SUSE LINUX 9.1 is now released and available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. If you live elsewhere, you can get the first taste of the new SUSE by downloading the SUSE LiveCD (formerly known as SUSE Live-Eval). Read more at DistroWatch.
SUSE LINUX 9.1 LiveCD Available
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Eugenia Loli
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does it have hd-install like knoppix?
under yast -> software, there wos a thing that you can use too do an hdinstall! or?
> under yast -> software, there wos a thing that you can use too do an hdinstall! or?
no, as I know you can save a package+installationlist for faster reinstall
Bjorn,
The SuSE 9.1 Live-Eval is basically a demo of SuSE that runs off the CD and not a full version of the distro. You may be able to install to your hard drive but I can’t understand why you would want to since it’s evaluation software. This basically give users a chance to try it out before making the decision to install SuSE. SuSE will be releasing Personal and Pro retail versions early May. Shortly after you will be able to download and install SuSE Personal for free via their FTP site.
Does the version released in Germany, Austria, and Austria support english? I have relatives coming over and I don’t really want to wait till May 1st since I have a server tha needs to be replaced now.
Yes. I wouldn’t even wonder if there are no seperate English v German versions at all.
The CDs and DVDs will be no different, but the manuals will be in German, almost certainly.
All version of SuSE (which I bought in germany) supported english and many other languages. The installation don’t start in german, it’s in english first and you must choose your language in first step.
Just downloaded it! Would not boot on my HP ze4300 laptop… neither would 9.0 live… gotta love in house testing. Mandrake Move had no problems booting on this laptop. However, it did boot on my desktop (shuttle, xp2000, 1Gram radeon8500). This would not be of note were it not for the fact that I was able to get the internet working easily via yast. My desktop has the D-Link DWL-AG520 a/b/g wireless card which does not work with Mandrake 10 and a score of other distros… impressive. Nice work SUSE!
Bouncing animated notification icons, with large centered app launcher at the bottom… looks like they are getting some inspiration from the mac world. Spell checking works to fill in web forms like this, cool. Windows networking with no additional configuration… xandros is not the only kid in town anymore.
I just tried out the live cd and I have to say I was very disappointed. The list of applications was very limited(no mozilla), and the look of kde is terrible. It looks like it was made by fisher price with gigantic icons, bright colors and the main panel is centered only taking up about 75% of the width of the screen. This might be the most unprofessional looking distro I have tried.
xandros is not the only kid in town anymore.
They never really were.
When the curser is held over minimized windows the tooltip popup shows a small empty box. Although when programs are maximized the popup shows the name of the program as expected.
Zero config networking was Xandros’ “killer feature”, in addition though to a lesser degree Crossover Office. It was always possible to network with windows computers with other distros just never that easy.
>> Bouncing animated notification icons
>> Spell checking works to fill in web forms like this, cool
Just so that you know, these aren’t SUSE specific features, they are standard in KDE 3.2. They are nice though.
The thing I am most loking forward to in SUSE 9.1 is the inclusion of Rekall. I have been wanting to use Rekall ever since it was GPL’d but I never got it to work from source.
I have to agree on the main panel. I don’t see the benefit of wasting the corners of the screen when windows are maximixed… unless you have a huge screen and like the look. However, you can change the size with a click of the mouse so it is not that big a deal. I think their choice to limit the app selection was a good one as this is a “demo” and not a “live cd” in the knoppix sense (diagnostic and useful tools).
>> The SUSE LINUX 9.1 FTP version is being worked on and will be published in a few days, in this directory. (from distrowatch)
Does this mean we won’t have to wait the usual 28 days for the FTP release?
I never knew that bouncing animations were part of KDE. I guess I use distros that disable them by default. I did know that the spell checking was new for KDE though. Rekall looks really cool, I wonder if there is any integration happening on the OpenOffice front?
Did you try the other boot options like “Install – ACPI disabled” on your laptop?
