I’m sure everyone is sick of reading reviews of Suse 9.1 by now but perhaps this one is a little different. This is not an ordinary review in the sense that I don’t provide lots of colourful screenshots, or ramble on endlessly about the included software versions and other trivial things. Written from the point of view of a Debian user trying to switch to an “easier” distribution, I concentrated on how Suse stacks up compared to some of the traditional Debian strengths.
Before I begin with my impressions of Suse, I’ll start with a little background information:
I switched from Windows to Linux about 4 years ago when I finally found a distribution that didn’t annoy me, Debian. It required a bit of manual tweaking but I always found that the important things “Just worked”. Well after 3 years of just working, I finally rode my installation into the ground through a combination of kernel upgrades and running a diverse mix of packages from the “unstable”, “testing”, and even “experimental” branches of Debian. It got to the point where KDE would boot unbearably slowly, applications would fail to start, and my mouse and keyboard would stop working if I didn’t use them for a few minutes. After much fiddling I finally decided a reinstall would be the path of least resistance. Since I’d been hearing all these fantastic reviews for Suse 9.1 I thought I would give it a try; after all it sounded like this was finally a no-nonsense, “just works” distribution for the fabled average user.
First Impressions
I downloaded the FTP install version of Suse 9.1 and installed it on a spare partition. The installer is absolutely great and I had no problems with it whatsoever (looks pretty too). The install finished and I boot into my shiny new Suse 9.1 installation. At first glance, everything seems to work great, I can see the Windows shares on my roommate’s computer, the internet connection is set up and working, the KDE 3.2 menu is well organized, and the desktop gives a very polished first impression. In terms of setting up a pleasing desktop environment, Suse is far ahead of Debian.
The Problems Start
Unfortunately I immediately ran into my first problem, the wheel and the fourth button on my mouse didn’t work. So I fire up the sluggish but slick looking Yast2 and click on the mouse configuration module. My mouse, a Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical, is not present in the pitifully short list of mice to choose from. So I select the generic USB mouse and check the “Enable mouse wheel” box. The wheel still doesn’t work and I spend the next half hour unsuccessfully trying different combinations in the configuration module. Finally I decide to restart the system and voila, the wheel works (although my fourth mouse button is still broken). On a related note, this mouse, including wheel worked great with Debian on the first try.
Similarly, my keyboard was set up as a generic 104 key keyboard, when in fact it is a Logitech Cordless with all those volume wheels and special buttons. In Debian, once I had selected the proper keyboard in the KDE Control Panel, the volume wheel was automatically mapped to the volume controls of the KDE Mixer. Not so in Suse. Sure this is easy to correct but I had been hoping to leave these annoying chores behind by moving to an easier distribution like Suse.
Software Installation and Updates
Input problems aside, I decided to get on with setting up my system, which brought me directly to the next issue. Installing software in Suse is a very frustrating experience. I start up Yast2 and click on the software installation management. I don’t know why this isn’t directly in the K-menu since it’s a huge annoyance to have to start up Yast2 every time. The software installation module is very slow to start up and when it appears, offers relatively limited functionality. There is no apparent way to view only installed packages and the package information fails to show you the files that the package will install (although the embedded Yast in Konqueror does). Nevertheless the applications that were available in the database did install cleanly and did a good job of adding shortcuts to the K-Menu.
Suse has a system tray icon which automatically checks for updates and supposedly informs you if there are any available. While this is a good idea, the implementation needs some polish. There is no tooltip on the icon to check the status of updates, nor any progress indication when checking for updates. Also, if there is no updates to install, there is really no reason that this icon should even be visible. The same can be said for the system tray icon for the suseplugger application that monitors for new hardware. Why do we need to see this if there is no new hardware? Does anyone actually reconfigure their hardware so often that they need a quick link in their system tray?
Multimedia Support
Suse, like every other distribution, cannot legally ship some of the multimedia codecs with their distribution because of patent reasons. Sure enough, videos in Windows Media and other proprietary formats fail to play with the Kaffeine video player. I’m perfectly fine with this as I am used to getting these codecs via an external source from my days with Debian.
