SuSE 9.1 Available for Download

Aiua writes "Novell and SuSE AG have made the Live Evaluation CD of SuSE Linux 9.1 available for download. A list of mirrors carrying the 680MB ISO image is available on the SuSE Website. The Live CD allows you to test some of the new features of 9.1 without installation, and is a SuSE recommended download to test your computer for distribution compatability. The full Personal and Professional Editions are now shipping and available for purchase in the SuSE Store or your local reseller." Reader Sweetshark points out that the first release of the Live CD has problems, so make sure you get the most recent one: "SUSE Security Announcement: Live CD 9.1 (SuSE-SA:2004:011) describes a big security hole in the SuSE 9.1 Personal Edition Live CD: 'Upon boot, the Live CD will automatically configure a network card if one has been detected. [...] A configuration error on the Live CD allows for a passwordless, remote root login to the system via ssh, if the computer has booted from the Live CD and if it is connected to a network.' A fixed iso is available."

Comments

Still no full install ISOs....

[gumpish]

I've always been annoyed by the fact that SuSE has never made regular full-install ISOs available.

Blah blah ftp install blah blah... I've heard it before.

Can it fill the gap Mandrake 10 can't?

[eyeye]

I was going to install mandrake 10 today but it doesnt appear to support my on board ethernet (nforce2), will suse support it by default?

Oh hold on this a bloody "live cd" again isnt it - I thought SuSE had stopped being difficult about allowing their distro to be downloaded as CD images.

Re:Can it fill the gap Mandrake 10 can't?

[eljasbo]

i installed 9.1 last night and the nforce2 net drivers work great. I was also amazed that it picked up my usb flash disk reader without any extra configuration at all. It works like a champ from i can tell so far

Re:Can it fill the gap Mandrake 10 can't?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake 10.0 kernels (2.6 or 2.4) support nForce ethernet without problems, the driver is called forcedeth. And, oh, it is present in vanilla kernels too.

Re:Can it fill the gap Mandrake 10 can't?

[pjkundert]

Just a note of caution if you are using the nForce2 motherboards with a 2.6 kernel. I just built up a new webserver/fileserver/wireless access point, using an ASUS A7N8X motherboard and Athlon 2600+, and wanted to run 2.6, reiser4 and software RAID. As soon as I did any disk I/O, it would hang solid.

Apparently, the 2.6.5 (and perhaps other) kernels trigger a bit of an nForce2 chipset problem; I needed to need to turn of APIC and Local APIC for them to work reliably at their rated speed. Here's how I did it using GRUB (my root partition is a mirrored RAID device). Note the "noapic nolapic" in the kernel specification. Using lilo, you would add an append="noapic nolapic" to your image=... stanza...

title GNU/Linux 2.6.5 MD+Reiser4+hostap (hd1,0) /dev/hdb
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5 ro root=/dev/md0 noapic nolapic
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.5

title GNU/Linux 2.6.5 MD+Reiser4+hostap (hd2,0) /dev/hdd
root (hd2,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5 ro root=/dev/md0 noapic nolapic
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.5

After this change, it's been running rock solid under heavy use for over a week. I am running Debian; perhaps the SUSE or other distributions have already patched their 2.6.X kernels for this problem, but I doubt it.

OpenSSH

[uebermts]

congratulations to SuSE!
A whole new meaning of *Open*SSH

Re:I'll wait a week.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll wait a week too. Nothing to do with SUSE or downloading, I'm just installing Gentoo.

Re:FTP Install

[thryllkill]

no the live CD has been available for days now... the FTP install has not been updated yet...

I've been waiting... can ya tell?

Obscure version numbering?

[PCM2]

My initial, kneejerk reaction on reading the headline was that this story was way, way out of date. Then I realized I was thinking of Mandrake. Does anyone else think Linux vendors could maybe come up with more informative ways of naming their releases? Just a month/year might be more appropriate. If someone blurts out that they're running SuSE 9.1, and I'm not familiar with the whole history of SuSE, I have no way of even guessing whether there's a 2.6 kernel in there, let alone all the other software with version numbers that are a whole lot more relevant than the version number of the distro itself.

