The upcoming SUSE LINUX 9.2 has yet to hit the retail stores, but the product’s two live CDs (with either KDE or GNOME) and a live DVD are now available for free download. Update: KDE shots and Gnome shots from the SuSE Live CDs.
SuSE Linux 9.2 Live CD/DVD Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m downloading from 9.1 – getting 160KB/s which is max for me – isn’t anyone else downloading? But I don’t expect a big upgrade. But I’m going to buy 9.2 – eventually – just for support.
30min and done with the KDE cd!
Is there to be a downloadable ‘personal’ CD later on?
I’ve heard that 9.2 has features for laptops, which linux has heretofore lacked quite distressingly.
And I don’t wish for a gigantic 5-disc installation with 40 text editors, 8 email clients and other useless junk. 9.1 personal was a good template for the SuSE, and I hope that 9.2 is similarly pared down.
Theres no such thing as a boxed personal cd, so yes.
“…isn’t anyone else downloading..?
They are now — I’m only getting 140Kbps & I have a 3MB connection. geesh – I remember the good only days when I got excited upgrading my 28.8kbps to a 33.6kbps.
I’ve got 500kb/sec
Using fir 2 hours…
Quite inpressive…fast boot with improved hardware detection…nothing major but the small things that matter…the gnome/kde all around integration is great for instance…yast has few new icons….to bad that the live version not automount hd’s..also gnome 2.8 doesn’t fit to release schedule..
..otherwise great first impression!
310Kbps on my Comcast 3Mbps/256Kbps connection. Wget says 34mins left.
Getting the Gnome CD – very excited about a Ximian version of SUSE – the awful KDE-centricity is why I switched from 9.1 Pro+SLES9 to Fedora 2+RHEL 3ES!
Well it’s considerate of Novell to separate the Gnome line from KDE so they could pack more on each CD instead of leaving out some software. This will give consumers a better chance to try out all the tools available for their preferred desktop GUI prior to making a purchase.
My friend has a Radeon X800, and SuSE 9.1 was just horrible with it. The colours were mixed, and with a new network card even Internet didn’t work. I hope they both work now.
I’m only getting 56.7 KB/s and this is on a 1.5 Mbps cable connection
Oh well, another 1 1/4 hrs left.
Is there anyway to install from the live DVDs a la Knoppix or is this just a tease?
It’s plastik. Good. It’s lean. Good. OpenOfficeWriter won’t start. Not soo good. Starting the OO QuickStarter first makes no difference. Realplay video from the BBC shows nothing. But it doesn’t work in 9.1 either. No Flash either.
In the menu I see some newcomers – Database, Bluetooth, Groupware (whatever that is). uname says kernel 2.6.8. Infocenter says Xorg. XF86Config has radeon instead of fglrx (for ati cardholders) – expected because not OSS. The font in webpages in Konqueror looks ok. The network works – I’m using it writing this.
Wtf is suse distro now? Didn’t they convert it to Novell? Do they still release two seperate distro?
Nice. Here’s a list of mirrors, find a faster one if it’s downloading slow from the link @ distrowatch.
http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int_mirrors.html
Great idea, a live DVD. Eventually linux vendors are beginning to realize that more and more people have fast connections and DVD burners.
Which one do they put in Live CD: Xorg or XFree ?
Xorg, or atleast thats what DistroWatch says.
hm, openoffice won’t start, and the splashscreen looks as if they developed it backwards. but it’s a livecd, so one can still hope the final release will work/look better.
It’s really funky.
-SuSEplugger/OOo quickstarter/etc open a tiny window instead of loading in Notification area.
– Menu is broken (nothing in Applications)
– why does |Help| -> User manual open KDE help center ?!?!
– no icons on many of the launchers on desktop
– clicking on “Printer” on the desktop opens KjobViewer and a little KDE notification object in a tiny window
– really slow! It took 3mins+ just to open OOo. Takes only 30secs in Knoppix.
– Both Gnome’s “Computer” and SUSE’s “My Computer” launchers are on the desktop at the same time. They both point to the same dir.
Im horribly offended. Either drop Gnome or atleast do a decent job, Novell !!!
A Gnome 2.8 for SuSE is available from usr-local-bin:
http://www.usr-local-bin.org/
It is beautiful, but buggy as hell.
