“SUSE Linux 9.1 – the first version of the distribution to come out after Novell bought the company late last year – will be available in Australia from May 1. SUSE has the second biggest marketshare among commercial distributions of the open source operating system.” Read the review at SMH.com.au.
Novell’s SuSE Linux has Landed
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Eugenia Loli
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>>SUSE is the first commercial distribution to use the 2.6 kernel and the degree of responsiveness in the system has thus increased markedly.
SO NOT TRUE. I don’t think I need to go any further than that, as anyone who reads this site knows that a distro that won’t be out until May 1 is not the first commercial distro to use the 2.6 kernel.
>>And in Novell’s case, there is some resonance for the open source community – this is a company which actually took on Microsoft in the 1980s and won the networking battle.
Novell WON? Mr. Varghese, I think you mistook a couple Novell and SuSE marketing pamphlets for a history book.
If anything, this is an announcment at best.
“For example, if one accesses YAST2 and makes some changes in a system parameter and then wants to make some changes in a hardware setting – while YAST2 remains open – the root password is required once again.”
I have used SUSE since 8.0 and this not the normal action. This seems like a bug to me since none of the other pre-reviews have mentioned this signifigant change. I would be very displeased if this bug is not really a bug.
This article must have been written a while ago since YAST *has* been GPL’d.
Also, I thought the Pro version came with 2 DVD’s? Am I just mistaken or what?
Finally, why don’t they cover any of the new features of SUSE? They cover what’s new in KDE, but little else. I want to hear how good the automounting is working or the integrated cd-burning (i think they announced that at Brainshare, maybe I’m just confused). Does the OO.org/QT perform better or worse than normal OO.org? I guess I will just have to buy it and see for myself (not that I wasn’t planning to anyways).
Will YaST now being GPL mean ISOs can now be freely distributed?
I just checked the SUSE site and they didnt list the media for 9.1 Pro. However, under the SUSE 9.0 Pro it lists 5CDs and 1 *Dual* DVD, which would be equivalent to 2 single sided DVD’s.
Do you mean freely distributed by SUSE or freely distributed by you if you over Bit Torrent or other method?
AFAIK, you could always freely distribute the CD’s in any form, you just couldn’t charge for them since that was part of the YAST liscense.
So yes, you can give CD’s to friends or share iso’s.
Does it mean SUSE will provide free iso downloads? No.
Well, since this seems to have been written a while ago (see my previous post) Mandrake 10.0 more than likely hadn’t shipped and the reviewer didn’t know when it would ship. In that case SUSE would have been the first commercial distro to ship with 2.6, but Mandrake did beat them to it.
It seems like very review nowadays is about “the first commercial distribution with a 2.6 kernel.” To my knowledgle, Mandrake 10 has had it for a couple of weeks now.
which company comes with the first 2.6 kernel blablabla…
actually suse isos cant be distributed freely or in one of those cheap cd store cause there are always some commercial software bundled with it.
the suse 9.1 boxset content:
5 cds for intel arch, 1 dvd for intel arch and another dvd for 64 bit version
tips: if u wanna order one oder the update version which is same as the pro version except that the thick manual is excluded.
update ver:60
pro ver:90
TurboLinux. Although I think it was a beta kernel. But still first.
News item read here on OSNEWS.
>>And in Novell’s case, there is some resonance for the open source community – this is a company which actually took on Microsoft in the 1980s and won the networking battle.
Novell WON? Mr. Varghese, I think you mistook a couple Novell and SuSE marketing pamphlets for a history book.
Microsoft was never in the network business in the 1980’s.
Unless we are talking about DOS clients, they had nothing to network with. Workgroups wasn’t released until sometime in 1992-93, and that was never really considered much of a network by anyone including MS.
I guess the statement is actually true. Yet another example of someone winning a huge battle against themselves.
SO NOT TRUE. I don’t think I need to go any further than that, as anyone who reads this site knows that a distro that won’t be out until May 1 is not the first commercial distro to use the 2.6 kernel.
Wrong.