Re:Obscure version numbering?

[Beren]

How would that fix things? I could tell you I'm running "Debian 05/2004" and you still wouldn't know whether I was running a 2.6 or 2.2 kernel.

Especially with Debian! :)

I mean, really. There is no good way to do what you are asking, short of having something like the Geek Code for Distros... :)

Update From 9.0

[swtaarrs]

Is it possible now or in the near future to do an update from 9.0 to 9.1 using just YaST, without downloading new CD images?

Re:Remote hole!?

[molarmass192]

If this were a Microsoft or Apple product ...

The exploit would be a code defect instead of a configuration screw up. Also, it would be in the production product rather than the no-install, evalutation only version.

Re:FTP Install

[King_of_Crunk]

Well you going to have to wait a bit longer...
From the readme.txt on the suse ftp site:

Wed May 5 12:50:00 MEST 2004 - draht@

This tree contains the source RPM packages for the SUSE LINUX 9.1
distribution. The SUSE LINUX 9.1 ftp version will be published on June 4th
in this directory.

Thanks,
Roman Drahtmüller,
Sebastian Nagel,
ftpadmin@suse.com

Re:Remote hole!?

[happyfrogcow]

If this were a Microsoft or Apple product...

neither would we have been told about it, nor would it be fixed for 23 more days?

Cool

[MrRuslan]

I tought I would never see pirated Linux distros but i just looked on xMule and i saw cds and dvds of this...this means Linux is gaining ground LoL.

Re:Dear SUSE

[aacool]

If Microsoft did that, Slashdotters would be all over them. funny how things change based on which side of the fence one is.

This is not a troll- just an opinion. It is definitely a big gap, and good that it was identified early - possibly earlier than it might have been were it in the closed-source world?

YaST?

[harlows_monkeys]

They said they were going to GPL YaST. Have they done so for this release?

Re: [ISOs here!]

[bach37]

You can get Suse isos here for $10.

Scott
G-Vegas, NC

Small correction...

[gmuslera]

as far I understand, what is available for download is the Live CD, not the full product, not even the ftp version of 9.1.

The article title seems to say that the full SuSE 9.1 is available for download, when is a bit far from it. As far I remember, SuSE always had a "live" demo to test it released around the same time as the full product and available for free download, but that don't mean that can be installed in hard disk or from it install the full 9.1 ftp version from their servers.

Nothing new about this

[StarTux]

SuSE have been releasing Live CD ISO's since at least 2000, actually before Knoppix came to the scene.

Really nothing new here, apart from maybe more people paying attention.

StarTux

LINs (like VINs?)

[vxvxvxvx]

This is a great idea! We could have Linux Identification Numbers (like VIN) and they would be able to tell you everything you need to know. So, a sample LIN number could be

WSPKY474X4F000001

Where W means it's made in germany, KY means it runs 2.6 kernel, and so forth and so on. Then all you gotta do is ask the person for their LIN number and you know everything about their distribution and release! Genius!

Re:LINs (like VINs?)

[Anonymous Coward]

> KY means it runs 2.6 kernel

Yeah, cause we all know that you'll need some KY to run a 2.6 kernel!

Re:FTP Install

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL ensures Open Source not FREE source. If they distribute GPL programs they must provide scource code to those they have DISTRIBUTED to not anyone. If you have not bought the retail 9.1 you are not entitled to their scource code as they haven't distributed anything to you. I don't think they technically every have to provide a free download. Why complain that they give paying customers a month head start?

Re:on the contrary,

[aardvarkjoe]

the more people "torrenting" the faster torrents are

Not neccessarily. When there are few people with the whole file, the torrents will be fairly slow, even if there are lots of peers. On the other hand, if you wait a few days, there will be lots of people with the full file, and not many people downloading it.