I can’t understand why Suse/Novell can’t work with the man and make it their default Gnome desktop.
Looks like they’ve still hacked together the Gnome support – like the [broken] KDE shortcuts are still on the Gnome desktop. The Ximian guys at Novell must be p*ssed as they’re obviously not being taken seriously.
It looks more like SLES9 that SUSE 9.1 Pro (Novell icons etc.)
OpenOffice [sheet at least] works fine for me.
SUSE 9.2 reported that it needs at least 256Mb to run – like SLES9.
This was running under VMWare 4.5.2 for Windows.
Is there any way to install it on the hard disk?
Nope. There isn’t any installer. But they might release a free Personal edition, as they did with 9.1
I’m really curious if the gnome livecd which they ship contains the Ximian modifications. Or is it just the normal gnome 2.6. Anyone knows the answer?
As an earlier post suggested, ULB-Gnome is a fine looking version of Gnome 2.8 for SuSE 9.1. It is crafted and supported by James Cogley, a former SuSE employee who knows his way around that dsitribution.
I agree that it can be buggy. I’ve installed it 3 times with different results each time. After the last install, it never got beyond the login splash screen and a spinning mouse cursor. Each install has been a misadventure in conflicting dependencies with forced package removals necessary to complete the install.
I’m not bashing on ULB, but I also think ULB is an example of the kind of project that challenges one person’s ability to support in their free time. Linux and open source has many such projects. The contributions these people make is inestimable. But, there are only so many hours in the day, and fewer when you spend most of them earning a living and/or caring for a family.
At some point, the scale and complexity of any project exceeds the capacity of one person. Where that point lies depends on the skills and free time available to each person, but it will happen.
I quite agree with you.
But then, as I already said, why couldn’t SuSE/Novell adopt James Cogley’s Gnome and debug it?
MEPIS was (still is?) largely a one-person project. And that distro went from obscurity to Distrowatch top 10 in short order. But then I don’t think that dude ever sleeps…
Cheers
what this promises If I’ve read their propaganda right is the ability to detect networks which those of us who use wireless at home, work, and school use all the time in windows but up until now in Linux didn’t have.
forgot to add this though:
why is the distro yet again i386 based? Why aren’t more distros moving to compiling for i686 like Yoper? That distro flys on my dual P2-450! I know part of the reason for that speed is the way the libraries are linked or called on but some of it has got to be because its compiled for i686.
thanks.
Rob
I think the simple answer is that ULB-Gnome appeared only a few weeks ago, well after, I’m sure, 9.2 had completed testing and been frozen.
Now, I’d love to see a SUSE release that includes a well-done Gnome 2.8 with all the Project Utopia goodies (which ULB currently lacks). There’ve beem rumors lately that Novell may adopt a community support model for the non-enterprise SUSE products, rather like Redhat did with Fedora. I’d applaud that, but I’m not holding my breath.
All this is doubly frustrating because some of the more interesting Gnome work is being done by Novell, Mono, etc., developers who are clearly using SUSE or the unreleased Novell Linux Desktop. Moving a boxed SUSE consumer product from Gnome 2.4 to 2.8 and adding the other needed packages is painful and likely to fail. (Anyone out there who has built 2,8 on SUSE 9.1 using Garnome/jhbuild/CVS?)
Just tried the DVD version in VMWare and it didn’t want to play ball at all. Got to the login screen in X and wouldn’t accept mouse clicks (but mouse cursor moved) or keyboard input (but the caps lock light responded) and kept on flashing off then coming back.
Will try again but now going togive Ubuntu a go (which I downloaded after the article about it here earlier in the week)
“There’ve beem rumors lately that Novell may adopt a community support model for the non-enterprise SUSE products, rather like Redhat did with Fedora. I’d applaud that, but I’m not holding my breath.”
I expected somebody saying that, sooner or later.
SuSE 9.0 was IMO their best release ever. 9.1 was, from many points of view, quite disappointing (not too bad now after months of bug fixes)
On top of that, what do they earn with SuSE Pro? Hardly anything, I suppose.
But right now I am annoyed. I have wasted a download and a DVD. I get kernel panic, out of memory (I have 256 MB and 700 MB swap). Never had anything like this before.
Why would anybody load a LIVE CD in VM Ware..
I downloaded the DVD version and must say everything works and the distro look fine.
