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Review of SuSE 8.1 Professional
Gentu writes "SuSE 8.1 is out and it seems to be the main competitor of Red Hat 8. OSNews has the review of its Professional version. The new SuSE 8.1 seems to be sleekier and more powerful than ever." Eugenia, as usual, isn't shy about saying what she doesn't like. There's a review on Linuxlookup.com as well.
It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with each other more than their common enemy.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I've used several versions of both including RH 8 and my opinnion is that while RedHat makes a great server build SuSE has always had the edge in developing the workstation distro.
I don't understand why SuSE is only now coming out with Linux 8.1, and Red Hat only just came out with Linux 8.0. Meanwhile, Slackware came out with Linux 8.0 an entire year ago. Why do all the commercial companies find it so hard to keep up? I guess in some sense the open model really is better.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
To be honest, many of the recent "improved" install tools require the user to think exactly like the programmers did in order to use the installer properly. Otherwise, most of them require a bit of unnecessary trial and effort to get your install right.
Knowing that the new install tool is tricky, I'll still stick with SuSE. It's stable and intuitive without the use my way and like it that redhat tends towards or the I work great if I decide to work of mandrake.
If linux ever intends to become a mainstream (read: NON GEEK) OS, it needs to become dependable, easy to use and easy to install. For example, why did it take me almost 3 days to hack my way to using my qwest dsl connection without having to boot into windows? DSL is a standard technology now, you should be able to use it easily.
Does anyone know where one can find rpms
:-)
for SuSE 8.1? I know that lots of people
with SuSE 8.0 and older would like to upgrade.
The rpms are GPL'ed so where can they be downloaded?
+5 karma to the one who gives a FTP or similar
You mean, something like a united Linux distribution. Let's call it "UnitedLinux", either that or "LASER".
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
SuSE has an ftp installation... so if you don't want to buy the CD, you have to download their installation manager and boot to that. then you can select the packages you want, etc. via ftp.
So I just got done installing Suse 8.0 and while doing the online update, I decided to see what's new on slashdot. Guess what the first article I see is.
it should fit on a single floppy.
.*or* you can have the one with all the doodads. What's more, to get all the doodads you want you might even have to have *two* of big mothers, each for a special range of abilities.
Look, you can have the slim and sexy Swiss Army knife. .
That's just the way it is. I canna change the laws of physics Cap'n.
KFG
SuSE just doesn't have enough CDs. I want SuSE to install every utility for every OS I can, at least in theory, emulate. I also want all optional features enabled and support for every language and file format just in case. I'm talking something like a 20GB minimum install, and SuSE just isn't there yet. Maybe next release, though.
I have already loaded it onto my laptop.
For some reason the advanced power management doesn't work, (it did with 8.0). Also, although the wireless stuff recognizes my wireless card, there are links missing for it to make in internet connection. Too bad. Also its hard to put Latex on the computer anymore, you have to hunt it down, and emacs did not install automatically.
I don't know...
Sigh.
"However, if SuSE fix some of the issues they have, get rid or redesign that package manager, license the Web Fonts, add some more GUI settings panels for wireless support, FTP & HTTP servers, better integration with Windows, fix some of their untested or buggy applications they include in their CDs, modify Star Office and GTK+ application to look more as their primary Qt platform and other such details, I believe that Red Hat's 'empire' in the Linux world will be in jeopardy."
Does that mean she likes it, or not?
No DVD problems to report like the reviewer encountered. However, the software configuration in the install is still quite poor (no change from 8.0 from what I can see). It did a fair job on hardware but I still had to hit Sax2 to properly configure my monitor.
That said, once installed, it has a nicely polished KDE desktop. I like the icon choice but default "curved" windows I just don't like, back to KDE 2 window decoration it goes. I do like the changes the made to the Yast character mode interface, much easier to navigate. I'm also a little disappointed that it shipped with 2.4.19 instead of 2.4.20.
Overall, not bad but non-techs would require a small amount of hand holding trying to install this release from scratch. The DVD has a very complete collection of software on it that is relatively up to date. It a nice tool to have handy when you're on the road.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
YaST2 and SaX2 can be better, but even as they are today blow most of Red Hat's preference panels away. On the other hand Red Hat's XFT font properties are no match to any other Linux distribution so far, while Red Hat has good integration for Qt and GTK+ toolkits, something that SuSE doesn't.
This is very important! People keep bitching about Anti-Aliased Font support, well why is RedHat the only including an advanced utility? Fonts are 99% of your visual aspect of your desktop, good looking fonts make a BIG difference. (side note, Mosfet Liquid engine/theme is a must..)
I'm a SuSE (sparc64), Mandrake (x86) user. Mostly because Mandrake had the better font support. I've switched over to RedHat 8.0 due to the XFT font support.
BTW, I shouldnt have to recompile the desktop to have decent font support. So dont keep saying "Compile yourself". If I wanted a source based, compile everything yourself distribution, I would use Gentoo. (Gentoo doesnt include all the custom applications for preferences.)
