First Look At SuSE Linux 8.2

TheMadPenguin writes "Once again I find myself checking out the newest SuSE release, and to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it. My personal computer is running Slackware (yes, I upgraded to 9.0 immediately), and I wouldn't trade it for any other distribution in the world, but I've got to say is that SuSE is still at the top of their game. When you look at all the desktop distros out there such as Mandrake, Lycoris, and Red Hat, they all really have their endearing factors, but they all are lacking in one way or another. Check out the entire review at MadPenguin.org. Complete with screenshots :)"

Comments

why Bush is invading Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

Psalm 137:7-9 :: The Message (MSG)

7 GOD, remember those Edomites,
and remember the ruin of Jerusalem,
That day they yelled out,
"Wreck it, smash it to bits!"

8 And you, Babylonians--ravagers!
A reward to whoever gets back at you
for all you've done to us;

9 Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies
and smashes their heads on the rocks!

US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of

[Stop the war now!]

US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death

Mark Franchetti, Nasiriya

The light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I walked slowly towards the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead.

Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning.

Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery.

Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved.

One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps.

Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father. Half his head was missing.

Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqi woman -- perhaps the girl's mother -- was dead, slumped in the back seat. A US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.

This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a last chance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a donkey.

As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared beside me.

"Did you see all that?" he asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice."

Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy," said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."

Only a few days earlier these had still been the bright-eyed small-town boys with whom I crossed the border at the start of the operation. They had rolled towards Nasiriya, a strategic city beside the Euphrates, on a mission to secure a safe supply route for troops on the way to Baghdad.

They had expected a welcome, or at least a swift surrender. Instead they had found themselves lured into a bloody battle, culminating in the worst coalition losses of the war -- 16 dead, 12 wounded and two missing marines as well as five dead and 12 missing servicemen from an army convoy -- and the humiliation of having prisoners paraded on Iraqi television.

There are three key bridges at Nasiriya. The feat of Martin, Dupre and their fellow marines in securing them under heavy fire was compared by armchair strategists last week to the seizure of the Remagen bridge over the Rhine, which significantly advanced victory over Germany in the second world war.

But it was also the turning point when the jovial band of brothers from America lost all their assumptions about the war and became jittery aggressors who talked of wanting to "nuke" the place.

None of this was foreseen at Camp Shoup, one of the marines' tent encampments in northern Kuwait, where officers from the 1st and 2nd battalions of Task Force Tarawa, the 7,000-strong US Marines brigade, spent lo

early post!

[Frank White]

I dedicate this post to the memory of the 1985 Kansas City Royals, and all their homosexual players.

BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

America is nearly at war, and now is not the time to be supporting the enemy. The fact is that SuSE is a GERMAN for-profit company, which means that every time you install SuSE you give a little bit of money to some krauts. Normally this wouldn't be so bad, but as I'm sure you've all heard, Germany is OPPOSED to the US in the pending attack on Iraq. They are refusing to help us, just like a second grade child. They would rather be gassed by an evil dictator than lift a finger to do the just and right thing.

Not that I'm suprised. After all, Germany is the country of Hitler. In order to support the war effort, patriotic Americans MUST uninstall SuSE from all their machines. Also, I suggest you not buy any other German product such as Mercedes Benzes or BMWs and instead buy American goods such as Fords. I do not suggest hacking into SuSE machines around the world and formatting their disks because that would be illegal(WINK WINK). It is true that buying a German product like SuSE does not make you a terrorist, but by supporting Germany you are indirectly supporting terrorism!

Do you want the blood of 3,000 New Yorkers on your hands??

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[fferreres]

They would rather be gassed by an evil dictator than lift a finger to do the just and right thing.


Bush could be seen as a dictator also. That does not make it right for others to invade your country.

Do you want the blood of 3,000 New Yorkers on your hands??

Fucking Iraq will not bring them back, in fact, making war when the rest of the world think you shouldn't will only bring you more trouble. Defend your country inteligently, don't try to macho Earth, it will not work for any of us. Do it subtedly.

Sincerely.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush seen as a dictator? Hehehehe! I can just imagine! A dictator with a 2-term limit on time in power, in a position where two other branches of government can force that dictator to alter behavior, one that had to be elected, one that (if the dictator wants 8 years of power instead of 4) must campaign in a multi-party system for reelection. That's hilarious. Perhaps if Saddam were in power under a similar syste... Oh, wait, impossible! He would have never come to power in the first place since he arrived in power by coup. Oh, and if he HAD come to power like Bush, he'd have had to leave office in 1987 (8 years later) with one reelection in 1983. Oh, and his country would have a multi-party political system. And you wouldn't be killed, tortured, imprisoned, or your family threatened if you spoke out against the government. Oh, if only ALL world dictators were dictators in exactly the same way Bush is a dictator...

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[craesh]

> one that had to be elected

Really? I thought Bush hadn't the mayority of the votes.

> must campaign in a multi-party system for reelection

You mean a TWO-party system, not a multi-party system. Look at the european counties, they have democratic multi-party systems - or do you think ignoring minorities is democratic?

> or your family threatened if you spoke out against the government.

Ok, so if an US-citizen says 'fuck Bush for whatever, I don't like him' he won't be arrested? Are you sure?

Btw: have you noticed that Bush is allied with a real dictator? I'll explain this: a dictator is usually defined as a political leader who is not interested in the popular opinion, who ignors the interests of its citizens and of other parties, right? So what about Asnar??? Over 90% of the spanish population is against war, and he just says 'fuck off, I want war!'. Is this democracy??? Is Bush really willing to support and be allied with such a dictator??? Think about it!

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Btw: have you noticed that Bush is allied with a real dictator? I'll explain this: a dictator is usually defined as a political leader who is not interested in the popular opinion, who ignors the interests of its citizens and of other parties, right? So what about Asnar??? Over 90% of the spanish population is against war, and he just says 'fuck off, I want war!'. Is this democracy??? Is Bush really willing to support and be allied with such a dictator??? Think about it!

If you're just now realizing that the United States has frequently allied themselves with dictators whose interests coincided with US interests (and who could be taken out later when those interests later diverged from ours), then I suggest you would find a study of US history over the last 50 years to be very, very eye-opening.

We're not nearly as beneficial as we make out to be, not when threatened by Communists, and not currently when threatened by terrorists. Different enemy, same fearful reaction.

Small governments of the world, beware. And these days, "small" includes just about all of them.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aznar (not Asnar) has the majority in the goverment. That means he can make decisions without consulting anybody. Besides, did Bush ask the people about the war? No, he did whatever he wanted. That most of the us population agrees with him doesn't mean he is doing what the people wants.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so if an US-citizen says 'fuck Bush for whatever, I don't like him' he won't be arrested? Are you sure?

Uh yeah, dumbass, I'm pretty sure. There were people marching by here this morning with signs saying much stronger things than that and they're not being arrested. You must get your information from one of those idiotic European newspapers that can't even tell a consistent set of lies from one day to the next.

Perhaps you're thinking of France, where you can now go to jail for showing disrespect to the national anthem or the flag.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Zemran]

I think you have have not been reading the news. People getting arresting for wearing "Give Peace a Chance" t-shirts or old ladies carrying anti-war banners. People are being arrested for voicing critical opinion of the war.

Freedom and free speach were the first victims of this (probably the first of many) oil war.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[marsonist]

I don't think that boycotting a German linux distributor will effect Germany's political stance one way or the other. It will only hurt one of the best Linux companies around. I don't understand why so many people of so many nationalities are taking the political decisions of other countries personally. I am an American, an ex-soldier, living in Germany. I personally feel that the war is in many ways justified, others don't. Everybody is allowed to have and voice their own opinions, and countries are allowed to do the same. The French, Russians, and Germans are the most outspoken against the war, but that is their right. One of the reasons that we are in Iraq is to give the Iraqi people the right to voice their opinions. We don't punish people for different points of view in the United States, and we shouldn't treat Germans, French or whoever, any differently. And a note about presidents going against the will of their constituants. Name one country that does a nationwide vote on whether to raise taxes or not. We have set regulations for electing officials, and they were followed to a "T". Dare I forget to mention that our legislative branch of government voted overwelmingly to support the presidents decision should he feel that war is the only viable option. Everybody has an opinion, but not everybody has the facts... learn a little before trying to tell someone something.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Stonehand]

...arrested for trespass and for blocking traffic, or worse, not speech. If the administration were busy silencing critics, Bush would have had Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman executed already...

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[TKinias]

scripsit craesh:

So what about Asnar??? Over 90% of the spanish population is against war, and he just says 'fuck off, I want war!'.

Huh? Right-wing dictatorship in Spain? Impossible. Could never happen. You must be thinking of San Marino.

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[craesh]

> Huh? Right-wing dictatorship in Spain? Impossible. Could never happen. You must be thinking of San Marino.

Impossible??? I also thought so before, but yes, it's real! Some hours ago I heard in TV that 92% of the spanish citizens are against war, there are every weekend millions demonstrating (although the goverment says there are just some 100.000), in several regions they are even on strike, simulating war instead of going for work!

Aznar is really destroying Spain! He is responsible for the Prestige-disaster, it has contaminated huge parts of the spanish northern coast with oil. You think this is impossible in Spain? It _IS_ possible, I'm sorry.

The next ellections will be summer, go to hell Aznar, great dictator, hopefully the last one Spain ever had!

craesh

Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

"nearly at war"? "pending attack"?? Not just a troll but a completely out of date one.

It's funny

[Eudial]

It's funny how all dists seem to come with new versions at the same time. Conspiracy? Aliens? Illuminati? Flesh eating spiders from mars? Thermonuclear sharks with lasers attatched to their heads?

Re:It's funny

[gmuslera]

I think that the reason is more big packages released recently (KDE 3.1, Mozilla 1.3, GNOME 2.2, XFree 4.3, etc) and a big amount of critical packages fixed (sendmail, samba, etc).

And, of course, time since their last release. If well they don't have to release at the same time, the previous factors helps to do some kind of syncronization (be because "lets release a new version now that package XX version YY is released" or "release now because the ZZ distribution have the XX package version YY and we don't")

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense for Mandrake and SuSE to release the moment they think a new version of KDE seems stable.

And RedHat feels they have to join the party.

It might matter less if KDE had an easy 'select your options and download what you want' style installer.

