SuSE Linux 9.3 Pro Released

InnerPhalanx writes "Today, SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional was released. After submitting the 9.2 update, I decided I should submit another article. The suggested retail price is $99.95 US. An update version is available for $59.95 US, in case you have an earlier version of SuSE Pro. More information, especially news about the product itself, is available here. As usual, there's a Live DVD release of SuSE 9.3 Pro as well as the 9.2 Pro Evaluation Version DVD ISO."

Comments

Re:MP3?

[Mad Merlin]

Doesn't say if they fixed the lack of MP3 support.

There's nothing to "fix" from a technology perspective, it's a legal/IP issue. AFAIK, the paid version includes such things out of the box, and the download version does not.

MP3 Support...it's there.

[SSonnentag]

SuSE 9.2 Professional supports MP3 playback without any problems. I haven't used the standard version, but I've been using SuSE Pro for several versions now and MP3 support has always been there.

$99.95 USD?

[R.Mo_Robert]

"The suggested retail price is $99.95 US." Isn't that a bit much, considering some other distros are free (free as in the kernel itself and the software typically built around it) or at least available for a reasonable price to cover the media, or at most the media and a reasonable support fee?

I know this is the Pro version, but still. I'll stick with Ubuntu, Fedora, and the Personal Edition, thank you.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Fine. Then don't buy it. You're not really their target market anyways.

Ubuntu is too unstable. Fedora is a moving target. If you're lucky, people won't yell at you if you ask for support in the IRC channels.

With most Linux distros, people spend way too much time getting shit to work. SuSE Pro tends to work better then the free distros, and it comes with polished versions of Evolution, OpenOffice, Samba, Xen, etc.

Some of us need to spend our time USING the software, not playing around.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[PCM2]

No ISOs available for 9.3 yet. Only 9.2.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[Stevyn]

Exactly. And if you're a business, $100 to spend now is to save in productivity from bleeding edge distros or Windows. That's their market. The TCO savings from linux doesn't come from the cost of the software, but from increased productivity.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[R.Mo_Robert]

Looking at the download for 9.2, I see that the ISO (not the mini) is ... 3.2 GB?! Maybe this is something people would rather purchase.

Oh, and did I mention I was on dial-up? :)

Re:$99.95 USD?

[managementboy]

And you only buy ONE copy... after that distribute it in your comany x1.000.000! Share it over apt-get or ftp or nfs etc... that will do the job of amortizing the one time investment in a nice thick manual that comes with SuSE 9.3

Re:$99.95 USD?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Suse 9.* does not have enterprise level support. Novell Linux Desktop fills that niche nicely.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[Eisenfaust]

Considering what you get with some other software, $99 isn't too much for both CD and DVD media and printed documentation + tech support.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

SuSE might already have such a mechanism available, and it may cost less then you setting up your own repository.

If you're talking about 10 copies at $99 each, I'd have a hard time justifying any sort of home grown solution.

Time is money.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[MrResistor]

Suse Pro comes with the most excellent and useful printed manuals I have ever seen. Ever.

The Suse manuals were absolutely invaluable when I was learning to use Linux, and are the primary reason I still buy the Suse Pro boxed set, instead of simply waiting a month and updating directly from their ftp site (which can also be mounted via nfs, if you like to swing that way).

You see, about every 6-12 months some friend or family member decides they want to give Linux a try. At that point, I burn copies of the CDs and DVDs and hand them the entire origional boxed set. I find this dramatically reduces the number of questions they have for me, while dramatically increasing their level of confidence in being able to actually use it, which is the largest single factor in deciding if they will stick with it or not.

To put it bluntly, every person I've known that has started their Linux experience with Suse was using Linux primarily or exclusively within 2 years, without exception (they may switch distros, but they do stick with Linux). Every person I've known who has started out by downloading free Mandrake or Red Hat ISOs has given up on Linux as a "toy OS" within a few weeks. YMMV, obviously, but that's been my experience over the past 5 years since I started using Linux.