So I start my hunt for the w32codecs package which should contain all the codecs I need to play my video files. A quick search leads me to two packages on different web sites, one for the Quicktime codecs and one for the Windows Media and DivX codecs. I click on the RPM files in Konqueror to install them and the view changes to a nice overview of the package and a button to “Install with Yast”. So far so good I think and click install. After a long delay the Yast software installation module appears with no sign of my codec package, but clicking “Accept” does proceed to install the requested package.
Unfortunately my videos are still not working. Off on another web search, I find that I should install something called “avidemux”, which, after wrestling with the dependencies, I manage to do. Once again, however, this does nothing to phase my video files, which still refuse to play.
At this point I gave up on the video issue because I was sick of jumping through so many hoops to make Suse’s crippled multimedia applications play game with the additional codecs. Why does Suse even bother including the multimedia software if it is virtually useless for anything other than playing plain mpegs? I think it would be more productive to not include it at all and provide some easy instructions for adding the software from an external source.
All that was necessary to add multimedia support to Debian was one additional line in my apt sources list.
The Yast Configuration System
One of my mayor gripes with Suse is with the Yast2 configuration program. While it is nice to have all the configuration in one place, the whole thing felt quite cobbled together and is missing important features. The hardware section has an icon for setting up the mouse, but nothing for the keyboard. How is anyone supposed to know that to set up the keyboard they need to go into the KDE Control Center instead of Yast? Also, every time I access the network configuration to change an IP address or something equally trivial, Yast goes through the network card detection routine again. Why does it have to detect my network cards again if I just want to change an IP address? Yast seems to take every opportunity to waste time and make common tasks frustratingly cumbersome.
Along with being poorly organized, many icons for configuration tasks just shouldn’t be displayed by default. Everyday, mundane things like “Select keyboard layout” or “Choose language” are right next to “LVM” and “/etc/sysconfig Editor”. Suse should really move the advanced configuration options, which no ordinary users or even most knowledgeable users would ever touch, into a separate section.
Conclusion
Suse has done a lot of things right with this release, unfortunately almost none of those things are particularly useful to me in everyday operation of my computer. The important things, like software availability and management, proper detection of my basic hardware, and straightforward configuration are quite lacking and have sent me straight back to my old Debian install. I have earnestly made an effort to like this distribution and wish I could switch to something “easier” than Debian, but I just cannot bring myself to use Suse 9.1 on a regular basis.
About the Author
I am a Computer Engineering student in Victoria, Canada. I’m currently working in a research position on eye tracking technologies for the severely disabled at the University of Victoria.
Try mandrake 10 official
I agree with you completely. You may want to check out Mepis @ http://www.mepis.org. It is debian based, but very easy to set up and use.
Try Arch Linux, much better than debian.
Slackware. Its just so obvious.
The following site provides SuSE RPM packages for many great programs like Xine, MPlayer and so on:
http://packman.links2linux.org/
There you will find also the most important codecs for watching movies.
It is pretty funny to read an article that starts off how world + dog would be bored by the the gazillion of SuSE 9.1 reviews by now, but then the seasoned Debian user, who presumably read through all these SuSE-reviews as well is incapablbe of installing video support. If the author doesn’t manage to do so, at least he could have picked any of these SuSE reviews for reference, since even the lousiest of them would have pointed him to the Packman packages. No need to search the web with his pre-knoqwledge. Doesn’t sound too seasoned after all, imho.
From a two-page “review”, I expect more than lamenting about how the appearence of an icon does or does not make sense + how the author is not able to get his video playback working for 1.5 pages, where he should have been able to.
Yast isn’t the fastet beast on earth, then again, what are you people doing, really?! “Normal” people don’t install/uninstall software on a daily basis. There are only so many applications you will need and then some — so what’s the point?! Btw, when complaining about speed, it’s always nice to know the system specs.
Please stop posting empty submissions, they are even more annoying than another dozen SuSE reviews.
You are all indeed right, you should try the blahblahix distro! It is even based on a distro that was based on another distro that might bave been based on debian.