Red Hat and SuSE are the only two commercial distributions available.
All the others (Lindows, Mandrake, etc) are irellevant. They just happen to be sold commercialy.
Red Hat and SuSE are the only two commercial distributions available.
All the others (Lindows, Mandrake, etc) are irellevant. They just happen to be sold commercialy.
Glad that someone has realised this fact. Lindows might be one of the runner ups, but they’re also not playing in the game. Mandrake, Gentoo and Debian and others are just hobby distros for education purposes or something.
I thought Mandrake 10.0 was the first with the 2.6 kernel? I think the 10.0 “community edition” has been out for some time, and the official version has been shipping for about a week.
All the others (Lindows, Mandrake, etc) are irellevant. They just happen to be sold commercialy.
They just happen to be sold commercially, do they? Sounds like they were first then.
Lindows might be one of the runner ups, but they’re also not playing in the game. Mandrake, Gentoo and Debian and others are just hobby distros for education purposes or something.
They may not have as much perceived backing (which doesn’t count for very much – only to people on Slushdot
), but nevertheless they are good for competition, and certainly Mandrake, although not large, are moving forwards commercially. I would have no problems discussing with Mandrake about a contract for supporting a collection of servers, and they’ve also done deals with HP and IBM in the past.
Simply saying that certain companies ‘are not in the game’ means absolutely nothing. They are there.
They’re right – but they did it the wrong way!
If you access the Yast functions through the KDE control centre, each setting calls up a new instance of Yast and needs the password again – what you and I and all other Suse users actually do is call up Yast on its own, not through KDE, and then you only need to give the password once. This has been the case for a long time – and I imagine still is.
yeah, debian is an hobby distro…
that’s why our 100.000+ hits a day web site runs on a debian unstable cluster…
and for the same reason that’s why our mail server that handles about 6000 emails a day runs on debian unstable + postfix + amavis + spamassassin…
please stop being stupid, there is some people out there doing some real business with debian
“that’s why our 100.000+ hits a day web site runs on a debian unstable cluster… ”
Business practices that are working for you are not always good business practices in general. 100k hits is not really a heavy load for many companies, either.
The fact remains, though, that if unstable ever breaks Apache in some weird way, you’re screwed. There’s no one to turn to but a mailing list. Novell and Red Hat offer you a lot more guaranteed quality. That’s worth paying for in a lot of cases. Maybe not yours, but “Debian works for me, so it works for everyone” is hopelessly naive.
The fact that you’re running on Debian _Unstable_ doesn’t leave me with the impression that you’re a good sysadmin – just a lucky one. Hopefully I’m wrong, but you can understand my skepticism.
-Erwos
Actually suse isos cant be distributed freely or in one of those cheap cd store cause there are always some commercial software bundled with it.
Are there also bundled commercial softwares in the Personal edition ?
If not, it means that the ISO of Personal edition can be distributed freely, considering that YaST has been GPL’ed, doesn’t it?
> Does the OO.org/QT perform better or worse than normal OO.org?
Try it yourself <hint>available for download later today.</hint> 🙂
> Will YaST now being GPL mean ISOs can now be freely distributed?
According to reports the YaST of SUSE 9.1 is already GPL. But the ISOs contain commercially licensed programs.
SUSE 9.0 Pro had one double-sided DVD. SUSE 9.1 Pro has two double-sided DVDs (32-Bit and 64-Bit versions).
SuSE is difficult to pronounce, and Novell is a well-known brand name. They could also change the green theme to a more professional looking novell theme.
> SuSE is difficult to pronounce, and Novell is a well-known brand name. They could also change the green theme to a more professional looking novell theme.
The green SUSE (it’s SUSE btw, not SuSE) logo looks to be more professional than the red Novell logo. Red, in many culutures, has a “danger”-sign associated with it. That is not good for adoption.
