“I want to approach this review a little different then most. There are already a number of very detailed and technically oriented reviews done by others on many Linux Desktop Operating Systems, and SuSE has been well documented by the Jem Report, OSNews, ProLinux, Sydney Morning Herald, Mad Penguin, Linux.com just to name a few. I will just give a personal view of my observations and differences in how they compare to some of the other Linux Desktop Operating Systems I have installed and used.” Read the rest of the review here.
A Users’ Review of SuSE Professional 9.1
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
well, not a good review, nor long, so here goes:
Suse works, you just need to know what to do with it..
Grab win32codecs etc, update to kde 3.2.2 and install mozilla, you then have kaffine working fulltime with all plugins when surfing, that is http://www.apple.com/trailers etc, xvid movies etc, you get the point.. flash works,java and so on.
in terms of default install, hello: I don`t have a laptop..
it`s slower than mandrake ( no benchmarks to show, but running em bouth for some weeks)
not that many packages for suse as for e.g debian when that comes out in some time, mandrake more packages.
Theme is ok, could be better integrated like this one: http://www.munjoylinux.org/
well it works, it stable, it`s ok, but it is NOT debian stable, nor is it a distro to play around with, not that many rpm`s for it, and gnome support well.. ximian hello!! make unstale atleast work…
I installed this yesterday, love the installer and the overall look of the distro; but my sound and ethernet do not work. Sound I can do without right now, have fiddled around with ALSA in the past and gotten the soundcard to work; but no internet connection really sucks. Thing is this same computer worked fine in Fedora, MEPIS, Knoppix and Linspire (sound and internet). I found a forum post detailing some stuff I can try out when I get home. I’ve really been interested in using Suse and finally settling on one distro; hopefully I can get it to work. If not, guess I’ll try Fedora later this week. Wish all distros could have a common hardware detector that works; hate having to choose my distro based on all my hardware being detected instead of what the distro actually offers.
Which? HTML composing? Be serious…
should get the eth0 to work, alsa to, but if you`re looking for a distro try debian testing with the new installer and se what`s comming, there you`ll get it to work
Are you going to do a review of SuSE 9.1? How about Fedora Core 2 (out tomorrow?). Thanks.
dear eugenia. i really do appreciate osnews.com however how many ppl are going to review the same product again & again & again. i suggest you to put some censorship on its. just my request.
thank you
aditya
I installed fedora 2 last night and just this morning I received a box with SuSE 9.1 Pro. Dunno if I write something and when though, I am getting ready to go to vacations soon.
i have nothing against this writter. however i am just tired of reading same old headlines
Cool. Well, I’d at least like to hear your preliminary assessment of Fedora Core 2. We have had lots of SuSE stuff, so if you wanted to put something out about FC2 that would be great. Love your reviews!
I would say that 90% of the reviews I read on here and maybe just in general are pretty lame. For example, if some piece of hardware didn’t work, what was it? I mean I want a Manufacturer and Model Number because maybe I have that hardware too, so I would know to stay away. Also, the installer always gets such a large portion of the review, I don’t really care if it looks pretty, but I would care if it is missing a serious feature, like partition creation and formating or individual package selection or does it corrupt your partition table. I think reviewers should attempt to use this as their main OS for atleast 2 weeks before writing a review. That way they can talk about stability and application shortcommings in an informed manner. Also, all these reviews don’t seem to have a standard format, granted they are coming from other sites also. I do like Eugenia’s rating system, but a summary page would be nice of major desktop packages. For example for Suse 9.1:
Desktop : KDE 3.2.1
Video Player : Kaffiene X.Y.Z (based on xine-lib 1.0rcX)
Office Suite : Open Office.org 1.1.1
Instant Messenger : Kopete (KDE 3.2.1)
linux-kernel 2.6.X (plus patches)
…
In a separate, but related comment, do any distro’s provide or 3rd party sites provide a ‘How to uncripple your linux desktop’ summary where they tell you how to d/l and install win32codecs, livdvdcss (or whatever it is), flash plugins, get mp3’s working (yeah, redhat)?
