it a try folks. There are still plenty of bugs in this BETA version.
So authors ran linux for 90 under load. Is that really something. I too know people who run FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris for many months. What’s the point?
I ran SUSE 9.0 Pro (the 5 CD set) on a laptop (P4 3.2ghz, 1 GB RAM) for a few weeks, and found it to be the most polished of Linux distros and probably very good for someone coming over from Windows. However, for as many features Yast has, it is painfully slow. When installing software or changing hardware configuration, you will be looking at a rotating hourglass for several seconds. The Yast scripts also seem to update ALL config files, even if your config change didn’t touch them. Perhaps this will be somewhat better on a desktop where the HD is a bit faster.
I ended up going back to MDK 9.2 with the MM kernel and VM tweaks found on the web (/proc/sys/vm/bdflush, etc.) and the machine FLIES, even with the stock MDK 586 glibc.
I ended up going back to MDK 9.2 with the MM kernel and VM tweaks found on the web (/proc/sys/vm/bdflush, etc.) and the machine FLIES, even with the stock MDK 586 glibc.
I’ve got Mandy 9.1 with the Multimedia kernel too. Are the VM tweaks part of the MM kernel or are they seperate? I installed the MM kernel from a prebuilt RPM supplied in the contrib dir.
Downloaded and installed from ftp. works better than 8.2, but seems to have a few more bugs.
RE: << Bill Gates said in an interview: “instability do not come from Windows itself, but merely from applications installed” For Me, a good OS must protect the user/itself from system crashing, XP isn’t good at this, Linux is a little better.>>
if Windows instability comes from applications installed then what good is Windows if you can NOT install any applications???
so i agree- Linux is better :^)
As far as I can tell, the only adjustments in the MDK multimedia kernels are the O(1) scheduler and pre-emptive kernel. The VM tweaks I applied can be found here (and of course, they are not MDK specific):
http://robert.timetraveller.org/talks/optimisation/
My system has 1 GB of RAM, and adjusting bdflush seems to make it cache much more aggressively. I really need to load it down hard to have it hit swap.
As a normal Linux User I am wandering and wasting time to fix a OS for my Desk. And the last stop of mine is Slackware. Used RH nearly five years and tried around all the rest of OS Distros, Slackware has provided to me a pefect desktop and small server run Web Servers, Samba Server and SQL server and so on. Very responsiveness, speed and secure. Stability and less bugs as a big point which slackware brings to me. I personally think all RH, MDK or SUSE are just colorful ditros and many GUI, that makes them so slow if you run on a not-very-modern-hardware. Yast,under my view, is very heavy after you update asystem or packages (waste time)
Slackware – the most *nix OS so far, but very quiet words :-). I love it. Moving all data from RH to Slack and now I made decision how long I can keep them along with me, lifetime?
cheers all, happy new year
Will Plastik be the default theme for kde 3.2? No offence to the person writting this article, but he doesn’t seem very knowledgable, so I can only assume it is from his screenshot. I must admit it curtainly looks incredable when compared to Keramik. I never understood why Keramik was ever made the default theme, it simply makes KDE seem like its directed at a small child or something. I am glad they are at least considering changing the default. I was not however aware that Plastik is the new default (thought it was planed for 3.3).
Anyway, I think 3.2 looks amazing, I hate YaST though, so I have no desire to use SuSE. Most every distro supports my hardware, so I am lucky enough to be able to use a distro that I like rather then simply one that supports what I have to run it on.
I personally prefere KDE apps to Gnome apps based on the same reason many prefere GNOME, it has an amazing amount of customization. I have read the GNOME HIG, but can’t say as though I agree with one single point it trys to make. I beleive the GNOME HIG is the single reason SUSE and Mandrake and others default to KDE. This is my opinion though, and really doesn’t pertain to the article much at all. I hope SUSE 10.0 Professional will include some Novell inspired tools etc, and replaces YOU with Red Carpet, but only time will tell. YOU is simply terrible though.
What can I add? SuSE is great; I recommend it. You hardly need using a terminal; everything is almost automated. Lately, I switched from cable to dsl; I have never configured dsl on Linux, it took me under 30s to configure it with Yast. I have been with SuSE since 7.3; it has been evolving nicely and logically. With the next release, with kernel 2.6 and other major releases (Kde 3.2, Gnome 2.6?), SuSE might deliver a true home desktop alternative (though it works for me now, for 99% of my requirements).
