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

Oh Suse Q

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh SUSE Q, oh SUSE Q!
Oh SUSE Q, Version 9.2, SUSE Q."

SuSE is awesome...mostly.

[numbski]

Unless they've changed something, they have a habit of having everything including the kitchen sink included.

I guess that's good. Most everything is behind a version or two by the time it hits your hands though (in the past).

Perhaps I'm simply spoiled by the FreeBSD ports collection (any good package manager really) where I run cvsup to get the ports collection current, then I can either build from source or pkg_add -r pkgname and install the binary quickly across a network.

Don't take this a knock though, SuSE was the *nix that I learned on, and it's still awesome. Just seems somewhat unwieldy to bundle so much software in that is going to go out of date so quickly.

Great for situations without net access though.

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.

Re:SuSE is awesome...mostly.

[Kaimelar]

Perhaps I'm simply spoiled by the FreeBSD ports collection (any good package manager really) where I run cvsup to get the ports collection current, then I can either build from source or pkg_add -r pkgname and install the binary quickly across a network.

Don't take this a knock though, SuSE was the *nix that I learned on, and it's still awesome. Just seems somewhat unwieldy to bundle so much software in that is going to go out of date so quickly.

This is why I love APT for SuSE. A simple

sudo 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade'

and I have the current versions of everything -- just like using the ports tree in FreeBSD. Check it out, you might find it interesting. And it respects the RPM database, so you can still use YaST or install/remove RPMs manually if you want.

It's great!

[pumpknhd]

People may ask why we should shell out money to pay for open source programs...well, open source doesn't mean free source. Someone had to put in their time and energy programming this stuff. And since most of us haven't contributed to the source code, we could at least support those who have. :)

Re:It's great!

[stevey]

Yes we should support people who produce open source, and not just the big projects like Samba, Apache, Rsync, etc. I have software included in the SuSE professional edition that I wrote.

When it's displayed in Yast there's a field for Author name / Homepage. Do you think those fields give me credit? Do you think I even got an email from SuSE? Do you think I might have received a free boxed copy?

Nope.

I only noticed as a colleague pointed it out to me when setting up a SuSE professional box to install Oracle upon..

*sighs*

Re:It's great!

[big tex]

Bzzzzt. Try again.

As a SuSE user who has been buying boxed sets since 6.1, I know that I am helping to support KDE, ReiserFS, and so on. SuSE supports full-time KDE developers, so I _am_ paying the programmers.
Plus, I really like YaST, so I pay for it.

Also,it's more than "some handbook". It's a frickin' set of doorstops compared to any other reference manuals that I've seen come in a boxed set.

Re:It's great!

[JivanMukti]

Also,it's more than "some handbook". It's a frickin' set of doorstops

Well, at least you're getting some use out of it. ;-)

Re:It's great!

[kris]

Excuse me, but this is real bullshit. You don't pay the programmers, you only pay for somebody who takes open source projects and makes a nice compilation of programs. Plus you get the media, some handbook and installation support.

Suse happens to pay programmers that work on the Kernel, particularly the ISDN interface, the RAID drivers and many other areas. Suse also sponsors reiserfs, several KDE subprojects and a lot of other projects. That's you money at work.

Kristian

Couple more reviews

[jubalj]

Actually there are atleast two more reviews of SuSe 9.0
Mad penguin review
german review (translation)

- Jj

Re:Couple more reviews

[molarmass192]

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

Re:Can you download ISOs yet?

[jester42]

no, you still can't but you can install it directly over the internet via their ftp server. it's not the same but should be good enough for most users.

I don't like CDs anyway because they just tend to get lost...
I like the DVDs though, because with those you don't have to change CDs anymore. btw how many disks is the current SUSE?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What kind of performance increase?

[Billly Gates]

I use to use SuSE in the past. It has become quite slow and bloated, even on my athlonXP.

I switched to Freebsd because its slim and lightening fast. I have a hunch its mainly its own version of xinet and yast that slows things. I wonder if it could be faster and if it is, if I should switch?

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.

Torrent

[Unregistered]

Does anyone have the torrent for the live-eval cd yet?

Also, do they actually think that people buy it since they can't download an install iso instead of just using a differnet distro like drake?