I am currently writing a review too, but since I have it only since last thuesday on my pc and have planned, but not installed on a notebook compaq nx7000, i prefer to wait.
a very small review, with no pictures, and no solutions to overcome some of the shortcoming of suse (codecs, dvd to name a few….)
I think evaluation like this do more damage to all M$ alternatives.
The addition of this link makes me more mistrustful of the content published here because it’s so shoddy.
This is not a review, it’s rambling.
Michael
philci52,
I agree with most of what you said but don’t think it’s as high as 90%. Eugenia or OSNews in general really need to review the articles submitted by so called writers prior to posting on this site. I rarely see real journalism when it comes to people trying to play at being something they are not. Whether the articles are linked or submitted it doesn’t do OSNews any good to have garbage articles on this site. Also unless there is a more in depth review of a particular OS, software or hardware then there is no need to post repeat articles on the subject. It’s not only a waist of site space but it waist the readers time.
Anyway, an example of what a review should look like and what I would like to see more often is at this link (PART-1 http://www.waltercedric.com/pc/suse/myExperience.htm ), (PART-2 http://www.waltercedric.com/pc/suse/migrationToLinux.htm ) You’ll noticed the writer (Walter Cedric) goes in depth with regards to reviewing SuSE Linux, posting both postive and negative experience, showing colorful screen shots, info on transitioning from Windows to Linux and helpful links. I hope he post a review soon on SuSE Linux Pro 9.1 since he did such a good job with the 9.0 review.
Suse offers iso’s of the live evaluation CD – not of 9.1 presonal or professional. Did he really install 9.0 professional? I have the live evaluation cd of 9.1 running on my old 763Mz Celeron box. It runs slow. It runs off the CD. It doesn’t install Linux on the hard drive. But I really like it. and I may pay the $30 to buy the program. This is the first Linux that I felt was good enough to buy.
here
http://www.waltercedric.com/pc/suse/suse-professional-9.1-review.htm
😉 still working at it
The reviewers of Linux often install to some dusted hardware. It’s unfair because Windows is never reviewed on a 400 Mhz CPU but always on some high horse rig with dual camshafts. But I can accepts it as long the the reviewer does NOT use the word SLOW anywhere in the review.
I installed SuSE 9.1 Pro from the DVD last Friday on my A7N8X/Sata/Ati9600/AMD2700.
This time I selected the default package selections (minimal) and only a few additional packages. Makes for a lot less clutter that way.
I then did YOU (YaST Online Update – equivalent to Redhat’s up2date).
I then updated to KDE 3.2.2 from SuSE website (for some reason not included in YOU).
Lastly, I updated with all xine related packages from http://packman.links2linux.de/ including the script to install libdvdcss. Kudos to packman – it just works.
I did not install the 3D driver from ATI because it requires a kernel recompile and I have no need for it – I’m not a gamer.
I then exercised every app – most of them just a little.
Bottom line: No bumps. If MS is not already frightened then now is a good time.
If all you do – like me – is a little e-mail or watch a video, write and print a doc, play an mp3 or a clip, page the web or burn a cd/dvd – stuff like that – then Linux is fine. There’s buttons to do all of the above – don’t need to know no cryptic command line.
I also have a Windows box. But if it wasn’t for Turbotax and a few others that run only on Windows then I wouldn’t need Windows. Actually, I’ve gotten used to KDE and wouldn’t want Windows.
FYI. The release of Fedora 2 was pre-released yesterday and will be released tomorrow according to slahsdot.
These mega distros that try to do everything for you are a waste of time. Usually you end up having to hand config the system to get it upto scratch anyway so why not from start. Using Arch Linux here and it is a snap and the pacman utility is great for package management.
Gnome 2.6.1
Kernel 2.6.6
Nvidia drivers
Alsa ice1712
Tulip ehternet.
Findout what your hardware is and then either modprobe it into action or add entries into rc.conf for it to load the modules on startup. Can’t be simpler.
