Slashdot Mirror
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.
Ok then is there any concensus about which distro is the best? I realize that there are a lot of variables here but I would think that stability, support and documentation would be three big factors.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
That would explain why last week i downloaded their FTP install boot disk and was unable to get it to work.
In the meantime I've installed Slackware instead...and much more atisfied with that then I was with SuSE 8.2.
My experience so far has been that RPM-based distros like SuSE and Red Hat that attempt to simplify dependency problems with propreitary upgrade tools inevitably just end up causing me much more frustration. SuSE had NO provision for getting software other than what was in the version I'd installed(8.2) and wouldn't even install apt4rpm due to dependency hell. I've found installing and upgrading new software in Slackware a 1000x simpler than any RPM.
I will attest to Yast being a nice tool, that was easy to use, and did a pretty good job of detecting my hardware. But the complications in upgrading individual packages in a registered copy of their distro proved too frustrating to justify sticking with it.
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.
once you go slack, you never go back
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 work for the Fulton school of engineering at Arizona State University. There are several hundred Linux systems here, and I support almost all of them in one way or another. I've had people try to tell me that we should be using Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, and even FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Sometimes this advice is based upon some genuine technical reason but all too often it is based upon ideology, especially where Debian is concerned. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to use a distro just because it follows the FSF/GNU flavor of political correctness. The day the unix world chooses ideology over technology is the day we are doomed.
The distributions we encourage our customers to use are Redhat/Fedora because this distro family is easy to support. Those other distros may or may not have real (technical) advantages over Redhat, but none of them scale as well as Redhat does. SuSE may scale equally well but due to Redhat's popularity we simply haven't had much call to try and work on SuSE systems. If Fedora proves to be unstable we may switch to SuSE, especially if it becomes more popular than Fedora.
The reason why we push Redhat/Fedora and not some other distro is because we don't want to have to install packages by hand or compile stuff from source all the time. Hand installs and compiles are great when you've got one system to support, but that just doesn't work when you're trying to support several hundred systems.
We have to look at what is the best solution for ALL of the systems at the same time, not just what solution would work best for one particular system.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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.