On October 22, 2004, Novell released SUSE Linux Professional 9.2 (abbreviated as SLP9.2 henceforth) targeted at the home user and Linux enthusiast crowd. Since I am already using SUSE 9.1 for my daily work on my IBM laptop, I was quite eager to check out 9.2. SLP9.1 is already a very polished Linux distribution, with tons of software ready to go. So here’s a SuSE user’s review of 9.2 after several weeks using the new version. Update: Also see some 9.2 screenshots with KDE and Gnome.
I run Linux exclusively
on my home computer, laptop and all servers at my work place. Most of
the customers that I support run some flavor of Linux or UNIX. I
wanted to evaluate how well SLP can fit any/all of these roles.
Currently I run a mix of distributions: Suse, Debian, Red Hat, and
RHEL recompiles such as WhiteBox and Rocks.
Traditionally, I have
been a Red Hat and Debian user with occasional flings with Gentoo and
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, but only recently migrated to using
SuSE on a daily basis.
I asked Novell’s
Singapore office for a copy of SLP9.2. The next day, Novell couriered me
a nice green box. (Thanks to David Tang) I have installed the copy
on my home PC, laptop, an Athlon64 Shuttle XPC and a very high end
IBM Z-Pro Technical Workstation to test various functionalities.
I have run the
installation for several weeks to look out for any problems (lockups, usability, missing packages etc) This review is a summary of
my experience and observations.
A brief
Introduction to SLP9.2:
Price:
You can buy
full-version, boxed sets for US$ 89.95 either from the online store (and pay a hefty US$60 UPS airfreight to Singapore, as I did on earlier occasion)
or order locally for about S$168.00
An update version for
current SLP9.1 owners is offered at US$59.95 (Also available is a
student version for the same price.)
The boxed set contains:
-
One 300+ page
printed User Guide
-
One 700+ page
printed Administration guide
-
Some leaflets
-
One CD/DVD box
with
-
A combined IA32
(x86 – Pentium, Athlon, Celerons, including mobile versions),
AMD64 ( x86_64 ) and EM64T installer DVD
-
A DVD with all
source code
-
Five CD-set with
IA32/x86 installation files.
-
Over 3500 software
packages
Documentation:
I browsed through the
comprehensive printed documentation. Even for a person like me who
has been using Linux for several years, the printed manuals offer a
treasure of information. The manuals are of professional quality and
any user with reasonable computer skills should be able to pick up
Linux by referring to the manuals.
The User Guide explains
installation and mostly desktop-type activities, such as using
Graphical Desktops (KDE, Gnome), using file managers, web browsers,
email clients, multimedia (sound, video, CD/DVD recording and
playback), office applications (spreadsheets, word processing,
presentations), graphics editing, using digital cameras, scanners,
printers, etc
The Administration
Manual is considerably bulkier and covers Installation, setting up
various servers (web, email, DNS, DHCP etc), using the Graphical
Admin Tool, YAST, Hardware issues, backups, system security, and
advanced topics such as LVM, package management, notes on 32- and
64-bit computing (on AMD64 or EM64T hardware), booting issues,
kernel related topics, X-Window System, laptop issues – such as
multiple profiles, PCMCIA devices, Wireless devices hotplug facility
and file synchronization between multiple systems.
Comprehensive
documentation is available online in various formats. The usual Linux
documentation in man-pages, GNU-info formats is still available.
Installation:
The
hardware I used/am using for testing SLP9.2 is as follows:
-
Laptop:
IBM R40e, Intel Celeron 2GHz, 256MB, 20GB IDE, Broadcom 5901 network
adapter, LCD 1024×768 display, ATI Radeon IGP 340M VGA chip, various
USB based peripherals such as Kingston USB-storage, USB-Network
adapter, USB-serial adapter etc.
-
Home
PC: Duron 1GHz, 256MB, 60GB IDE, CDRW and DVD-ROM drives, Realtek
8139 for ADSL connectivity and DEC Tulip network adapter for
internal-LAN, nVidia Riva 32MB VGA adapter, 19″ Sony G400
Trinitron 1280×1024 CRT, 256k ADSL unlimited package from SingNet
with AzTech DSL900E Turbo ethernet ADSL modem. Peripherals are Epson
Perfection 1250 USB scanner, Epson Stylus Photo 915 USB Printer,
Nikon CoolPix 3100 Digital camera with USB interface.
-
Shuttle
XPC with AMD Athlon64-3200+ MHz, 512MB RAM, 21″ Sony Trinitron
G500 CRT, nVidia GeForce FX5200 VGA adapter with 64MB VRAM, Seagate
SATA 80GB, additional Intel Gigabit Desktop adapter, DVD ROM, HP
LaserJet 4050N network printer.