Re:It's funny

[watzinaneihm]

It's funny how all dists seem to come with new versions at the same time.
I believe its tbe kernel. SuSe's latest distro uses 2.4.20 kernel. Redhat is pretty much at the same place with RH 9. Whenever a new kernel comes along and breaks a binary compatibility with the previous versions, a new whole number comes out.
A new UI, applciation etc. makes a point release.Since all the distros use pretty much the same apps, synchro. releases are to be expected. Note that Debian and Gentoo don't play along.

Re:It's funny

[grahammm]

Yet they still put old versions of other applications, eg MySQL and Xine, in the new release.

Re:It's funny

[nother_nix_hacker]

Thermonuclear sharks with lasers attatched to their heads

I think you'll find thats frikkin' lazers

Re:It's funny

[mattdm]

Kernels don't necessarily break binary compatibility. glibc is a more typical culprit.

Re:It's funny

[Xpilot]

Whenever a new kernel comes along and breaks a binary compatibility with the previous versions, a new whole number comes out.

I don't see how a new kernel "breaks binary compatibility". If glibc were upgraded yes, it might affect all the shared libs dynamically linked to it, but not the kernel.

Re:It's funny

[StarTux]

I have not been following the kernel that closely for awhile; What binary issue in the kernel are you alluding to?

Re:It's funny

[MrResistor]

SuSE has released a new version roughly every 6 months for years. It's not driven by anything beyond that being a reasonable pace. It keeps customers fairly current, bundles a reasonable amount of overall improvement in each release, but isn't so frequent that the end-user feels like they are constantly updating. You can expect SuSE 8.3/9.0 (depending on the amount and importance of the changes) around October.

Re:It's funny

[Eudial]

How come Slackware does the same?

Re:It's funny

[MrResistor]

Don't know. SuSE's been in business for over 10 years now, maybe they started the trend? You know, sort of how Moore's Law drives chip developement. Customers expect the next version to come out within a certain amount of time, so the designers do everything they can to ensure that it does.

Really, though, I think 6 months is just a reasonable pace. It's fast enough that the users don't feel like their falling behind, but not so fast that they feel like all they ever do is update their system. 6 months is also a reasonable period to "capture" the current state of Linux as a whole. I think we can agree that what most people mean when they say "Linux" is far more than just the kernel, that it encompasses a huge amount of code that is constantly being improved. With a longer period between versions the changes would be more drastic, increasing the chances of breaking things.

Re:It's funny

[Eudial]

Slackware has been in the buissnes just as long (since April 1993)

Re:It's funny

[MrResistor]

SuSE started in 1992, though they don't give a month. I would assume it was in the fall since 8.1 was their 10 year aniversary release.

ey

[Tolleman]

"Once I installed the current 1.0-4191 video drivers" From what I have experienced with them. They are a bit (massive lag impulses) slow with 2d. I think it is because nVidia is developing their own 2d renderer or something.

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Less than 10 comments and yet...

Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28

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Unable to select database

Re:Oh well

[Florian Weimer]

Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28

And it's the site of the submitter. His hoster will probably have a word with him. Ruin your day. Submit a story to Slashdot.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this attempt to lure out a karm whore or just bad luck on your part? Either way, I don't see it. The site is responding fine for me, despite this being a front page story.

Re:Oh well

[TheMadPenguin]

Yeah, they are gonna be ticked I think ;-) to wake up to a sluggish server first thing on a sunday morning. I've already got an email in to them to open the flood gates, at least during the slashdot rush.

this guy is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the top project manager at EA software, and I can tell you that this guy is a complete moron.

Oh, and to add to my list of qualifications, I also graduated from MIT with honors.

So don't start flaming me and telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.

This guy is a moron.

Re:this guy is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I graduated from MIT.. with top honors.. and I am the ceo of a large software company.. and I am also the senator of the state of Wisconsin.. and many other qualifications...

oh wait.. im posting ac so none of that means anything..

Site is VARY slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again I find myself checking out the newest SuSE release, and to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it. My personal computer is running Slackware (yes, I upgraded to 9.0 immediately), and I wouldn't trade it for any other distribution in the world, but I've got to say is that SuSE is still at the top of their game. When you look at all the desktop distros out there such as Mandrake, Lycoris, and Red Hat, they all really have their endearing factors, but they all are lacking in one way or another.

This is not to say that SuSE is perfect, because it's not. It has it's irritations just like any other OS, but they are minimal. More on that later... let's get on with it.

Joe Eckert at SuSE, as always, rushed a copy of their newest release to us. I finished up my work, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and sat down with our new found treasure. It was just like Christmas. No other distro really gets me this excited, except for maybe Slackware :) Hey, I'm the first guy to check out all the new toys, and I don't miss a chance to play.

The test machine used is a clone we built with the following specs:

• Abit KG7-RAID mainboard
• AMD Athlon XP 1600+ CPU
• 512MB RAM
• LG 40x CD/RW
• SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1 w/ Live!Drive
• 3Com 905C NIC
• 60GB HDD
• 128MB MSI NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 AGP Video
• 256MB USB Pen Drive

The nice part about a machine like this is that we usually don't run into too many compatibility issues. In a way I prefer this, but it would be nice to have some really interesting parts to test with, but our budget doesn't permit it at this time. Donations are welcome :)

Installation

If you've ever installed SuSE Linux before, the installation routine has not changed much at all. If you haven't, let me explain the procedure briefly for you. SuSE has always had a great installer, though it can be a bit cumbersome due to the amount of user input it requires... compared to other distros in its class. For instance, Ark Linux requires the end user to answer only a few questions before proceding. Red Hat and Mandrake ask a few more. Slackware asks more, but is for a more experienced user. SuSE stops at every step of the way and asks about configuration. I'm not really saying this is bad, because it isn't, but it's not for the impatient. The nice part about it is that when setup is complete, you will have a running system that really doesn't require any more setup. Once the OS is up and running, you can immediately begin working (or playing, depending on the situation).

The first thing I noticed when the installer started was that it was using antialiased fonts and the Keramik theme. Nice touch! Compared to their previous versions, this is a welcome change. Most people view this as purely eye candy, but I tend to think of it differently. I see it as less of a strain on your eyes to read the text presented to you. It also looks more appealing to new users. Those of us who have used Linux extensively have grown somewhat used to looking at jagged fonts over the years, but to a new user (coming from Windows or Mac), this is an immediate turn off. My hat's off to SuSE for realizing the importance of first impressions.

The next thing that stood out, other than flawless hardware detection and my timezone was actually correct, was that GNOME was not selected by default in the software list. Well, what about all my apps that require the GNOME/GTK libraries? No problem. I did a search on some of the libraries necessary for operation of traditional GNOME/GTK apps and they were all preselected. Nice touch. This goes a long way with me. For the diehard GNOME users out there, it is still an option. Don't worry. I used to be a GNOME user, but tried KDE 3.1 when it came out and was immediately a convert. SuSE has always placed more emphasis on the KDE environment, so this was not surprising at all.

I made some custom selections to try and break dependencies,

Re:Site is VARY slow

[DoofusOfDeath]

How can they have GCC 3.3?

GCC's website (http://www.fsf.org/software/gcc/releases.html) lists 3.2.2 as the latest release.

Re:Site is VARY slow

[FlyerFanNC]

Does that mean that sometimes it's slow and sometimes it isn't?

Re:Site is VARY slow

[mickwd]

"The only complaint I really can think of through this whole experience is that some of the applications didn't work."

So nothing major then ? ;)

Re:Site is VARY slow

[RoLi]

While it may not be the first choice for veteran Linux users, [..] Well, if Linus Torvalds uses SuSE as his home system (and he does), that's good enough for me.

Eh? Who's more veteran than Linus?

Re:Site is VARY slow

[platipusrc]

on my freebsd box, these are the versions of gcc that are available as ports:
/usr/ports/lang $ ls -a | grep gcc
gcc27
gcc28
gcc295
gcc30
gcc31
gcc32
gcc33
/usr/ports/lang $

Version 3.3 is beta though.

Re:Site is VARY slow

[Anonymous Coward]

If Red Hat treated KDE as shabbily as SuSE treat GNOME, it would be cause for KDE suicide bombers to lauch from their base in Germany and blow up RH headquarters.

Let's not forget that SuSE is also closely allied with Caldera/SCO/TrollTech and therefore with the Canopy group who are, at this moment, suing IBM and saying that the only reason Linux runs at all is that it took secret Unix (tm) cooking tips.

Fuck SuSE, fuck their dodgy licensing, and fuck their dodgy friends and business partners. Just don't use it.

Re:Site is VARY slow

[twener]

The facts: SuSE is the big player behind UnitedLinux. And Canopy owns only a 5.8% share of TrollTech.

Re:Site is VARY slow

[slasher999]

That just isn't fair to SuSE. Bottom line, after seven years of using Linux on a daily basis, SuSE is the best distro I've used and I'm happy to support them. In the past I've used RedHat (4.x - 5.x) and Mandrake (6.x - 9.0) and played with others like Debian. Never touched Slack, but I do respect it for what it is. I hear a lot of whining about licensing, but the only thing that really applies to is their configuration tool. Everything else is just as open as it is in any other distro.

Re:Site is VARY slow

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to thank you for posting as an AC and not being a karma whore.

Video Review

[nilstar]

Check out the review (Both Real/WMF format available) Here on CNet News.com.

Slashdotted -- article text

[arvindn]

Distro Release: First Look At SuSE Linux 8.2
(Posted on Friday, March 28 @ 20:13:51 EST )

Once again I find myself checking out the newest SuSE release, and to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it. My personal computer is running Slackware (yes, I upgraded to 9.0 immediately), and I wouldn't trade it for any other distribution in the world, but I've got to say is that SuSE is still at the top of their game. When you look at all the desktop distros out there such as Mandrake, Lycoris, and Red Hat, they all really have their endearing factors, but they all are lacking in one way or another.

This is not to say that SuSE is perfect, because it's not. It has it's irritations just like any other OS, but they are minimal. More on that later... let's get on with it.

Joe Eckert at SuSE, as always, rushed a copy of their newest release to us. I finished up my work, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and sat down with our new found treasure. It was just like Christmas. No other distro really gets me this excited, except for maybe Slackware :) Hey, I'm the first guy to check out all the new toys, and I don't miss a chance to play.