The KDE developers won’t make Plastik the default theme in 3.2 for two reasons:
1) They don’t want to switch again when they just switched in 3.1. KDE has a sizable userbase and major changes like that tend to upset existing users. Besides, KDE 3.2 is already in a feature freeze, so such significant changes cannot be made this late in the process.
2) More importantly, all the documentation has standardized on using Keramik for screenshots. Changing the theme would require changing screenshots in 52 languages, something that would significantly delay the final release.
As for why Keramik became the default at all: at the time, it was really the only choice. There are a precious few KDE themes, because finding people with artistic talent and coding ability is not easy. Thus, the choices were basically limited to KDE HighColor, dotNET, Keramik, Liquid, and a few others. KDE Highcolor looked dated, dotNET looked too much like Windows, and Liquid looked too much like OS X. Keramik, at least, was original and unique.
I agree i think SUSE linux is the best out there at the
present time, i not using 9.0, using 8.2 but it is very good.
I am using somewhat older computers and i also have mandrake
9.2 on a hobby machine, which i run at times it is also very
good also. but SUSE is my favorite distro, dont get me wrong
redhat made a fine desktop too, still do go to frys electronics a new $99 dollar version is on the shevles
no number
I use the plastik theme. But whether it is that or another is not a big deal to me. But if most prefer plastik then maybe it could be advertized in the first tip popup that the user sees after installation. That wouldn’t reuire a lot of changes. I do not believe much in KPersonalizer in the first place. For a first time user it is probably mostly in the way. They want to get going. And they don’t yet quite know what it is, what to do with it, what KDE looks like and are maybe afraid to screwup something. It works better for repeat installations. But once you’ve gotten comfortable you can do the same with the ControlCenter. http://dot.kde.org/1072367340/.
I also purchased SuSE 9 + Wine Rack for XMas.
I don’t know if I am allowed to give free copy of SuSE 9.0 to my company (I read the licence, it’s ok for friends, don’t know for companies)
I read Wine Rack can emulate Office XP. I don’t care since my company use OpenOffice, even if some of my colleague still run Office 2000.
Some of you say that Mandrake 9.2 is good : that’s a lye ! Uou are liars : MDK ‘s KDE Menu are buggy, some of my USB hardware are not detected, abd MDK 9.2 freezes constantly (let you PC run for 10 hours !)
Fedora is excellent though. If you want a truly, robust, efficient, scalable and reliable Desktop distro, please choose between SuSE 9 and Fedora. MDK 9.2 is the Windows Millenium of Linux.
Some of you say that Mandrake 9.2 is good : that’s a lye ! Uou are liars : MDK ‘s KDE Menu are buggy, some of my USB hardware are not detected,
I am a liar if I think Mandrake is good? No – actually that’s called an opinion. A word that is clearly not in your vocabulary. So let me help you. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=opinion
abd MDK 9.2 freezes constantly (let you PC run for 10 hours !)
I had this problem with Mandrake 9.2 on one of my systems (though it works flawlessly on my Laptop and my other computer without additional tinkering.) I was able to “fix” the problem on this machine by compiling my own kernel. Since I compiled my own, the system has not hung once. (Though understandably kernel compilation may be intimidating to some and thus would not be an option.)
I have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (revision 2.0) motherboard. I would be interested in knowing if you have the same board?
Fedora is excellent though. If you want a truly, robust, efficient, scalable and reliable Desktop distro, please choose between SuSE 9 and Fedora. MDK 9.2 is the Windows Millenium of Linux.
That’s a pretty bold statement don’t you think? You need to realize that your own personal experiences aren’t going to be the same as everyone else in the world. You have 1 hardware configuration among millions of possible hardware configurations. The fact that Mandrake didn’t work out for you is unfortunate. But do some searching on Google and you will find thousands of people who are just as unhappy with Fedora and SuSE as you are with Mandrake. Personally I don’t think SuSE is that great. But I’m not about to start bashing people who use it and calling them liars. That’s pretty narrow minded.
well, I installed it, but my S-9 still doesn’t play divx.. 🙁 Is there anything I would have to adjust manually..?
why this is on osnews? this review is technically so bad, it makes me want to laugh. there are real reasons to use linux instead of windows, but you have to know something about windows to find them. pretending we would still fight win98 just makes you look stupid.