-
IBM
Z-Pro Model Workstation: Dual Xeon EM64T 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, nVidia
Quadro FX100 with 128MB, Dual SCSI U320 73GB, DVD-RAM, 21″ IBM
C220p Monitor @1280×1024
A
lot of reviews focus primarily on ease of installation (or lack of
it). However I would like to cut short the installation part. The
reason being, SLP sports a nice GUI installer with extremely good
hardware recognitions and automatic configuration capabilities.
Installation, for me, turned out to be clicking mouse buttons and
occasionally entering some text, such as passwords. It cannot get any
easier than this!
All
devices listed above were recognized and configured, including ADSL
connections, USB devices etc.
After
installation, which took about an hour, a beautiful KDE desktop
started up. A small tweak to the KDE setup (using KDE Control
Center) restored the defaults I like (Mosfet’s Aqua, background
images etc.)
Languages:
This release is available
in multiple languages including asian languages such as Korean,
Chinese and Japanese apart from a bunch of European languages.
However Indian language support is still weak, though more are
getting added ( Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu etc
are already included in many distros).
Supported CPU
architectures:
x86
( your traditional Intel/AMD 32 bit CPUs) such as Pentium, Xeon,
Pentium-M, Athlon, Duron etc.
AMD64:
Extended x86 64-bit technology from AMD, Opteron and Athlon64 CPUs
EM64T:
Extended x86 64-bit technology from Intel.
Key Applications and
versions:
Kernel
version 2.6.8
Gnome
Desktop version 2.6
KDE
Desktop version 3.3
OpenOffice
1.1.3
Evolution
v2.0 which can connect to MS-Exchange servers
GCC
c/c++ and fortran compilers v3.3.4, Perl, PHP, Python etc
Several
server programs such as Apache – web, Postfix – mail, Bind – DNS,
DHCP – server, MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers, LDAP, News,
NFS and Samba for Windows networking, Zope – AppServer
On
the security front you get Kerberos client, SSL, GNU TLS, SUSE
firewall script, nmap, nessus, chkrootkit, Selinux policy compiler
etc.
SuSE
is switching to X.org’s new X11 server from the old XFree servers.
Also
new are:
Inkscape
– a vector drawing program
and
Nvu – a WYSIWYG website editor – based on the famous Mozilla
suite. I find that it is quite useful for static website creation. (
I traditionally use vim or quanta)
Apart
from the large collection of Open Source applications, SUSE has
packaged some commercial software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader,
TextMaker/PlanMaker and MainActor5 (video editing). However I did not
try out these applications.
SuSE
has thoughtfully included SUN Java 1.4.2, Flash Player and RealPlayer
10, which is quite useful.
Updates:
The Professional series
is released about twice a year by SuSE. Software updates are
available for two years, which, for a desktop, laptop and high volume
( 2-way, web/file/email/print/dns etc) server, is quite reasonable.
If you need much longer
maintenance periods, or certifications, probably you should look at
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server products or Novell Linux Desktop 9,
which are fully certified against major applications and supported
for 5-years.
Using the YAST tool, a
few clicks will take you through locating mirrors for getting update
packages, selecting which ones to install and complete the action.
Due to the Open nature of Linux, aggressive updates are quite common,
and by the time I finished installing the systems, there were already
some updates waiting to be applied!
SuSE places a round
SuSE Watcher applet on the desktop that monitors for updates and
changes color depending on the importance of the patch ( Red –
when security patches are pending, Orange – When normal or bug fix
patches are pending), a click brings up a password prompt for root
user and launches the update program. (Note that logging in as root
or administrator is heavily discouraged on Linux systems, you are
required to create a normal unprivileged user and login with that
account)
What I liked:
-
Hardware
recognition is vastly improved.
-
On
my laptop, I just formatted my root partition, with the data in
/home undisturbed. All previous settings (from SLP9.1) were
recognized correctly.
-
Opening work
related documents: both in native OpenOffice format as well as
Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint formats.
-
Remote connections
with SSH and VPN’s worked fine.
-
Ripping , Audio
CD, creating and Playing MP3s – amarok is especially nice.
-
Playing VCDs (my
child’s collection) with xine and kaffeine
-
Viewing, editing
and printing of full color images using various applications (gqview/gwenview, gimp and KDE/cups printing), scanning photos was a
breeze.
Obviously, apart from
all the excellent applications, there are some nice touches which
every distro vendor adds. Here’s what I like about SUSE:
-
The installed
CD/DVD default choice is “Boot from Hard disk” and not start
installation. This feature is useful if you forget to remove the
CD/DVD and reboot. The system will boot up from hard disk, and not
affect your existing system in any way.
-
Yast2 can download
and install Microsoft core-fonts package which provides several
excellent quality free True Type fonts. The fonts cannot be included
on the CD (due to legal restrictions), but you can download and
install via Yast Online Update.