I was reading distrowatch before coming here, I cant believe that “Greece” is a language lol :p (FYI it is Greek)
At OSDir, we’ve done a screenshot tour for both KDE at http://osdir.com/shots/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=158&slide=1 and Gnome at http://osdir.com/shots/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=159&slide=1
suse needs a pentium or better to run
>> By Dark_Knight (IP: —.abhsia.telus.net)
>> Well it’s considerate of Novell to separate the Gnome
>> line from KDE so they could pack more on each CD instead
>> of leaving out some software. This will give consumers a
>> better chance to try out all the tools available for their >> preferred desktop GUI prior to making a purchase.
Amen. I prefer GNOME myself. Keep up the good work Novell-SuSE!
After the DVD fiasco I managed to make the KDE LiveCD work.
Well, it seems that if you already own 9.1 there are few reasons to buy 9.2
I hope that by the next release season, when all the new technology is more mature, we can expect more.
> why is the distro yet again i386 based?
Who says it is? Already SUSE 9.1 was i586 only with i686 optimized packages.
“I’ve heard that 9.2 has features for laptops, which linux has heretofore lacked quite distressingly.”
well, everyone’s pushing their ‘laptop support’ with recent releases (SuSE, MDK, Fedora). in reality it’s a fairly nebulous area which depends on a combination things. Most important is power management – which is actually done in-kernel (APM) and by the acpi4linux project (ACPI), so any distro claiming it’s ‘better’ than anyone else in this area doesn’t pass the reality test. (*every* distro, AFAIK, uses the kernel APM stuff and the acpi4linux ACPI stuff). after that, you have things like suspend and sleep, which are actually handled by the power management; there’s also an external script for suspending to disk, called pmsuspend, which improves it in some cases. But whether this works depends, above all, on your hardware. My laptop is unusual in that suspend to disk doesn’t really work, but suspend to RAM works perfectly; the opposite case is more usual. But in any case this will vary hugely with hardware. Beyond THAT, you have system specific features, which tend to depend on obscure little third party tools that, in my experience, at *best* the distros simply package and don’t integrate in any way.
For example, on my sony laptop I use the sonypi and meye kernel modules to enable the Sony-specific hardware, and the spicctrl program to do things with them. Mandrake includes the kernel modules, but not spicctrl; as far as I’m aware, other distros are in much the same situation. Other laptops aer similar – there are similar programs to enable the specific features of most manufacturers’ laptops. And then there’s also a special utility to enable most of the features of Synaptics touchpads.
The single most useful thing a distro could do for laptops is make an effort to package *all* these disparate third party tools and do SOMETHING about making them obvious to the user; either try and detect a user’s laptop model on install (or just ASK) and enable all the appropriate stuff, or make a bigass “laptop” configuration tool and build in frontends for all these tools to it.
AFAIK, no-one’s done this yet. I haven’t heard that this is what SuSE is doing, but I’d be very pleased if it was. More likely, they’re just saying “laptop support is better!” because ACPI has moved forwards since the last version of SuSE, which as far as I can tell is what everyone else is doing.
There’ve beem rumors lately that Novell may adopt a community support model for the non-enterprise SUSE products, rather like Redhat did with Fedora. I’d applaud that, but I’m not holding my breath.
This isn’t going to happen any time soon. Suse Linux is the only Linux Desktop distribution that has ever turned a tidy profit. This is just wishful thinking from those in a certain part of Novell
.
If there are rumours that Suse Linux will become a community distribution, get it from a Suse spokesperson in first. They probably won’t comment though as they’re too polite to say that another part of their company is lying about their products.
Suse is still very much a KDE oriented distribution with little in the way of enhancements from Ximian. The NLD will probably have all of the work that Ximian has been doing (heaven knows, they’ve promised it for long enough) and will provide an option for installing both.
There are two camps in Novell at the moment as Novell is wisely looking at what side will have the greater following for a potential corporate desktop. Massive emphasis is put on the word potential, as I see nothing strategically that is going to make people go for it in a big way.
Hello
Somebody checks if it contains Mono ?
Compilers on non-installable Live-CDs? SUSE 9.2 Pro contains Mono 1.0.1.
looks like the site is password protected to get to the DVD download..
how do you get around that one ?
Use a non-busy mirror?
