Novell Releases SUSE Linux Enterprise RC3

MrHoolio writes "Yesterday morning Novell publicly annouced the free availability of release candidate 3 of the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 products. Both the server edition and the desktop edition work with XGL out of the box. A serious step forward in the Linux desktop market, Novell claims this will go head-to-head to rival Windows on the enterprise level. It implements a whole new menu system on top of Gnome that is very well thought-out. It has incredible hardware support for a Linux distro."

Comments

A lot of praise.

[Volanin]

You can read some good reviews here and here.

"Incredible"

[the linux geek]

It seems like "Incredible" is awfully vague. What I really want is out-of-the-box support for my nVidia card (common enough with non-FOSS distros) and my crappy Netgear WG111 wireless USB adapter. In general, wireless, sound, and to a lesser extent graphics support are what plagues Linux. Of course, Windows isn't really any better; they just have the advantages of actually having drivers developed for them by third parties, which is still relatively scarce in the Linux world.

Re:"Incredible"

[Neon Spiral Injector]

The autoupdater in SLED 10 adds ATI and nVidia to the list of servers from which to pull updates. I have an ATI card in my work machine where I'm trying this new distro. It found and configured the card out of the box as you wished.

Re:"Incredible"

[mrsbrisby]

It seems like "Incredible" is awfully vague. What I really want is out-of-the-box support for my nVidia card

Lots of people would like that. Contact nVidia and tell them this!

(common enough with non-FOSS distros)

Mac OS X is the only non-Free operating system that I know of that ships with nVidia's drivers. Windows users must install the third-party driver. Linux users may use the nv driver from Xorg, or they may sacrafice their freedom and install the third-party driver.

What distros are you talking about?

my crappy Netgear WG111 wireless USB adapter

Lots of people would like that. Contact Netgear and let them know this!

In general, wireless, sound, and to a lesser extent graphics support are what plagues Linux.

Really?

You can't get below 50msec latency on Windows without special sound cards and drivers, but I have no problem with this on ALSA and Linux.

Wireless support is extremely poor throughout windows- it tells applications IP is down (causing lost connections) whenever there's a 802.11 signal problem- something that's almost certainly intermittent.

Intel's own graphics drivers work better on Linux than they do on Windows, so what exactly are you talking about here?

Of course, Windows isn't really any better; they just have the advantages of actually having drivers developed for them by third parties

I'm not sure this is an advantage. Unless the driver was signed and "blessed" by Microsoft, it's quite often a very low-quality driver, and worse still- you're lucky if you receive any support on it.

In fact, unless you get an OEM bundle of Windows, you're likely to have very poor hardware support from the get-go, and unless you take the time to find signed quality drivers, you're going to have problems.

Of course, on Linux, there's a much larger source of high quality drivers- the sound drivers are much better than any of the Windows drivers (With some exceptions for some ASIO drivers), and graphics support is simply much better with Intel and Matrox boards. I'm told nVidia and ATI don't make particularly good drivers (for any platform), but it doesn't really matter to me because their drivers are non-Free.

DL.tv has a video of this

[jbarr]

Check out DL.tv, an online tech show hosted by Patrick Norton (of former "The Screen Savers" fame") and Robert Heron. Episode 72 shows off the function. It's pretty cool. It's a lot of eye candy, but it is pretty stunning. And supposedly, it's running on a not-too-state-of-the-art video adapter, illustrating how the implementation, unlike Windows Vista, doesn't require the highest-end hardware.

Re:"Incredible is awfully vague."

[Amendt]

Having just gone through the process of installing the nVidia driver it does seem strange that that nVidia doesn't release a script so you don't have to go out of x (the graphical system) and then go back into the graphical system manually. I find Intel is doing a better job of 3d graphic suport. Too bad all the decent cards are nVidia or ATI. I guess a little pain for the long term gain. Also, with OSS other graphic card campanies can become main stream easier. Hang in there Linux users the I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Re:Running it right now!

[Glonoinha]

If I can get Sybase 12.5.x or Sybase 15 (the free ones for Linux) running on SLES 10 I will be all over this for a server.
Oh yea, and if anybody is wondering what the hell I am talking about - Sybase ASE 15 is free on Linux if you run a single CPU machine with other limitations (no more than 2G of physical memory allocated to the Sybase engine, and I think it limits the database size to 5G - but other than that no limits; you are even allowed to use it commercially last I checked.)

apps and peripherals

[zogger]

All major distros install fine now, so what is left is how they deal with your hardware, that is the #1 important part now that really needs to be "fixed" in linux land, any distro. Any distro out there can function as a web surfer, email client and word processor,all that crap works now just fine, but how about printing and other various USB devices? How about all the other do-dads that the vendors are pushing now that come either USB or to a lesser extent firewire? I've been on a search for the best distro with the best hardware detection AND configuration. It not only has to find and see the device, said device MUST repeat MUST become functional within a few clicks or it is "broken". I am no longer buying more hardware trying to find the magic combination of distroX and add-ons. I am no longer playing with distros because this or that desktop window manager has "cool new features" and they now offer a thousand new semi functional applications. That is irrelevant, it is already "good enough". Fix the dang bugs! Make what is already out there "just work".

People want to know how to "make money" with open source? Frikkin easy to answer that one. Offer a distro that actually installs and configs external devices flawlessly. That's worth paying for. Your monitor gets nailed, sound WORKS first time every time, printers work, cams work, and etc. That stuff. Not half assed semi-works and have to haunt google for weeks to find the magic incantantion.

    All the other stuff,IMO, perpetual fast release cycle beta broken ware.

    I don't care one bit if they release two or three times a year if the stuff doesn't work (Hi Fedora!), I prefer one good solid release once in awhile, a year or two, with just security updates, that's plenty. I don't need 5 CDs full of broken ware,90% of which I and the vast bulk of the computing public will never, ever use, I want one CD with some normal apps and ****superb hardware detection and installation****. That's the killer make it or break it "app" for me now. Beyuond that, sure, have it offered, but stick to one cd tops for a basic install, and everything on that CD works. If it doesn't stick it elsewhere and label it truthfully as alphaware.

I'll see how the reviews go on this latest suse, the forums tell the tale.