-
The very well-written
system configuration program, yast. Yast is comprehensive, well
designed and easy to use, albeit a little slow.
-
Advanced users may
find network autoinstall very useful (autoyast).
-
The default
install configures and starts a firewall, which is good!. Also note
that X server starts up with “tcp nolisten” option. So if you
are wondering why incoming X11 connections fails, change this option
through YAST custom security settings.
-
Novell allows
unlimited installations for non-commercial use. So yes, you can buy
a boxed set and install it on your multiple home systems!
Wishlist, Shortcomings & assorted notes:
As all products have some things that can be improved upon, I would
like to point out a few:
-
Several media
formats needing special codecs will not play. SuSE does not bundle
them due to issues related to redistribution. I had to download the
bundle from mplayerhq site and install the Win32 codec DLLs in
/usr/lib/win32/ to watch my collection of avi’s and mpg’s. Quicktime
(MOV) files still refuse to play.
-
e-Banking with DBS
needed an update to the Java VM from 1.4.2 included in the distro to
1.5 (Tiger). Note this is not a bug with SuSE, rather an issue with
DBS website code.
-
ACPI power off
failed to work on my home system. However, after the subsequent
kernel update (via yast) it works now.
-
Suspend seems not
to work on the laptop. So I need to shutdown every time. Hope this
gets fixed soon…
-
A
programmer-oriented document may be nice to have ( explaining the
internals of SUSE, compile time flags, etc)
-
SLP support for
PPC architecture that can cover PPC systems (only Enterprise Server
editions available now) would be nice.
-
A UML (user mode
Linux) config tool (such as the one bundled in SLES 9) is nifty and
could be a useful addition to SLP9.2, though I did not explore
FAUmachine which is included.
-
Manual update for
nVidia drivers are still necessary to fully exploit the hardware
Conclusion:
SUSE
9.2 Pro definitely deserves the Professional tag in its name.
It is a professionally made package, no doubt. It has a large set of
software packages, excellent hardware support, is secure and fast.
For the Advanced computer user, SLP9.2 is an excellent choice for
desktop, laptop or small server usage. If you are a power user using
Windows XP or Mac OSX, you would be surprised how far Linux has come.
Parameter | Rating (1=poor, 5=acceptable, 10=excellent) |
|---|---|
Installation ( ease, hardware identification) | 8 |
Software bundled and default choices | 8 |
Documentation | 10 |
Adherence to standards ( LSB, FHS, IETF) | 9 |
Default security and ease of updating, patching | 9 |
Overall Experience | 9 out of 10 |
Links and
Resources:
SUSE & Novell:
http://www.novell.com/linux/download_linux.html
Linux:
Final Screenshot:
—
About the author:
Mr.
Anand Vaidya is a Linux enthusiast since 1999. He currently works as
the Director of a Singapore company specializing in High Performance
Computing and providing Linux/UNIX services.
I have the pro cds and yea I would have to agree with the author on the good points. I submit however, that advanced users might not like it though because suse has a ton more config files because of yast in etc than I’ve seen in most distros. So its harder to find what you need to edit in some cases to get the affect.
Also, while it ran fine for the most part on his Athlon 64, Suse runs sluggish on a PIII 500 mhz, hell some of the yast modules dont even seem to load and seem to just hang, which I use. I found that slackware with the same software runs quicker, though I do admit going to from the 2.4 kernel to the 2.6 kernel adds some sluggishness (as least thats what i personally notice).
Now this might be a bug that was fixed by an update but I notced that when using yast over ssh it didn’t seem to save my settings, at least for setting up a vnc server (although I admit their command line driven part of yast is impressive by look anyway).
Anyways these are just my experiences I would like to contribute. I am in fact using Suse 9.2 right now and I think its a good distro for new people with moderatly new computers. (My only rant being the lack of codec support but just install the xine and codec rpm files from another website, you can google and find the win32 codecs in suse format).
Rather than anything in article, the backgroupd pic of beauty in the last screenshot is worth a look!!!!
I agree with you !
I’ve got one running on a server and a AMD64 laptop and it run like a charm … unless you try to do something not implemented in YAST … like twinview ( with the nvidia drivers activated !!) on the same graphic card … ( on mandrake 10.1 it’s much easier ! and you can get painlessly the last update of it ! )
Otherwise it’s clear that graphicaly suse 9.2 rips ! Also the apps and kde 3.3 … on mandrake 10.1 you’ve got the packages but no words on how to install …
I have tried SuSE, and I’d even buy it, but its too KDE-centric for my tastes.
Its very quality but…
http://www.osnews.com/img/9321/slp92_review_html_631cef95.png
Something about KDE’s bubbly-ness I can’t stand!
I wish Ubuntu would make a boxed version with nice manual like SuSE does!
