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."

Comments

Will Novell get killed by the company's own vision

[bizcoach]

Novell's vision of one Net -- a world without information boundaries

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.

And the CDs...

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

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.

Re:And the CDs...

[Roofus]

Dude, the personal version is going to be priced at $29.95 (at least according to an earlier post). That's a more than reasonable price for a fully featured OS suite. Just buy it from CompUSA or order it online.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so glad Linux has gotten to the point where we can say "Do we really need another office suite?" :-)

Another office suite?

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:Mono

[AirLace]

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.

Re:Will Novell get killed by the company's own vis

[pmsr]

A noble effort indeed, but lost in vain nevertheless. Humans like to differentiate themselves from others. They create groups, teams, clubs, communities, and in general they avoid mixing. This starts in kindergarden actually, as i think most people recall. Also, people get bored easily. So, there will always be plenty of ****-nets around. No ammount of single net "visions" can change that. Actually this "vision" thing with corporations is making me go for my gun every time i hear it. Is it just me?

/Pedro

Re:Aw, crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

But the Real Joy with SuSE...

[grahamkg]

...is the ability to save a list of the selected packages in a file and use that to configure other machines almost instantly (the user.sel file saved through YaST). It's very powerful.

SuSE is what RedHat could have been and what Mandrake should aspire to be.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:My own experience with SuSE..

[pandrijeczko]

Everything you say, I agree with but I don' think SuSE is aimed at the experienced Linux user anyway.

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.)