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SuSE 7.0 Available For Download
solusthewizard writes: "SuSE, probably Europe's top Linux distro, is available for download as a 'live evaluation' iso image for version 7.0. Not quite sure what that means as opposed to the shrinkwrapped version as I haven't finished downloading it yet! Check out here for the iso (or better still, look for a local mirror). Can't be any worse than Red Hat 7.0, my laptop is still recovering." Read about the things that make 7.0 beam with pride here, if you'd like. I will make a sizeable contribution to The Human Fund in the name of everyone who establishes or points to a mirror :)
I upgraded from Red Hat to SuSE 7 last night, and my IBM ThinkPad 770Z's X-windows configuration stopped working entirely - it gives me a totally blank screen and I have to restart - the usual ctrl-backspace won't work. I found the FN-key combination for changing from external to internal monitor garbled the display, and then I could ctrl-backspace - but that's still a long way away from getting an X-Windows system running.
:-)
Anyone know what might be wrong? I have a message in to SuSE technical support, but every little bit helps
Many thanks for any thoughts.
D
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Compare that with RedHat, who is making ISO images of their distribution widely available and often hands them out at trade shows and other places. Of course, Debian is even more open, with "free live updating".
SuSE may technically be a reasonable distribution. But they seem to make getting free versions of their software more cumbersome than necessary. I don't think that kind of approach is good for Linux in the long run. I can't even figure out what they are trying to accomplish with their strategy, and that concerns me. I think I'll stick with RedHat and Debian for now.
Indeed, SuSE is strongly KDE based. But you can install other desktop environments or window managers too. The latest release (7.0) has a very nice graphical installation with Yast2, which will let you go from nothing (PC without OS) to a fully working KDE environment in only a few mouse clicks. It is easy to use, it detects and configures a wide range of hardware automatically, and it is even rather robust. It also works for updates/upgrades too.
However, if you do not want to run KDE and you do not want to install it at all, then SuSE gets in your way. It is possible to install SuSE 7.0 without KDE (if you are short on disk space, or for political/philosophical reasons), but it is not trivial. The easiest way to do this is to use the older (text-based but still menu-driven) Yast1 installation tool, pick one of the standard configurations that is suitable for you, then manually unselect the KDE packages. It will complain that some packages are missing from the base system (y2base and yast2) and it will report an unsatisified dependency (lxuser, the basic user setup for X, requires kbase from KDE) but everything will work fine anyway so these dependencies on KDE are not really necessary. It is a bit annoying that you can never let Yast select packages automatically (otherwise it will select the ones mentionened above, find that they depend on more KDE pieces, and in the end install most of KDE) but it is doable.
By the way, if you do not install KDE because you prefer GNOME, then you have to be careful: even if you select the "GNOME system" instead of the "KDE system" during installation, it will still install parts of KDE and it will not start the GNOME environment automatically when you boot. I found that it is usually much easier to select an installation without any desktop environment, and to install Helix Gnome from Helix Code, which has better packages than the old ones included with SuSE.
That being said, if you do install KDE, you will find that the admin tools are decent. They do not allow you to do everything, but the basic configuration options are there. Also, the graphical configuration tools do not prevent you from using command-line tools if you like them, or editing the configuration files by hand if you know what you are doing. The files that are automatically generated or modified by some tools contain some comments explaining that you should modify /etc/rc.config instead. This works quite well.
-Raphaël
I bought the 7.0 Professional package yesterday and updated my laptop from 6.4. Seems to be working very well so far. USB support seems quite a bit better, but I can't say for sure yet until I get to play with the printer this weekend - but the mouse support seems decent.
There are some wacky things that SuSE does - so if you are a RH person, they may throw you. They sure did me. Config files are moved all over the place, for instance, and I still have not become 100% used to where they are now, but for the most part I like what SuSE did to them.
Vote Nader
Hmm... I like Slackware (I'm still a die-hard veteran since version 2.3 in August '95), but I'm finding that it's being sidelined.
Hardware Vendors and Commercial Software Vendors are really only supporting distributions such as RedHat. SuSe appears to be the second most popular distribution at the moment and there is more support for it than there is for Slackware. Getting some stuff to work on Slackware is like fitting a square peg into a round hole...
Being in the UK also makes me feel that SuSe would be better suited for me.
I don't object to paying for Linux distributions, I paid £20-25 per version of Slackware since 2.3, but now that home use Internet bandwidth is becoming available where it is actually possible to download ISO images in a reasonable amount of time, we're finding that some distributions are pulling the plug on online downloads. Even if they provide value-added commercial software.
I can't find accurate information, but does anyone know whether the tree at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/7.0/ is the full version?