A good over view of what the distribution offers consumers as well nice seeing a reviewer bench the software on multiple systems.
As for the issue regarding codec support in SuSE Linux this link http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=87247 should be useful for those wanting full codec support.
Regarding the comment “Manual update for nVidia drivers are still necessary to fully exploit the hardware” found in the article. It should be noted that Novell provides an optional package to be installed via YOU (YaST Online Update) called “fetchnvidia” (aka: Download NVIDIA drivers) which will fetch and auto-install NVIDIA 3D drivers. Unfortunately there is no script yet for ATI users. Anyway, just as with Windows that doesn’t supply 3D drivers with the OS it’s the same with Linux distributions. The user can either choose to manually install the latest 3D driver from NVIDIA or ATI (depending on GPU) or choose the auto-install script mentioned for NVIDIA users. I believe Novell is the only Linux developer to offer such a script to auto-install 3D drivers. Not surprising considering their exceptional hardware Plug & Play (aka: Hot Plug) support.
Also it should be noted that Novell provides support for a wide variety of graphics GPU both non-DCC (ie: Geforce/Radeon) and DCC (Quadro, FireGL, Wildcat). A list of the supported cards can be found in YaST as well the “SuSE Linux Hardware Database” http://cdb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK
I am testing SUSE 9.2 on my laptop. With the 2.6.8-24.10-default kernel.
It is a 1.6 Centrino with 512M RAM. And, SUSE is so much more sluggish compared to my Mandrake 10.0 Community version.
… but like SUSE, as I do, you might wanna give Novell Desktop Linux a try. ISOs are free for download; it costs $50/yr for access to Novell’s Red Carpet update services (and I understand this can be purchased at a discount from Novell agents.
NDL is very SUSE. Thanks to the Ximian crew, you get a very tidy and polished Gnome 2.6 desktop. Comes with a Gnome-themed Firefox as the default browser, a Ximified Open Office, and a very orderly menu with well-chosen packages. I dropped-in a custom background image in Ximian grey, and it’s all very snappy and businesslike.
It’s possible to install KDE under NDL, also.
I also have SUSE 9.2. Was surprised to find SUSE’s stock version of Evolution apparently did not ship with Connector — a bit of a surprise. Perhaps I just missed the package and someone here will correct me.
But connector is included in the NDL ISOs. It’s the first time I’ve been able to reliably access our corporate mail from within a pure Linux environment. Very refreshing.
You get a lot for your money with either SUSE 9.2 or NDL. I’ve decided to buy a seat license and continue with NDL this year. No fuss, no bother. And it runs just like its SUSE brother.
suse 9.2 (32bit) works very very well on an nvidia based amd64 based shuttle box. only issues are:
* that the nvidia opengl acceleration was not enabled despite the official reciple – i needed to hack it to go…
* the front facing USB ports do not work
* the sound does not work (front or back sockets)
(all the above work with windows xp home)
people may like the fact that realplayer, acrobat reader, flash plugins all just work fine…
people may not like the fact that firefox is still a very patched 0.9 series and not 1.0 … even on the updates.
You can get official SUSE Firefox 1.0 rpms from the ftp server: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/mozilla/firefox/1.0/ They also have Thunderbird as well as Mozilla suite builds in there as well.
That should be part of all reviews.
That will force the distributions to keep some standards.
I am very impressed with SuSE on the desktop, but for laptop support things are still messed up. On my Inspiron 8200 I can’t get my built in WiFi to work and I can’t close the lid with the nVidia drivers. This is one of the reasons I switched over to OSX, things work as expected and there is no reason to fight with the configuration.
Linux is getting there but it’s still a ways to go before it’s useful for folks that don’t want to fool with things to get everything running.
i’m using suse 9.2 now, and i’m loving it, its the best version yet, its stable, fast, snappy and everything is well integrated as well as most of the packages being new, like the kernel and xorg 6.8.1 and kde 3.3.
i think the direction suse is taking is the best, not too noobish like xandros and lindows and at the same time with cutting edge software that is’nt unstable and easy to use, it has the best balance for a linux desktop distro for a normal user.
I installed Suse 9.2 and it fired my laptop. After installing it I left my computer on and went to bed. When I woke the morning my laptop was dead. I suspect the lack of support for ACPI and APM caused my computer to run too hot.
I learned my lesson. I will never install Linux or BSD or any other *nix on a laptop. NEVER! It simply isn’t ready for general laptop use. Plus wireless support is terrible. On Windows it’s point-click-and-done!
I began using Suse a month ago. I find it difficult, perhaps because of poor documentation. I have 4 problems: 1) My wireless card does not connect (although Suse detected and installed), 2)PDA does not connect, 3) I’m at a loss when I try to download, e.g. Gnucash, and 4) I’ve developed a problem with shutdown, and openoffice tells me I’m already accessing, so should leave the program. I plan to join a local forum or possibly a Vo-Tech class. Part of the problem, I think is Suse’s flexibility. To make significant inroads, Linux will pretty much have to spoon feed everything. But I like it’s look and “feel” of operation.