I have to agree with the reviewer's sentiment that they should have included Gnome in SuSE. While KDE is pretty good for newbies from the Windows and Mac world, it's still missing the eye-candy that even basic Gnome 2.x has. Of course this is all my opinion, and highly subjective. But, I will say that if you happen to be a fan of the Gnome environment, you're going to feel a bit restricted by KDE. Some major features are missing in KDE:
-themeable login manager
-flexible bitmap themes that allow you to tweak window behavior into something that you want
-granular control over the look-and-feel of the environment (multiple toolbars, drag and drop launchers, etc...)
-a more standarized approach to where binaries go: '/usr/local/bin' rather than '/opt/kde' (Of course it would be better if things were more like '/usr/local/kde', but thene again I compile everything I use.)
If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.
RedHat's Blue Curve approach is probably a little stronger than SuSE's version of KDE. I've only seen screenshots, but it's much prettier.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I think this Eugenia distros instalations chat irrelevant.
The OSes have more important aspects than installations. Anyway, the OS is installed ONE time, but used MANY times...
Why in hell she rates an OS by its installations process?
First she complains about the installer not making enough decisions, then she complains about SaX making decisions.
In reality, the installer DOES make all decisions. All it does (and that was obviously confusing Eugenia) is SHOW these decisions to you and allow you to change it. But it doesn't force you to do anything at all.
What's wrong with that? The below-average complete moron (which everybody seems to be targetting these days.) just presses "Install" and it installs without any need to configure anything. On a computer with one clean harddrive or partition, the install should work just fine with the default settings.
Hell, even Eugenia was able to install the damn thing, so it's dumbed down enough.
Also, unlike Eugenia sais, SuSE comes with CDs *AND* DVD, not "or".
This is getting to be a real annoyance. I don't want to have to download (7x650) 4.550 GB of data just to try out the latest linux distro. Some people aren't even able because they're either on a modem or have capped broadband. Personally, I'd like to see all distros cut down to three:
1 CD to install the OS. This would be the only cd necessary to install the operating system. With just this one cd, the user would be able to install their chosen distro of GNU/Linux and get a graphical desktop with some very basic apps (I'm picturing basically everything on the accessories menu on windows).
Up to 2 cds of apps - an office suite, dev tools, games, whatever. After using the single OS install disc, the user would then be able to pop an apps cd into the system and choose what they want.
No source cds. I'm not saying that distro makers shouldn't provide source code to the binaries that they distribute (they should!) and I'm certainly not saying that source is useless (it's not!). I'm just saying that making ISOs of source packages available for download is a great way to waste bandwidth for users and mirror sites that don't bother to mark them as non-essential to the process of 'getting something working'. Windows doesn't have a loop device to check out isos before they're burned, so newbies from windows can't help but be confused. (Yes, I know about Daemon Tools. Does everyone else?)
It would eliminate bloated 2GB default installs and cd swapping. Sure, there wouldn't be a (start|hat|k|foot|swirl) menu that takes up 10MB of space on disk just for the items it contains, but that's probably a good thing.
I'm not bashing suse or RH or any of the other GNU/Linux distros. I'm just saying that the default install/CD bloat is way out of hand and this would be an easy way to solve it. The way I see it, it's a no-brainer like replacing "scary" printk's during kernel startup with a booting progress bar (by default).
Let's face it, friends:
Distros save you cooking the cuisine but therefore give you fastfood. You can't have both. And SuSE is the best darn distro I've ever seen - making the best job of offering a fastfood cuisine compromise.
It's that simple.
For instance: the documentation simply 0wnz RedHat and all the rest - and a dead tree is something good to hold on to when your box won't budge and you haven't been told the "man 'your one-word question here'" trick yet.
SuSEs YaST got me so far with me knowing nothin' 'bout Linux, I would have found it silly to give up again.
Shure this automatic stuff tends to be a pain a year later when your "/usr/lib/java ->jsdk1.4.1" gets changed to "/usr/lib/java ->jsdk1.1.2" every time you fire it up once again, but when you are ready to notice the fault in some distros config I guess you're ready for Debian.
I'm not buying SuSE anymore, as I am not buying any Distro anymore. I'm expierenced enough to get Gentoo or Debian rolling from scratch and if anything it's them getting a donation.
But for n00bs like I was one once, I know no better way to turn to Linux and *never* look back on Windows again than SuSE. This company has earned itself a solid reputation for a reference grade quality Linux distribution and every word of it is true. If you're thinking of giving Linux a try, try SuSE.
I can only recommend it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I, for one, think you'd have to try pretty hard to find SuSE's installation difficult. She complains about the problems for newbies, but this is SuSE 8.1 Professional. Yes, it's for professionals.
Having said that, I think the installer is wonderful for newbies. I like the fact that you get a summary (which is like a web page, as Eugenia said), and you can drill down as deep as you want to customize it. If you like the defaults that the installer has chosen, you can click OK and go right to the installation. I can't imagine why a linear progression through a wizard would be preferable.