Get real guys, if someone wants to know what other distro’s there are that have no relevance to this article then they can real all your previous shameless plugs for the distro god blessed you with.
i myself still cant really believe about how crappy all the suse stuff is
there are user guides of updating suse between releases, via yast and apt-rpm… cause u cant just add another source to either and upgrade with the knowledge that it will update the system and not fuck something up
yast feels from the root on fucked, made as a configuration / package manager without any real-useful-logic, rather suse needs (as any distro) such a manager, but they dont seem to care about it
packages are sloppy too, dunno if its still like that, but the apache packages required a couple of X libs, for some reason
the list of ‘why’ questions exceeds the list of rational answers =)
s/why/crap therefore =)
for me, suse is the biggest crap i’ve ever seen, the only thing its good for is installing linux and X without any tech knowledge or so
and suse has been and is commercial… so figure out
I totally agree with you! I’m running Debian on a PC and Mandrake on my Dell laptop. This is the second time i give a chance to Suse on my laptop (9.0 and now 9.1), and one conclusion : Suse sucks for the basic task you expect it to accomplish! My external PS2 mouse never worked well, the
XFree86 config file was always crappy when generated by Sax. DVD protected multimedia etc.
On the other hand Mandrake has always worked and detected every hardware flawlessly on my laptop and just works fine!
So for me, Mandrake is a far better choice for userfriendly-newbie linux use!!!
I love it when people think that the ability to access a Windows partition is a sign of quality from a distro. Now, when are we going to read a review in which somebody says that right after installing Windows 2000/XP/2003, they accessed a linux or BSD partition without hassle ?
Funny I did the oposite
So you can play all your favourite Videos without installing obscure codec packs. And when you want th “open source experience” install Media Player Classic.
PS: Is there a way to skip all this “Linux reviews”, maybe this will leave more room for interesting OS-news.
“yast feels from the root on fucked, made as a configuration / package manager without any real-useful-logic, rather suse needs (as any distro) such a manager, but they dont seem to care about it”
You’re kidding right? Or you don’t know what you’re talking about! YAST has still some quircks and is a bit on the slow side but it is the best configuration tool of any linux distro… and no Mandrake Control Center is not as good.
Debian and SuSE are really just different flavours of Linux. If you can do one thing with Debian, and cannot do the same thing with SuSE — you’re probably lack basic Linux/Unix knowledge. That’s just fine, and there’s nothing wrong with it. You use whatever distro you find comfortable. The only question is: why go public with your problems/lack of knowledge? Debian is really a fine distribution, but most people agree, that their users are very arogant, and not really educated. This article just adds to this negative perception.
For all those of you, that find it really entertaining telling whole world: “I can’t do it!”, please remember, that every OS/Distro is as good, as its user is.
“So you can play all your favourite Videos without installing obscure codec packs. And when you want th “open source experience” install Media Player Classic. ”
I didn’t know WinXP could play Quicktime, Real Player and encrypted DVD out of the box…
“PS: Is there a way to skip all this “Linux reviews”, maybe this will leave more room for interesting OS-news.”
You mean like discussing how late Longhorn is going to be
Sorry I couln’t resist.
Tigor, you must be 12 and your daddy set up your XP system for you. You can’t play many videos on XP by default.
There is no DVD support either and if you want to play Divx and alike, you will need the exact same obscure Codec packs for Windows as you would for Linux. Go ask your daddy about it.
shares != partitions
in the meaning… setup a samba server and there you go
woolhara, no i aint kidding =)
its manages configs and packages, cool, what i say is that the quality of how it does it (the user side and code quality) is just miserable
So how is this different from other reviews? All the ingredients are there:
1) installer
2) First boot, desktop slick or not
3) hardware trouble and fixing that
4) missing apps and/or codecs and fixing that (or not)
5) Post-install configuration
6) Distro-‘war’ in the comments
Yup, I’d say this is a pretty conventional review after all. Choice of distro is a personal thing anyway (one of the reasons there are so many..).
Also, I think it’s quite useless to write a review after a couple of days of use. How a distro works after being installed for a long time is much more interesting, in my (not always) humble opinion, but those usually turn into stories longer than Lord of the Rings and contain the stuff you don’t really care about.
Oh well.. Guess there’s nothing that can be done about this. Or maybe there is, how about a rating system for articles?
