Novell’s SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 is a solid, comprehensive Linux distribution that provides access to the latest technologies the open-source software world has to offer—with a level of polish that’s superior to most other general-purpose distributions. SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 fits well as a desktop or notebook distribution, particularly for developers and system administrators new to Linux, says eWeek. Also, this does seem to be the boot ISO for the FTP install.
SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 Review; FTP install available
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Wouldn’t work properly on my VAIO K45 – gdm didn’t load properly, and there was a lot of other strange behavior. Switched to Fedora Core 3 and everything works. Too bad. 9.3 looked like it had a lot of great features, but it would run stable for me.
That’s news the way we know it from OSnews: What does the mini-install.iso help you when not all necessary files are availabe?
could you please specify?
What? The missing files? Kernel, glibc, kdebase, …
You need a folder called boot where yast reads package and setup stuff. For 9.2 it’s there ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.2/boot/ , for 9.3 it’s not (believe me I tried the ftp install as soon as I saw the mini iso, got an 404 error, and when i checked the logs I saw he was looking for files not yet available for 9.3).
Don’t you think it’s weird that the 9.3 would be out and nobody would say anything ’bout it?
hey, give them some time to get the packages up. i already see the rpms showing up.
on a sidenote, suse has never really made big announcements of releasing ftp install isos. you should rather buy it
making it available for free is imho a move to get more users testing and squash possible bugs… and some candy for the geeks (they wouldn’t be really popular in the community if there was no free version)
> i already see the rpms showing up.
You see ghosts, the suse/i586 directory was not touched since 28th April – the day when the mini-installation.iso became available.
I have been using SUSE since 8.2
But at the same time I started using Debian (actually Libranet 2.8)
I am beginning to have really enough of having to fix their bugs: because I am not a developer, sometimes I succed, sometimes not.
And with 9.3 they have really gone over the top with beta (KDE 3.4) and alpha apps or features (Beagle, suspend to disk, Xen)
In another partion I have Kanotix 2005-02 which is running with zero problems.
I am very seriously considering replacing SUSE, once and forever, either with Sarge or with Libranet 3.0, whatever is more stable.
Debian has been criticised no end, for not releasing often enough and so on. But it remains unbeatable, IMHO.
And BTW, slightly offtopic, it seem that old MDK is starting to learn its lesson: 2005 Limited Edition is quite stable, IMHO. If they start using apt I’ll seriously consider them.
SUSE 9.0 was an absolutely great release: I was in love with it.
Starting with 9.1 things have got worse all the time, IMHO.
Had the news submitter spent a few minutes on an actual SUSE forum like http://www.suseforums.net he/she would’ve noticed that it’s NOT YET AVAILABLE for ftp install.
I for one am very impressed with the polish of 9.3. Perhaps much of the snappier feel is due to improvements in KDE, but overall, it just seems extremely polished. It is a much more significant update than 9.1 to 9.2 was. OpenOffice 2.0 beta rules, Firefox is included and the multimedia issues initially reported have been fixed through option packs. It is a fabulous distro and I would recommend it to any newcomer to Linux in general, as well as a professional hobbyist who really knows computers and perhaps would like to try developing with Mono, Gambas, etc.
There is so much to be excited about in this release.
i was wrong, maybe because i’m too eager to try 9.3.
i tried to install it from various mirrors, but – i can only confirm – there are some files missing. anyways, the cd is laying on my desk ready to be used.
I love this release. It’s TOP notch from the Novell Suse conglomerate. I have never seen a more top notch distro (except Linspire 5).
Check here for my thoughts on this I have it on a laptop and a desktop ( http://staticambient.blogspot.com ).
Congrats to Suse/Novell/Gnome/KDE/X and the rest of the linux community, we are getting there, we just need some good people working for money to get this nice polished experience.
Sorry to hear of all the problems with “since 9.1” etc….I have been using SuSE “since 9.1” and have had NO trouble with it at all. It’s the ONLY distro that I can do an install on my ASUS laptop and EVERYTHING WORKS. It’s the only distro that I can put pretty much on anything and it all works.
So, I guess the people with all of the problems are in the minority from all of the good reports this has been getting. My opinion is that this is the best release ever.
As far as Alpha software…beagle is turned off by default. Play with it if you will. If they kept the new technology OFF of the distro, someone else would have complained that the didn’t include it.
Great distro…
It won’t even install on my new machine, and it’s not the media because i got it working fine on my old box which i keep lying around for emergencies. I was really looking forward to playing around with it too…
“As far as Alpha software…beagle is turned off by default. Play with it if you will.”
Fair enough. But KDE 3.4 is the default desktop (true, you can also use Gnome, very nice this time) and not even the downloads from SUSE KDE service solve the many issues.
The KDE 3.4 available for SUSE 9.2 is much better. That doesn’t make sense to me.
As to “suspend computer”, it is the bottom choice and it is very easy to hit by mistake.
I’ve been using suse since version 9. Its gotten better each release. On a side note with every release more more bugs are fixed but I feel there is still not enough of testing done before the final release is out. I thing Novel/suse should invite more people to test. I need to give them the credit. That the distro is really polished and, at least on my system, the apps start up much faster and no crashes. With that out of the way I found out that my sound card is still now working (at least it detects it but no go) and for some reason the drivers for my ethernet card is missing or corrupt. I think the very desktop portion of the system has improved and I would say is alot faster then all the other distro that I have tested with kde 3.4 (debian sarge, kubantu, and fedora wiht custom binaries).