> The list of applications was very limited(no mozilla)
Space on one CD is limited. Pro has Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon, Epiphany…
> It looks like it was made by fisher price with gigantic icons, bright colors
You can change icon size and colors. And AFAIK the Personal defaults to Plastik (Pro to ThinKeramik), so I’m even more surprised that you talk about “fisher price” in conjunction with Plastik.
> and the main panel is centered only taking up about 75% of the width of the screen.
Can be changed. And is Personal specific, the Pro uses 100% screen width.
I may have tried “Install – ACPI disabled” had I had the opportunity to type anything… it froze at the welcome screen.
Just tried the 9.1 – Live CD.
Impressions, based on this system:
Athlon XP 2100+
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer
200GB WD 8MB Cache 7200 RPM ATA133 HD
40GB Maxtor 2MB Cache 7200 RPM ATA100 HD
3COM SOHO 10/100 Network Card
Logitech Dual Optical USB Mouse
Wacom Intuos2 6×8 Tablet
The Good:
1) The menus are nicely organized, and generic names are used for most programs (such as “CD / DVD Burning” instead of K3B)
2) The control center looks and works better than any previous version of SuSE I’ve used
3) Yast is much faster than previous versions
4) Even though it didn’t detect my mouse or monitor properly, I was able to select both of them and get them working properly using the graphical tools and my keyboard alone (nice!)
5) The default wallpaper is appropriate, and looks fairly professional, as do the other included wallpapers
6) Text redraw speed in Konsole was super fast, much faster than I’ve ever seen in Konsole or Gnome-Terminal
The Bad:
1) didn’t setup my soundcard properly (SB Audigy Gamer), had to manually run sound control panel and select the card (even though it supposedly had already detected it) before it would work
2) didn’t detect my Logitech Dual Optical USB Mouse, had to manually select it in the control panel
3) had to manually select my monitor in control panel (Sony Multiscan E400)
4) redraw is pretty slow when resizing windows, everyone says KDE 3.2.x is snappy and fast at redraw, but there are some ugly delays when resizing windows sometimes, is this SuSE specific?
5) my Wacom didn’t work, even after adding it in the Yast control panel
6) many of the control panel dialogs aren’t fully visible when they first come up, I have to resize them to see the full content of the control panel without them being clipped, or in the case of some, without the picklist controls being cut in half making them unuseable
7) my mouse wheel didn’t work until I logged out and logged back in after selecting a new mouse (I know why, but new users may be confused)
8) Kpilot segfaulted when trying to sync with my Palm Pilot
9) Didn’t detect my hostname properly (it’s DHCP assigned)
Overall:
SuSE 9.1, looks nice, runs fast for the most part, but falls short in hardware configuration, network configuration, and PDA usage. Hopefully these are just Live version problems, but I suspect I’ll have to wait until 9.2 or later.
I should note that RedHat 8, 9, RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3.0, and Debian Woody do not have any of the configuration problems or PDA problems that SuSE 9.1 Live has on my system.
Throughout this comment I have used “SuSE” not “SUSE”, because that’s what’s on the Live CD desktop graphic.
Since when has Debian Woody automatic hardware detection?
Note this (and the sources on FTP) include the first YaST version under GPL.
Sorry,
Won’t boot on one machine that has run every other OS.
Took 30 minutes to boot on a dual 2.4G Xeon.
Better hire the Knoppix team to fix it.
@anonymous:
Since when has Debian Woody automatic hardware detection?
Debian may not have one utility that does all the detection, but when you install the various components (such as ALSA, XFree86, etc.) it runs a configuration program for those items that usually guesses them correctly for me.
I like very much the integration of OpenOffice.org in KDE; I think this is a very good feature
I tried the live cd and it would not recognize my usb keyboard so I could not continue. It would not set up the video correctly on my laptop either, so both machines won’t be getting Suse. Sorry Suse keep working.
> “Space on one CD is limited. Pro has Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon, Epiphany.”
I understand that space is limited, but it seems like they choose to put in pointless programs for an evaluation cd. They put in a cd ripper, real player, juk, … the list goes on and on of stuff that is only good if you had a harddrive to store your work finished work on.