If you honestly have a hard time installing SuSE, then I just can't imagine what kind of installer you'd find easier. (I guess that's why I don't design installers.)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I have been a RH user since 4.2 and a KDE user since before their first 1.0 release. I just bought RH 8.0 and the tweeking of KDE that they have done irks me to no end. I have just started to look at it, but it appears that you can't simply change themes back to the KDE default to recover the KDE 3 look and feel. Would anyone like to share their experience with how they recovered the KDE 3 look? I know it must be simple but I haven't had time to probe into it much. Sorry for the OT post.
The author of the package manager emailed me a few weeks back and told me that this is a tool only for professionals and experienced users
LOL...
Come on, grab ARCHIVES.gz from the first CD, use zgrep and rpm to install. Yast2 is the worst, I have ever seen/used. Using SuSE since their first distro (4.2).
When the next official X release comes out with support for XFT2 and the next official qt release comes out with support for it, then SuSE will put them in the supplementary version of your favorite mirror. SuSE does not ship beta versions of core componentes like glibc or X.
SuSE has been antialiased (XFT1) for more than a year now, KDE3 offers a good way to install fonts, I do not know what is missing exactly. I think Eugenia did not know about kcmfontconfig. No problem here (SuSE-8.0).
Moritz
"Unfortunately, this has been the trend with too many reviewers - they look at the superficial stuff, and make up their minds based on whether the colors are pretty, and this passes as in-depth journalism."
I agree. Someone taking the review seriously, and having no basis of comparison, would think that SuSE was a terrible distribution. Also, it is somewhat irrelevant that the distribution doesn't install well at the resolution used by 24" monitors.
I also agree with this: "It was thinking (if you can call it that) like this that gave us the dot.bomb crash."
It wasn't the reviewer's best work.
Just select the K menu and select control panel. Select the default theme. After that find the sytles menu. From their select kde default instead of bluecurve. Last click on the upper left hand Window title bar on any running program. I am not a on a linux machine currently but I believe you can change the Window decoration on one of the settings by right mouse botton clicking it and selecting docarations. Browse and find the default kde2. This will get rid of the bluecurve default titlebar. You may want to keep the default font since the orignal kde ones are ugly as hell.
The only problem I noticed is the default kpanel is gone and replace with the gnome one. I know this because I played around with some of the settings and they are almost identical to the gnome panel. Also you may need to download the default icons from kde's website.
Doing all of these will bring back %95 of the kde desktop back.
What really annoys me more then the gui is the exclusion of apache1.3x and perl 5.6!
Do you have any perl cgi scripts that access a mysql database? Your SOL. Redhat included the older gcc 2.9.5x compiler but not the older perl or apache. And no, perl is not fully source compatible with perl 5.6 like the perl mongers say it is.
I am learning perl programming from a college level book called "How to Program Perl" by Dietel and Dietel. Many cs majors have used their c and c++ books. I tested all the example programs and noticed alot of problems. Particularly with return statements, threading, mysql access, and cgi since mod-perl has not been fully ported to apache2 yet. The return statement problems seems to be caused by some changes in default scoping rules. I can easily changes these but I want to learn how to program and not learn how to deal with perl 5.8. Everything else can not be ported. I do not mind the newer versions of apache and perl being included. I would just like the older ones installed optionally as well as gcc. Apache 2.x is not ready for anything besides static webpages.
In other words avoid this release if your an internet developer.
On the other hand my gripe with suse is that their distro's have always been buggy and not as reliable as redhat or debian.
For my games which require low latency sound(sucks on w2k), and low ping times I will stick with redhat. I have noticed ping times cut in half in some circumstances and my scores are higher due to low latency for sound. I am already dead before I hear the rocket sometimes under w2k. For software development, I will stick with Windows2k.
http://saveie6.com/
I know SuSE doesn't distribute it but does anyone else?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Hmm, thanks! I was just now wondering why the SuSE boot CD would stop at "trying to connect to FTP".
Of course, SuSE 8.1 isn't on the FTP sites yet.
Anyone going to be offering (3rd party) ISOs for download anytime soon?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I was about to post something sarcastic about this, too, but apparently it's a real word.
If you really have to use Redhat, do as intended and use GNOME. Redhat has no competence regarding KDE configuration, in fact they fired their only dedicated KDE developer, who provided the KDE release packages in his spare time!
Redhat is not an option for me, I am in love with KDE since 0-Beta2. GNOME just feels slimy and hacked together to me.
Moritz
You can get service packs on cd if you want to pay shipping and handling. I'm more worried about the latest "version" of windows update in which the "No information is sent to microsoft during this transaction," notice is absent. Those are just updates, though - akin to running up2date or apt-get dist-upgrade. The possibility that I was referring to above is one in which Microsoft distributes cds that, by themselves, are incapable of installing windows and must connect to the internet to download very large key components, just like gnu/linux ftp installs.
Oh my god. I stand corrected. Wow, I hate it when I think I'm all cool and smart for bashing someone else's grammar and then it turns out they were using real words all along.