The test machine used is a clone we built with the following specs:

* Abit KG7-RAID mainboard
* AMD Athlon XP 1600+ CPU
* 512MB RAM
* LG 40x CD/RW
* SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1 w/ Live!Drive
* 3Com 905C NIC
* 60GB HDD
* 128MB MSI NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 AGP Video
* 256MB USB Pen Drive

The nice part about a machine like this is that we usually don't run into too many compatibility issues. In a way I prefer this, but it would be nice to have some really interesting parts to test with, but our budget doesn't permit it at this time. Donations are welcome :)

Installation

If you've ever installed SuSE Linux before, the installation routine has not changed much at all. If you haven't, let me explain the procedure briefly for you. SuSE has always had a great installer, though it can be a bit cumbersome due to the amount of user input it requires... compared to other distros in its class. For instance, Ark Linux requires the end user to answer only a few questions before proceding. Red Hat and Mandrake ask a few more. Slackware asks more, but is for a more experienced user. SuSE stops at every step of the way and asks about configuration. I'm not really saying this is bad, because it isn't, but it's not for the impatient. The nice part about it is that when setup is complete, you will have a running system that really doesn't require any more setup. Once the OS is up and running, you can immediately begin working (or playing, depending on the situation).

The first thing I noticed when the installer started was that it was using antialiased fonts and the Keramik theme. Nice touch! Compared to their previous versions, this is a welcome change. Most people view this as purely eye candy, but I tend to think of it differently. I see it as less of a strain on your eyes to read the text presented to you. It also looks more appealing to new users. Those of us who have used Linux extensively have grown somewhat used to looking at jagged fonts over the years, but to a new user (coming from Windows or Mac), this is an immediate turn off. My hat's off to SuSE for realizing the importance of first impressions.

The next thing that stood out, other than flawless hardware detection and my timezone was actually correct, was that GNOME was not selected by default in the software list. Well, what about all my apps that require the GNOME/GTK libraries? No problem. I did a search on some of the libraries necessary for operation of traditional GNOME/GTK apps and they were all preselected. Nice touch. This goes a long way with me. For the diehard GNOME users out there, it is still an option. Don't worry. I used to be a GNOME user, but tried KDE 3.1 when it came out and was immediately a convert. SuSE has always placed more emphasis on the KDE environment

poke-it-with-a-stick department?

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Is he talking about Mad Penguin's Web site?

Re:poke-it-with-a-stick department?

[Lu Xun]

I think that would be more like the rape-it-with-a-sledgehammer department. Must be referring to the distro.

Re:poke-it-with-a-stick department?

[quan74]

Google news is linking to the /. story as the top Sci-Tech story right now, I don't think anyone can stand up to a combined slashdotting/googling at the same time :P

Re:poke-it-with-a-stick department?

[egreB]

Well, both Google and Slashdot can take googling/slashdotting, but those are probably the only ones (-:

MAN, YOU'RE REALLY FIRED

[YOU ARE SO FIRED!]

Don't you know that George Brett owns 35% of our company? Badmouthing the Royals (especially the team that won the world series) will get you nowhere but fired in this company. Which is exactly what you are. Er, fired that is. You're fired. Yep. Oh, just get out already. Tina will forward your things to the address you have on file.

Dammit, that didn't go well.

Fun fact: Former Royals player Danny Jackson owns a bowling alley in Kansas called Incred-a-Bowl.

YOU FAIL IT !

[Anonymous Coward]

No karma whore for you! Score: -1, Redundant

Distro War is Cool War

[mcaserta]

Ah, the good old distro war! It's good to have distributions competing against each other since this is supposed to make them better and better. So, thanks distribution makers for all of this competition.

I only wonder why Suse didn't call this one 9.something to overcome Mandrake :)

Price is right

[CEHT]

I still have SuSE 8.0 installed on most of my computers, and laptop. And I got to say I like it very much.

SuSE is a good solid Linux distro.

From the screenshots, looks like they upgraded the theme of YaST 2 to Keramik and changed the default theme colour to blue. Good stuff. If they make a full list (and links) of patches / add-on of their kernel along with the documentations, it would make my life compiling kernel easier.

Re:Price is right

[garglblaster]

From the screenshots, looks like they upgraded the theme of YaST 2 to Keramik and changed the default theme colour to blue. Good stuff.

fyi: those things were already changed with SuSE 8.1

Re:Price is right

[ralcha]

Hi! Got to say I agree. I've got suse 8.0 on a windows computer and suse 7.1 on a Mac.(not so good but still useful) Getting it on a Mac hard, but suse helped by email Brilliant company

KDE broken?

[watzinaneihm]

From the article
The only complaint I really can think of through this whole experience is that some of the applications didn't work. You would launch them from the K menu and nothing would happen.
Saw the samething with RH9.Try a simple KscreenShot->Save on RH9. While it was expected with RH and their Bluecurve, whats wrong with Suse?
Also the test machine seems to have been an AMD, while I believe most distros put in a Intel optimised Kernel (atleast RH does) and the author mentions that it runs slower than a source distro.Shouldnt he have recompiled the kernel ideally>

Re:KDE broken?

[Lshmael]

Saw the samething with RH9.Try a simple KscreenShot->Save on RH9.

Red Hat Linux 9 ISOs will be available to paid subscribers starting March 31, 2003--a week before they will be available on redhat.com, in stores, or on Red Hat FTP.

A bit hard for most of us to try, especially since today is the 30th...

Re:KDE broken?

[watzinaneihm]

They have released the Gold (or RC2) for RH 9 for companies to test. Got my hands on one of those....

Re:KDE broken?

[sjbcfh]

Also the test machine seems to have been an AMD, while I believe most distros put in a Intel optimised Kernel (atleast RH does) and the author mentions that it runs slower than a source distro.Shouldnt he have recompiled the kernel ideally

No need to recompile the kernel. SuSE provides an Athlon-optimized kernel which one can chose during the install.

Whats new?

[gmuslera]

more than the package versions, most of the things that the author says that are "new" to the distribution itself seems to be already in 8.1 (yast2 package manager, the desktop, the menus, boot, etc).

New packages are important, but I have them installed in 8.1 already, and the changes that should matter should be in what differenciate this distribute to the others, and itself in previous versions

Re:Whats new?

[twener]

You have your SuSE upgraded to glibc 2.3 and compiled with gcc 3.3? And sure the development is evolutionary (faster YOU, YOU at install, common desktop look [Keramik/Geramik], better WLAN support) rather than revolutionary.

Let me guess

[snofla]

the article:

• has screen shots
• raves about new stuff

DO NOT CLICK! Parent is a GOATSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: Parent contains a link to the infamous "goatse" photo

slashdot is dying!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why do the Reply button and Reply to This links keep disappearing?

Re:slashdot is dying!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is not dying! Look at Usenet. Posts quoting slashdot outnumber posts quoting the bible, at least in the com.os.linux.* newsgroups. You don't have to be Kreskin to understand this.

It's not funny at all!

[Lshmael]

One factor you forgot to mention was me burning CDs of all (ok, well, a lot) of the distributions. The timeline goes like this:

1. Massive Distribution Version Release
2. Long Period during which FTP mirrors are overloaded
3. I decide it would be good to burn CDs
4. Laziness ensues
5. I actually burn CDs
6. as soon as the burning starts, new packages come out
7. as soon as the burning stops, new distros come out
8. Massive Distribution Version Release
9. I cry...

Note there was no "4. Profit!" in there...

Re:It's not funny at all!

[rosewood]

FTP installs are PERFECT for this problem

I too used to download the 6 ISOs and burninate all the CDs. No longer.

Ill take one CDRW and burn the FTP boot disk image, boot that up and specify my FTP source and go to town. Of course, I only use Red Hat but I think this works for all major distros. The redhat one doesn't allow me to do the pretty install. I think the redhat team should jump all over that.

Its also nice because you dont download any RPMss you dont need.

Re:It's not funny at all!

[mrscorpio]

Burninate?

Chris

Re:It's not funny at all!

[CableModemSniper]

Trogdor was a man, he was a dragon-man, err he was just a dragon, but he was still TROGDOR!

Re:It's not funny at all!

[Archfeld]

Burninate !!! Gotta love strongbad :)

Re:It's not funny at all!

[CanadaDave]

Of course Debian is king when it comes to net installs.

The reason for Germanies strange behavior:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the reason is more big packages released recently (KDE 3.1, Mozilla 1.3, GNOME 2.2, XFree 4.3, etc) and a big amount of critical packages fixed (sendmail, samba, etc).

And, of course, time since their last release. If well they don't have to release at the same time, the previous factors helps to do some kind of syncronization (be because "lets release a new version now that package XX version YY is released" or "release now because the ZZ distribution have the XX package version YY and we don't")

Fonts look nice...

[gbrall]

Does anyone know whether this clean fonts in the screenshots are out-of-the-box or added by the reviewer?

Re:Fonts look nice...

[mfago]

The "clean" font family is included, but not default. It's what I use...

this is good... or is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

SUSE is trying to become the Microsoft of Linux.

They take so much from the community and don't
give anything back. They are worse than RedHat.

I'll NEVER use SUSE or RedHat. Evil big corporations
are ruining Linux.

Re:this is good... or is it?

[dnaumov]

Fucking moron. I know this is most likely a troll, but I'll respond anyway. RedHat has people working on / contributin on GNOME, Linux kernel and god-knows-what-else. They employ Alan Cox who is considered to be Linus's right hand by many. SUSE has people working on KDE and CUPS.

BIG EEEVIIIL CORPORATIONS ! RUN !

Re:this is good... or is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

> SUSE has people working on KDE and CUPS.

Actually, SuSEs OSS development staff is the largest one.

And the server wailed in anguish..

[concatenation]

Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28
Warning: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32
Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32
Unable to select database

Frames Per Second

[5lash]

I'm not sure I understand this:

on Slackware Linux (and also VectorLinux), graphics performance was about 2500-2600 frames/second using OpenGL. With SuSE Linux 8.2 I am experiencing frame rates of about 2000-2100 frames/sec. This is a noticeable drop in performance, but again, for most users this will go unnoticed.

As far as i know the human eye can only see about 30fps, and from playing Counter-Strike a lot, people seem to be generally pleased as long as they have above 60fps. Does he really mean he's getting 2000 frames per second? Someone explain please!

Re:Frames Per Second

[TheMadPenguin]

It is true. GLXGEARS pulls frame rates like that all day long with a good card. Games such as CounterStrike will not, though. It's just a benchmark really. Thats why I said most people wont even notice it, but for benchmark purposes, it's just a way to compare, and say "Hey this card ran better under slackware!". :)

Re:Frames Per Second

[damiam]

glxgears is an extremely simple 3D demo, it runs at 600fps on my Athlon with no 3d accel whatsoever. A card that runs glxgears at 2000fps will run real games at much lower framerates. No, you can't visibly tell the difference between 500fps and 40000fps in glxgears, but it's a benchmark, so you don't need to.