It still beats me that Suse and Mandrake don’t licence these codecs (along with the css) and distribute them separately as they do with the flash plugin or other realmedia player. There is nothing wrong with that as long as they don’t keep users from getting them elsewhere.
At least that’d help those who are just starting to get these things set-up easily.
el chupacabra, please elaborate. In what ways Debian users are arrogant? I am a Debian user and I am very proud of it, but pride and arrogance isn’t same.
The author and I both have tried Debian and Suse.
But that is where the similarity ends, because if it is true that I am leaning more and more towards Debian, my view of SuSe is not (yet) quite as negative and, sorry, shallow.
He could have used apt4rpm + synaptic, which are ideal for a Debian user. Suse apt used to be a mockery of Debian apt, but these days I find them almost on a par (to be honest SuSE apt has some features which make it even better than its Debian counterpart) If he had set his sources.list correctly he could have found all he was looking for in no time.
The mouse issue: I have exactly the same mouse and it works fine, first attempt.
About starting Yast when you want to install/uninstall software: no need for that: put in your Panel the applet called: ‘Preferences’ and at the bottom of the choices you’ll find one called:YaST2 modules. So just launch the one you need.
I could go on…
Having said all that, I have been disappointed by SuSe 9.1 when compared to 9.0, which was close to perfection (only minus: rather sluggish): 9.1 is even more sluggish and quite buggy, IMO.Also I find the out of the box look and feel inferior to 9.0. A silly example: what happened to the ‘Quick Browser’ item in the K menu? It took me about 5 seconds to add it, but I doubt that a new user knows how to do that.
This “review” is really not very comprehensive. The fact that Suse, like most other distributions, does not ship full-featured multimedia/codec support is well known.
Leaving the legal impediments aside, you have to consider that development in this domain advances fast, the 3 month or so release cycle of Suse is too long to always offer recent versions of multimedia applications. So basically get your packages from third party source or (better yet) compile yourself.
Regarding the package management: Yes, yast is not fast. But apt-get neither is. But a bit of psychology must be mentioned here. In apt-get, you invoke your command on the shell and then do something else useful. So you perceive apt-get not as slow. Whereas with yast (or other graphical managers), you wait for the different dialogs and selections to appears, watching on status bars, etc…
So it is perceived slower because you wait on it.
For a list of installed packages: rpm -qa : This appears quite fast to me, don’t know what the author wants.
Regarding the network configuration thing: His reasoning appears a bit flawed to me. For sure before setting the ip address of one device, you first have to know which devices you have in your system. Sure, you do not have to detect the devices, you can also read them up somewhere (you <=> your computer program). But think: What is a frequent reason for changing an ip address? It is because you inserted new network hardware. So detecting network hardware as a preliminary step make sense (Especially as detection takes about one second). If you really do not want detection, you can use ifconfig or set it up in the configuration files.
As for some commentaries which go like “My keyboard/mouse/… does not work with Suse -> do not use Suse.”
This is a rather unhelpful way of giving advice, because one small sample (yours) does not say anything about the general state of affairs. To give good avice on this issue would be to collect a database of many users who contribute their experiences.
(Btw.: It took endless hours to configure keyboard and related stuff for a relative of mine in debian. With some configuration the umlauts worked on plain bash but not in X11, sometimes they worked in plain bash and in an X11 shell, but not in other X apps, sometimes they worked never, and so it went on and on and on…)
A quick addendum to my own post: Of course the biggest problem in the past with yast was that it wasn’t free software. But that has changed, to my best knowledge yast is licensed under the GPL in Suse 9.1. Maybe somenone who has the distro can confirm that.
“its manages configs and packages, cool, what i say is that the quality of how it does it (the user side and code quality) is just miserable”
Yep I had some weird behaviour when configuring my network card but overall I trust it more than I would trust the Mandrake Control Center although it’s not an inconditional trust!. Maybe by open sourcing it a dev group will formed around YAST ready to tackle some of its shortcomings.
It seems that a lot of the configuration tools out there uses python, perl or some other combinations and they feel slugish.
I don’t think it’s because they are the best tools for the job but rather the developer of the day assigned to these tools prefered one language over the other.
So the well known “use the best tool for the job” becomes irrelevant.
