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SUSE 9.1 FTP Version Available
twener writes "The SUSE 9.1 FTP version is now available on SUSE's ftp mirrors for free installation via FTP/HTTP (installation instruction). It's almost identical to SUSE 9.1 Professional except some few packages which are missing due to licence reasons. Also don't miss "SUSE 9.1: The Complete Review" recently published by DesktopOS.com."
why is it unusable? There is a boot.iso, burn it, boot it, install from ftp. If you want to have everything on you local disc, mirror the whole tree and install then.
...
btw: YaST2 is GPL now
Novell GPL-ed Yast2, so SuSE is free now. The packages that are missing from the FTP install are things like a database package and some other app. Nothing you cannot do without.
Even before Yast2 got GPLed, they supplied the binaries with the FTP version. You can, and always have been able to, install the FTP version fine. In fact, I've been doing so with every version since SuSE 8.1. (I bought some earlier versions)
The only difference to the commercial version is that the FTP version doesn't include proprietary software that they can't redistribute via FTP for free for licensing reasons. They do have licenses for some proprietary software, such as Acrobat Reader, Opera, etc.
Know the facts before you criticise/troll.
According to the company, it's:
SOO-suh
-Jem
I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I plan to purchase the full media. For ~$90, The documentation alone is worth that. It's a bargain in itself, plus the satisfaction of supporting the community.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Tip! Get the IP address of the ftp server before attempting the install! DNS isn't picked up on the SuSE boot/install CD.
Omnis amans amens
First off, let me say that I quite simply love SuSE, it's my favorite distribution. Furthermore, I use the packaged version, not the FTP version.
/home on its own partition, so a fresh reinstall are a piece of cake without touching my actual data.
/boot/grub/menu.lst and added acpi=off - then I edited /etc/powersave.conf and enabled user-suspend or whatever it was called. Worked like a charm.
However, my first experience with 9.1 was not impressive. I tried to update my laptop, instead of reinstalling. The result was far from good.
- The touchpad stopped working
- Sound stopped working
- Outdated daemons still started, and prevented other daemons from starting afterwards (acpid started instead of powersaved, among other things).
- And loads of general badness.
In short, it quite simply sucked.
I suspected this was do to flaky update mechanisms, which also turned out the be correct. As a good user, I have
The reinstall worked flawlessly. Most things was installed the right way, and worked as it should at once. With one exception.
That xception was that acpi was loaded instead of apm - and acpi is buggy on my laptop. I edited
In other words, I think the 'update' routine sucks, while 'install' works like a charm.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
"I would only reccomend SuSE to a newbie who has no desire for messing around with things once its installed, and just wants it to work reasonably well from the beginning."
./configure, make, make install - which works.
Bzzt. Try again.
I've been running SuSE since 6.1, and always mess around with things and install extra software, usually not official SuSE packages. Generic RPM's usually work OK. If not, SuSE still ships with enough to
Automatic package dependancy does leave a little to be lacking when you use non-SuSE packages (foolib? What the hell is foolib?), but since the monster CD/DVD set contains almost every library you would possibly want, you can install it then.
As for actually installing the RPM's, you could do it with YAST, or KPackage, or by the CLI - the computer dosen't care.
I think I need a new sig here.
I switched to SuSE 9.0 when RedHat anounced the end of their desktop products as we'd all come to know them, and it instantly became my favorite distribution. YaST is awesome and performance was good.
So I was excited to try 9.1. I borrowed the full 9.1 Pro CD set from someone at work to try. I installed it on a couple of Pentium 4 machines with Nvidia cards. While installtion was flawless on both, the performance was terrible. X takes forever to start, KDE takes a long time to initialize, and forget starting YaST - I can go for coffe while it loads. Even installing and running Unreal Tournament 2004 was painful because of some changes SuSE made to the way they mount removable media. Starting UT2004 is slow too. Since I dual boot, slow startup times are an issue.
Before anyone says the obvious, yes - DMA is enabled and one of the systems is using fast U160 SCSI drives so there's just no excuse for the poor performance.
Since Mandrake 10.0 is available for download, I tried installing it. I was hesitant, but it installed flawlessly on my system with the SCSI drives. I'm spoiled and used to the bazillion applications that SuSE installs, but no biggie.
Mandrake 10 performance is what I expect from a P4 system : fast, responsive, snappy.
No offense to the SuSE team intended, but they need to get their act together a little better. There's just no excuse for the poor performance of SuSE in my opinion - and yes, I have just as many services running in Mandrake as SuSE.
I'll keep using Mandrake for now and try SuSE again when 9.2 comes out.
I'm sure glad I didn't pay for 9.1, I would have been really p*ssed.