Doesn’t the kernel supplied iwth this version of SuSE contain the infamous malloc() bug which would cause USB mice to “hang” while changing virtual terminals?
If so, I’d say thats a showstopper for sure.
Chuckles B.
Does anyone know how to get a pci-X geforce 6600 to work under suse or any other distro it seems that i can’t get it to work even after installing nvidia drivers.
I believe Novell is the only Linux developer to offer such a script to auto-install 3D drivers.
Gentoo has had ebuild scripts in portage (not third party) which handle the installation of the nVidia drivers for a VERY long time…..
Summary of my experience with Suse 9.2 on my Centrino Pentium-M laptop:
(-)Wireless works about half the time
(-)Powerdown does not work (it reboots on shutdown)
(-)Hibernation does not work
(-)No XOrg ATI drivers and no option to use XFree
(+)Best hardware management tool (Yast) I’ve ever tried
(+)Best KDE integeration I’ve ever tried
As a whole, I am rather dissapointed because I expected the above not to be of issue after reading the initial reviews. I expected Suse 9.2 to be a notch above the others but it is not IMHO.
Bill,
Sorry to hear your SuSE Linux experience was not enjoyable for you. Where you using an older release such as SuSE Linux Personal 9.1 (Personal now axed) or current SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 release? I currently use SLP 9.1 and have used both wireless and bluetooth devices successfully with out any hassle. After testing several Linux distributions I found SuSE Linux and Novell’s other offerings are best geared to consumers (private and enterprise). If you are familiar using Windows XP then you should be able to use SuSE Linux just as easily since it comes with familiar tools (ie: YaST Control Center, UI, Plug & Play, Remote Desktop, etc). As the reviewer in the article already mentioned the distribution comes with very detailed and helpful end user and Administrator documentation. More than I ever got with a Windows purchase. What was not mentioned is that this information is also contained in the SuSE Help Center located on the desktop shortcut link. There’s also an online library for users here http://elibrary.fultus.com/technical/index.jsp and the user forums as well as “How-To” manuals here http://www.linuxforum.com/ should be useful to you. If you have purchased SuSE Linux then it came with technical support included or you can use Novell’s pay per incident support packages if your support has expired. See here for more info http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/support/advanced.h… Alternately you could have a technician use Remote Desktop to help resolve your issues. You can find out more regarding Remote Desktop in the SuSE Help Center.
I tried suse 9.2 at home, it’s just as bad as 9.1 when it first came out, isn’t it?
1. installing the developer software-group (not active by default) installes not just the c compiler
and kernel source for the current kernel, but also a usermode-linux kernel. It then messes up the
config by replacing /boot/vmlinuz and /boot/initrd so that the machine tries to boot with that
usermode-kernel – which of course fails before even mounting the rootfilesystem via reiserfs module.
The fix was to use the grub menu to edit the parameters to load the correct one and then after booting
fix the menu.lst up.
2. now that that works, it runs fine until I try to mount my other reiserfs partition from /dev/hdc1 that
was there from a previous suse 9.1 installation. system freezes, nothing in the logs.
3. now I installed fedora core 3 and am failry happy. That suse pro stuff is banana software – ripens in the
customers hands. I guess Novell has changed the priorities for SUSE in favour of the enterprise edition?
Before 9.1 I could always recommend SUSE Pro but since then it seems the QA is missing a lot.
Michael
>>I installed Suse 9.2 and it fired my laptop. After installing it I left my computer on and went to bed. When I woke the morning my laptop was dead. I suspect the lack of support for ACPI and APM caused my computer to run too hot.
I learned my lesson. I will never install Linux or BSD or any other *nix on a laptop. NEVER! It simply isn’t ready for general laptop use. Plus wireless support is terrible. On Windows it’s point-click-and-done!
Hold up. I do not know about Suse. I have never used. But with Fedora and Gentoo, my Presario 2100 is the best. Who ever knows about this laptop, knows how noisy and hot it is under windows. With Gentoo I do not have any complains, in fact that is the main reason for me to use Linux. So maybe is your laptop, which you didnt specify what it was. So do not generalize only because you had a bad expirience. If I do the same, I will say that windows is not ready for laptops either.
If I am not mistaken, the yast-uml package is on the DVD install, along with alot of other packages that are not on the cd install version like qemu.
Does anyone know how to get a pci-X geforce 6600 to work under suse or any other distro it seems that i can’t get it to work even after installing nvidia drivers.
Just a minor correction, it isn’t a PCI-X, its a PCIe graphics card; a PCI-X has NO relationship with PCI Express, both are difference pieces of technology.