To some extend I doubt in Redmond a developer will decide to use python or perl over C just because he/she feels like it!
(as much as I dislike MS you need some consistency and policy to move forward).
Well my daddy said, i can go to http://www.quicktime.com, http://www.real.com and even to http://www.divx.com, to download the needed player/codecs in a perfectly legal way. The legality is in my opinion questionable with this ripped codecs.
PS: i would really enjoy the “Next Generation Windows” and the exciting new features. but i fear after a few posts the usual Linux here, Linux there blabla will suffocate every discussion. But you can alway disabuse me
I have inherited a Suse server and I am experiencing some of the same issues that this guy has.
http://packman.links2linux.org/
To everyone who is telling this guy to visit the pacman page, you will see that the number of packages available there is very limited compared to Debain’s repositories or Mandrake’s contrib and plf repositories.
Additionally, there is no easy way to install software from the command-line with the officially supplied tools. And running yast through the ncurses interface is not the same thing as apt or urpmi.
I have been given a Suse server to look after and while it has been reasonably stable, it is full of funny and not so funny quirks.
Instead of putting Apache’s directory in /var/www where most distributions put it, Suse puts in /srv/www/htdocs. Ok, fair enough, I can adapt to that.
But sofware installation of stuff that is not on the CDs is a huge pain as are a few major things. By default, it makes all new users part of the same “users” group, which means that all users have read and write access to each other’s directories. If you go to Yast and choose the paranoid setting for file permissions, this still does not change the default behavior and users can still read each other’s files.
Can someone tell me how to fix this, other than me creating my own /etc/skel settings? Why don’t they do it like Mandrake or Redhat or Debain,where each user is self-contained unless you otherwise tell it to share stuff with other users?
I want joe user to belong to the joe group by default and nothing else.
I need help from a Suse user who can provide a workaround for this issue. Thanks
Your choice of kernel/distro. Graphical environment optional.
“Well my daddy said, i can go to http://www.quicktime.com, http://www.real.com and even to http://www.divx.com, to download the needed player/codecs in a perfectly legal way. The legality is in my opinion questionable with this ripped codecs.”
That’s what your daddy said, fair enough. But as is with most juveniles, did you actually *listen* to your daddy and followed the links he supplied you with? No.
If you had done so, you would have found perfectly legal and (free) offerings for Linux as well. You need not install Real Player, it is preinstalled with SuSE. As for Quicktime, there are legal freeware players, I didn’t care about much, but you will find them on tucows.com, for example. Divx.com holds version for all operating systems, free.
Additionally, there is no easy way to install software from the command-line with the officially supplied tools. And running yast through the ncurses interface is not the same thing as apt or urpmi.
yast -i <package>
And yes, a simple “man yast” could have told you that.
not only yast, but simply:
rpm -i blabla.rpm
rpm -i *.rpm — this will tell you about missing dependencies as well, if you have one/a bunch of RPMs and something is missing…
how is this different to any other rpm distro?
“yast -i <package>
And yes, a simple “man yast” could have told you that.”
Thanks for the info. I am new to Suse. This still does not resolve the issue of adding additional non-suse repositories to my installation sources. I am not at work now, so I don’t have Suse at hand to see if “man yast” also resolves that.
If so, where are these repositories, other than the useless packman stuff.
“not only yast, but simply:
rpm -i blabla.rpm
rpm -i *.rpm — this will tell you about missing dependencies as well, if you have one/a bunch of RPMs and something is missing…
how is this different to any other rpm distro?”
This is different from any rpm distro in that urpmi will resolve dependencies for you and download them from an online repository. I also have not seen a large repository of rpms such as Mandrake’s contrib or plf which you can find at easyurpmi.org.
If there is, please enligthen me. I have been using Linux for years, you don’t have to explain to me that rpm -i package will install it, but if you can give me more Suse specific info, I’ll be thankful.
Notice that no one has answer my question about the default user permissions. And yes I can manually assign groups and so forth, but it’s a pain in the ass when you are dealing with hundreds of users, particularly when you want a default /etc/skel setup that makes sense.
“Installation of stuff that is not on the CDs is a huge pain”
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm
Haven’t any of you ever used Arch Linux? It bitch-slaps all the others into obscurity.