Re:Frames Per Second

[5lash]

Oh right, thanks for clearing that up. Surely it'd be better to use a more up to date benchmark system though, with more realistic helpful scores. Something like that probably doesnt test the graphics to it's full potential. Anyway i dont really know what i'm talking about.

Re:Frames Per Second

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

This is offtopic kind of but there is a HUGE difference between a geForce 4 MX model and a geForce 4 ti like mine. He was getting only 200-2100? Here's a cut and paste from Redhat 8.0 on a ti 4200 running on an Athlon 1.33. Is there such a simple and easy to use and free benchmarking utility for Windows?
[root@PlanetExpress bax]# glxgears
31079 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6215.800 FPS
31880 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6376.000 FPS
31946 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6389.200 FPS
31837 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6367.400 FPS
31952 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6390.400 FPS
31881 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6376.200 FPS
31903 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6380.600 FPS
31992 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6398.400 FPS
31958 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6391.600 FPS
31924 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6384.800 FPS
31986 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6397.200 FPS
32108 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6421.600 FPS
31175 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6235.000 FPS

Re:Frames Per Second

[kidlinux]

The performance of glxgears is completely, 100% meaningless unless you are given ALL the details.
When I run glxgears, it comes up in a 300x300 window, and I get ~1110fps consistently. When the window is full screen (1600x1200) that drops to 67fps. If I put the glxgears window behind another window, I go up to about 4050fps.

This is on an amd thunderbird 1.4 @ 266, and an ATI Radeon 64MB ddr.

Assuming glxgears comes up in a 300x300 window by default, you still need to know what depth and resolution X is running at. The above numbers I provided were at a depth of 24, and a resolution of 1600x1200. If I drop to 16 @ 1280x1024, the frame rate in a 300x300 window goes up 200-300 fps. Full screen, I get ~132 fps.

So before you start making comparisons with glxgears, make sure the environments are as similar as possible.

Everyone always says the human eye can't see over 30fps. That's a lie, as far as I'm concerned. When I play Quake 2 (for example), I notice an enourmous difference between 30 and 60 fps, and a more marginal difference between 60 and 90 fps. I tried reducing the frame rate in a network game, hoping to improve my ping. Don't know if it worked, but it wouldn't have been worth the annoyance of the lower frame rate.

The sensitivity to frame rates most likely varies from person to person, just like sensitivity to sound. Some people say a 128kbps mp3 sounds terrible, others can't tell the difference.

Re:Frames Per Second

[AntiNorm]

This is offtopic kind of but there is a HUGE difference between a geForce 4 MX model and a geForce 4 ti like mine. He was getting only 200-2100?

This is because there is a huge difference between the MX and TI models.

Re:Frames Per Second

[leereyno]

The reason there is a noticable difference between 30, 60 and even 90 fps under quake is that these numbers measure the average fps. Depending upon the scene being rendered, the actual fps for that individual scene could drop low enough that you could see some lag and/or choppiness.

Another thing to consider is the refresh rate on your monitor. If your monitor is running at 60Hz, you're not going to SEE anything above 60fps. This effect can readily be seen on glxgears. If you could actually SEE the fps rate in the thousands that glxgears will normally report, the gears would be a blur. Instesad what you actually see is the fps divided by your monitor's refresh rate. This is why playing with the resolution of the window glxgears is running in can make the gears appear to rotate backwards. It is also the reason for the clipping and distortion you'll commonly see as different frames show up on different raster line segments.

Re:Frames Per Second

[badasscat]

As far as i know the human eye can only see about 30fps, and from playing Counter-Strike a lot, people seem to be generally pleased as long as they have above 60fps. Does he really mean he's getting 2000 frames per second? Someone explain please!

It's a myth that the human eye can only see 30, or 24, or whatever arbitrarily low number of frames per second you want to come up with. First of all, the limiter is not the eye, it's the brain. So the more accurate phraseology would be "the human brain can only perceive X frames per second" rather than "the human eye can only see X frames per second". More importantly, though, is that there is no hard and fast number of frames per second a human can perceive - it's different for everyone, but for almost everybody it's well beyond 30.

Consider motion picture film. Initially, film was shot at roughly 16-18 frames per second. This was later standardized at 24 fps when it became clear that at 18 flicker was still clearly visible. 24 fps is the minimum at which flicker was determined to not be a distraction, and this minimum was used for economic reasons (not because it was the highest number of frames per second people could perceive, but because it was the lowest number of frames per second at which they would not be distracted by flicker, and this helped keep film stock costs down to the minimum while maintaining the increasingly sophisticated audience's interest).

Now, you may wonder why I'm using 24fps as an example when you're talking 30. Simple, really - a film strip that's being projected at 24 frames per second is actually showing 48 images per second, it's just that half of those images are blank. Now, next time you go to a film I want you to look at a bright scene and tell me you do not perceive any flicker at all. You probably won't be distracted by it, but you'll see it if you look for it. And this is at a real 48 "frames" (images) per second - well higher than the 30 you mention. Clearly the brain is capable of perceiving even higher than the 48 images per second projected in motion picture theaters.

I think people get confused by the concept of persistence of vision. Persistence of vision is what allows us to assign motion to static images when they're projected in sequence fast enough for our brains to be tricked. However - and this is the most important thing - the speed of projected images at which our brains can be tricked into perceiving motion and the speed of projected images at which our brains lose the ability to perceive those individual images are not the same. There are two different areas of the brain at work here - one processes raw images, and the other assigns meaning to them. They work together but are independent of each other.

It may be easier to understand this through a musical example. Imagine a piece of music that you've never heard before, but one that makes auditory sense (ie. it's not just a bunch of noise, it follows a pattern your brain has heard before and expects). Now imagine that three times per second there is a period of silence in that music. You will likely still be able to hear the music itself and understand it to be music and follow along with it - but you will still hear the silences as well and it will be annoying. Obviously, as you ramp up the sample rate there is a point at which you first will be able to tolerate those silences (perceiving them to be nothing but degraded sound quality) and then eventually lose the ability to perceive those silences at all, but that point is at a fairly high sample rate. This is obviously the theory behind the CD, which is broken up into 44,000 samples per second.

It's a bit of a moot point in this case because we're talking extremely high frame rates (there would be no perceived difference between 2500 and 2100 frames per second), but it's a pet peeve of mine when I see it stated that 24 or 30 fps are "all the human eye can see" so I thought I should correct it. In the case of

Re:Frames Per Second

[MrResistor]

As far as i know the human eye can only see about 30fps, and from playing Counter-Strike a lot, people seem to be generally pleased as long as they have above 60fps.

This is pure myth. The human eye can see far more than 30fps.

AFAIK this myth comes from NTSC TV being roughly 30fps, but even that is a myth in some respects, since your TV picture is interleved. What that means is that each frame is split into 2 fields, one comprising all the odd numbered lines and one comprising all the even numbered ones. These alternate, giving an effective 60 fps. This combined with other effects, such as motion blur, trick your brain into ignoring the flicker and perceiving motion.

It should be noted that the MINIMUM fps at which the brain will ignore flicker is about 24fps, which is what film runs at (although I've been told that most film runs at an effective 72fps, though I don't know how it's split up). PAL TV (used in Europe, and many African and Asian TV markets) runs at 25fps interleved, and while I've never had a problem with it myself I know several Americans who find it irritating. [1] The reason PAL uses 25fps and NTSC uses 30fps has little to do with image quality, and much more to do with the ease of synching those refresh rates with the frequency of the AC power sources available in those areas; 50Hz in Europe and 60Hz in the US.

So, basically, 30fps is the slightly above the minimum refresh rate at which the brain can be tricked into perciving motion from a series of still images. I can consciously percieve a difference up to around 100fps. That is, for example, roughly the point at which the default machinegun in Quake 3 becomes a useful weapon since I can track moving targets with it smoothly.

On a subconscious level faster is always better. If you stare at a 60Hz monitor all day your eyes will be strained, perhaps blurring your vision or making your eyes hurt, perhaps causing headaches. These effects are reduced as you raise the refresh rate of your monitor.

As a side note, Counter-Strike (and all Half-life based games) are limited to 60fps by default. There's a text file (I don't remember what it's called) where this limit can be raised to 99. Try it and see if you notice a difference.

[1] I'm a technician at a manufacturer of professional video production equipment. This is why I know people who care about things like the refresh rate of television. This is also why I have experience with PAL, despite the fact that I've only left the continent of North America twice, and both of those were trips to Hawaii.

Observation

[Erwos]

I always find it interesting how some people see what other people think are cons as pluses.

Here's a good example: the story's author likes how SuSE prompts you for information constantly during install. I've heard that as a criticism from other people - why won't this thing just install, dammit!?

It's also a good reason why some people prefer certain distributions and hate others. The guy who likes Debian may not care about a complicated install process and tons of configuration afterwards if he gets auto-upgrade functionality like that found in apt-get, whereas a RedHat user might prefer auto-detection and a really nice-looking desktop (Bluecurve) in exchange for the lack of apt-get functionality.

This is why such casual observations as "X distribution sucks, Y is so much better" tend to be so idiotic - not everyone has their priorities in the same places. What's good for me might not be so good for you, and vica versa.

-Erwos

Re:Observation

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's also a good reason why some people prefer certain distributions and hate others. The guy who likes Debian may not care about a complicated install process and tons of configuration afterwards if he gets auto-upgrade functionality like that found in apt-get, whereas a RedHat user might prefer auto-detection and a really nice-looking desktop (Bluecurve) in exchange for the lack of apt-get functionality.

up2date-nox is the Red Hat equivalent to apt-get. "up2date-nox -u" == "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade".

There is also apt for RPM, developed by Connectiva. Works quite well with Red Hat systems.

Re:Observation

[Fred Tourette]

"What's good for me might not be so good for you, and vica [sic] versa."

Indeed. Isn't that why we all came over here to LinuxLand from WindozeWorld (or for the lucky, never spent any time at all in WindozeWorld) in the first place? We can praise and dis each others' distros out here like Ford/Chevy/Dodge truck owners, but the joy is, there are distros to praise and dis.

Re:Observation

[deKernel]

I have to say that I never really thought about it in that like. Good point.