Some more ghost RPMs for the unbelievers }:-)
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/suse/i386/9.3/suse/i586/
Now if only my SiS-soundchip gets supported…
If you have at least two machines at hand you could setup an anonymous ftp-server for example and put the files from the live-dvd in some directory on the newly installed ftp-server and install from there with the minimal-iso.
I switched from redhat to suse from suse 8.2 and have been pretty pleased with it until I made an upgrade from 9.2 to 9.3. Now suddenly the sound card stopped working, Mozilla Firefox keeps crashing, translucency does not work (it did not work in 9.2 either but now Xorg 6.8.2 has been stable for a while) and also evolution seems unstable and has no icons in KDE.
OpenOffice is unstable as well. I think many of these problems are related to XOrg, but Xorg works fine on my Gentoo, so it is really a problem of SuSe hack of Xorg.
Any way, if you are using SuSe then do not go from 9.2 to 9.3 just yet.
Maybe your upgrade got messed up..? Did you try a clean install?
Well I have a job and I can not stop working for a day to just install from scratch, an upgrade takes an hour or max 2. and upgrade from 9.0 to 9.2 worked painlessly as it should have.
What is the point with an upgrade otherwise.
Some issues I’d like to see resolved for future releases.
1. Release cycles annually not every 6 months. This ensures developers have time to resolve bugs and implement new ideas as well ensures customers get their moneys worth.
2. Licensed codecs. If Novell is expecting customers to pay for their distributions even if simply to have support they should also expect that consumers want working codecs out of the box. Even though most countries have broadband or dsl internet capability customers shouldn’t have to use YaST or other means to obtain missing codecs. If Linspire can do this then so can developers such as Novell who have larger cash flow.
3. VOIP and MSN/Yahoo Webcam capability for Kopete, Gaim, etc. Instead of Novell just packaging chat messengers that lack such common features they should assist developers in implementing the protocols necessary to bring the best user experience for customers. Heck if Google (creators of Gmail) could come up with their own chat messenger with VOIP and Webcam I’d give up on Hotmail and MSN Messenger entirely.
4. Either provide updated YaST mirrors that include Gnome packages or drop Gnome entirely. Even though I’m a KDE user there’s software such as Gimp that unfortunately still requires Gnome packages and it’s frustrating to find that since SuSE Linux Pro 9.2 there’s only updated mirrors for KDE, not Gnome. If Gimp is dropped then ensure KDE is across the board with all their distributions (NLD, SLES, SLP).
5. Extend support with paid distributions. Example extend the current 3 mnths technical support for SLP to 6 mnths.
After some inital issues with the Nvidia driver diableing KDM or GDM, 9.3 is working fine. So far though I have to say 9.2 was the best so far.
I updated from 9.1 to 9.3 and JDE is running very staragnely. None of the Mozilla apps will run, getting some gtk_qt_ Glib errors. Gimp has the same issue. interestingly, these same apps run in Gnome without issue. I am guessing that I have a dependcy issue (have not figured it out yet), but the whole point to running an upgrade version is to upgrade, or so I thought.
1)I absolutely agree. SUSE releases come out with tons of bugs which, if you are lucky, are ironed out 2 or 3 months later. So I’d rather have a yearly release cycle: from this point of view Mandriva is on the right path.
2)Agree again. Even if getting full multimedia support with apt is very easy, the apt developer can only do so much. One of the most annoying issues I am having now is kaffeine-mozilla, while in Debian everything is just fine. With other words I can have support only for RealPlayer streamings. Trouble is, it is not going to be easy to convince Microsoft to sell licenses for their codecs.
4) Don’t have much of an opinion because I use KDE. However 9.3 has a very nice Gnome.
I want to add a point of my own: don’t force customers to buy bulky boxes every time. Make also CDs/DVDs only available to customers who prefer that way.
Regarding issues with gtk_qt_Glib, Gnome looked pretty funny after my upgrade from 9.2 to 9.3. Icons and themes looked funny.
I removed the gtk_qt rpm and it ran pretty fine afterwards. But the problems with evolution in KDE continues after that.
I think they should have waited with 9.3 and updated 9.2. Novell is after easy money it seems like instead of giving good support to their customers they stop updating their distros each six months so you have to buy new distro full of bugs. I hope they reconsider their strategy.
“Novell is after easy money it seems like instead of giving good support to their customers they stop updating their distros each six months so you have to buy new distro full of bugs.”
Not sure about that. I don’t believe they earn a lot of money from SUSE Pro: huge manuals must be expensive. And besides after a few weeks they give it away for free.
My suspect is that they need a test bed for their enterprise offerings, very much like Red Hat and Fedora.
There are many people buying SuSe Pro, especially in europe. 100$ would cover the price of the book and CDs and then some.
But you are right that they use it as a testbed for the SLES.
I still think SuSe Pro should have longer life time or people stop using it. They could very well update its rpms in 1,5 year instead of just 6 months.
What is the exact ftp install link for this mini install 9.3 and also what IP should I use for that when asked during the ftp install wizard?
Altgough they ship a new version every six months, they keep supporting every release for about 3 years, maintaining security updates up to date. That’s way we see SuSE 8.2 in every SuSE’s mirror