The manuals change from time to time, but typically there is a n00b guide (what apps to use for common tasks, and brief how-tos for them), a user guide (more in-depth user documentation for the apps in the n00b guide, and many more that might be of interest to a more serious user), and an admin guide (which IMO is far more useful than any other "Using Linux" style book I've seen, and I own several.)

So, that's why Suse Pro is $99.95, and IMO, as a Linux advocate, it's well worth the price. If you don't want to pay that, fine; wait a month and install it directly via ftp/nfs for free.

Re:$99.95 USD?

[R.Mo_Robert]

Finally, a good explanation. Thank you. Too bad the moderators will probably never see it anymore.

Speaking of moderators, I'm still trying to figure out why my original post was "Redundant" when it hadn't even been mentioned before (you know, sort of like those people who rate posts "Overrated" before they even have a rating?) ... I mean, I could understand "Flamebait" (even though it wasn't) but not "Redundant." :-) Oh, well...

Re:$99.95 USD?

[MrResistor]

I think the moderation instructions suggest reading posts in reverse order so you see newer comments first. I guess it's supposed to counter the first post advantage, but I think they forget sometimes when they get to the end and see the same post they've seen 15 times already that it was actually the first, and all the others were redundant.

Perturbed

[erichill]

I'm still perturbed (or insert stronger word) that they stopped supporting the PPC.

Re:Perturbed

[NullProg]

How about POWER5 support instead:

Linux on POWER;

Enjoy,

Re:Soooo...

[yahwotqa]

My friends using SuSE swear by YaST, suse's configuration tool. I have heard (also from elsewhere, not just from these friends), that it is very user-friendly, yet powerful.

Student edition

[antikristian]

I'm waiting for the student edition, same price as upgrade, but with the manuals. If I were suse/novell, I would be less strict with the versions that have odd numbers, and make people pay up if they want the even-numbered distros a couple of months before it hits the ftp server. Oh, and it is worth the cash, ubuntu is getting closer, but nothing can really rival suse on laptop-support.

Re:Student edition

[suezz]

I tend to disagree with you - I tried to install suse on my laptop and it locked up on the splash screen.

went back to ubuntu - it installed without a hitch.
and anything that comes with suse is just an apt-get away with ubuntu.

so I would ubuntu does rival and surpass suse on laptop support.

Re:Student edition

[MrResistor]

and anything that comes with suse is just an apt-get away with ubuntu.

Nope. The Suse boxed set usually includes some proprietary apps as well.

Anyway, YMMV obviously. I've used Suse for years, and the only time I've had problems installing it was IIRC Suse 6.3 on an old Pacard Bell Pentium machine, and even then it was just that the video card was unsupported, anything non-graphical worked fine. I've never successfully booted one of their live CDs or DVDs, though.

Re:It's crippled.

[antikristian]

open the "change installation source" (or something similar, I use norwegian on mine) choose add - http type in packman.iu-bremen.de in the first field, then type in suse/9.3 in the second. now remove xine and kaffeine with add/remove packages, then you can install xine, mplayer, w32codecs, divx, xvid ++++

GPL

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

How does charging for this comply with the GPL?

I can see how they're allowed to charge for it, but aren't others also allowed to distribute Suse for free?

Re:GPL

[mstandfest]

actually, it is legal to distribute suse for free. i contacted them about a year ago about it. (i bought a box set of 9.0 pro and we wanted to install it on a box at work just for fun, and to hand out copies to my co-workers.) i eventually got in touch with their licensing/legal department and found out that it is ok. it's not legal to sell it because of the old YaST licensing, but it is legal to give copies away for free.

Re:GPL

[Erik Hensema]

How does charging for this comply with the GPL?

I can see how they're allowed to charge for it, but aren't others also allowed to distribute Suse for free?

The DVD edition of suse pro also includes some commercial software which can't be distributed. The FTP version (available in a month or two) won't include that software and will be completely free to distribute.