Typically, for a new torrent with lots of people downloading at once, my download speed will stay around the 30-70 kB/s range. For a somewhat older torrent with sufficient numbers of people seeding the file, I'll often get 200-300 kB/s or better. Of course, YMMV, but the general trends seem to be pretty consistent.

Re:FTP Install

[ocelotbob]

They just have to provide the source to the people who get the binaries. Legally, they don't have to give a copy of the source to anyone else, not even the developers. I've bought GPLed software before; a tweaked version of GCC from Cygnus back when nicities such as the EGCS branch and the graphical debugger weren't in regular gcc, and I only got the source on the CD, it wasn't on their website at all.

Someone should link the gpl here; I'm too lazy and need to take a shower and head out for debauchery and stuff. But the relevant verbage is in there. The only reasons Linux companies provide the source to the General Public is because it's good Karma.

Mine's already waiting for me

[Helmholtz Coil]

Decided this time around I'd do the responsible thing and actually *gasp!* pre-order a copy of 9.1 to support a Linux company. Comes with the install CDs and the live CD to boot. Already got delivered and sitting at home-this clock at work really needs to hurry the hell up.

I think I'll count my donation to SuSE as my charitable donation for the year.

Re:I'll wait a week.

[Requiem]

Yeah, that should take about a week.

Best linux desktop so far!

[novakane007]

I've tried a ton of desktops. Mandrake 10, Fedora, Knoppix, etc. All of them were functional, but lacking in certain areas. They just didn't seem ready for an end user. I booted up the Suse 9.1 because I'm intereted in the Novell Linux play. I was instantly blown away. This is the most well designed, streamlined and functional Linux desktop I've used. Finally something tha can be installed and run by an end user without hand holding from a geek.

Re:Best linux desktop so far!

[Mateito]

Finally something tha can be installed and run by an end user without hand holding from a geek.

Bugger. There goes my last chance of meeting a girl.

WTF? Offtopic?!?

[deadlinegrunt]

This is no more offtopic than the original parent post, and it got +5 Intersting.

Just because someone thinks ftp isn't convenient as an ISO download that gets an interesting modification? Someone tells them that GNU GPL doesn't mandate that it has to be an ISO in the same langauge they use it's off-topic?

Somebody give me +Informative modpoints for informing moderators how to mod correctly.

A Very Nice Distro

[DeckerEgo]

I just got my SuSE 9.1 Pro DVD/CD set in yesterday, and installed it on both my AthlonXP workstation and my Inspiron 8200 laptop. I've been waiting for a distro that has easy-to-manage Samba 3 & OOo 1.1 & KDE 3.2 & kernel 2.6 installations.

Now that SuSE's using submounts, tho, things are kinda weird when trying to run installers that expect to be able to run the mount command (i.e. UT2004). Since it dynamically mounts the media, you can't run a mount command any more without changing fstab.

SuSE's is my favorite installer so far (I like thinking of installation processes as checklists, which is how SuSE organizes them) and YaST2's integration into KDE's control panel is nice. Also it bears noting that this has both 32 and 64 bit installations - they aren't charging extra for 64 anymore.

The only tweaks I've had to make so far are to KDE's look and feel. Such a nice time saver to have a works-out-of-the-box installation.

Re:I wonder...

[theendlessnow]

I've always been annoyed by the fact that SuSE has never made regular full-install ISOs available.

Blah blah ftp install blah blah... I've heard it before.

You must be very, very young my friend. SUSE stopped making ISOs with version 7 which dates WAY back to Q3 of the year 2000!! Since any "friend" will gladly make you a copy, what's the big deal? In fact, it saves you the download time and everything!!

Hmmm... I guess there is the requirement that you have to have at least one friend though... may be tougher than I thought.

Oh... I guess this went in one ear and out the other... let me rephrase so you can understand:

Blah blah friend blah burn me a copy blah blah

Yes.

[FreeLinux]

Yes. Yast was GPLed some weeks ago and the source has been available on their site for eons.

Re:I'll wait a week.

[crawling_chaos]

Optimist.