This article was a review of the boxed SUSE 9 Professional product, not the somewhat stripped (and difficult to install) FTP version. So the comments here based on SUSE’s downloadable version aren’t germaine to the discussion.
If you are a KDE user and appreciate simple installation and administration, SUSE 9 Pro is a terrific product. The double-sided DVD install is beyond convenient. Yast and SUSE’s very smooth online update mechanism make maintaining the desktop very easy, particularly in office environments where users might just be getting their feet wet with Linux. You can have a completely up-to-date KDE desktop running in under an hour with Kernels optimized for most processor configurations. The boxed sets contain darn near every Linux application you’ll need.
Going with the Pro set means you’ll be able to effortlessly install Microsoft’s font set, which is a boon for readability and compatibility with Windows users. SUSE 9 Pro also works beautifully with Crossover Office. You also get ALSA and a variety of backported features from the 2.6 kernel. Yast makes it very easy to configure and manage a variety of networking tasks. Toggle the included Liquid theme and you’ll have a fast and sexy KDE desktop that plays very well in work environments. I’m on my third SUSE boxed set, and have always considered it money well-spent.
Getting back to this distro’s KDE-centricity, SUSE’s daily KDE service makes it quite convenient to maintain a bleeding-edge desktop. I’ve used KDE through a number of distros and on several platforms, and it seems to be much perkier on SUSE 9. The only thing that comes close is Mandrake, and SUSe’s KDE support is far superior to Fedora’s.
On the other hand, if you’re a Gnome user, you’ll probably be more comfortable elsewhere. SUSE 9 ships with Gnome 2.2, rather than the superior 2.4. Yast’s online update tool only runs in the background on KDE. I assume SUSE’s Gnome support will improve dramatically once Novell completes its purchase of the company. Don’t be surprised if Ximian ships as the default desktop in 2004, and that will be just fine.
I’ve discovered a few minor bugs in SUSE 9. The most annoying is an odd problem in the way it handles cddb lookups, which crashes kscd on both of my desktops. The workaround is to disable the feature. Evolution also looks awful under KDE. Ximian does not yet officially support the distro (or several others, for that matter).
But SUSE 9 Pro is a good choice for those interested in a smooth-running, easy to use and maintain KDE desktop. It retails for just under 80 bucks, and retail boxed sets can be found even cheaper on eBay. SUSE now also offers Wine Rack, and implementation of Crossover Office and WineX optimized for the distro. Guess I’ll be trying that next.
With Red Hat retreating from the desktop, I’m damn glad SUSE is around.
Oh.. don’t start fiddling with tthe RPMs in various folders of the Wine Rack disc — Go via YAST to Software > Patch CD — this will set it up for you without any futher hickup…. very nicely done.
It retails for just under 80 bucks
The Pro can be purchased for $65 (shipped) at Amazon.
Included with SUSE Pro is also a commercial videoediting software, just like in MacOS X and Win XP.
The major defect with SUSE: no active community forum in which their employees participate. (I don’t do mailing lists.)
Contrast that with Mandrake, Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros, Gentoo — which all have great community forums.
The closest community forum option is http://www.linuxquestions.org/ — but SuSE won’t officially participate there, and hence there is no SuSE sub-forum.
Your bad luck, SUSE users seem to favor “old-fashioned” communications ways like newsgroups and mailing list. And I honestly don’t see a need for a proprietary web forum interface where I have to load all replies everytime again and wait for all avatar pictures to load. 🙂
When major linux distros release their new distribution I check them all including MDK, RH, KNOPPIX, DEBIAN and SUSE. I always found SUSE the all round best distro to keep.
I use SuSE 8.2 Pro for my Sony notebook and SUSE 9.0 FTP upgrade for my desktop. The GUI installation is easier and faster than XP specially in hardware detection. Security is top notch with automatic YOU online update. Warning: You need to dissallow auto login in SUSE 9.0 if you careless on the first installation, and don’t forget to double check your firewall. Apply online update during installation or right away after first login. You can fetch MS fonts online during installation, and video driver too.
Multimedia is very good if not excellent. A working DVD and MP3 player, CD/DVD burning/ripping too. Note: need update to make it works better, e.g. from http://packman.links2linux.org/
Almost complete packages for me (99%): Office, graphics, internet/web/e-mail/calendar, programming, etc.