Regarding PCI-Express support for Nvidia, check Nvidia driver README file, there should be some information relating to the setup of PCI-Express graphics cards, you also might want to check the xorg.conf setup, removing and special settings you may have added.
review.
I thought suse was ok when i tried it. I got it from novell during the summer, if anyone remembers that linux techinal kit give away. To bad companies like eclinicalworks don’t support suse, but hopefully they will let me port it when i work there in the summer. It sounds to me like the eclinical guys don’t know what they are doing but they seem to have a product that people like. I guess i’ll see what its like when my parents get it setup on they’re new redhat system.
However, comparing any version of Linux to FreeBSD on the same hardware, I’ve observed that FreeBSD is the most responsive and secure of the popular operating systems available for the x86. Darwin looks very good also!
When evaluating any operating system, my main concern is stability! Of course, it is also my opinion that any version of Linux would be better that anything from the company in Redmond, Washington, (we don’t need no stinkin’ memory leaks). Linux is no longer an experimental OS, it has made it to the desktop and deserves the recognition as a “main player” in the OS market. I’ve used SUSE 9.1 Pro and found it to be a very full featured operating environment. That said, I’ll probably pick up a copy of their latest offering to play with.
Ha! I’ve been waiting for a long time for acpi to work properly. I reckon that when ACPI works properly there will be some other standard for laptops. I waited so long I gave up and returned to windows xp. I want to be able to hibernate and suspend on the road and I haven’t seen linux do that consistently.
So much talk about the desktop… linux needs to focus on the laptop…
i initially installed 64bit 9.2 on my dell laptop. due to architecture dependency of the rpms there are bunch of software that i need to recomplie: knetmon, firestarter, stardict, gaim, azureus and some theme files. worst of all bunch of xine files( quicktime and wmv video files problem no sound no video…
and then i found out wacom tablet doesnt work in 64bit xorg server. the same config in xf86config failed on the 64bit distro.
in the end i went back to 32bit, everythings fine now.
aside from the rants above, the following works fine:
nvidia 3d driver
external lcd monitor (vga out)
notebook power management (suspend, sleep)
I have still not been able to use K3b successfully with Suse 9.2 or Mandrake 10.1 official. for SUSE, it said something about running CDRecord at root. With the new mandrake, its been fixed but when I tried to copy a simple vcd, a mac os cd, and a pc cd, still haven’t been able to successfully complete a burn. I’m using the yamaha 2100 scsi cdrw burner
Anand, RobertN, TheCenter and JoeBlowHard: Regarding powermanagement and ACPI. Please understand that it’s not always Linux at fault! Many manufacturers have broken ACPI BIOS implementations; they provide software level workarounds when they write the Windows drivers. And switch to MacOSX for laptop support.. come on, they make the hardware AND they make the software.. how can you go wrong with that?! 🙂
As a workaround, disable ACPI and fall back to APM. I know, you won’t get all the ACPI niceties but at least you don’t get a burned laptop! 🙂 Anand, I have an IBM R40 and ACPI has never ever worked for me with any of the distros I’ve tried. Switch to APM and u’ll get working Suspend and (sorta) working Hibernate.
ATI Drivers: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/
Reg Firefox 1.0: The rpms that Zeke pointed to are not official. They are built by SuSE employees and usually use the same build infrastructure. Nevertheless – they are officially unsupported.
Bill Shahan: Have you got OOo-quickstart running? That caused problems on logout for me.
Wireless support: This is again a manufacturer support issue. No drivers and unreleased hardware specs – how do you support such hardware? Still, thanks to ndiswrapper, lots of windows only cards now work. I beleive Centrino wireless works out of the box with SuSE 9.2 (and other new distros like Ubuntu). Centrino certainly works with 9.1 as I have it running personally.
Take a look at my SuSE 9.1 page for more tips on laptop support and getting the latest KDE/GNOME installed.
http://www.antrix.net/stuff/suse_thinkpad/
almost 50% of the computers sold today are laptops. I want to switch over to linux but I cannot do it if Hibernation function is not working. I have come to the conclusion that i can use my softwares on linux using crossover and win4lin but the simple issue of having no fully functional ACPI will not make me take the step!!!
If the linux community wants to truly take off and seriously enter the os market, the programing gurus should drop all other work and focus to fix this issue!
regards
H
It’s a evul circle. People stays of Linux by particular support reasons (like it doesn’t change fan speeds on the laptops or something), and they switch to another operating system INSTEAD of telling someone about the problem. If noone is using his laptop with Linux the laptop themself won’t be supported ’cause why support a computer half-way while noone is using the software on that computer?
The more people demanding Linux on their laptops the more developer’ll fix the issues with those, as they did with the desktop computers and webbservers and everywhere else where Linux is already the best alternative.