Re:GPL

[MrResistor]

How does charging for this comply with the GPL?

Try actually reading the GPL yourself. You clearly don't understand it.

aren't others also allowed to distribute Suse for free?

They can and do.

Re:Soooo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo users? Crazy?

I'll come up with a witty response for that as soon as mozilla-firefox finishes compiling.

Re:MP3?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

What are you talking about? First of all, the mp3 support is fixed by suse themselves when you first update your distribution. Second, updating the xine library from the packman repository and installing the w32codecs package gives you full video functionality.

I really wish people stoped talking about things they obviously know nothing about, but then again, this IS slashdot.

Re:Soooo...

[Anubis350]

as a combination debian/fedora/suse user (and a dabbler in other distros) I can tell you that, indeed, yast is unrivaled in config ability and usability. It's simple, easy to use, provides a central place to configure everything, and integrates incredibly well inot the distro

While I prefer debian as my main desktop (for other reasons), a number of my other machines run suse and it is comparitively so much easier to configure them that it's incredible.

on a related note, I heard that suse open-sourced yast a little bit ago, anyone know about the progress in porting it/parts of it to other distros?

Clan Install for Upgrade

[widderslainte]

I own 9.2. Do I need that installed on a machine before I upgrade to 9.3? Anyone know?

Re:Clan Install for Upgrade

[wagemonkey]

I haven't tried 9.3 yet but for all previous releases the only differences between Pro and Upgrade were that the Upgrade has fewer printed manuals (which are on cd/dvd anyway) and 60 rather than 90 days installation support. I believe the cds/dvds are the same. So if 9.3 follows the same approach the answer to your questions would be: No, and Yes.

YaST is what makes SuSE great.

[Aldric]

There simply isn't another Linux configuration tool that can even come close to matching it. It was made open source ages ago but none of the other distros seem to want to use it.

Re:MP3?

[syd02]

What was I talking about? You know perfectly well what I was talking about, because as you say: SuSE had to fix the problem themselves and allow you to update it post-installation. I thought that they might do that after enough people complained (why did they do it in the first place?), but I wasn't sure that they had already because it's hard to research something that isn't widely available yet (not everyone wants to pay $100 for free software...I've been wanting to download it for weeks, checking every day, but 9.3 is only available as a live eval). Also: "Second, updating the xine library from the packman repository and installing the w32codecs package gives you full video functionality." Did SuSE do that for you, or did you do that? I wasn't complaining about you, I was complaining about SuSE. You sound like a big SuSE fan/apologist and I suppose most of the moderators in this thread are too.

Re:MP3?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

1. Linux and all free software is, well, free. Packaging everything and supporting it is not. Suse are notoriously open about their licencing, once you buy a copy you can install it on as many machines you have access to. I really cannot imagine it being better than that for a commercial distribution. If you have something against commercial distros, well there's free ones that you can use.

2. You said you had to recompile stuff and then yast was broken after updating the xine libraries. This is wrong. Is the way suse go about it the best way to do things? Well, I don't really know, I don't own suse and I don't therefore have responsibility on their actions, I'm pretty sure management weighed the pros and cons of crippling suse and came up with that solution. I find it pretty easy to add a yast source and frankly if you search for "suse dvd" on linux you'll quickly come across this solution, or another that is equally elegant.

3. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an apologist, as far as I am concerned I just pointed out you did not know what you were talking about, an assessment I maintain even after your flaming. I don't see why I have to justify my liking suse to a random /. user whose misconceptions I corrected, nor why I am a "fan" of a company when I point out that you have no idea what you are talking about. I enjoy all flavours Linux and, frankly, the only distro I actually have a strong opinion about is Mandrake or whatever the hell it's called, and that opinion is a negative one - I hate it. If suse is not to your liking, install whatever you want or Windows for that matter. But please go against the /. trend and actually form an opinion after you have experienced the product you are criticising.

You compile brainially?

[DFJA]

In other words, your compiler runs on the same CPU as your wit generator?!