Personally, I just love SuSE myself.

Re:Observation

[powerlinekid]

whereas a RedHat user might prefer auto-detection and a really nice-looking desktop (Bluecurve) in exchange for the lack of apt-get functionality.

Thats what we have Mandrake for :). URPMI kicks ass.

Re:Observation

[MrResistor]

Here's a good example: the story's author likes how SuSE prompts you for information constantly during install. I've heard that as a criticism from other people - why won't this thing just install, dammit!?

The way I read that it was a criticism, but was mitigated by the fact that it resulted in an immediately usable system upon completion of the install.

Of course, my posting that only enforces your observation.

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an extremly long peice of fiction. Because let us not forget that that is exactly what it is...fiction.

Amazingly enough, in what has been proven true over and over again, most Iraqi civillians are happy that the US is there, and are happy that the US isnt listening to France and Germany that all they care about is the money Iraq owes them.
More and more Iraqi civilians are defecting all the time, and some have, in groups, left parts of the city so that the Iraqi Military wouldnt be able to use them as human shields.

Lets compare how many civilians were really accidentally killed by US. less then 10, and those could of been prevented if Iraw wouldnt of brought the fighting into the cities. How much were murderd cold blooded by Saddam Hussain trhoughout the years? How many were tourtered because they were 'traitors'? (meaning they said a bad sentence to a friend, that was interperted incorrectly) How many were killed by Iraqi's in an attempt to make the us look bad? How many were kileld because the Iraqi Troops shot artilary shells and dont give a crap where they land, even if its in a middle of a huge market!
The US missles have been shown to take out things like tanks, without even damnging the bridges the tanks were hidden under. Also, the US has been successfully bombing weapon factories without harming any nearby building!

There have been alot of propoganda of pictures of injured civilians caused by the US. Well how about some proof that they were caused by the US?
Percentage-wise, it is much more probable that they were cause by Iraqi troops. And the fact that all of these images come from extremly biased sources (we all heard of frace reporting of civillian casualties before the war even started, and the arab supporting websites are far from reliable). Did you even wounder why you do not see images of American soliders waving to farmers as they drive pass them? You will only find these types of pictures if you dig deep under the propoganda and find some more reliable sources.

And what about the US casualties? Well, at last count, 1 casualty was because of actual Iraqi Fighting. the others were cause by mistakes and malfunctions with the technical aspects (like chppers etc...), and also, another group (around 20 as i recall?) were murdered when Iraqi Troops pretended to surrender, and the US troops actually believed them, and didnt want to kill unarmed people. The fact is, that the US has spent alot of money, on making this war as quick, and as non-bloody as possible. With extrmely expensive technology, that enjures (or atleast tries to) the protection of the American soliders, and allows the US to do things like blow up weapon bunkers and only the weapon bunkers with minimal side damadge.

YES! this is were the multi-million dollar missles are worth every penny for the life of every innocent civillian! This is why the Iraqi civillians are constantly supporting the US!
I do NOT respect the other countries that have not joined, claiming that they want 'peace' and blaming the US for oil, when anybody that actually knowns anything, knowns how much money the current Iraqi Gouverment owes some of these European 'Companies' (aka gouverments). And when Bush replaces the gouverment there, OH NO! there goes a few hunderd billion down the drain. Well thats just too bad that those countires care more about thier money rather then the lives of a country being opperesed by a cruel, mad, tyrannical leader, who (as posted above) has cold bloddedly murdered his own civillians for no reason. I respect the US and its brave soliders for spending a huge amount of money on actually making a difference in the world (this is the second bad arab gouverment, how many left to go?). And for the brave soliders that fight for the freedom of a people they do not even know.

Saddam Hussain and his supporters have no respect for human life! They murdered civillians on a regular bases a long time before the war started! He deserves to die a slow death, and rot in hell.

Where to get some Suse love?

[rosewood]

Recently, someone pointed me to Suse's Open Exchange Server and I was blown away by it. I have quite a few small (2-3 people) offices that are REALLY wanting a way to share calenders and other stuff. MS's Exchange server is WAY TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. It would seem just a simple computer running Suse's OE would be perfect! However...

I am really not a linux expert. Ive run Red Hat for years and I like it -- but its not my primary box. It just sits for web serving and ftp. Ill open up VNC and browse through it when Im doing some random stuff that eats up CPU time on this box and Ill also use it when Im at the library or something and I want to use Phoenix -- but thats about it. So, I dunno if I can handle the switch to SuSE.

Also, the other problem I have is with SuSE support. Recently they started offering This evaluation program for OE server. It sounds like $20 gets OE server and I can install it on a box running SuSE and go to town, assuming I can RTFM. I think this would be GREAT! It gives me a chance to demo this out and decide if I want to try to sell it to the small offices I do work for. However, as stupid as it sounds, $30 (after shipping) is hard to come by as a college student. So, I sent them an e-mail asking 1: How long it takes to get shipped out post order and 2: Could I just pay the $20 and download the isos? That was Monday and today is Sunday, and I didn't receive anything back from them. Considering part of the $1,250 paid for OE Server is a year of support from Suse, I need to know that they will be there.

I'd read the article posted, but it has already been slashdoted :( Are there some good community sites out there for Suse? People that actually use OE Server?

PS -- If anyone knows of any alternatives to OE Server, please let me know! I need to be able to share calenders and address books for clients running outlook 2k/XP/2k3. If you know of a way to make iCal and vCards work and well for outlook, I could even live with that.

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[alansz]

In the U.S., you might check out Ricis, Inc., which is a SuSE partner and sets up a lot of SuSE systems (including the open exchange server) for enterprises and organizations of many shaps and sizes. Their other specialty is security.

[ Disclaimer: I consult for this company. ]

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[rosewood]

Well -- all bias aside, is oes as kick ass as it looks?

Even though Im a total n00b, Ill probably have to go into this venture by myself. If I can RTFM, will I still be up a shit's creek?

One other thing no one has been able to answer, does this require that I have a FQDN?

PS - I cry to see the powered by win2k server at the bottom of your page.

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[StarTux]

You might want to try the SuSE mailing list, that way you will be in direct contact with other SuSE users and I am sure at least a few will be able to answer this questions from the viewpoint of a consumer :).

StarTux

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[r101]

You may want to keep an eye on the Kroupware Project with it's kolab server: http://kroupware.kde.org

It requires a commercial plugin from outlook and is currently beta, but it could be one for the future.

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[rsax]

PS -- If anyone knows of any alternatives to OE Server, please let me know! I need to be able to share calenders and address books for clients running outlook 2k/XP/2k3.

Check out InsightConnector. You can try it out for 14 days, pretty cheap and it works with the Cyrus IMAP server.

Re:Where to get some Suse love?

[MrResistor]

First, there's the online SuSE support database, which you can get to from their website. I honestly don't use it much since I have a hard time finding what I'm looking for. Maybe I just use the wrong terminology in my searches, I don't know.

Where I usually go is USENET, particularly alt.linux.suse, although if the question is regarding a specific application, such as Samba or Wine, I'll usually go to the appropriate comp.os.* group.

One area where SuSE really stands out, though, is their printed manuals, which are hands down the most useful Linux books in my collection (of course, I'm a SuSE user, so YMMV).

What it comes down to is that in the 3 years I've been using SuSE (or Linux at all, really) I've only had occasion to contact support twice. They were a little slow to respond, but in both cases it was problems that aren't covered under installation support. They did answer, though, and I suspect, based on my own customer service experience, that unpaid support questions get answered last. I wouldn't consider the current delay to be indicative of the type of support you'd get from them under contract.

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen

what!!!

[phre4k]

KDE loads and runs perfectly with no delays launching windows and apps take minimal time to load. It's not quite as fast as source-based distros, but for an everyday user, this is completely acceptable behavior. It still runs TONS better than Windows 9x, NT/2000, and XP combined. Who is he kidding? As much as we all love linux and free software. A thing as opening new windows is one of the things that works well on windows. Always fast and the windows is opened before you release the mouse button. /Esben

Re:what!!!

[CmdrGravy]

". A thing as opening new windows is one of the things that works well on windows. Always fast and the windows is opened before you release the mouse button."

That's not my experience of windows, certainly the borders of windows can appear pretty fast but then you have to wait for the contents to render and that can take a while. I have run both KDE and Windows on my PC and KDE does feel a lot more responsive than Windows ever did.

Distro Incest

[Icephreak1]

In case y'all didn't know, SuSE is Slackware's long long lost bastard child. It sprung directly from it just as Redhat squirted out Mandrake.

- IP

Re:Distro Incest

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake fell out of Redahat's Ass.

Another distro diary

[Telex4]

I'm getting a little bored of these reviews... they read more like little diary entries than full reviews. This one is better than most, but it is still just a rambling tale of the odd things this person noticed about the product. At the moment, the only way to determine which distro is better is to try them all, or to sift through reviews weeding out the occasional shred of information from the random problems each person had.

A breakdown of what the distro offers in the way of tools, unusual packages, speed, stability, etc. would be nice. I know it might get a bit repetetive over many versions, but it's still useful to get it all down, and also to comment on how well they work.

Me thinks it's time to set-up www.troll-diary.org and let these reviews be posted alongside the usual ill-thought-out "Linux won't succeed until..." and "distro x isn't as good as BeOS because...". It'll save me checking them out at least :)

Re:Another distro diary

[belbo]

Me thinks it's time to set-up www.troll-diary.org and let these reviews be posted alongside the usual ill-thought-out "Linux won't succeed until..." and "distro x isn't as good as BeOS because...". It'll save me checking them out at least :)

Dude, we've got that already. And that *plus* a dominatrix style webmistress who doesn't know the language she's writing in. You can't top that.

Re:Another distro diary

[Telex4]

I was, of course, referring to everyone's favourite reviewer, but it'd be more fun if she at least posted onto a domain that was true to her name :)

Why I stopped using SUSE

[phaze3000]

I used to use SuSE on a number of machines some time ago (started with SuSE 6, last version I used was SuSE 6.2).
What really used to annoy me was the propensity it had for just editing config files I had altered, without any warnings. ISTR there was a change you could make in a rc file somewhere that would stop YAST from doing this, but then that meant newly installed packages didn't configure themselves correctly.
Have SuSE since fixed this? I now run Debian on my machines at home, whilst at work we use Redhat (management's choice, but not one I'm massively upset with). I haven't seen a good reason yet why I might want to switch, but perhaps some other Slashdotters can come up with some?