More people gets better drivers than less people!
Less isn’t more!
The last two versions of SuSE cured me from it. More USB problems than one may stand with my equipment, no reaction on the detailed bugreport, bugs, bugs and some more bugs, kernel updates via YOU that fry your system … yes SuSE WAS a killer Distro and it still seems on the first glance, but if you go out to check some of the stuff thats on the DVD and which is not chosen by default much of it gives a crashmanager notification and that’s it, if you begin to really work with the system you may remark a dozen hickups and glitches everywhere.
For comparison: SuSE 9.1 Updates: 2.1 GB, Mandrake 10.0 updates: 1.2 GB and they fixed the same security holes, so the difference is bugs …
Try Mandrake, try Mepis and you’ll feel the difference in quality …
Antrix,
Let me clear things up. I am a Windows user, or Windows whore, if you may. Over the course of a year I try to run Linux whenever a major distro revamp occurs just to see if I can finally switch for good. To be fair, Suse 9.2 is the best I’ve yet to try. I can live without hibernation/suspend mode. Similarily, I have read that a mere kernel update with Yast fixes the powerdown issue for many people using Suse 9.2 out of the box. However, the lack of what I deem as reliable wireless support is what truly turned me off Suse 9.2… back to being a Windows whore, for the time being. Each time I booted up Suse 9.2 there was a 50/50 chance that wireless would work for the given session; this is unacceptable. Most of the time I would have to reboot to get wireless going or sometimes I would have to run Yast to “redo” the wireless device installation. Also, the lack of an XOrg ATI driver and the inability to rever to XFree, which does have an ATI driver for it, annoyed me. The link you gave has ATI drivers for up to 9.1, which can run XFree, unlike 9.2 which exclusively runs XOrg.
APCI:
I have installed SLP 9.2 on a Dell and an HP notebook. I was disapointed to find the suspend/sleep buttons didn’t work, but then found it is due to APCI not configured at install. If you go to Yast–>PowerManagement, enable suspend, then select APCI settings. Both computers suspend to disk fine, tried many times. I haven’t tried suspend to RAM.
On other fronts, I especially like being able to select from my docked/undocked profile at boot. Undocked, I select 1024×768. Docked I select 1200×1024 (21″ monitor).
I have smartcard readers, USB pen drives, USB sound card (Dell lattitude, no audio in), USB drives, everything simply worked. It is a little slow/jerky when you plug a USB device in for a few seconds. The only things that don’t work are on the DELL.
1) CD player, have to use XMMS with digital read,
2) Dell conexant modem. 14.4 unless I pay $19.99 for the regular driver. I just just my trusty external modem.
GVTC Dridged DSL (Dell) perfect, no configuration. SBCYahooDSL (HP) perfect. No configuration required.
Well, let’s put it this way, the HP is my girlfriends with Linux now because she has been infected with spyware/virii 6 times in 4 months with 4 re-installs in XP. The last time, get this, in the time it took to connect to the web and download SP2, it was REINFECTED. It now runs linux and she is completely happy.
Kevin
P.S. IT is still arguing with me. XP refuses to work docked (Windows VPN client required to connect to a customer), neither the keyboard or mouse work docked (makes press CTRL-ALT-DEL hard to do). They insist the keyboard and mouse are bad, but concede it is strange that they work flawlesslessly, docked, in Linux.
Your wireless problems seem strange. Especially ‘cos for me, Centrino wireless works more reliably under Linux than WinXP. (At least pre SP2 – I’ve never used my XP+SP2 setup for more than 5 minutes at a stretch – yeah, I am a Linux whore ;-))
Which wireless card do you have? Have you tried reporting the problems?
Abt the ATI drivers, I agree it’s unfortunate that there are no XOrg drivers. I am curious to know how other distros are handling this since almost everyone is using XOrg now.
Hey Kevin, do all of your USB flash keys and your media reader automount your devices when plugged in? Painless hotplugging those items is what I’m looking for. I would like to know as I had 9.1 and had all sorts of problems with my devices not automounting. If they do hotplug with no stress for the user, then I will definitely spring for 9.2.
Yes, I have a USB hard drive (got a kit to convert an internal to an external). SUSE wanted to install there, so unplugged till dual boot installed. I have a smartcard reader, Lexar 128 Mbyte thumb drive, 2 USB cameras, and as mentioned, a USB sound card because the Dell has no line in or line out. Everything is hotplugged and simply works. As I mentioned, the mouse gets a little jerky for 3 to 5 seconds when they are plugged in, however, Konqueror opens automatically for each device (well, the drive types). Oh yeah, USB keyboard and USB mouse with wheel. All simply worked. The cool thing too, the aliases to the USB devices are persistant even when they are unplugged during boot or whichever order they are detected. Undocked, they keypad is active, simply plug in the USB micromouse and it just works immediatly.
