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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.
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
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.