Re:Torrent

[np_bernstein]

I've never understood why people care about the iso thing. You can do a ftp install off of two floppies, or burn the ftp/http/etc install cdrom and use that.

FTP Install Instructions

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"

[PReDiToR]

Working on the assumption that you didn't put this in just to troll ...

Has the command line stripped out with EVERYTHING, I MEAN EVERYTHING possible for the GUI, NO EXCEPTIONS, not even for Emacs zealots)

There you go, spoiling it. You described the perfect OS until you said that.

The command line is NECESSARY you dolt. Necessary, as in, can't live without. As in no matter how pretty you make your OS it still runs on text, and you have to get to that text sometimes. If you want nothing but pictures, grab the funnypages. In this world the command line lets you fix problems that arise in ways that they never teach you in college. Its the command line that keeps people like me in employment while kids straight out of university are still scratching their heads over how to write shell scripts.

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.

Just installed it myself...

[jamesots]

I've just installed SuSE 9.0 on my laptop this evening. I wasn't sure if it would be worth upgrading from 8.2 as the changes didn't seem that major, but I like to support SuSE since they do such a good job, and I've bought every version since 7.2 so it seemed like a shame to stop now...

Anyway, I copied all my important data onto the server downstair, stuck the disk in a did a full install. (I've always done an upgrade before, but I thought it was about time to have a clean sheet again).

I was really impressed with the installation - went really smoothly, and detected nearly all my hardware straight off, with only the Wacom graphics tablet not detected. It was improved over previous versions in that it gave options for connecting to networks and authentication via LDAP and stuff like that. One of the last things it offered to do was connect to the internet to get the latest updates, which I allowed it to do. It also got the proper NVidia drivers and the MS TTF fonts.

I did the usual fiddling to get the display exactly how I like it, copied the data back from the server and I have a fully working system again.

Now I'm starting to notice the improvements. The first thing I noticed was the considerable improvement in boot speed. The next thing I noticed was how the fonts were all looking really nice without me having to change any settings. (Although I have now changed to Bitstream Vera because I prefer that).

Then I plugged my camera in, and a new icon appeared on the desktop for it automatically. (I tried to ages to get 8.2 to do that).

My samba connection to the server is working without me having to fiddle with any settings.

I'll admit it's early doors yet, but so far things are looking really good, and I'm very pleased I upgraded.

Freeloaders

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, do they actually think that people buy it since they can't download an install iso instead of just using a differnet distro like drake?

Actually they *know* people buy it whether or not they'd offer a free ISO download. Also what's this obsession with ISO downloads? SuSE install images would span at least 7 ISO image files. They offer the entire FTP/SAMBA-based install set of files for free download, about 6GB worth, so the total download btye-count to get yourself a freeloader's install-base is about the same. All you need then is to set up an internal FTP or SAMBA server to host these files and then you can do all the install-over-your-LAN installations you please. Over a 100Mbps LAN it even goes much faster than a CDROM install does, plus you're not bothered to do all those pesky disk swaps as does a cd disk-based installation require.

Fools Rush In - Wait for Steve

[rixstep]

I think I'll wait to see what Steve Ballmer says. Odds are he'll discover that SuSE/SUSE is just as insecure as all the other Linuxes.

Better safe than sorry.

Re:The one feature I want

[locus_standi]

Have you tried Mandrake 9.2. It features wireless network configuration and automatic detection during installation. Redhat 9.0 also has WiFi features.

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:802.11x Wireless support

[dukerobillard]

I have a Dlink DWL-650 wireless card on my old Toshiba laptop, and Vector Linux (a slackware derivative) found and used it automatically when I installed it.

Re:802.11x Wireless support

[adrianbaugh]

Try a Netgear MA-311 (PCI) or MA-401 (PC Card) adapter. Both tend to be autodetected (as prism2 chipsets) by anything modern (Mandrake 9.1, gentoo, knoppix 3.3), and work fine, certainly more trouble-free than with windows.

Having said that, in my experience they work even better with the linux-wlan-ng code.

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'!

Buy one, install many!

[Frodo420024]

Just found this:

Furthermore, no license costs are incurred for the installation on multiple machines or for software subject to the GPL (General Public License).

on their 10 reasons to switch page. Cool.