Don’t miss superior Debian apt-get much by installing RPM/SRPM apt-get e.g.from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.0-i386/
Warning: avoid some unstable packages from apt repos.
Have fun tho 🙂
Why do you compare that two things ? We know all which one is the best, so you’d better present an article talking only about SUSE and not a comparison with XP. At the end you should chnage your title to SUSE, XP comparison. Nevertheless the article is not so bad.
This site was pretty good: http://www.suseforums.com but hasn’t been active in a while. The webmaster said it would be online again soon but who knows..
Nice article, but I dont see why people keep comparing Linux to Windows, from a usability point of view Windows is the winner. With XP I have never had to unintentionally reboot and things work better than any other Microsoft OS I have used. I have yet to experience hacking incidents or viruses. I have tried Linux, alot of different distributions but I keep coming back to Windows. One thing I see is that so many articles and reviews focus on Windows like functionality and comparisons to MS Windows. It must mean that the computing geek public must see Windows as the standard.
At the beginning, this article was not a “war” but more a review of the suse installation. Then I ‘ve read all your comments and adapt the content (between Sat and today).
I’ve add:
– my test configuration
– reference to live eval cd which can help a lot of people to try linux with no risk
– reference to my background
– A user said that he doesnt see any reasons to switch to Linux and still prefer Windows. That’s why I try to explain why you may give Linux a try.
I really prefer Linux now even if windows usability is sometimes better.
Thanks for reading
cedric
For those interested XD2 was release for SUSE a few days ago.
Just once I would like to see a review/article about SUSE without the usual trolling by people who cant bear to see a good word written about a distro that is not their percieved holy grail.(r u listening Blixel?) Their posts always start with something like “Suse didnt work for me”, “Suse has bugs”, “Yast is slow”, ” Didnt like the interface?/default theme” and end up with something like “I use Mandrake and its really good”. About half a dozen posts here so far and all from Mandrakers, none from users of other distros. Please, go to http://www.pclinuxonline.com and sing Mandrakes praises at the top of your voice, thats what its there for. And for those who see the yast licence as their ticket for a free troll, I’ll explain it simply for the simple, NO ONE CAN SELL YAST WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION FROM SUSE. You can give it away but you cant charge money for it. SUSE is a commercial entity and made this decision to survive in the commercial world. The result? SUSE is going from strength to strength while others are dying. Dont agree with this?, DONT USE IT. However, if you value stability and a professional, polished product, SUSE awaits you.
I have tried SUSE 9 Professional and I must say that after using it for about 3 weeks I have mixed feelings.
First, it would not install on my PC (Supermicro P6DBE mob with 2*PII 400MHz). The only way I could install it was to remove the hard drives from my intended PC and place them in another PC on which I could perform the installation. On completion of the installation, replace the hard drives back into their original PC. It would not even install on my Dell Latitude CPi laptop. In both cases, the installation would hang at the welcome screen.
I have installed Red Hat on both machines without any problems. I spent about a week playing with various BIOS settings but to no avail – the install would always hang after displaying the welcome screen.
Secondly, the install program does not accept input from my USB keyboard and mouse. It detects it, but pressing any key has no effect. The only way to get it working, is to plug in a PS2 keyboard and mouse. Once installed SUSE has no problems working with USB keyboard nor mouse.
As a desktop system, I feel that SUSE has a lot to offer and I suspect that it’s better than Red Hat 9. It has by default all the little things that Red Hat lacks e.g. all important plugins, java, proper Adobe PDF reader and not the inadequate one that Red Hat is suppling. One can get these things for Red Hat as well but I feel that they should come with the system as standard.
Having said that I still have few niggly problems:
* every time I login all the icons seem to be scattered on the screen and I have to manually arrange them so that they line up. My Red Hat system seem to remember the position of icons without any problems.
* I can not get fonts to display properly. My two systems, Red Hat 9 and SUSE 9, both run KDE at the same resolution 1600×1200. In the KDE control centre I set the fonts to Sans 10 for my Desktop on both systems. Red Hat looks OK but I am convinced that the desktop on SUSE does not display fonts properly. They look much bigger than the same fonts on Red Hat (here I am talking about Taskbar, Window titles and Menu items). They just look big and ugly.
So for the time being I will be sticking with Red Hat for a bit longer.