“This isn’t going to happen any time soon. Suse Linux is the only Linux Desktop distribution that has ever turned a tidy profit. This is just wishful thinking from those in a certain part of Novell
.”
However it would seem to me that since the Novell acquisition SuSE Pro and Personal aren’t enjoying the same care as they used before. You can see it from many little details. It is as if a smaller team of developers worked on them.
As an outsider, but a keen user, I have been wondering what is happening “inside”
> On top of that, what do they earn with SuSE Pro?
> Hardly anything, I suppose.
Completely wrong. As a former SUSE employee I believe that I know the numbers better than you do. And although I have always been sceptical in regard to what any company I’ve worked for has told me I have no reasons not to believe in those numbers. The truth is that SUSE Professional has been incredible popular in Germany so far (much more so than the SUSE Personal. SUSE Personal with its low price was just introduced to make the potential customers feel easier about buying the SUSE Professional Version. Still it has been heavily discussed inside SUSE to drop the Personal Edition since it was introduced).
Believe it or not – the SUSE Professional has always been the major source of income for SUSE since years.
The SUSE Linux (Enterprise) Desktop on the other hand has never been anywhere near as successful. And therefore it remains to be seen whether it’s follow-up product will surpass the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop significantly.
Really, if you doubt the success of the SUSE Linux Professional just come to Germany and watch the huge amount of stores selling those SUSE Professional boxes.
> You can see it from many little details. It is as
> if a smaller team of developers worked on them.
While it might seem to you that way this is not the case.
And while SUSE had some layoffs from time to time the number of developers who worked on the SUSE Personal/Professional has been pretty much the same during the last 2 years. Actually SUSE is hiring again, so if you are a KDE/Qt developer and want to join the SUSE desktop team
http://www.suse.de/de/company/suse/jobs/index.html
is your friend 😉
> As an outsider, but a keen user, I have been wondering
> what is happening “inside”
[x] You are reading too much OSNEWS (which is heavily C#/.NET/Gnome(files) focused since months anyways 😉
Always very happy to learn, especially from an insider 🙂
One would imagine that when you get, for just $90, a big box, two manuals, 5 CDs, 2 double DVDs, there isn’t much margin for profit.
However what is really worrying me at the moment is that 9.0 was a real work of art and love. The quality of 9.1 and now 9.2 seems to have dropped drammatically. What next?
“[x] You are reading too much OSNEWS (which is heavily C#/.NET/Gnome(files) focused since months anyways 😉 ”
No, not really 🙂
I do care a lot about the future of the linux desktop and I do believe that SuSE is our best hope in that regard.
And I prefer KDE anyway 🙂
“…SuSE Pro and Personal aren’t enjoying the same care as they used before.”
I wouldn’t be surprised. My guess is that Novell is in it for the money more than the original owners of SuSE were. And paying developers to develop software just to have to post it on the web for free download might not be on top in their mission statement. As Redhat said recently – OSS needs more volunteers.
Suspect you were addressing a response to my post. but, in any case, I have no reason to disagree with you.
I’m not privy to any “insider” info about SUSE but everything I’ve seen in the press indicates that they sell an awful lot of SUSE boxes in Europe. That is, after all, their home and their primary market. Here in the States, it is rare to see any Linux boxes on the retail shelves, but SUSE does have a presence. Except for old and dusty RedHat boxes and the occasional Mandrake box in one of the big-box bookstores, SUSE is the only Linux retail product I’ve seen on shelves in years.
I like SUSE and would like to see broader and more organized community support here in the States. But, I don’t expect SUSE to start giving away a profitable product. RedHat asserts its consumer line was making money, but they clearly decided that more money was to be made by spinning off Fedora and concentrating on their enterprise products.
And paying developers to develop software just to have to post it on the web for free download might not be on top in their mission statement. As Redhat said recently – OSS needs more volunteers.
Bang goes anything without a working business model then – like Mono.
Since the Suse Desktop was the only linux desktop (anywhere, ever basically) to be very popular and justify its investment via turning over some reasonable revenue then I’d call that an extremely good start for Linux on the desktop. Unfortunately, no one in the open source community really gives that much credit to this sort of thing. That’s what matters though.
And therefore it remains to be seen whether it’s follow-up product will surpass the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop significantly.
Quite right. I think some realism needs to be injected into some of the silliness of this corporate desktop.