Re:Why I stopped using SUSE

[RoLi]

Yes, it detects wether you have edited a file and only overwrites, the global rc file is also gone.

Re:Why I stopped using SUSE

[mgkimsal2]

Same end, different reasons. My primary reason was based on an old experience, and no doubt people will say 'it's better!' but I don't have a major need to switch and learn another distro.

Back in 99 and 2000, I was trying out various distros - tried Caldera, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse on the same machine. Debian later on a different machine, but that was a different story.

Same hardware, but Suse took 100% longer to install, and at that point installed far fewer packages than the others, using a 'default' install. Perhaps there were switched I could have flipped at boot time to make it go faster, but all other distros were fine. What got me, though, was how slow Suse felt compared to the others (again - same hardware - same machine, actually). Yet everyone I spoke with who used Suse *raved* about how great it was and how much faster. When I showed a couple of them my machine - and they used it and didn't see anything wrong with it - I became suspect of Suse advocates.

We now have a guy here using Suse and it's OK, but I still can't shake those experiences off. Can't put my finger on it, but it's still a bit puzzling.

Re:Why I stopped using SUSE

[twener]

> last version I used was SuSE 6.2). What really used to annoy me was the propensity it had for just editing config files I had altered, without any warnings.

Still argueing with bugs fixed years ago? What a poor discussion.

Re:Why I stopped using SUSE

[einhverfr]

in 7.x I noticed that YAST2 would only run into serious problems if I tried to configure two different ethernet cards from different manufactures (ended up editing the conf.modules). I am sure this has been fixed by now (or at least hope it has). In 7.0 the ReiserFS driver was buggy and sometimes I would end up with weird issues due to metadata corruption (fixed in 7.1).

My experience with SuE has been mixed, but I have to say that many of their default install options are aimed at creating a functional system as quickly as possible. Als SuSE Professional includes everything you could possibly ever need including a Hello World program (and maybe with the latest Mozilla, not it has the kitchen sink?).

Personally I prefer RedHat because I have found that its hardware detection was better when I started using it than most others. But SuSE offers a better price for the boxed set and so I don't entirely discount it :) Also I think their openexchange product is cool :) although I would like to see a fully open-source groupware server suite......

Shameless, Kinda-Off-Topic Troll...

[cliffiecee]

All pre-packaged distros suck. Build your own linux distro... from scratch.

(Chicken-v.-Egg Warning: You'll need a working linux system to build one from scratch.)

I started compiling from source two weeks ago and just built Mozilla last night! w00t!

Re:Shameless, Kinda-Off-Topic Troll...

[mfago]

I started compiling from source two weeks ago and just built Mozilla last night!

The perfect advertisement for a pre-packaged distro?

Re:Shameless, Kinda-Off-Topic Troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

He should try Gentoo. It took me 2 days to get everything up and running completely (with KDE, Gnome, X, Openoffice, Mozilla, etc).

Re:Shameless, Kinda-Off-Topic Troll...

[Unregistered]

I'll bite
Go gentoo. Seriously. It has all the advantages of LFS w/out the hell of actually maintaining the system. It also has a cool init system. And it doesn't need a working system. All you need is a cd.

Re:Shameless, Kinda-Off-Topic Troll...

[cliffiecee]

I probably will.

It's actually been fun learning about dependencies, permissions, libraries, etc., but I don't think I'll put myself through that again.

GENTOO PLUG

[Syncroswitch]

I find SuSE to be a bit rough on the updates, and the live cd, no download thing is not acceptable. Dont get me wrong I like suse, and I paid for boxed sets of 6, 6.1, 7, 8, but its just not worth it anymore. Gentoo gives me all the bleeding edge that I can handle, with a 10th the fuss, and its free, AS IN BEER.

Re:GENTOO PLUG

[BlowChunx]

Sure, free as in beer, but how much did your hardware cost? Compiling everything from source is not an option on older hardware (wasn't that one of the original benefits of linux, to run on older hardware that windows bloat was dog slow on???). I'd rather buy a boxed set on my old hardware than drop $$$ on new hardware so I can compile my free software. But hey, I'm cheap.

Re:GENTOO PLUG

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo compiles fine on older hardware, as this P2 366 notebook attests. Large packages such as KDE could take a day to compile but KDE is only really practical on new hardware anyway. Fluxbox compiled in ten minutes.
If you want Linux on a slower box, use Slackware. We're throwing out Pentium classics at work, a SUSE box set is worth more than hardware of that vintage.

Re:GENTOO PLUG

[Syncroswitch]

I understand your dismay, but gentoo does work on older machines. I have compiled it to a PII klamath, with little to no trouble. You do have to compensate your savings on older hardware with the extra compile time, but it pays back with the speed of its optimized execution. Gentoo will still accept RPMs, DEBs and other bin forms, and they have stage three tarballs with complete bins as well. For older harware I would not choose SuSE anyways, as it is a bit on the bloated side, and if I'm using old hardware for somthing I want it lean, and specific in purpose.

but thats just my to eurocents

About ISOs

[ArchKaine]

Does anyone know if Suse is distributed in ISO format?I'd like to have permanent copies of the install disks, because I expect to be moving soon, and don't know when I'll have fast internet again... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re:About ISOs

[diffuze]

SuSE does not provide iso images of their distros.

There are iso's available for their Live Eval distros though, but that's not quite the same thing, as they are run directly from the bootable CD, and not installed on the harddrive.

I personally always make an ftp installation, as that options fits me best.

You can read about the installation options here: SuSE Linux Download

Re:About ISOs

[SamBeckett]

Yep, they are at best buy on the CDs already for you!!

Re:About ISOs

[ArchKaine]

I was referring to downloadable ISOs, not CDs. But thanks for the input.

Re:About ISOs

[ArchKaine]

Ok, thanks for the info, I guess I'll have to figure out a way to make my own then.

Complete with screenshots :)

[rmarll]

Complete with screenshots :) = Site down

Mirrors?

Suse deliberate cripple online update old version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been having trouble with online update on some of my boxes. The older distros started first. Failures on 7.3 when 8.0 came out. Failures on 8.0 when 8.1 came out. And now I'm noticing that 8.1 isn't so hot either, although there aren't any failures yet.

It appears that Suse is taking lessons from ms on forced upgrades. Why do I say this? The problems with online update on the early releases have already been acknowledged by Suse, according to some of the tech writers. They and others have posted that Suse's answer was to upgrade, there was a bug in such and such release of online update, and the solution was to upgrade, they weren't going to fix it.

Apparently, enough people complained about 8.0, and possibly 8.1 online updates that they came up with a workaround. Deleting the files that hold the update records is one of the workarounds.

So according to Suse, if I use their distro, I could forget about the hundreds of days of uptime I used to enjoy. I have to pay them for every upgrade.

With ms still supporting Win98, and still supporting NT if you block the rpc port, ms distros work out cheaper in just licensing costs, if they last so much longer than Suse. And as for stability, Win2000 is pretty damn stable, and when stripped for specific uses, it only gets more stable.

Online update is arguably the most important part of a distro. The security updates must constantly be installed. I've been running distros without firewalls, and haven't been hacked, for years. As long as the packages are updated, and you only run what you need, you don't have a problem. Of course, as best practices, I've added firewalls to my servers. But if you can't update the security patches, what good is a firewall?

I have boxes running 7.3 without any problems (yet). And I have boxes running 7.3 that I've had to take down and put another distro on it because online update kept failing. I have boxes running 8.0 with the same problem. Some run fine (so far). Others choke on online update, I can't download/install the security patches, and I have to change distos.

If the distro would work, I could leave the boxes running apache, and never have to touch them for over a year each, except to update security patches. But due to the online update problem, I have a headache of time administering these boxes.

I bought 8.0 because of the online update problem with 7.3, or I would have been happy with 7.3 Now with the problems with 8.0, I decided against paying for 8.1, I did an ftp install instead. I would have bought it, in part because I like to have the original disks on hand rather than getting scratched copies from someone, or wasting time with the loooooong ftp install. But I also would have paid for the new release because I believe in supporting companies who support my business. If a company is going to help me out with a product or service, I believe in helping them out as well, with the religion part of it having nothing to do with it, I've been rewarding companies who help my company for many years.

I add a new server every few months on average. So bothering with a local nfs server install doesn't interest me. But with the online update problems, I'd be crazy to continue punishing myself.

Forced upgrades is a dirty ms tactic. Too bad its bleeding into our community.

I never thought I'd say this, or do this, but Debian, here I come.

Spilling the guts

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm,

Seem like the Mad Penguin is spilling the guts (The MySql username/password is replaces with xxx/xxx below):

"
Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28

Warning: Access denied for user: 'xxx' (Using password: xxx) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'xxx' (Using password: xxx) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32

Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32
Unable to select database"

Btw: I have long since switched from Red Hat to SUSE - I tried the new RH8, but I'll stick with SUSE (ssh works, mc works, kde works, ...)

SuSE Linux 8.2 Product Pages

[twener]

There are more screenshots than in this review.

All these choices...

[hendridm]

All these distributions are great, but what I really want is the ability to install a printer without editing text files and starting a service to do it, and have my printers actually show up in my applications.

Re:All these choices...

[claude_juan]

i have always had this beef too. i just installed mandrake 9.1 a couple days ago and it solved that problem. i took my laptop to work and it found the printers installed on the windows network we have. i was pumped. just a few clicks here and there and it worked first time out.

i plan on trying suse though. i've always liked it better. mandrake has always been "cartoony" in appearance.

Re:All these choices...

[Fizzol]

Then you want Xandros. I was able to connect to an HP printer connected to a windows machine on the network, and print. A first for me with Linux.

Re:All these choices...

[drewness]

I'm running SuSE 7.3 and all I had to do to get my printer working is install CUPS and go to http://localhost:631 and answer a couple questions to get my Epson Stylus C80 to work. qtcups and kups are also available frontends for printer configuration with CUPS. Is that more the level of ease you wanted?

Re:All these choices...

[hendridm]

> I'm running SuSE 7.3 and all I had to do to get my printer working is install CUPS and go to http://localhost:631 and answer a couple questions to get my Epson Stylus C80 to work. qtcups and kups are also available frontends for printer configuration with CUPS. Is that more the level of ease you wanted?

*sigh* Did you read what you just typed? Why should a modern OS require this?! Althought I can do this, I feel like I shouldn't have to. In fact, I got my printer working just fine under CUPS, but why can't I just click "Add Printer", choose my printer, and have it show up in all my applications?