I got the sound card after installed, had the SD reader and thumbdrive there during install, but I doubt it matters.
Kevin
From the article:
Several media formats needing special codecs will not play. SuSE does not bundle them due to issues related to redistribution. I had to download the bundle from mplayerhq site and install the Win32 codec DLLs in /usr/lib/win32/ to watch my collection of avi’s and mpg’s. Quicktime (MOV) files still refuse to play.
Have you tried Packman’s site (SUSE rpms)? It is really great, and it is updated. I have Quicktime working in 9.1!
http://packman.links2linux.org/
For codecs, look at the end of this page:
http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=124
Kalna
Does anyone know who the Bollywood actress is in the final screenshot?
Hey thnx Kevin. That was my biggest worry about 9.2, but your account and many others’ have convinced me to give it a try. It seems that Suse/Novell paid attention to those who took 9.1 for a whirl and had a hard time with the USB key issues. I find it good news that 9.2 can fulfill my needs in that regard. Of all the distros I have tried and spent my money on, Suse has been the one that keeps me most satisfied. Thanks again.
Ken
I suspect it’s Aishwarya Rai
Ken, Kevin: Another problem with 9.1 was the kernel in use. The USB code in the kernel got a pretty major rewrite after 9.1 was released. I bought a simple USB external hard drive that refused to work with 9.1. I upgraded to the latest kernel and boom – drive works!
So 9.2 benefits from the better USB code in the newer kernels and of course – the engineering that SuSE puts in to get hotplug and persistent device names and all that working.
Latest kernels from Kernel of the Day: http://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/
I don’t have to tell you that experimenting with a new kernel every day could be hazardous to your system, do I? 😉
Guido, chowyunpat: It is indeed Aishwarya Rai.
http://www.santabanta.com/wallpapers/rating.asp?catid=401162
I hope this isn’t going too OT Eugenia 😀
i’ve bought the retail boxed Professional versions of Suse 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2. .. and i’ve just been dispappointed with the performance in general. part of this is due to:
http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2004-Oct/0556.html
> Out of the box “time kate” reported 4.5s.
>
> Pre-linking kate cut about 0.5s off this time. (A little
> poking about seemed to show that pre-linking cut 0.5s
> off the loading time of most KDE apps.)
>
> But I also noticed that doing an
> “export LANG=C” before launching kate cut a full second(!)
> off the startup time. (My default LANG on this box is
> en_GB.UTF-8)
>
> A quick analysis of the output from “strace -r konsole” showed
> that indeed, it was taking about 1 second for X11 to
> parse the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose
> file
…
Thank you very much! With your suggestions it is much faster now. On this
machine kate launch time went from 6.3 down to 4.3. konsole from 5.4 to 3.3.
It is still not as responsive as this kde 2.2.1 I’m using now (Suse 7.3, the
best so far), but it is coming closer.
What am I missing with the LANG =C setting? How to enable it system wide?
One final note: your findings show that performance really seems to have been
forgotten. And the saddest part is some people are blind enough not to
recognize it.
.. and removing the “desktop” kernel parameter starting from version 9.0 can help on older machines and does help things a bit for me (as well as certain on/off combos of acpi, apm and desktop paramter together as suggested by someone at suse on the mailing list)
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/10/pohletz_desktop_90.html
.. since “The “desktop” boot parameter sets ten times shorter time slices (1-31ms) and ten times higher timer interrupt rate (1000/s) than standard. “
http://portal.suse.de/sdb/en/2003/10/90_scheduling.html
.. but even with all those two things–turning off utf8 and removing the desktop parameter–it’s still relatively and noticably slower on old machines (PIII 500mhz & 600mhz, 256MB & 512MB ram, 7200 rpm hd) compared to windows 2000, windows xp with antivirus off, freebsd 5.x, and other distros like mepis, mandrake 10.x. (both mandrake 10 and freebsd especially fly here!)
As expected, 9.2 does not offer anything revolutionary. That’s okay as long as the box works. But some things i never loved with SUSE is that:
1. the installation takes much too long. SUSE is the slowest rpm-based distro i have seen and i have tested a lot of dirrerent distros.
2. that SUSE does things differently than others, thus chaning the overall system-layout and making migration from SUSE to e.g. debian or <enter distro of choice> more difficult. nearly nothing is at the same place or handled the same ways in the /etc folder
3. too KDE-centric. It might suit many users to have a full-fledged KDE desktop but imho, the KDE style is not far away from Windows XP’s Fisher-Price style. When will there be a beautiful KDE desktop??? (yes, start a flame war if you want. i don’t care …
)
I just have to put 9.2 on.
Sure there are some odd things but as for my box it is really running well. I have put many a linux distro on it. 9.1 was the most functional by far.