Yes, Michael, the Register can be nice. Also, they can spell. Also, they don't have dupe stories every fifteen minutes.
Also, they probably won't toss an insult your way because you are a meaningless geek wannabe in a field of real tech journalists.
HA!
Your momma is a whore Michael !!!
My experience with SuSE 8.2
by
MrDingDong
·
· Score: 1, Troll
First off, I've been using Linux since V1.2.8 - Slackware - and I've installed SuSE 6.4, 7.0, 8.0, 8.2 and maybe a couple of others. I am a Solaris sysadmin (15 yrs+) during the day, so I know my way around Unix a bit.
Last Saturday I started upgrading my 8.0 machine to 8.2 and went through inserting all the CDs. Finally the SuSE procedures took over to finish things up. Well.... it got to SuSEconfig.tetex at 91% complete and it hung. I power cycled the machine and it did the same thing all over again.
Luckily I had a Mondo backup of all my files, so I bit the bullet and decided to do a clean install. That went OK, but it took me a long time to get all the software I want to run back up and running again. In fact I'm still working on it!
One major problem I'm having still is with ALSA and sound. It doesn't "just work". I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. I got no sound at all after the first boot up following the install. (And I know to unmute the device, etc.) I downloaded the latest ALSA stuff just to be safe and built it all. At this point, I can use xmms to play mp3s etc, but system sounds in KDE 3.1 still don't work. Not that I need that, but I do like things to work like they should even so. I have another box running SuSE 8.0 with the same sound card and sound works on that, but I can't see why that one works and this 8.2 box doesn't. Very frustrating. And this 8.2 box used to do sound fine when it was 8.0. It looks like I'm going to have to become a KDE expert to get dopey system sounds to work - but why do I have to? Why can't something simple like that "just work"?
I had problems with the Cyrus IMAPD server, and in the course of trying to fix it, I tried to rebuild it from source. No luck. Apparently there has been some change in header files (varargs.h vs. stdarg.h) in gcc 3.0 and so Cyrus IMAPD does not even compile. SuSE does supply a compiled version of the server, so I focused on getting that to work. It took some time, but I finally got it to go... but it was no cakewalk. And I have a lot of experience with this software.
Also, I use a lot of Dan Bernstein's software like qmail and djbdns. Be aware that his software does not compile with the new gcc compiler either. There is a problem with "extern int errno" in his header files. You have to replace that with #include errno.h. I found that somewhere on Usenet after having it drive me crazy for a few hours.
And also, it is useful to speak German if you want to use SuSE. The Yast2 tool is cool, but the package descriptions and a lot of the messages are mostly in German with some occasional English, even though I set LANG=en_US in the environment. I haven't really looked into this too much because it isn't that important, but it is a nuisance. Why do I even have to have it on my list at all?
And forget about support from SuSE. Check out their Web site and you'll see that if you buy the Prof. version you get 60 days support, but dig a little deeper and you will see that they support next to nothing of any substance. Just stuff like how do you change a password I guess.
So.. SuSE 8.2 is OK, but be prepared to be patient and to have to work to get it working right. I wish someday someone would put out a Linux distro that does "just work" out of the box. I don't mind doing configurations and installs and stuff, but having to deal with compile errors and SEGVs and the like, is not too much fun. I know its not SuSE's fault that apparently gcc 3 breaks a lot of compiles, but it still is something else that I have to deal with. It's been a week now starting with a clean install and it still isn't really right yet....
Slashdot Mirror
nice, but there are no ftp or .torent link :P
"Wow, the Register can actually be nice?"
Yes, Michael, the Register can be nice. Also, they can spell. Also, they don't have dupe stories every fifteen minutes.
Also, they probably won't toss an insult your way because you are a meaningless geek wannabe in a field of real tech journalists.
HA!
Your momma is a whore Michael !!!
Last Saturday I started upgrading my 8.0 machine to 8.2 and went through inserting all the CDs. Finally the SuSE procedures took over to finish things up. Well.... it got to SuSEconfig.tetex at 91% complete and it hung. I power cycled the machine and it did the same thing all over again.
Luckily I had a Mondo backup of all my files, so I bit the bullet and decided to do a clean install. That went OK, but it took me a long time to get all the software I want to run back up and running again. In fact I'm still working on it!
One major problem I'm having still is with ALSA and sound. It doesn't "just work". I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. I got no sound at all after the first boot up following the install. (And I know to unmute the device, etc.) I downloaded the latest ALSA stuff just to be safe and built it all. At this point, I can use xmms to play mp3s etc, but system sounds in KDE 3.1 still don't work. Not that I need that, but I do like things to work like they should even so. I have another box running SuSE 8.0 with the same sound card and sound works on that, but I can't see why that one works and this 8.2 box doesn't. Very frustrating. And this 8.2 box used to do sound fine when it was 8.0. It looks like I'm going to have to become a KDE expert to get dopey system sounds to work - but why do I have to? Why can't something simple like that "just work"?
I had problems with the Cyrus IMAPD server, and in the course of trying to fix it, I tried to rebuild it from source. No luck. Apparently there has been some change in header files (varargs.h vs. stdarg.h) in gcc 3.0 and so Cyrus IMAPD does not even compile. SuSE does supply a compiled version of the server, so I focused on getting that to work. It took some time, but I finally got it to go... but it was no cakewalk. And I have a lot of experience with this software.
Also, I use a lot of Dan Bernstein's software like qmail and djbdns. Be aware that his software does not compile with the new gcc compiler either. There is a problem with "extern int errno" in his header files. You have to replace that with #include errno.h. I found that somewhere on Usenet after having it drive me crazy for a few hours.
And also, it is useful to speak German if you want to use SuSE. The Yast2 tool is cool, but the package descriptions and a lot of the messages are mostly in German with some occasional English, even though I set LANG=en_US in the environment. I haven't really looked into this too much because it isn't that important, but it is a nuisance. Why do I even have to have it on my list at all?
And forget about support from SuSE. Check out their Web site and you'll see that if you buy the Prof. version you get 60 days support, but dig a little deeper and you will see that they support next to nothing of any substance. Just stuff like how do you change a password I guess.
So.. SuSE 8.2 is OK, but be prepared to be patient and to have to work to get it working right. I wish someday someone would put out a Linux distro that does "just work" out of the box. I don't mind doing configurations and installs and stuff, but having to deal with compile errors and SEGVs and the like, is not too much fun. I know its not SuSE's fault that apparently gcc 3 breaks a lot of compiles, but it still is something else that I have to deal with. It's been a week now starting with a clean install and it still isn't really right yet....