Really, if you doubt the success of the SUSE Linux Professional just come to Germany and watch the huge amount of stores selling those SUSE Professional boxes.
I don’t doubt it at all. I’ve installed it on various PCs (the Personal Edition that is) in businesses and it is incredibly popular with people. I worry that the NLD is going to become an absolute boring pile of crap that individials will not buy, and no one will consider installing in various functions in businesses.
I thought the Personal Edition was actually great as a business desktop as it simply focused on the desktop itself rather than irrelevant surrounding components. If Suse/Novell want a good corporate desktop then they should bring it back and work on it.
Enloop: “RedHat asserts its consumer line was making money, but they clearly decided that more money was to be made by spinning off Fedora and concentrating on their enterprise products.”
Bad move. It’s like a car dealership giving you a demo to take for a test ride – no radio – no A/C. And, by the way, you’ll have to put gas in it.
9.1 was rough out of the box but worked great after an update.
9.1 64 bit works great and is noticeably faster than 32 bit.
Looking forward to 9.2 Pro.
Because its still the easiest way to test other OSes, even LiveCD variants.
When it works that is.
Me: >>> why is the distro yet again i386 based?
>>Anon: Who says it is? Already SUSE 9.1 was i586 only with i686 optimized packages.
Well that’s what I’m asking guess I phrased it wrong. On their FTP site the d/load for these live cd’s is under the i386 directory. After reading more about 9.2 I discovered that unlike 9.1 there aren’t seperate products for 64bit and 32 bit versions which further confused me as to just what Suse is optimized for.
So I’ll turn it more into a question: Just what is 9.2 optimized for on the 32bit CPU side?
Thanks,
Rob
Not so good at all,
Did not boot in my toshiba laptop
In my PC wifi did not work openoffice either.
Something was also wrong with ati driver.
Without access to RedHat’s spreadsheets, neither of us have any idea if Redhat’s move re: Fedora was smart or not.
However, I don’t see Fedora in any way being a stripped down version of RH’s enterprise product or a teaser that is intended to entice corporations. RedHat won’t come fix Fedora in the middle of the night, and that’s why businesses pay big bucks for software.
It pays to remember that RedHat’ objective is to make money selling RedHat contracts, not to make the best possible Linux distribution.
Again, is it possible to install the damn thing to the HD, like knoppix does? If it isn’t I won’t even bother with it.
Again, is it possible to install the damn thing to the HD, like knoppix does? If it isn’t I won’t even bother with it.
and once again: NO
you cannot install the ‘damn’ thing to the HD. You will either have to buy the professional version, see if they will release another personal version or wait until the ftp version is made available.
So your answer is: Don’t bother with it!
enloop:
I understand “RedHat’ objective is to make money .”
I have no problem with that.
I talking in terms of promotional value.
RedHat used to be a synonym of Linux in the eyes of many people.
In a book store computer section – a high percentage of the Linux books where devoted to RedHat. In computer stores – RedHat was always featured.
That’s a lot of lost free publicity. Companies spend millions and IBM, Billions on promotion because it works.
Suse is the only thing left in most computer outlets – good for Suse – bad for RedHat.
I’m not saying Fedora is bad – it’s not a ready to go solution. Someone evaluating Linux from a business point of view doesn’t want to mess around trying to figure out what they have to download and install to get it working right.
Suse is now THE out-of-the-box-ready-to-go Linux solution, not RedHat.
Brand recognition makes a difference.
Typing the from the KDE version. Very fast for a livecd, can connect to the windows network through Samba, actually seems faster than XP.
So I am not sure why some people are talking about bugginess and slowness. Seems extremely well put together from where I am sitting.
this lovecd 9.2 (kde) seems to have a boot up opton which allows me to install. is this true? has anyone tried it? i don’t mind it allowing a netowkr install?
the general trend as i understand it is suse the business distro of choice in europe, and redhat is in north america. i agree that fedora is not a viable business solution, but it was never meant to be.
RedHat marketing was largely responsibile for many people associating Linux with its desktop consumer product. Part of that marketing extended to the publihsing business. Many of those RedHat volumes sitting on bookstore shelves were subsidized by RedHat.