Except for Cubase SX I have all I want from windows, now if I could get a version of RoseGarden with a GTK interface instead of QT then I would be set. I like the simplicity of Gnome over KDE’s power interface, stops me from f’n around with the computers interface and just get down to using it for work, play.
BTW Il2 FB and UT2004 run fine under my setup. The first in Wine-X and the second natively. Also don’t use mp3 as it is a proprietry codec, prefer to use Ogg-Vorbis, better codec and they don’t $ting the content creators if they want to sell their compositions unlike the Fraunhofe Institute.
I struggled for a couple of hours trying to get any sort of video to work, I downloaded the win32 codecs, I downloaded the divx rpms, I downloaded the xvid rpms, I downloaded mplayer, I downloaded ogle and a bunch of libraries to support everything and after all that nothing worked. I hate microsoft and want to dump XP but was forced to go back to it. Does anyone know of a site with video solutions for SuSE 9.1? Has anyone been succesful with divx or xvid? I have a pretty generic box and everything plays perfectly with XP.
Yes, packman (as I commented above).
Thanks Claus but those are the rpms I used. Did you have any trouble with them? Which packages did you install exactly? Also did you have to chose certain packages or do anything special during the install process for these to work?
I don’t understand why people find it shocking that they can’t play or burn a copyright DVD in SuSE Linux? Novell doesn’t include certain library files due to licensing issues. Hopefully they will reconsider in the future and pay developers to aquire the codecs for smooth DVD playback. You can play most codecs with the installed media players that come with SuSE Linux just as well or even better than you did in Windows.
Anyway, typically in KDE the default media players installed are Kaffeine (Video/Audio), XMMS (Audio) and Realplayer (Video/Audio). I’ve never used Realplayer so I just choose during the installation of SuSE Linux to not install it. Okay so either you can download the plugin file for Kaffeine necessary to play copywritten DVDs from the developer site or you can uninstall those 3 programs in YAST and install MPlayer from the developer site that includes all codecs even though it’s not necessarily legal. I say not necessarily legal since the developers of MPlayer have yet to compensate certain codecs developers or receive authorization to include it in MPlayer. This may explain why some developer have left.
Oh, and for those that say things like “Well it worked fine in Windows” I say get the shovel out because you’re hip deep in manure. I ran both Win2000 and WinXP prior to switching to SuSE Linux and neither OS play copyright DVDs with out a third party program being installed. This is done by either purchasing the player to play the DVD or hoping that the DVD comes with a player such as my “Star Wars – Attack of the clones” did. Microsoft does the right thing by not including codecs they haven’t paid for or gotten authorization from the developers to use in Windows. So knowing this those people complaining should stop their bitching.
Your best bet is to install apr4rpm for SuSE:
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/home.html
It’s very easy. You install 2 rpms from that site (apt and apt-libs) for your SuSE version. Then take a look at the text file at /etc/apt/sources.list which contains a list of rpm repositories (including packman). Edit out the ones you don’t think you’ll need.
Then run in a terminal: apt-get update
Then install synaptic, a gui front-end: apt-get install synaptic
Then run synaptic and you’ll see lots of rpms you can install. Apt will resolve dependencies and take care of everything for you.
Here is an easy how-to:
http://www.thewholeclan.com/will/archives/000017.html
One last piece of advice: go to the support page at suse.com and subscribe to the suse-linux-e mailing list. Lots of help there. There is also a new forum at http://www.suseforums.com.
Good luck!
One feature I would really like is for the filters to move filtered emails to remote imap folders. Last I checked kmail doe not have this feature.
Any trouble? None. I’ve tested a few DVDs and mpg’s
( http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/jet.mpeg ) – but no divx nor the opensource derivative xvid. Xine is now more smooth, CPU consumption lower and the desktop operable while a movie is playing. Maybe I missed something in the past.