I agree that SUSE is a bit hard to pronounce.
waiting eagerly
Suse is hard to pronounce..? Should the germans then change Volkswagen, Porsche and just about every last bit they are shifting to the US of A to some other name because they are resistant to proper pronounciation..? 😉 Because quite frankly, the stuff you guys pronounce correctly can be counted like 1-2-3 and I am being generous here…
Don,
Microsoft was in the LAN business back in the 80’s
Microsoft Lan Manager 2.1
“Microsoft’s offering for the enterprise was the LAN Manager. This is a piece of software with a very long history. First versions appeared sometime in mid-80’s and the latest incarnations still live on in Windows NT/2000 Server as well as (to a lesser extent) in IBM LAN Server/Warp Server. First versions of LAN Manager were developed by Microsoft in cooperation with 3Com and sold to OEMs (not directly by Microsoft). LAN Manager was compatible with, although not identical to, IBM’s LAN Server.”
http://pages.prodigy.net/michaln/history/os2ee/
Pronunciation isn’t very relevant. Just pronounce it how you want to. Look at toe-mate-o/toe-mott-o pronunciations. Is it really too hard to sound it out? I used to pronounce it soo-see until I finally learned how to pronounce it (soo-sah). I also used to call Debian dee-bee-an but I’m now pretty sure it’s deb-eee-an.
I pronounce it soo-zee ‘cuz it’s much cuter.
” Don,
Microsoft was in the LAN business back in the 80’s
Microsoft Lan Manager 2.1″
Ya got me…<g> I totally forgot about that.
For me in those days it was all Netware, Vines, IBM, and Artisoft. I don’t personally know a sole who actually ran it.
Should the germans then change Volkswagen, Porsche and just about every last bit they are shifting to the US of A to some other name because they are resistant to proper pronounciation..?
It’s really irrelevant what you dip.t-dialiners want because Novell owns Suse and so can change the name to anything they want.
I don’t remember anybody using it either, maybe that is why you forgot it? <g>
I agree, it was a Vines/Netware world for me back then as well.
Artisoft, wasn’t that the low cost, distributed file server software/hardware thingy???
-Fuji
I noticed on the NVIDIA site the Linux drivers now have the “run” extension and in the SuSE ReadMe it appears we can actually install/update our NVIDIA driver through “YOU” instead of doing it manually as in the past. Can someone confirm this with a test version of SuSE 9.1 if “YOU” actually updates the default 2D driver with a current NVIDIA 3D driver? Can ATI drivers be updated through “YOU” as well? It would be great to finally install/update graphics drivers with a GUI instead of using a command line. Definately would make things easier for newbies.
Just for info – there is a major gotcha coming with NVidia drivers.
If SUSE have done the same as Fedora and merged the 4KStacks patch the NVidia drivers wont work. As far as I know it is also going to be merged in vanilla 2.6.
>>All the others (Lindows, Mandrake, etc) are irellevant. They just happen to be sold commercialy.
That’s your opinion. If a distro is sold commercially, it is a commercial distro. Here at my company we do use Mandrake on our Linux servers, and prefer it to Red Hat and SuSE.
I cant find a side by side comparison anywhere. Does one exist? This should be “front and center” on the details page!
> Does the OO.org/QT perform better or worse than normal OO.org?
See http://dot.kde.org/1082652256/ for download link.
Oh, how easily pople forget Microsoft Lan Manager
Definetely avaiable in the 80’s and yes Novell did thump them then
BTW if you have OS/2 server, WinXX server or eCS server you are using LM code
You have been able to install the nVidia drivers through YOU since 9.0 — at the end of the install you even have the option to run YOU and install the drivers before ending the install and going to the desktop.
And no you can’t install the ATi drivers through YOU, which is a real shame because I haven’t gotten my 9600XT working at all. (SUSE does have their own installers for the ATi drivers at in the supplementary section on their ftp.)
Ok Folks I am planning to buy Suse Need Your Feedback. I am using Mandrake 10CE with kernel 2.6 and freetype BCI enabled and Xft antialiased. However the Fonts in KDE look plain SH**. I did al the unscaled and fiddled with Xfree86 Config to change the Fonts, tried 100DPI fonts. Nogo Just that you know I use a Toshiba Laptop with 512 RAM.