>”You can change icon size and colors.”
> Can be changed. And is Personal specific, the Pro uses 100% screen width.
I am well aware that the look of kde is completly cutomizable, but just because the look can be changed doesn’t mean suse should make the default desktop very unuseful.
Just tried out SuSe 9.1 live cd. It ran well on my computer. The icons are colorful They are using generic terms for certain things like cd burner software and not naming in the menu as K3b. I can see how SuSe is trying to win over users by using this icons in this way. It ran well and very stable and faster than Suse 9.0 because of the 2.6 kernel. Definitely a distro people should check out.
any bit-torrents for 9.1 professional?
I noticed a problem with slow redraw (Mobility Radeon 9200), but it had to do with the fact that hardware acceleration was disabled by default. I tried changing the setting through Yast, but for some reason it was unable to run the test X-server. I guess there are only so many things that they could cram on to the test CD, since hardware acceleration was supported on previous versions of SuSE I have used with this laptop.
The hardware configuration on this Sony Vaio was completely painless though, so I must say I am very impressed with this version so far. With both the static touchpad & the external mouse working without any additional configuration, when they have given me some trouble in the older versions, I am one happy person.
I have to agree with the person who said that its becoming more & more like a Mac, as I didn’t have to do anything extra with the configuration, etc … it just worked! I, for one am glad that they are being inspired with the painlessness of a Mac … now thats something which would make me permanently “switch” to Linux
The integrated spell-checker is also VERY nice : its useful to have it check my message as I type this, and will be very convenient when using webmail, among other things.
Overall, this version is so much snappier than any version of SuSE I have used so far, so I think I’ll go with the retail box once its available.
Great work SuSE!
I’m writing this on the live-cd.
Did anyone notice the snappy-ness of application launches? This is the first ‘real’ distro with a stock 2.6 kernel and I’m impressed!
It seems to have had a problem detecting the dual-processor configuration though.
– the subject say it, nice distro, but no ntfs drive are mounted even in read only mode. (mount -a has no effect). Knoppix is a way better live cd (the 3.4 will be available soon 🙂 )
– The screen resolution has not been correctly detected on my HPnx7000 notebook, but you can adjust it
– icons are too big
– the icon: terminal is not in quick launch tasbar as default, SuSE may wabt to conquer windows users
I will still buy the box as soon as it is available…
Tried it on my HP Pavilion zv5000z laptop. Worked well, but didn’t recognize my network card correctly. Probably isn’t on the CD. Anyway, I thought it was nice and YAST did run a lot faster.
I’m not completely won over by changing the names of the programs to generic terms. I understand that K3b isn’t obvious as a CD burning program, but I prefer that if they’re going to change the menu name, change it to “K3b-CD/DVD Writer”.
> nice distro, but no ntfs drive are mounted even in read
> only mode.
Whether Windows NTFS hard drive partitions is supported is my major determinant in migrating to LINUX (I really love a lot of other aspects of the OS’s features and development trajectory).
I thought kernel 2.6 was supposed to have native NTFS read/write support. Can anyone tell me what the current state of NTFS supports is on LINUX?
2.4 supported Reading NTFS and I had no problems. I just made a small VFAT partition (~500 MB) for when I wanted to send a file from Linux to WindowsXP. There was writing but it was marked as unstable and while (apparently) it worked for some ppl it could crash and take out the whole partition with it. AFAIK it has not changed much in 2.6, but I haven’t used it just read about… I was waiting for SuSE
!.
But you should have no problem with the read-only NTFS and what would really need to write onto NTFS for from Linux when you could just have a VFAT partition that both Linux and Windows can R/W too? Really its not a problem. The only files I ever wanted from my NTFS were my movies and MP3s… but there was no need to write onto them.
Perfect? No. But its not as big as a problem as you might suspect.
Captain Pinko,
Thanks for the info!