Re:All these choices...

[drewness]

*sigh* Did you read what you just typed? Why should a modern OS require this?! Althought I can do this, I feel like I shouldn't have to. In fact, I got my printer working just fine under CUPS, but why can't I just click "Add Printer", choose my printer, and have it show up in all my applications?
I don't quite follow you. Essentially all I did was click "Add Printer". It took me less time to get it working in SuSE 7.3 than it did in Windows 2000. CUPS is installed by default in SuSE iirc, wheras in Windows I had to stick in the driver CD, install the driver and then reboot (As far as I remember. Lots of things in Windows seem to require a reboot; speaking of "Why should a modern OS require this?") CUPS is a lot better than the old lp utils. I remember trying to configure a printer in Linux several years ago. That was painful. I think the CUPS admin page has a decent interface, and I've never had problems printing from any program. The only advantage I see in Windows printing with my printer is that Canon provides that program that shows you all the ink levels and lets you clean the printer at the click of a button, but that's pretty negligible in my book.

Target us clueless Windows users

[markalot]

Howdy,

I am a windows XP user. I've had redhat installed before with win2k, dual boot, but haven't used Linux since I upgraded to XP. I just looked at the Suse page and could not find anything under install that led me to believe the two operating systems would work together. I am a clueless windows user. If you want me to run linux, and Suse looks real pretty, I need to have my hand held a bit more.

I have plenty of space, and a real desire to try out Suse, but not at the risk of damaging my XP install.

Re:Target us clueless Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the documentatipon on Windows XP bootloader.

When you find out how bloddy hindering awkward that is, take a look at the install book you get with SuSE boxed set. It goes into this in some detail.

The only point where you'll have problem is resizing the partition XP is on (this is a problem with XP, since most of the other "enterprise grade" filesystems hadnle partition resizes). If the automatic tools won't work (ask SuSE - they will answer you), then look into a commercial tool for handling any OS partitions.

If you are using older NTFS partitions (if you upgraded rather than bought and installed XP new), then you are definitely OK. XP does give some headroom to the idea that other OS's may exist in the world, so use that and configure it to look for Linux Boot partition. Done it myself. Read carefully and you'll be fine. If you used the new XP-only NTFS+ and have no partition you can vape to put Linux on, check first. You may have to pay for another program to fill the gap in XP capabilities.

Re:Target us clueless Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they will coexist. Windows will overwrite Linux's bootloader, but Linux doesn't return the favor. As long as you always install Windows first, it's easy.

Also, if you want to read/write to your Windows partition from Linux, I recommend using FAT32, not NTFS, for Windows. Writing to an NTFS drive from Linux is not yet a happy experience.

Re:Target us clueless Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

suse makes it really easy to install a dual boot system, the nicest i have ever seen. it resizes the windows partition and does all the hard stuff for you. ive got it running fine with win2k, and on a diffrent system win xp (though i never use windows on either box, i use suse 8.1 all the time).

Re:Target us clueless Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a hard disk to spare, install linux there and boot it from floppy or even from the installation CD. That way you don't touch Windows at all. If you decide to keep SuSE, you can install the bootloader on the first hard disk later.

Re:Target us clueless Windows users

[dioxn]

You may want to try Mandrake 9.1. It now does NTFS resizing (the default partition type for Windows XP)

I have a linux newbie friend that installed this distro alongside an existing XP and he found it to be extremly easy to install.

Winmodem support?

[kavau]

Does anyone know if SuSE 8.2 supports LT winmodems? (I know... "ugh!", but my laptop came with one and I don't feel like spending extra money on a pcmcia card) This is pretty much the only point that keeps me with RedHat at the moment.

Re:Winmodem support?

[BathAndy]

Don't know but you can always DIY http://www.linmodems.org Regards

SuSE

[GypC]

I usually define SuSE as AIX written by Germans on crack. -- Derry Hamilton, alt.sysadmin.recovery

Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[einhverfr]

Bush was not elected fairly. Not only did he fair to get the majority of votes, but there was a major election scandal in Florida where some 60,000 voters who *happened to share their name with a convicted felon* and who were *dispurportionally black* were barred from voting, despite the fact that the vast majority were not convicted felons, and most of those that were had the right to vote because they were convicted in states which did not disenfranchise felons... This was covered BTW on BBC, and in the Washington Post (well after the fact) and is the basis of a lawsuit against the state of Florida by the NAACP. Basically assuming that standard demographics applied, Bush would have lost the election because he would have lost Florida... BTW, Jed Bush used the same tactics in the most recent election, excluding an even greater number of (predomainantly Democrat) voters.

How does this have to do with SuSE 8.2? SuSE 8.2 is a German company, and so I have argued that one should in fact protest this war by going out of our way to buy German and French goods. This means Mandrake and SuSE. Oh, and it never hurts to send a letter to your congressman explaining why you are doing this too... CC: president@whitehouse.gov and leaders of France and Germany as well, naturally ;)

Re:Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

this war isn't about bush hating . . . it's about:

1. Saddam having weapons of mass distruction (which he reported to the UN back in 95.)
2. Saddam did not show any signs of giving up or destroying his weapons for the past 12+ years while the UN have many attempts to negotiate with him.
3. Saddam has shown that he has the will power to use these weapons.
4. The innocent Iraqi people have been tortured by Saddam. Many Iraqi Americans have testified to this. The murdering of innocent people, systematic rape, torturing like: walking on glass, electricution on sensitive parts of body, public rape, and many other brutal tactics.

To many Iraqi people who are suffering, it's a slap to the face if you're against the war because you hate Bush, or if you simply don't like wars. Tons of people are suffering and dying under the brutal and unhumane regime of Saddam. This war can safe many, those we may lose a few due to collateral damage, but still a greater good. I don't care if people hate Bush, but look deeper into the issues surrounding the war.

Re:Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[craesh]

It seems to me that you still haven't noticed that war is NOT the best solution for this. Ok, Saddam is cruel, but war is even worse! At the end of this war the US will have killed thousands, no, perhaps 100000 or more iraqi people, destroyed important infrastructures (roads, bridges, power plants, etc) and a great part of its (harmless) industry - there would have been other, much less expensive ways to fight Saddam.

Bush just wanted to test his newest toys, that's it. Bush wanted to demonstrate how powerfull his weapons are, instead of this he is just blaming himself, isolating the US from the rest of the world, insulting the democracy (ok, Bush never knew what democracy really meant).

Re:Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[einhverfr]

1. Saddam having weapons of mass distruction (which he reported to the UN back in 95.)

And most of the world would have preferred coercive inspections (perhaps with the authority for air-strikes to be ordered by UN inspectors) but Bush *wanted this war* and has said so for a long time. Hans Blix said in a recent interview that he felt that the weapons inspectors were seen as an annoyance to the Bush Administration who "were not interested in objective evidence." Note our current "objective evidence" of chemical weapons is *still* circumsntantial (troops in posession of antidotes), but even France doesn't dispute the claims that Iraq probably has them.

Ha'aretz was reporting that a large number of anti-tank RPG's have been handed out to Iraqi civilians, and BBC has been reporting that Saddam's government has been passing out military weapons (assault carbines/rifles, side-arms) to any Baghdadi who wants them along with rhudimentary training. My guess is that the Iraqis see themselves as fighting for Iraq against a foreign invader rather than for Saddam. This will likely lead to an Iraq without either Saddam or an American military presence if deposing Saddam actually stiffens resistance. We are also seeing other Arabs, North Africans, Persians, etc. traveling to Iraq to "Join the Jihad" (in the words of a 1979 American propaganda poster).

OTOH, I suspect that Saddam is probably not well supported by the majority of the people fighting the invasion (the Indonesian Press is calling it the Invasi Iraq). The tactic of arming a possibly hostile populace *in your capital city* is likely to backfire in a repressive regime like that of Iraq. I suspect that if we pulled out now, Saddam would be gone within a week, but the ensuing regime would be (understandably) anti-Bush/Blair. Either way I do not see this ending well for the US (though perhaps the Iraqi people will finally be in control of their destiny rather than the US, which has been in control since at least the start of the Iran/Iraq war). Freedom in Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqi people, and I expect them to rise to the occasion against all foreign occupation or internal dictators.

Again, I say, support German and French companies like Mandrake, SuSE, Mercedes, etc. Enjoy that French wine, and help people impliment SuSE OpenExchange :-)

Re:Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

4. The innocent Iraqi people have been tortured by Saddam. Many Iraqi Americans have testified to this. The murdering of innocent people, systematic rape, torturing like: walking on glass, electricution on sensitive parts of body, public rape, and many other brutal tactics.

And in America, breaking the religious taboo by smoking or eating the wrong plants gets you thrown into a cage to be anally raped and brutally beaten in private. Which isn't to say I don't support the war, just that I wish people were as willing to fight cruelty when it's they who have to work, not their governments soldiers.

Re:Political rant, was Re:BOYCOTT SuSE!

[CatOne]

The majority of votes is a complete non-issue: We have this thing called the Electoral College in the US and that's what matters, not the popular vote. You can't change the rules because you've lost the election. On the barred voters thing -- don't forget the tens of thousands of overseas (servicemen) votes which were delayed and then cast aside in FL also. These were of course extremely biased towards the Republican side.

What about DCC-Probing

[The Analog Kid]

SuSE 8.1 could never detect my monitors, has this changed? Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, and just about every other disto I've tried can except SuSE.

Re:What about DCC-Probing

[Anonymous Coward]

SuSE 8.1 could never detect my monitors, has this changed?
Don't know - send me your monitor and I'll test it for you...

Haha!!!

[evilviper]

You know, there's just something so very hilarios about seeing an article about the "'Uphill battle' to win Iraqi trust", next to a SuSE review by "TheMadPenguin".

Great to see Google News is now carrying Slashdot stories. I propose a toast to Google News; Here's to bringing you down a notch!

RANT:
No, it's not a troll... Trolls don't post at +2, now do they? Trolls don't have a dozen comments listed on their user info page that have been moderated up, now do they? NOW QUIT MODERATING EVERY BAD JOKE AS A TROLL!

Re:Haha!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up, asshole.

Madpenguin.org

[horsie]

Yes, with the Slashdotting, I just bet that Penguin is FURIOUS now.

Re:Madpenguin.org

[TheMadPenguin]

Yes I am :) You guys are kicking the living hell out of the system... and I might add, costing me more money I'm sure.