I agree that branding and presence is important, especially in the consumer market which is dominated by purchasers without technical expertise. But, judging from the behavior of every other OS vendor I can think of — MS, IBM, Sun, etc. — there’s more money to be made in the enterprise and corporate market. (That’s an area that gets little exposure in fora such as OSNews and elsewhere and which obviously is unknown territory for most posters.) Why try to sell consumer boxes at razor-thin profit margins in a market saturated with Windows? The sales potential of that market is reduced by the fact that many people with the desire and expertise to install Linux also know how to grab and burn a free Linux iso. Look at the whining here about SUSE not giving 9.2 away for nothing. Imagine that: A business that expects you to buy its products! Next thing you know, restaurants will be charging for lunch.
I’m glad SUSE remains in the consumer market. But, I’m not upset that RedHat left.
>>I talking in terms of promotional value.
RedHat used to be a synonym of Linux in the eyes of many people…In a book store computer section – a high percentage of the Linux books where devoted to RedHat. In computer stores – RedHat was always featured…That’s a lot of lost free publicity. Companies spend millions and IBM, Billions on promotion because it works.
***********
Me: Well and the C64 was a perfectly good computer system for home and business and it died. Things change. As far as “free publicity” come on, people don’t wander into OS sections of the bookstores unless they are specifically looking and in that case they usually already knew about Red Hat.
As much as I love the indy distros (I have Vector Linux running on two of my rigs atm even) there’s only two “distros” that have the pull required to put Linux into the mainstream now and gain us more of the hardware support and commercial apps we need: Suse/Novell, and Linspire. So if we really want the microsoft monopoly busted then supporting and evangelizing one or both of them and/or Apple is in order.
“As much as I love the indy distros (I have Vector Linux running on two of my rigs atm even) there’s only two “distros” that have the pull required to put Linux into the mainstream now and gain us more of the hardware support and commercial apps we need: Suse/Novell, and Linspire. So if we really want the microsoft monopoly busted then supporting and evangelizing one or both of them and/or Apple is in order.”
Lol, you didn’t mention Mandrake, but that is OK with me, I feel exactly like you.
what is the difference between the i386, i586 and i686 versions?
thanks
Dimble
It is a matter of architecture: i386 is (very) old, i586 is more recent and i686 should work on almost any modern PC.
However i386 will work on a modern PC, but i686 will not work on a very old one.
Hm… Every time there is a new SuSE live CD I download it and give it a spin, but I never see why I should leave Windows behind.
Is there a place that shows the benefits of SuSE over Windows? For different types of people? Developer? Artist? General Computing? I know b/c of Games I’ll probably always be tied to Windows, but would there ever be a reason to dual boot?
Also, One of the things I don’t like about KDE is how cramped the taskbar’s window manager is, is there any way to space them out?
Oh, yeah…rock!!
I just received my brand-spanking new boxed copy of SuSE 9.1 Pro (I pre-ordered it). Now I’ve gotta install!
I don’t believe you are going to get many satisfactory replies here. This is not the right place to start such a debate.
Try somewhere like ExtremeTech Forum, section OS Technical Debates. Or else at many linux forums such a question would be welcome: try Linspire.
live with Linux for a few weeks, learn how to do stuff efficiently at the console (since you sound like a reasonably knowledgeable user), get a feel for how much more in control of your system you are, and use some of the high-quality Linux apps like Evolution and k3b. Give it a couple of months and if you don’t start feeling a little shudder when booting back in to Windows, heck, switch back. I get this little twitch of dread running through me every time I’m forced to log in to a Windows machine…:)
I hope they release an network install disk or personal install disk so I can check out the support for burning disks with a 2.6.8x linux kernel? I did a manual hd install to try out the cd burning but have too look up one more error on boot to get it working. I really hope they have done a nice patch to get around having to burn optical disks as root.
IMHO: I wish the new hibernate and suspend features were more obvious as I haven’t figured those out yet. The GNOME integration is yuck while the KDE is as slick as always, big surprise, it’s SuSE.
that was fixed in the main kernel already, I’d be amazed if any distro shipping with a 2.6.8+ kernel doesn’t include the fix.
Re:”Is there a place that shows the benefits of SuSE over Windows?”
http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&id=81&perpage… , http://anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2114
Re:”For different types of people? Developer? Artist? General Computing?”