> But you should have no problem with the read-only NTFS and
> what would really need to write onto NTFS for from Linux
> when you could just have a VFAT partition that both Linux
> and Windows can R/W too?
Well, for one I want the hard drive space you suggest using as a transitory space between Windows and LINUX. I’ve always hated the inellegance of this solution for that reason (obviously a result of Microsoft’s use of closed-source formats and standards, not of LINUX technical deficiency).
What is more, I’m an OpenOffice.org user and I write research papers full-time… so what I’d like to have LINUX and Windows have equal-access to are my full-time work files. I’d like these in the more secure, more efficient, NTFS format. I’d like to not loose flexibility or complicate my file-allocation practices by maintaining as few partitions as possible… All in all, I’m just not interested in having an additional, sizeable partition just for creating LINUX access.
what would really need to write onto NTFS for from Linux
Are you kidding? Being able to write to NTFS will allow you to perform repairs on crashed Windows systems. It will allow you to perform file restorations or manipulate botched config files. Writing to NTFS would be a major advantage to those that use live CDs like Knoppix to breath life back into failed Windows systems. Right now the only way to do these things is through the recovery console, which is very limited or via a parallel Windows installation which takes a lot of time.
does 9.1 SuSE use xfree86 or xorg ?
XFree86 version: 4.3.99.902
I thought kernel 2.6 was supposed to have native NTFS read/write support. Can anyone tell me what the current state of NTFS supports is on LINUX?
The current state is that NTFS uses technology patented by Microsoft, and the big vendors are still cautious about being sued. Same problem as with playing DVD’s. This is not the fault of “Linux”, but rather of governments for ever allowing software patents.
I tried the LiveCd on both computers.
It didn’t work.
This is the third version i tested of suse live cd’s.
It has an nice bootup logo, and pressing F2 gives me teh details of the process. Then it goes into KDE 3.2 and you find an user guide waiting for you to read. So far so good.
The apps are fast starting, nice. Internet with konqueror worked well, with libflashplayer.so , pdf and realplayer ready from the box. But no mplayer plugin or an working kaffeine player for qtime trailers.And Dvd’s do not play,
due to the missing codecs. My sound was not autodetected, so i had to manually get it working. Kopete, refuses to connect to irc.freenode.net -i read somewhere on the internet that this is an bug in KDE and there is an fix, but what use is this, i am running an live cd, so thats kind of hard to fix! Finally got the sound working and shoutcast streaming audio played on the desktop with xmms.
Open Office was welworking, so i could write the test results. It looks nice, but could work an whole lot better.
I wonder if the makers really tested the whole thing, all in all, for an live cd my choice would be knoppix, for an hard disk install suse Pro 9.1 could be an nice choice.
cybernout
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/
I’m writing this from the the SuSE 9.1 Live CD and I’m really impressed by the overall quality (yes there’s a few things like the kopete irc pbm and the quicktime/dvd stuff). I have a Linux Mandrake 10.0 Official install and I can see the difference in the polish and I can’t count the number of unexpected reboots or lock-ups I had with 10.0 (note: 9.2 works much better)
Having said that isn’t this cd more an evaluation of 9.1 (if yes it serves is purpose well) than a real Live CD?
Is there some trick to burning Suse iso’s? This is the 2nd consecutive Suse live/eval CD I’ve downloaded and burned the iso for, and neither one will boot. I have no problem booting any other live CD I’ve burned.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. It’s boots up on my PC and not on the other… Neither PCs have pbms booting up CDs. Weird.
If someone knows why please let us know.
Corky, try SmartBootManager (http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/) – this has allowed me to boot any cd I’ve thrown at it, it’s normally hardware related if you can’t boot a cd that’s meant to be booted (depends on the cd), this app solves it. Never had trouble with SUSE CDs personally, mainly slackware ones.
my review when installing or trying to access NTFS partitions:
<a href=”http://www.waltercedric.com/pc/suse/migrationToLinux.htm“>
read and write on NTFS !
A lot of projects are trying to read Windows NTFS drive with more or less success more (slightly at the end of file 70kb)