The FURIOUS Penguin >:)

Re:Madpenguin.org

[scubacuda]

Just curious, Mad Penguin...

How much bandwidth is /. eating?

Re:Madpenguin.org

[TheMadPenguin]

You know, I'm not sure yet. I had to move the site to another hosting provider after it ate up all of my bandwidth on my own pipe. The hosting provider hasn't made the logs available to me yet, but as soon as they do, I'll gladly post here for you ;) All I know is that the site would start to choke at around 750-775 connected users. While changing settings, I think the provider broke something on their end with sql. Probably a permission issue... at leat it looks like that to me. MadPenguin is down completely now. Snowball effect. :(

Re:Madpenguin.org

[TheMadPenguin]

As far as hits go, we have received 27158 from slashdot today so far while the site was active (3:36PM PST). I am not sure of the bandwidth yet... still waiting for a resonse from our provider. I'll give you more when I get it.

Re:Madpenguin.org

[scubacuda]

You also made news.google.com

Look in the Sci/Tech section. :)

First Look At SuSE Linux 8.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Mad Penguin is out to lunch. His site just
gives reference to unavailable socket connections
to subdirectories of his /usr directory. Hopefully he will have them repaired in time for
us to enjoy the first look by the week end.

Re:First Look At SuSE Linux 8.2

[TheMadPenguin]

We're trying! Some serious db issues now... not related to /. so to speak, but a definate OUCH :)

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach on brother Anon.

Welcome to Slashdot!

[Daftspaniel]

...a daily weblog of broken websites!

Owitch!

[MerlTurkin]

Seen 4 times on the review site's page: Warning: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28 Madpenguin be illin'....

Re:Owitch!

[TheMadPenguin]

It's choking hard right now. Looks like something is broken. Our provider was working on it to help with the slashdot effect, and now it's down for another reason. I have written them telling them it looks like a permission issue in /tmp to me.

Time to chmod the hell out of the tmp dir ;)

How long do they _actually_ test these packages?

[grolschie]

Obviously not long enough to give them any credibility in the business environment. Ok for the home user, but shhheeeeshhhh I wouldn't do a LAN install with any of these release-every-3-to-6-months dists.

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you piece of shit americunt
good luck to the Iraqi defenders

SuSE is cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the setup tool has some dubious license restrictions, I think they really believe in open source- half the important OSS projects I keep up with get regular donations from the guys.

8.2 not available on SuSE ftp server yet

[rsax]

After browsing through their ftp server for a little bit, I discovered that 8.2 won't be available until April 11. Latest version that's available right now is 8.1

So can I upgrade for free from 8.1?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want to do is upgrade from 8.1, or 8.0, or 7.3, 7.1 or 7.0 which I have purchased.

I'm not purchasing anymore versions of SuSE. If I can't do free upgrades I might as well be buying Microsoft products.

Or better yet, I'll switch to debian. Yes I'm bitter!

Stupid MySQL

[fm6]

By the time I got to it, any attempt to access Modpenguin produced a stream of MySQL errors.

Attention, content-management hackers. MySQL appeals, because it's open-source, it's easy to set up, and it handles very simple queries quickly. THESE ARE ITS ONLY VIRTUES . Once your web site starts getting traffic, you have to start looking at a real DBMS that optimizes complex queries and scales worth a damn. Here's one, and another, and yet another.

Re:Stupid MySQL

[sunryder]

Well it's a good thing Slashdot doesn't get many hits, because they're using MySQL.

http://slashdot.org/faq/tech.shtml#te050

Re:Stupid MySQL

[fm6]

Except that Slashdot doesn't use MySQL for a lot of its content. Roughly half is generated HTML. (Half in terms of page access counts, not actual content.) Also, Slashdot is careful to avoid using advanced queries. On top of that, they have to throw a lot of hardware at the problem. Which is not only expensive, but leads to integrity issues.

Re:Stupid MySQL

[TheMadPenguin]

Ok, but the problem with that is that most providers offer mysql :(

Anyone know any good cost-effective providers who offer other alternatives that can handle to connections needed for a serious slashdotting :)

Re:Stupid MySQL

[fm6]

Good point, but only of interest to a low end web site, which can probably get by with MySQL. If a web site is successful enough to need a better database server, it's also successful enough to need a dedicated host. And if you have your own host, you can install anything you want on it.

Problem is, most sites start with MySQL, and stay with it long after they've outgrown it.

Re:Stupid MySQL

[dmakovec]

Sorry, I have to disagree with you here. It's amazing the number of people to put down product A or B because they've themself had a bad experience with it.

I've seen plenty of websites generating postgresql, Oracle and SQL Server errors, yet I don't regard them as a bad product. The fact that you see errors at all on a website that identify the database doing the work behind the scenes is more an indication of improper user configuration (that sort of information should never be made available to the general public, for obvious security reasons), and I suspect that this is the case for the problem you experienced here.

FWIW, I've found that MySQL does a fine job on high volume sites, and there are widely known examples of large companies handling enormous traffic with MySQL based sites (Yahoo! is an example of one that comes to mind).

I guess the moral of what I'm saying here is that it really doesn't achieve anything starting religious wars over competing software products just for the sake of it. They all have their uses , otherwise they wouldn't still be around.

Extra Points

[Anonymous Coward]

The destruction of the Edomites, of which this passage refers, was prophisied by Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 49
1 Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith the LORD; Hath Israel no sons? hath he no heir? why then doth their king inherit Gad, and his people dwell in his cities?
2 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites; and it shall be a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire: then shall Israel be heir unto them that were his heirs, saith the LORD.
3 Howl, O Heshbon, for Ai is spoiled: cry, ye daughters of Rabbah, gird you with sackcloth; lament, and run to and fro by the hedges; for their king shall go into captivity, and his priests and his princes together.
4 Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall come unto me?
5 Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts, from all those that be about thee; and ye shall be driven out every man right forth; and none shall gather up him that wandereth.
6 And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the LORD.
7 Concerning Edom, thus saith the LORD of hosts; Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished?
8 Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhabitants of Dedan; for I will bring the calamity of Esau upon him, the time that I will visit him.
9 If grapegatherers come to thee, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, they will destroy till they have enough.
10 But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is spoiled, and his brethren, and his neighbours, and he is not.
11 Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me.
12 For thus saith the LORD; Behold, they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink of it.
13 For I have sworn by myself, saith the LORD, that Bozrah shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes.
14 I have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent unto the heathen, saying, Gather ye together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle.
15 For, lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men.
16 Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the LORD.
17 Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof.
18 As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the LORD, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it.
19 Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan against the habitation of the strong: but I will suddenly make him run away from her: and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint over her? for who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that shepherd that will stand before me?
20 Therefore hear the counsel of the LORD, that he hath taken against Edom; and his purposes, that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitations desolate with them.
21 The earth is moved at the noise of their fall, at the cry the noise thereof was heard in the Red sea.
22 Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread his wings over Bozrah: and at that day shall the heart of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
23 Co

Sad...

[t0ny]

TheMadPenguin writes "Once again I find myself checking out the newest SuSE release, and to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it. My personal computer is running Slackware (yes, I upgraded to 9.0 immediately), and I wouldn't trade it for any other distribution in the world, but I've got to say is that SuSE is still at the top of their game. When you look at all the desktop distros out there such as Mandrake, Lycoris, and Red Hat, they all really have their endearing factors, but they all are lacking in one way or another. Check out the entire review at MadPenguin.org. Complete with screenshots :)"

I also have never been laid, and can go weeks without bathing! If it werent for the internet, I would have absolutely NO human contact...

MadPenguin.org Is Back Up

[TheMadPenguin]

Keeping our fingers crossed this time. Sorry for the inconvenience /. :)

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets compare how many civilians were really accidentally killed by US.

Nah; let's see how many posts to Usenet mention civilian casualties instead. You don't have to be Kreskin to figure this out.

SuSE 8.1 and laptops

[grolschie]

Kernel:
Clever installer detected my laptop and installed klaptop packages, but the SuSE kernel didn't even have the magical ACPI "control method battery" feature (either in the kernel source or as a module) to run it!!!!! There were a few minimal ACPI modules available.

So I get to look at a damn ugly icon of a battery with a line through it saying that my kernel does not have the ACPI features to run the program.

To get it to work, do we need to purchase the new version? Or download a generic non-SuSE'ed kernel source?

"Clever" YaST2?
Oh yeah, and the "clever" auto-config-my-system program kept overwriting my changes to the /etc files with it's own. Dag nabbit!

"Clever hardware detect?
The built-in mouse/knob-thingamee kept getting redetected at boot time as new hardware every 3rd or 4th boot. I get a nasty text version of Yast asking me to select (again - for the millionth time) the same mouse/pointer. And "no" I haven't been using any external mouse devices.

THE SOLUTION:
Perhaps SuSE should fix their bugs on the current version, before charging people for a newer version.

SuSE is one of the few very professional OSes left

[slovin8]

I have SuSE 8.1 Professional and I already upgraded to KDE 3.1, so nothing in 8.2 is exceptional, except for their online update fix. I have SuSE installed on several boxes and my new Pavilion laptop, I amazed that I never had to configure anything passed the installation. The reason I'm upgrading to 8.2 is not the new kernel or features, but to support SuSE for a most excellent distro. 8.1 is solid stable and fully functional.

OSnews reviews SuSE 8.2

[twener]

Read "SuSE Linux 8.2: Evolutionary, but not Revolutionary".

Re:Target us clueless Windows users - beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Ensure you use the Windows bootloader (i.e. mess with c:\boot.ini) - there's something in Windows which dislikes anything making the system useful (i.e. a non-Win OS ;-). I've also had instances where Windows reset the active partition when it was booted up, negating the trick of making the Linux partition the active one and running boot management from there. Obviously, the best solution is just to delete XP, but that may free too much Internet bandwidth as it no longer needs to call 'home' ;-). =X=

Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge

[CmdrGravy]

This does not look like Fiction to me, it appears to have been published originally in the Sunday Times and Mark Franchetti appears to have been a reporter for many years.

I really don't see much evidence that Iraqi people are that supportive of the US, at best they seem indifferent and in a lot of cases aggressive toward the US. In a way you can see why, the US and UK are invading their country, bombing their cities and telling them what they can or cannot do. Regardless of the motivation behind the actions of the US/UK this kind of behaviour is bound to offend the natural patriotism and loyalty one feels towards one's country.

Last Post!

[alpg]

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect
that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers
and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the
essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural
inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued
forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
-- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...