SuSE Linux is one of the easier to use Linux distributions for those coming from Windows. There’s others such as Mandrake and Linspire but I still prefer SuSE Linux with Novell’s services and additional software solutions (ie: Novell iFolder). With each release of SuSE Linux it seems the tools get better at closing the gap between the user friendliness of Windows with the power tools, stability and security Linux Geeks love. Linux has always had a strong server market but it’s also very popular with film studios due to it’s low cost and the highend software available on the platform. Anyway, SuSE Linux is good for several types of people such as developers, artists and even joe/jane user at home.
Re:”I know b/c of Games I’ll probably always be tied to Windows, but would there ever be a reason to dual boot?”
As Linux is a differant OS then there will be some that either run dual boot systems or choose to run their Windows PC games on Wine. The good news is game developers are starting to work toward porting titles and future releases to Linux as they do realize there is a market. I can’t recall the magazine but I believe it was Linux World that had an issue about game servers that were using Linux and that developers are testing ported Linux games that were primarily in the past pro Windows.
Re:”Also, One of the things I don’t like about KDE is how cramped the taskbar’s window manager is, is there any way to space them out?”
The nice thing about SuSE Linux is it’s ability to be customized for the work environment and end user. So if you want to just do some basic tweaking then the Control Center should have the tools you need. Otherwise you can use third party tools such as Baghira to give your desktop that OSX Panther look or have floating widgets with Karamba. You can find these at KDE-apps.org which also has a link at the lower left of the site for Gnome users.
It’s funny, I wanted to check it out to see if going from Mandrake to Suse could be a wise move for my 3 years old laptop.
That CD just hangs after a while. When looking behind the scene, I can see a couple of kernel crashes and traces.
Not good enough for me then…
but how the bloody hell do you burn a bootable .iso? 😡
i have tried with nero, magicISO, and instantCD, and none seems able to achieve anything.
both of the latter keep on asking for floppy/other based boot components which certainly didn’t come as part of the d/l i got?
help out a slow person please.
Dimble
Are you using Win XP?
Then you could try a wonderful little app called Iso Recorder:
http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm
With Nero, when the main window pops up, hit “cancel”
Then look for the option: “burn as an image”
For plenty of info on the subject, visit:
http://www.linuxiso.org/
Good luck!
Jeff
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this.
I must apologize, my previous reply was a bit silly.
I’ll tell you how I started with linux.
I was using Windows and I wasn’t finding anything really wrong with it. But I was bored. Not a lot more to learn, and doing things like hacking the register wasn’t really my cup of tea.
Then I came across an app called Iso Recorder. That was my big chance to finally try linux.
I absolutely fell in love with it: it was Mandrake.
But then things started to go wrong: crashes, hardware incompatibility, steep learning curve…
But I never gave up: I knew that one day linux would be more mature and that I would learn.
And that day did come: I have just recently got rid of my last, small Windows partition that i never used: since long it didn’t feel like home any longer.
To be said that I am not very much of a gamer, and anyway the games available in linux are enough for me.
With linux you are encouraged to keep learning: everything is open and, IMHO, easier than Windows once you get the gist of it. On top of that you have tons of apps to try for free (about 16,000 in Debian), you have new distros coming out almost daily and linux keeps growing at an incredible fast rate: no boredom, guaranteed 🙂
I read it, Fedora Core 2 ate my boot record once, and Fedora Core 1 was very frustrating for me when I first tried Linux, so I’ve been trepid to bother installing it again.
I like the ideal of Linux, but I’ve been timid to bother trying to install it again.
I’m going to carve like 10 gigs out of one of my drives to install Suse on, it seems a lot friendlier, I just need to find a 9.2 download (or can I download 9.1 and upgrade to 9.2 within 9.1?)
There is a big learning curve though, what is the best place to start?
Some apps look cool, like the BlueFish I think its called?
But then again, I have many legit Windows apps as well, I get lots of cheap EDU prices (XP Pro and Office 2003 only cost me $20… and Microsoft handed out free copies of Visual Studio.Net etc…)
So its again a question of switching from what is working fine now to something else… whats the incentive? What will be better? Is Gimp Better than Paint Shop Pro? I already use FireFox and Thunderbird and many other free apps like JCreator etc…. I run PHP and MySQL on IIS for web dev, is that better on Linux?
I have much to learn I guess.
I also unfortunately have an ATi card and I know that ATi isn’t up to snuff for Linux