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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."
The hardest part is figuring out what you want.
You are given a choice of a dozen text editors, several office suites, and about 8 or so window managers. Takes a full day to figure out which of the 5000 odd software packages to install, an hour or less to actually do it.
My rights don't need management.
Considering that Novell also owns Ximian, it would be interesting to find out if the SuSE Mono packages are provided/installed.
I love the live CDs and I love the fact that they're starting now to have an option to automatically install on a partition for you.
However my primary day-use machine is a work provided Dell laptop. I would love to use Linux on it. I have Linux on all of my other desktop workstations. But the laptop came set up with an NTFS partition that consumes 100% of the drive. I can't just blow it away because I need the usual office apps, VS and Outlook.
Later versions (> 6 which is what I have) of Partition magic seem to be the only thing on the planet that can non-destructively resize this for me. Does anyone else know of another way?
For me the uncertainty when resizing a drive or partition is a major holdup.
I hope they'll also release a PPC Version again. I always preferred SuSE to any other Distro unter x86. PPC Distros are rather rare and not as good as PC ones. Maybe Gentoo is quite good but it takes way too long to compile on my iBook.
SCO is gonna jump on this one so fast...Trouble is, they don't know what they're talking about. Doesn't stop their FUD campaign though...
Suse is the one distribution SCO would have the hardest time tackling. It was acquired by NOVELL. SCO can always claim some bs about how RedHat stole their code. But SCO's code was NOVELL's to begin with. That hasn't all shaken out yet. But in my humble opinion, the only thing SCO can do about Suse Linux is sit on their hands and like it.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
SoftMaker's products are quite exelent and TextMaker was worth buying, for me. There are a number of times when OO just doesn't render a document right while TM does. Ideaily I like to have at least OO, TM & Abiword installed on any desktop I use. I used to include Applix (the best office suite there was) in this but since the company killed it it's not worth running anymore.
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If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
While it's true that the software is written already, no one collects it and puts it together for you. And even once you collect it, it needs to integrate into the system - this is what a distro does. I used RedHat for years and was too often fustrated it. Once I got bitten by 7.3 support death, hated 8, and wasn't impressed by 9, so I was looking for a new distro. After a few tries with other distros, I gave SuSE a shot on a test machine at work. I liked it so much, that I dumped Win2k on my home machine and now use Linux full time there as well =)
Now how is it that one distributor can make a distro that can have such a difference in experience? Someone packaged it right. SuSE is very easy to use, and most of it works perfectly out of the box. My only problems being with them Crippling DVD support, and issues with playing movies. Where it really shines is Yast. Finally everything comes together in a control panel that makes sense, works, and is integrated with the KDE control panel (maybe Gnome too?). Yast isn't proprietary btw, you can get the source; it's just that only SuSE can charge money for it (if I remember correctly).
The GPL says nothing about cost. I can charge you $800 for Samba and that's fine under the GPL, BUT I am required to make the source code available to you. You can download SuSE via FTP for free, but they don't give out ISO's, yet STILL everyone complains.
SuSE professional is a bit pricey (although still worth it IMHO), but putting all that together for the home edition at $30 is certainly worth it.
One of the things that got me started on Caldera oh-so-long ago (whenever COL 1.3 was out) was their Netware integration and tools (having an NDS client when ncpfs was just bindery) and a KDE version of Netware Admin.
I'm wondering if there's anything Novell-y in this, or if it's Just Another Distro.
It's funny...I remember a time (not so long ago, either) when diversity was encouraged in the Linux community. I'm assuming that the reason why unity has become the Holy Grail is because of the desire to convert Windows users to Linux.
I read a good article on madpenguin.org the other day though about how if a reasonably consistent, unified *interface* is maintained, it doesn't matter how many actual programs there are out there.
Also, methinks peeps need to keep in mind that the whole reason why Outlook Express and IE are now the target of so many viruses is precisely because nearly everyone and their dog uses just those two programs. Only having a single set of apps which everyone uses makes life a lot easier for the crackers, script kiddies, and virus writers, and a lot harder for everyone else.
If we want unity and consistency, I think we should aim for it primarily in the UI space. If we follow ESR's paradigm of creating the core program and UI as modules connected by protocols anywayz, we can have a boatload of different programs all doing different things, (diversity being a GOOD thing) but the UI can be consistent enough that Joe Sixpack will have absolutely no trouble using them. The bazaar lives on.