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Novell Announces SUSE Linux 9.1
ravydavygravy writes "Novell today released details of the next incarnation of its linux products, Suse 9.1, based on the 2.6 kernel. It will come in both 32 and 64-bit versions, and includes a LiveCD version, to help people convince their Windows-loving friends to make the switch. It'll ship with Gnome 2.4.2 and KDE 3.2.1, as well as demo versions of the text processing application Textmaker and the spreadsheet application Planmaker (from Softmaker - but do we really need another office suite?). Samba 3 will also feature in the default setup."
I wonder whether corporations as big as Novell can survive in a "world without information boundaries". I'd expect that in such a world, networks of smaller (much more nible) companies will rule.
Are they allowing you to download the ISOs yet? That's what it'll take for me to use it. I've wanted to try it for a long time, but could never get it.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I'm so glad Linux has gotten to the point where we can say "Do we really need another office suite?" :-)
"...providing the only significant retail Linux products on the market. " Really? I thought I saw others floating around my local CompUSA...
If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate
Of course we need another office suite - as long as it supports compatible formats, who cares how many we have? Choice is good, and, more importantly a bit of competition is good. Right now everything is largely locked into the MS Office paradigm of how to do things, but there are other ways of doing these sorts of applications. The GoBe Productive suite, for instance, while not a direct MS Office offers a different and very nice style of doing some of these things. The more innovative and new thinking we can bring to the party the better we will be.
I really do fail to believe that the basic MS Office style word processor and spreadsheet are the pinnacle of design for such applications.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Maybe you posted the wrong link?
'We don't expect to make Ximian the default user interface, and for the medium term KDE will remain the default GUI on SuSE Linux'."
What you have to remember is that Novell has traditionally been a server-oriented business. Novell is interested in Mono primarily as a server offering -- the Ximian desktop connection is purely incidental. It would make perfect sense for them to bundle Mono to provide ASP.NET support in Apache 2, even if they've decided not ship a single Ximian Gnome library.
Yes, we need as many competing office suites as the market and programming talent pool will support. But in order for it to work, the file formats need to be completely open. Competition is goooooood.
Or you can just select the "default desktop" option and let them choose a single one for you. No one says you have to install everything.
No. Legally they only have to distribute the source code to the applications covered under the GPL.
It does not have to be available via download, they could make it available via CD and snail mail, when you ask for it. And they can charge you for the cost of the CD and the cost of shipping.
Its a Linux distribution worth paying for.
And the others aren't? Associating value with capital when it comes to free and open source software doesn't really make sense. There are probably better ways to praise commercial Linux distributions than spiting the hands that feed the `community' and make software freely available.
SuSE is what RedHat could have been and what Mandrake should aspire to be.
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Me is German. As suggested by Bambi Dee, "ZOO-Ze. Kinda." is correct.
No creamcheese, 'Suzy' is NOT correct.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
SuSE 9.0 installed without a hiccup on my onboard Hightpoint 374 SATA RAID controller drive without a fuss. So how long is about -8 months.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
YAST does make configuration a doddle in most cases but since every configuration change is made to the central YAST config file and then read from there, SuSE is not easy to move around when you're used to working at the command line - I find it disconcerting in SuSE when I go to edit a config file I'm used to editing and the first line in it says "# Please use YAST to make all config changes, do not edit this file directly" or words to that effect.
I'd probably say that SuSE sits comfortably as a desktop Linux, alongside Mandrake but can also compete with Red Hat in the server space also.
My feeling on commercial Linux distros is that they're great if you're a company or user that needs to have a technical support backup also, but I doubt that many experienced Linux users buy distros for themselves these days.
I used to buy SuSE as a boxed set on every release up to 8.1 but found that the distro was being borrowed by other people more than I ever used it so I stopped buying it. These days, I just use Gentoo myself, Knoppix if I need something quick and bootable and hand out Fedora or Mandrake Download from a magazine coverdisk if I need to build a box quick or someone else wants to do an installation.
(Apologies to the Debian and Slackware fans! I've never really used either distro so can't comment on them, good or bad.)
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...or you could always use Fedora. Seriously. Why do companies even bother with tech support any more? It's just not that useful since it's likely that your IT staff knows a hell of a lot more than the people on the other end of the phone. Personally, I haven't used tech support since 1998.
I don't buy into the cult of "accountability". The buck needs to stop somewhere, and if you know what you are doing in IT and you are the person responsible, then it stops with you. If something doesn't work, FIX IT. Don't sit there pointing fingers at each other or the vendor you bought the shite from. The time spent to fix it is a lot less money than having a support contract with a company who doesn't give a damn about your business.
To put it another way: Make your own dog food and eat it.
Un-news
True enough, but certain distributions are configured for different purposes, making them either more or less valuable to you.
I was a pretty diehard Redhat user before I switched to SUSE 9. I gotta say, on the desktop side, I'd gladly pay money to SUSE because of the care given to the desktop experience. Java's completely configured, Mpeg files play properly, just to name two big desktop features. Neither come configured (or, in the casee of Mpeg - installed) on Redhat.
Bottom line, you pay the company/organization/individual that provides what you want.
Suse has let you do a free network install for a long while. Go go take a look at ftp.suse.com or any sus mirror. Sure they don't provide iso, but you can easily do a network install faster than downloading the whole bloody thing.
_ mi rrors.html suse
http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
"Disclaimer: This is only my experiencew with SuSE. Yours may differ.
:). Gnome is there on 9.0, but we're talking about 9.1 and this time it seems a greater emphasis on Gnome too.
I bought SuSE 9.0 and tried it a few months ago, and must say I didn't particularly care for it.
While they are definately producing one of the most polished distro's available, it deviates from most linux distributions somewhat dramatically; I still don't know how exactly the init system works. (It's not exactly SysV, it's not exactly BSD). "
Got to disagree most vehemently here, its the other distro's that are deviating from the LSB and FHS that are causing you issues. As for init processes, thats the one defined by the LSB (and the same used by RedHat).
"When I used it I had a problem in which it repeatedly would launch the X configurator if I had dual-head enabled. I don't know if that was just me or not."
Never had that issue...
"Everything is tightly integrated in SuSE -- the KDE desktop is pretty amazing, but GNOME support is almost non-existant. Unfortunately, I found the KDE desktop to be pretty slow on my machine (P3 800mhz machine. Slackware with KDE3.1 runs great on it)."
Slackware is assume
"I also found that you HAD to do things SuSE's way -- if there wasn't a button for it in YaST, the SuSE configurator (and generally, there was.. YaST is probably the most comprehensive config tool for Linux), or YaST didn't give you all the options you needed, you couldn't do it yourself because YaST would stomp all over your changes. "
Switch it off then! You can tell Yast not to check or change certain files. Or you can rtfm and know that, like in Apache's case it can usea n external file for certain parameters.
"SuSE is also the most proprietary of Linuxes, and there's not alot of support for it online (again, you can't just update say, package X from a source tarball because SuSE will throw a fit). "
Its usually a dependency fit, and anyway...Depending on the package I tend to uninstall it first then install the update. This has never been an issue.
"It's probably not bad for novice and intermediate computer users; I'd reccomend that experienced users who want a pretty desktop with little hassle use Mandrake."
Bad recommendation, whilst Mandrake is fine SuSE offers many great tools and support that you failed to find or use. Seems like you installed it for a day, expected Slackware (it was originally based on Slackware) and did not bother from there.