Hmmm... the Eval version only runs from the CD, so you can't actually "install" it.
The "Personal" and "Professional" versions appear to cost $40 & $70.
Is this to say that SuSe isn't free? I always thought they were free. (as in beer or not)
If someone buys a copy can they supply me with the CDs or are the "SuSe parts" considered non-free?
I'm not evangelising here, I'm not about to boycott SuSe, but I would like some clairifcation as to where they stand.
SuSE add various 'features' to a kernel; ReiserFS is one example, usb support also made it there before it got to the main branch. 2.2.17 came out just before SuSE 7.0 was released so they did not have time to add their extensions.
My personal experience is these SuSE kernels are slightly less reliable than normal ones, I had a nasty problem on my laptop with SuSE 6.4 that was fixed by upgrading to a 'normal' kernel the next time one came out.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
SuSE often issue semi-official releases in between their normal ones. I have run into horrible difficulties in the past upgrading to them - make sure you save everything important first.
I have the evaluation copy as a CD in a German magazine and will be trying it later this evening (reckless fool!)
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
no.
:-)
Their desktop version comes on 3 CDs
Their server version comes on 6 CDs or 1 DVD.
This one fits on 1 CD - maybe one or two things are missing
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
SuSE has one central config file which they use for virtually everything - /etc/rc.config. When you update your system, the previous version is saved as /etc/rc.config.rpmsave. The upgrade process sends root a mail saying this.
It is quite possible that some of the config files generated from rc.config are not saved. Config files that are outside this system - smb.conf for example - are either renamed smb.conf.rpmsave or the new one is created as smb.conf.rpmnew. The upgrade process sends root a mail in each case saying this.
If I update my system, it makes sense to backup configuration files first. Saying that the 'austrian community finds SuSE ******' because some newbies not only forgot to save their config files but could not find the updated ones afterwards, could reasonably be called flamebait.
Maybe I should look at the at.linux newsgroups some time, I can't imagine that they are as bad as you think.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
If more distro's supplied these "live eval" type CD's, it would certainly do nothing but help Linux in the long run. How many people have you heard of who say they'd like to try "that Linux thing" but are afraid of messing up their computers, or have heard too many installation horror stories?
SuSe ships their distribution in Germany before anywhere else. It may have been out before 2.2.17. I know sometimes it's a pretty decent lag time.
Not everyone... Debian's still calling their releases 2.x. Not really sure what they're numbering strategy is though. Seems like they should have made potato 3.0 to me, but whatever.
treke
I installed the reiserfs stuff for 2.2.17
I enabled hdparm -S 240 to put it to sleep after 20 mins of no activity, and was running Samba exporting 2 shares on the reiserfs partition.
The next day I rebooted with shutdown -r now.
When it came up I noticed my ftpd was freaking out about respawning too fast. The ReiserFS partition was not mounted, and gave bad superblock errors when I went to manually mount it. So I decided to reiserfsck it, since it wasn't mounted anyway. No reiserfs found.
So I fired up fdisk to see whats up. No partition found on that hard disk.
ReiserFS ate my partition.
I cannot beleive that SuSe would include something so volatile in an official release.
Not a flame, just my experience. I'm sure ReiserFS will rock once it gets Alan and Linus' approval.
Lars -
>"Speaking of USB scanners, what the hell was that
>on the SuSE website about XFree86 4.0 supporting
>scanners on parallel ports???"
This is an easy one. Scanners with parallel port interfaces. Before USB became prevelant in 98-99, the two major interface types for scanners were either SCSI or parallel.
>I honestly don't know; this seems to defy logic.
>I would assume that this works out for a DB-25
>connector, but aren't the pinouts for the SCSI
>DB-25 and the Parallel DB-25 totally different?
Yes, they are. In fact, they're different signalling types, so they can't even be compared on a pin for pin basis.
>Maybe not, because Iomega's Zip Plus actually
>autodetected whether the connection was parallel
>or SCSI. But an LPT controller used as a SCSI
>device? This is making my head spin!
The Zip Plus actually had a built in parallel to SCSI converter built in. If you pluged into a real SCSI bus, it would connect directly to the ZIP drive, otherwise it would use the converter.
(Basically worked by having a driver that encapsulates SCSI commands over parallel.)
If you bought Quake3Arena for Linux, you may have noticed the SuSE 6.3 "evaluation copy" on a CD. This was great to convert those Windows people who liked the tin better than the lame-o box. At Comdex's Linux Business Expo in Chicago, they gave away 6.4 disks, which I used to initially upgrade my laptop. The 7.0 Live Evaluation is a great idea. It makes Linux more painless and gives people a definition of 'free software' that costs nothing (extra ;) to learn.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
If you're going to troll, do it with the right information in hand.
