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New Releases for Debian and SUSE
linuxbeta writes "With the recent SUSE LINUX 9.3 Live DVD ISO released, we get a sneak peek. (screenshots) of this much anticipated OS update. Cool updates in 9.3 includes Firefox 1.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Gimp 2.2, Beagle. Xen, VoIP client, and more." And while Debian's Sarge isn't here yet (give Branden Robinson a chance to find his plush new office!), wrochal points out that the fifth update to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 ("Woody" ) has arrived. 3.0 (r5) "mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems." Also, four packages were removed, three for license violations.
It's "peek", not "peak", ffs.
Well there was a mountain-load of screen shots.
..........FULL STOP.
It was too sexy.
This strategy will not "draw" in the crowds - most people give up before tinkering with the system. It has to work smoothly right out of the install (mostly).
I generally think Suse is one of the most polished distros out there, but it still has a way to go with multimedia, to get it to appeal to joe-computer user and Grandma who are scared of "breaking" things on the computer.
Linux is on the cusp from going from "hacker" OS to main-stream, but still has some catching up to Windows in certain things - mainly multimedia. Yes I know there are plenty of programs that work great - but the average user, I think, would not have the expertise to get it to work easily right off the DVD.
..........FULL STOP.
OpenOffice 2.0????? Isn't it in beta still?
Direct link to ISO file on Slashdot main site. Let the slashdotting begin!
OO.o at least is officially on 1.1.14; 2.0 is merely a beta. Gimp 2.2 is not that old, but yes, I'd expect 2.4, at least. I've immensely surprised about Firefox, though - very strange indeed, especially as nearly all of the updates since 1.0 have been security based, rather than adding new and unstable features.
So we have the recent crying session, over ubuntu and kubuntu being harmful to debian,when actually it comes to be a concern over "Release" dates and Press. Smells fishy to me.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
I got Suse 9.3 Friday after ordering from Novell.com 2 weeks ago.
mp3s work out of the box using Juk.
I watch DVDs using MPlayer which I installed using the apt port for Suse.
There are 4 mulitmedia packs you can download from Suse using Yast.
Understand?
This guy is way out there
I just thought that Debian Sarge was released and was already ordering a church service to thank god at last!
Join the torrent
torrent link
Right on brother. And here are the facts that no one in the Suse camp wants to face up to:
1) Turbolinux, a distribution with a lot less mindshare and less money can afford to ship you a legal DVD player for $69 but somehow Novell cannot do so?
1a) Unless you are a corporate buyer, you see HP's Suse notebook comes preloaded with PowerDVD.
2) Slide two of the Suse silliness presentation is not that they not ship multimedia codecs out of the box. If that were our only problem. Debian, Red Hat and Mandrake do not ship libdvdcss or any of the other codecs, but once you add them, your existing Totem or Kaffeine players play.
2a) But no, Suse has to go way beyond what's required and actually goes into the source code for Xine and Kaffeine and cripples so that even if you add the missing codecs/libraries, it still will not play.
2b) So what do you do? You have to remove kaffeine, xine, xine-libs ad nauseam and then install apt-get and install those programs from a third-party and hope that it doesn't break anything else. Why is this bad?
Because you no longer get updates for those packages from Suse and because mixing apt and yast sources can often leave your system in an inconsistent state.
All of this is a damn shame, because Suse is an awesome distribution with some stupid, stupid, stupid policies that have no legal or logical basis.
Hopefully, this long response will serve as a permanent rebuttal to all of the Suse fanboys. Liking a distribution should not be tantamount to giving them carte blanche to screw you over.
Summary of facts:
1) Suse ships DVD-playing software whenever the hell it pleases it.
2) Other distributions manage to ship a dvd player for $69, yet Suse costs $85-99 or more.
3) Suse cripples standard libraries and thus has disqualified itself from the home market. I will not touch it for these reasons and I have stopped recommending it to friends and clients.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Perhaps because Debian's flag only has 13 stars.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
In addition to being copyright infringement, these proprietary codecs don't work on non-i386-based platforms. One of the hallmarks of FLOSS is portability. I think it's a good thing that I can give someone a copy of an Ogg Vorbis file and not have to care what hardware they're using because I know it's likely that there's a program to play the audio file on their computer. Now, even portable digital audio players play Ogg Vorbis files, so people can hear high-quality compressed audio without being near their computer.
This is part of the reason why I'm anxiously awaiting Dirac and why I'm reading the Theora spec. I want to be able to point to a complete and competitive FLOSS codecs which are genuinely useful for movies.
We also ought to promote the use of these codecs and not be so eager to distribute copies of files encoded with proprietary or patent-encumbered codecs.
Digital Citizen
Novell Linux Desktop doesn't have a default desktop. It explicitly asks you whether you want Gnome or KDE during the install.
Breakfast served all day!
I don't keep up with every single distro (I just do servers), but what's the point in showing screenshots ? Every distro looks more or less the same because it's always a rehash of the same software.. different package managers, different default background images, different color schemes during INIT.. that's pretty much it.
What do screenshots mean in such a scenario ? I know I'm being overly critical but any default X configuration tends to look like 1994 nostalgia. Why can't we style KDE to look like Panther or something ? Always that "blah" blocky gray bar nagging at my subconscious. No shadows/depth, no perception of interactivity. Yes I know I'm being overly artsy but if I'm looking at a GUI that's slowing me down vs the command line, that GUI had better make up for its inefficacies by being intoxicatingly sexy and curvy.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Websters Dictionary: "Debian" Once a Mainstay in linux distributions and somewhat innovative in package mangagement with "apt get" it fell into
stagnation no doubt helped in part by it's so called "Debian Social Contract" and painfully slow release schedule. In later days it was surpassed by other more up to date distributions with other package systems with more flexibility and power.Debian R.I.P
Step out of the box and enjoy life
Gentoo has had a ximian openoffice in portage for a while. It uses the openoffice source with some added patches. I'm not sure how one would get this working without portage, but it may be a good starting point.
Keep in mind though, you need over 4gb of free disk space just to compile the darn thing. But I'll admit it looks nicer and integrates better into KDE.