Upcoming SuSE 9.0 Professional Reviewed

molarmass192 writes "Open magazine has the first review I've seen of the upcoming SuSE 9.0 (or should that be SUSE 9.0 now?) Professional distribution. To summarize, they are impressed with the upgrades to Yast (it's fully integrated into the KDE control panel), Samba integration, Winmodem support, network configuration management, and performance. It's not the most thorough review I've ever read, but it's an interesting look at what to expect for those who have preordered SuSE 9.0."

Comments

the competition is tough

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a copy of Libranet 2.8.1 on my spare computer here. 128 Mb RAM, 366 SillyCelery, nVidia 32 Mb card, running KDE. It's snappy. It's slick. It works. It sets a very high standard. OK, OO takes 37 seconds to start up, but otherwise it's OK. Libranet sets a very high standard.

That compliment does not come easily. I typeset annual reports in WP Win, use Paradigm database manager, dream in Excel macros, am a regular customer of InfoUSA mailing lists, use and despise WinWord and Netscape, and live and breathe QuickBooks2003 and mail merge. I know and make money with Win2000.

So, is SuSe as good as Libranet? I find Linux a relief after a day with Windows. If you don't have to do color separations or LAB, GIMP rules!

Re:Couple more reviews

[molarmass192]

I like that Mad Penguin review better than the one I submitted. Hopefully the mods do their jobs.

Why do you need an ISO?

[Anonymous Coward]

SuSE doesn't give away ISO images for free. Why must you insist on ISOs? You can download all the FTP-based install files for free and then do all the freeloading FTP or SAMBA over-your-local-network installs you please. I think SuSE has the finest, most refined Linux distro going and I actually buy the full version from them every other version or so...to help support their efforts. I also download all the FTP files and set up my own internal distro install server. It's not that much extra work, and I actually like it better since a SuSE install base is huge, it spans multiple CDROMs (or a DVD disk, and I don't yet have any DVD drives) and I hate swapping CD discs during the installation, I prefer to kick off the install and let it run to completion all by itself while I go away and do something else. An FTP install over 100Mbps LAN is faster than even a 48x cdrom drive anyway.

Still waiting for Distro "X"

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder which distro will reach version "X" (10) first. In my eyes, to be hounered the "X" title, the distro must

• Ship with Kernel 2.6, with support for the most obscurest hardware.
• Gnome 2.6 (that means decent file dialog and banishing gconf-editor and metacity)
• KDE 3.2 (Yes, KDE 3.2 alpha is pretty good, surley an XP beater. The Crystal SVG 0.9 theme is perfect!)
• Use a package manger like urpmi, yum, apt-rpm (not apt-get, that uses a non standard package format)
• Has the command line stripped out with EVERYTHING, I MEAN EVERYTHING possible for the GUI, NO EXCEPTIONS, not even for Emacs zealots)

I loved SuSE 8.0, and it is one of the best distros ever, but I'm currently with Mandrake 9.2, but the distribution that gives me what I want will get my money! We all know what "X" stands for (In mac terms, not X11 terms), so create the best "X" you can ;).

Re:Still waiting for Distro "X"

[gowen]

Has the command line stripped out

So, with a GUI, how do I do

for i in $(find ~/altimetry ~/SSH-anomalies -name "*.gif" -type f); do convert $i `dirname $i`/`basename $i .gif`.png; done

Show me that GUI, and I'll abandon the command line.

Hardware detection

[rpozz]

I dunno if it's mentioned on the /.ed review, but when I tried out the live-evaluation CD, it auto-detected every single piece of hardware in my machine and configured it automatically withou asking me a single question about it. Why the hell can't windows do this?!

Re:Hardware detection

[Phoinix]

The question is

Why the hell can't Debian do this?

And how is that different from SUSE 8.2?

[richmaine]

Sounds sort of like the reviewer never actually used previous SuSE versions, but just copied marketting blurb claims. He makes a big deal about how new it is that SUSE 9.0 does....exactly the same thing that the 8.2 I'm running at home does.

Namely it set up dual boot with Windows XP and mounted the NTFS file systems read-only.

Re:Want list

[Angram]

Ooh, add in decent sound card support! I have a nice old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP, and there's no way I'm switching until someone can come up with a nice surround sound (4.1 in my case) & graphic equalizer. Oh, that and a decent GUI. I'm not a programmer, so I want my options up-front and simple!

Re:SuSE is awesome...mostly.

[reallocate]

Agree that SuSE is a great distribution, and the FreeBSD is good enough to spoil me, too.

Remember, tho, that it's a European product. All those binaries are in there because, first, it's a great selling point, and, second, because bandwidth costs more in Europe. Systems like ports or emerge are only viable when bandwidth costs are negligible. That's why all those European Linux magazine stick CD's and DVD's on their covers.

Nice upgrade

[AaronW]

As a long-time SuSE Linux user it sounds like 9 is a nice upgrade. I've already ordered the upgrade from 8.2 to 9.

My experience with SuSE was that 8.0 was good, 8.1 was buggy, and 8.2 has been quite stable. They addressed many of my complaints about missing modules in YaST in 9.0, which is good. I also like the fact that they're using GCC 3.3.1, which IMO is *much* more stable than 3.3 or the pre-3.3 SuSE included in 8.2 (although 3.3.2 was just released).

I've already upgraded my SuSE 8.2 to use KDE 3.1.4 (which is available via FTP from the supplementary section of the SuSE FTP site (and mirrors), and have found it to be quite stable. It looks like SuSE 9.0 is basically just an evolutionary step from 8.2. I think the release number should really have been 8.3, although I guess they're under pressure from Redhat. I also like the fact that they backport a lot of features from the 2.6 kernel back to 2.4 (the SuSE kernel scheduler is basically taken straight from 2.6). When Linus came out with the interactive patch that makes X much more responsive I was able to verbatim take the patch and apply it to the SuSE Linux kernel.

I also love the fact that SuSE comes on DVD. It's nice to not have to swap between lots of CDs when installing various packages.

And finally, YaST is a great tool that always surprises me. Last night I went to enable telnet and rlogin support on a machine in our lab (security is no issue) in xinetd and Yast immediately requested that I install the appropriate CD and installed the RPM packages required (they were not already installed).

-Aaron

Re:9.0?

[ckuehnast]

SuSE's version numers actually have a meaning - they are linked to the release date.
9.0 just means "ninth year, first release".
This explains why there has never been a SuSE x.5 or higher in all those years...

Re:I want it bad

[Frodo420024]

But can anybody tell me the difference between the full professional version and the upgrade?

I checked with my distributor, and the disk set is identical. No 'Check for previous version' sillyness. What differs are the manuals - you get an upgrade manual that (presumably) outlines the main differences from the previous version. I think this is in good Linux / Open Source spirit. The price diff is less than I'd pay for two Linux books at my bookstore anyway, and I'm very content to let the excess money go to a useful company (as opposed to .. well, nevermind :)

In my case, I have a 7.0 Personal on the shelf (had good manuals also), and am picking up a 9.0 Pro full version next week. The package list of the Pro version also appeals, there's some stuff in there (mostly video) I've tried to install independently before, with very limited luck.

Looks like we have happy competition between SuSE and RedHat - keep rockin'!