All I did is the following – no post config – but on a fresh install of SuSE 9.1 – not an upgrade.
http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=124 (rpm -Uvh):
kaffeine-0.4.3b-0.pm.0.i586.rpm
libtheora-0.9_1.0alpha3-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-alsa09-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-arts-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-directfb-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-dvb-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-dvd-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-ogg-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-opengl-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-sdl-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-syncfb-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-w32dll-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
libxine1-xvmc-1_rc4a-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
w32codec-0.90-3.pm.0.i386.rpm
xine-browser-plugin-0.2cvs-20031207.i686.rpm
xine-ui-0.99.1-0.pm.0.i686.rpm
The last one is an alternative to Kaffeine. I installed it anyway.
And lastly the DVD decryption
http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=122 :
install_libdvdcss2 (script under “SuSE >= 9.0” – run it)
Don’t get confused about the “2” – it installs the real thing.
And again – thank you Packman.
====
I then updated to KDE 3.2.2 from SuSE website
====
ps : could you tell me how u did this ? ( cuz i upgraded to kde3.14 and now theme manager is missing ).
thanks
Add ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_9.1/… as source to YaST. But KDE 3.2 doesn’t include a theme manger, so updating will not help you.
i donno if they changed it 9.1 but in 9.0 lilo rpm installes by default but the default loader installed on Harddisk is grub. Also another another rpm’s not very needed are after installation on the disk – LVM for example
How odd. Most people complain that OS reviews only list the software versions and talk about personal experiences barely relevant to the situation. Here are people complaining about the opposite. Amazing.
There are many different review styles, and as such there should be many different reviews and if you’re making a purchasing decision you should read as many of them as possible. I do all my testing with the latest hardware, I outline the licensing, say very little about the installation and focus on what the software can do in relation to what it was designed to do. That is, from my frame of reference and in the opinion of the majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who read my work every month, the best was to do a review. If you want to know what versions of programs are included, go to http://www.suse.com and look through the package list for 9.1 Professional — you don’t need a review to tell you what the company has already published. A review should tell the reader what they cannot glean (or easily discover) from the company’s website.
Unless you’re willing to start writing and publishing (or selling) your own reviews, it isn’t right to assail the professionalism of others. Some of us — most of us — work very hard to write the best reviews that we can for the benefit of the community.
-Jem
Dark Knight…sorry if I was unclear. I didn’t mean to say XP plays DVDs or Divx out of the box. I had to install the codecs and a DVD player before they would work. I was just saying that my hardware is not the issue because I can play those video formats succesfully in XP. I’m no microsoft lover and once I get SuSE configured I’ll be much happier.
Thanks, to anonymous for the apt howto…I’ll try that.
none,
I would strongly recommend that you remove “ximian” and any kernel repositories listed in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Be careful about what components you leave in there since you may accidentally hose your system. When you install a package, take a look at all the dependencies apt will install to make sure everything looks ok. You may want to post on the SuSE mailing list and ask which sources people recommend.
Finally, be sure to check out http://www.usr-local-bin.org (excellent gnome packages like evolution, abiword, etc).
The default Office Suite is OpenOffice 1.1.1 and comes with the newer crystal iconset as well as some very basic templates. (from the review)
It is more than just a simple change in the iconset, they are using a version of http://dot.kde.org/1075705744/“>OpenOffice.org .
the whole thing from rebooting the computer with the freshly burned SuSE ISO, to the first desktop took me about 3.5 hours. (from the review)
So are we to assume this is a review of a ‘warez’ version of SUSE 9.1 Professional (or is it the ‘Live’ version)? Though 3.5 hours is a heck of a long time (a suspiciously long time). I haven’t tried 9.1 yet but 9.0 took significantly less time than that even on a 350MHz machine.
lastly:
I want to approach this review a little different then most. (from the review)
Argh! One of my ‘favourite’ pet peeves (should be ‘than’).
> It is more than just a simple change in the iconset, they are using a version of http://dot.kde.org/1075705744/ OpenOffice.org integrated with KDE.
Better link to http://dot.kde.org/1082652256/ which has the download link.