More SUSE Linux 9.1 Reviews

JoshuaTreeCA writes "Adam Doxtater of Mad Penguin has published another excellent review... this time on the newest SUSE Linux 9.1 beta-release. This release comes complete with the latest GNOME and KDE enviroments as well as being the first distro to present a retail package built on kernel 2.6.4 Check out the review, with screenshots." rokzy also wrote in with another review from NeoLink Computers.

Comments

Debian to suse

[qwertyatwork]

A few days ago I installed suse on a blank hard drive to find an alternative to debian for my desktop. I was impressed by the hardware detection, but yast was slow! It took forever to pull up. I tried mandrake to, I wasnt impressed at all. Is yast slow for everybody, or just me?

Re:Debian to suse

[Cyph]

It felt pretty sluggish to me too, but I don't consider that to be a major problem because it's not like I spend most of my time adjusting system settings. Neither will you, I assume.

Anyway, I also switched from Debian to SuSE within a few months after the Novell buyout. Always been a big fan of Novell, and I really wouldn't have even considered SuSE if it wasn't for the buyout. SuSE does a kick-ass job at being a desktop replacement.

Re:SuSE 9 seems to dislike USB mice

[Phishcast]

I can second this. For the people saying "This is a beta", he's talking about SuSE 9, not 9.1. I had exactly the same problem. I ended up hand-editing XF86Config...which then broke again when YaST ran. I love SuSE, and use it every day, but this is definately a bug. If it's a bug with KDE, SuSE could recognize that and work around it.

Kernel responsiveness to user input

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I REALLy want from a computer is for it to be extremely responsive in whatever it is I'm doing. In other words, the "top" applcation that I'm working in (or switching to) should always get top priority; I don't want to wait for the machine.

The other day, a friend directly connected his G3 iBook to my 1.4Ghz P-M laptop over 100mbit ethernet. As he copied large files from me, my computer bogged down and was unusable. Just switching windows to something already open was painful to watch. His iBook, though, just hummed along - he could switch to other apps and use them just fine. Very frustrating.

So....would the Linux kernel 2.6.x be extremely responsivle to user input, no matter what else is going on?

Re:Kernel responsiveness to user input

[Some Bitch]

So....would the Linux kernel 2.6.x be extremely responsivle to user input, no matter what else is going on?

I can only speak from personal experience but I find KDE 3.2.1 + Kernel 2.6.5 pretty hard to slow down. Even with a large emerge going on in the background (processor at 100%) and XMMS doing it's thing (along with the usual 20 zillion apps open) I still find my desktop as responsive as when the processor is idling. Things slow a little if it starts paging to disk but with 512MB RAM that doesn't happen often.

Re:Kernel responsiveness to user input

[snakattak]

I'll say. The other day, I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004, and an badly timed "emerge sync" went off from my crontab. Now, its not to say I didn't notice it, but Ut2004 was still playable the whole way through the slow painful python process. It was kernel-2.6.5.

Serial-ATA

[moonbender]

At work we're considering buying a new (low end) Dell server which uses S-ATA hard drives. It's supposed to house a SuSE Linux system in the future. However, I'm not sure how well Linux in general, and SuSE in particular works with Serial-ATA drives, especially when there's nothing but Serial-ATA available - ie. the installer would need to work with it, as well.

The best resource I found was this page, but it doesn't help me a lot, either. The server would be a Dell Poweredge 750 running the Intel 7210 chipset, which supports S-ATA.

The system which the new server should replace is currently running SuSE Pro 8.1, which I am fairly certain does not support S-ATA - but does SuSE 9.x?

Re:Serial-ATA

[arkhan_jg]

linux in general works fine with SATA drives if you're using the 2.6 kernel (they're under device drivers/scsi device support/low level drivers) and as the page you link says, there's the same libata patch for the 2.4 kernel series.

Having done a quick google, it appears the suse 9.0 cd has the support for sata controllers if you type 'apic' at the boot screen. (presumably that's the kernel with the drivers compiled in)

So the one remaining question is if the 7210 chipset is one of the supported ones.

This thread is a patch for the 2.4.26-rc1 kernel piix driver (the one which treats the drive like hda, rather the scsi emulation libata lib_piix which treats it as sda, and is what the 2.6 kernel uses)

Basically, it looks like it's a minor varient of the ICH5 chipset (which is well supported), so if the 7210 isn't supported yet by Jeff Garziks' libata, it soon will be.

At worst, you'll have to install with the sata controller in legacy mode (pretending to be a normal ide master/slave controller), setup a new or patched kernel, and change the bios back to enhanced mode afterwards.

Don't forget, Dell sell their poweredge servers with redhat enterprise - and if redhat supports that chipset, suse likely will too. The simplest route is probably just to email Dell's corporate tech support, and ask if the sata on that model is supported in linux yet. (jeff garzik may work for redhat, he's certainly got a redhat email address, though I hesitate to recommend emailing him directly)

You could also email SuSE, either tech support or one of the mailing lists (suse-linux-e@suse.com iirc, the full list is at lists.suse.com, it's been a while since I used SuSE)

As a quick addendum, avoid the nasty onboard RAID 0/1 on these mainboards. It's like a winmodem, most of the work is done in the closed driver, and the linux support is pretty weak at best.

You're by far and away better off using the sata drives 'standalone' then using the linux native md RAID support to RAID individual partitions. The only time you'd need the closed drivers would be if you were dual booting with windows using the onboard RAID.

Re:Very well and good, but...

[wneto]

If you mean running linux inside of linux, yes. At least SUSE 9.0 comes with all the necessary UML patches so you can play with the box inside of the box. Read this

Re:Review of the review of the review...

[AKAImBatman]

I've been writing reviews of various distros in my journal. I hope to have my Mandrake review up in a day or two. So far, both Fedora and Mandrake have been disappointing. I do have high hopes for SUSE, however. The Java Desktop System demo CD I have is based on SUSE. None of the problems I regularly have with other distros have shown up with that CD. Here's hoping. :-)

So much for the review...

[pair-a-noyd]

65 comments and the site folds..
Well, nevertheless..

I for one will be buying 9.1 professional.
I use 9.0 pro now and am very happy with it.
I tried bringing it up with the 2.6 kernel and KDE 3.2 but wasn't happy with that. Things didn't integrate well so I backed it down to a stock 9.0 package and all is well.

Having them integrate all the goodies ensures that everything will work as expected and I'm more than happy to wait (what else can you do?) for 9.1

I'll be traveling over to Fry's to pick up my package of 9.1 Pro when it hits the shelf.
I want the DVD and CD's and books and support. And I don't mind at all paying for it because in my 27 years of working with/on computers, Suse is the BEST operating system package I have used. Everything else is just second rate and inferior.

Re:SuSE 9 seems to dislike USB mice

[cozziewozzie]

The annoying thing about SuSE is that, although they always put out an amazing distribution, there is always some sort of showstopping glitch that gets through and annoys the hell out of its users.

In 7.3, for example, the SuSE firewall started before eth0, so it didn't work unless you edited the startup scripts by hand. They fixed it in the next version. Now the USB mouse doesn't work, although it worked in all the previous versions. I think that every SuSE version I've tried had some glitch like this (8.2 has some issues with the automounter). Which is annoying because in all other respects, SuSE is a top distribution, and this makes them look like amateurs.