SaX is SuSE's XFree86 configuration utility (Sax2 for 4.x series). YaST is the installation utility.
And, as long as I'm posting, ALICE is SuSE's new answer to Red Hat's kickstart. You set 'er up, and use a bootdisk on your workstations and walk away while it installs. I'm just starting to experiment with that on our business machines, and it looks extremely promising. SuSE rocks for business.
Bite my yammer.
hmmm
/etc/rc.config
change the first line to ENABLE_SUSECONFIG=no
vi
now you can be sure YaST wont over-write any changes you make... this took about one half second to figure out, maybe if you had spent as much time fixing SuSE boxes and you say you have, you would already know this. . .
Their product is named SuSe Linux 7.0. They don't mean "Linux 7.0", they mean "SuSe Linux 7.0". It says that everywhere else in the article but that one spot.
When I first got linux, I used Redhat since they were local to our area, and felt a certain loyalty bond. Well, perhaps I may go back one day - I won't rule it out.
After spending countless man-hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get XFree86 to install on my laptop (this was early 1998 - I forgot which version or why) I gave up and went back to windows. Later, I thought I'd give SuSE a try. The install went considerably more smoothly, and I got X up at the desired resolution. Now mind you, RH might have had a better install by early 1999 as well, but I wanted to try something new.
SuSE has been a dream for me since then, although I have had to tell it to not overwrite my hand-altered config files. With a modem hookup, it is far easier to buy a SuSE distro and have all my software updated at once than to download..download...download. Although I favor a do-it yourself approach, it was nice to at least have a GUI right off the bat - I'd explore later.
My main complaint with SuSE was that Yast2 will not run on my machine, even though it has 48M of memory, and I suspect if this trend continues it will become progressively harder to make full use of new features until I upgrade.
I realize that a more sophisticated reader can find fault with many of the things I have said here today, but that is my experience and opinion. I like SuSE - it is manageable and IMO fun to use. I plan to buy 7.0.
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You were a moderator with 5 points. You should have read the moderator guidelines before you did any moderating
When last I used suse (5.x or so), it seemed strongly kde based. That is, like corel, all the admin stuff reminded me of WinDOS. Is this still true? Can someone point me to some screenshots of a kde environment using themes? Or is Suse doing something completely different from this? What's the skinny on the admin tools? The ones with Corel drove me nuts; they seemed very rigid.
I see in the press announcement it supports OpenGL accelerated boards. What does this mean? The word "Supports" has a variety of meanings under Linux; from:
"The underlying *support* is there, so it might work in 2-3 years"
...to...
"Download 50 Meg of code from three sites, do two cvs updates, apply several dozen patches, rebuild everything three times, go to the zoo and feed the penguins, and it might be working when you get back"
...to...
"It just works when you boot"
So, of the common cards supporting 3d Acceleration, what "percentage" are they supported, with "100%" being "It just works when you boot"?
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I got 7.0 within 2 days of the release here in Austria (end of August), and installed it on my desktop SMP machine as my workplace OS, and have been using it almost daily since. As potential stumbling blocks for Linux my box has got a new Geforce 2 (purchased at the time of the 7.0 install - before it was SuSE 6.3 and a MGA Millenium), and a USB CompactFlash reader. To be adventurous, I also opted to use the KDE 2 beta as my main and only desktop - the new KMail being the most compelling reason to leave KDE 1 behind.
And everything went just fine and continues to work "right out of the box" (of course only after the compulsory day or wrestling with it until everything is right; but that is apparently common to all new distros and releases anyway).
The Geforce 2 performs quite well; the only problems there are with the beta binary-only NVidia driver, which guns the machine down about once per week (but that's what one has ReiserFS for anyway, right? Besides, this is hardly the fault of SuSE).
The only problem with the CompactFlash was that - out of habit - I tried to build my own kernel with appropriate USB support before it dawned on me that the stock 7.0 kernel already had all the support I needed compiled in (2 hours down the drain).
KDE 2 is, well, beta, but that again is hardly the fault of SuSE, who explicitly tell you that it's not quite there yet. I'd only wish that they'd post updated RPMs for new betas on their website from time to time (with the same disclaimer).
These are my personal experiences - maybe I was just lucky, but IMO 7.0 is quite a nice distro and worth the upgrade from previous SuSE offerings. But of course YMMV.
The SuSe Live Eval lets you run a Linux system off of a CD so you can check it out without doing a full install. Pretty cool.
And as usual, I'm sure you can download the SuSe install disc as well.