Actually Zeke, YOU on my system (SuSE 8.1) is able to update to the nVidia drivers.
Well, darn my bad memory. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never had an nVidia card in my system (someday… — maybe soon since I want some decent Linux drivers and the only reason I got the XT was for HL2).
“Artisoft, wasn’t that the low cost, distributed file server software/hardware thingy???”
I should have just said LanTastic and you would have known exactly what I was talking about. Low cost, peer to peer or sort of. Not really great stuff, but it was only about 50 bucks a node. Worked pretty damn well in small places, and not at all in big ones. <g>
SuSE is difficult to pronounce,
Sometimes a difficult to pronounce name can cause interest. Marketing is a strange beast.
SuSE is difficult to pronounce, and Novell is a well-known brand name.
Is it? This isn’t going to happen, as Suse are known now as a ‘Novell company’.
They could also change the green theme to a more professional looking novell theme.
What does that mean?
The fact remains, though, that if unstable ever breaks Apache in some weird way, you’re screwed.
If a service provider uses Debian, and supports it, no you’re not. However, I think people know now that this stuff is not going to break.
The fact that you’re running on Debian _Unstable_ doesn’t leave me with the impression that you’re a good sysadmin – just a lucky one.
Just because it is called unstable does not mean that it is going to break absolutely everything. The stuff that is in Debian Unstable, Suse and Red Hat are putting directly into their distros! This tells me that you are not, never have been, and never will be a sys admin. Good sys admins know what to install and what to leave alone
.
It’s really irrelevant what you dip.t-dialiners want because Novell owns Suse and so can change the name to anything they want.
The name will not be changed. Suse now have ‘A Novell Company’ on their logos, and it is clear that they gained some guarantees about their future from Novell at the time of the takeover. It was actually more like a merger.
Nope. Novell bought Suse, it was no merger. Suse isn’t even in the same league as Novell. Do you have some references to where there is guarantees that there will be no name change?
@redtux
Just for info – there is a major gotcha coming with NVidia drivers.
If SUSE have done the same as Fedora and merged the 4KStacks patch the NVidia drivers wont work. As far as I know it is also going to be merged in vanilla 2.6.
Actually, if you read various threads, the real problem isn’t the 4k stacks, at least for some users, but the “CONFIG_REGPARM” option, that changes what parameters are passed in registers. Although based on some reports NVidia’s stack usage can easily go past 8k. They need to fix this though as the 4K stack thing is supposedly going to merged into the mainline kernel and it won’t be optional.
“The stuff that is in Debian Unstable, Suse and Red Hat are putting directly into their distros!”
That’s patently false. Red Hat puts a known stable version of Apache in, and it _stays_ at that version for the lifetime of the product. Replicate that trick with Debian Unstable in an easy fashion. You can’t. You can do it with stable, sure, but they’re not even close to the same.
Try getting your facts straight before you argue. You’ll look less ignorant when you do.
I know what I’m talking about, having maintained servers that were running on Debian Unstable in the past. This would happen to make a system admin, but it’s not surprising someone who spouts off such foolishness wouldn’t recognize it. You’re just fooling yourself if you think Debian Unstable is appropriate for mission critical servers.
Debian is a great distro, but it’s a hobbyist distribution with no support and no guarantees. Serious businesses almost always want support on their software if something goes really wrong. End of story.
-Erwos
Suse now have ‘A Novell Company’ on their logos, and it is clear that they gained some guarantees about their future from Novell at the time of the takeover.
Actually, it really isn’t that “clear”.
Sometimes a difficult to pronounce name can cause interest. Marketing is a strange beast.
That is true, I agree, but I guess the others were being nice in saying it was “difficult to pronounce”. The truth is that it just plain sucks, “difficult to pronounce” or not. Maybe not as ugly as “Yoper”, “Xandros”, “Mandows”, “Lindows _and_ Linspire”, “Turbo Linux” and just about every other distro out there, but pretty bad, nonetheless.