RPM and the distros based on it suck my fat balls. Debian is (officially) painfully slow at updating packages. Gentoo takes 10 years to install. Arch Linux even out-slacks Slackware.
If all you’re gonna do is fight over whether RPM or Debian is better, then you might as well just install Windows and be done with it.
Oh, ok. Well I am pretty new to apt myself, but you can install it for SuSE as well, plus synaptic. This isn’t an obscure procedure either, there are RPMs for it. Whilst I did do so, I didn’t actually install loads of stuff with it subsequently, because apt + synaptic happened to be the last things I wanted on my system for now. Though, as I take it from a SuSE forum it works fine. You can edit the list of repositories to your liking, I simply copy/pasted mine from some user entriy in a thread, I don’t know whether this specific one is “any good” by common standards, it holds like 10 (?) repository entries.
There are so many Debian users that you could make any gross generalization you like about them and easily find a few examples to make your case. The same is true of all the major distributions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization
Do you like your Arch: enjoy it, and once and forever, you Arch users, STOP annoying users of other distros. You are MUCH worse than any Winbloze fanboy.
*warning this message may be interpreted as zealot plug*
If someone is unhappy with Debian doesn’t Fedora seem like the next logical move? You got your apt-get, eye candy, new packages and multimedia repositorys (no deps to worry about) all of which he complained about. Sounds like a fit to me. Fedora doesn’t put “experimental” or “unstable” packages in its distro, It’s kinda like Debian testing but with security updates. I don’t know, everyone plugged thier distro and what seemed obvious to me (because of the articles complaints) wasn’t mentioned.
Anonymous Penguin (IP: —.ldst.cable.ntl.com)
Thanks for pointing me to apt-4-rpm. I was familiar with it from my days with Red Hat, a distribution that suffered the same ills, only solved in this sense by Fedora, but I wouldn’t deploy Fedora on a serious server.
Still, you will notice that I mentioned in my first post that Suse did not have any “officially supported” tools to do what apt-4-rpm does. They need this badly and they need it quick, in my humble opinion.
Other than this and my issue with default user groups, I am not all that displeased with Suse 9.1
This review, like most others these days, reflects that fact that the Linux market is differentiating itself. Howver, the reviews do’t reflect the fact that different Linux flavors are targeting different kinds of people. SUSE is after one kind of customer, Debian another. Reviewers need to address how well distributions meet the needs, abilities and interests of their intended users, rather than incorrectly assume that they (the reviewers) represent “The Typical Linux User”.
One flavor doesn’t appeal to everyone.
That said, if the reviewer had purchased SUSE, he might have found some of his answers in the several hundred pages of printed documention that comes in the box. Dunno if that’s part of the FTP download.
He should also acknowledge that blinding speed in configuration utilities, like Yast, is not that important to folks who use it once during the initial setup and rarely after that. i.e., most office/home users. Some people like computers because they want to fiddle with them. Some people think fiddling with computers is no more entertaining than cleaning the refrigerator. For the latter, any configuration tool is only a necessary evil.
Thanks for pointing me to apt-4-rpm. I was familiar with it from my days with Red Hat, a distribution that suffered the same ills, only solved in this sense by Fedora, but I wouldn’t deploy Fedora on a serious server.
I wouldn’t use fedora for a ‘serious server’ either, though I’m not sure why apt-4-rpm would be any better if its unsupported.
Both Suse and Debian are good distros. I have used both and I realize that they both have strengths and weaknesses. Suse is more challenged in the software selection and Debian is a bear to set up. Comparing these two distros is comparing apples to oranges as both have different target user bases. Suse is for the home or enterprise user who wants a painless install that is up and running quickly while Debian is for the geek.To compare these distos is irrelevant and surely a waste of space…and certainly my time.
“Leave Linux, go Windows XP”
This person is an idiot who is abusing the forum. If you don’t like Linux, idiot, then don’t read about it. Notice that my comment will probably be moderated down while this blatent troll stands.
“I wouldn’t use fedora for a ‘serious server’ either, though I’m not sure why apt-4-rpm would be any better if its unsupported.”
That is precisely the point I was trying to make. I gues I wasn’t sufficiently emphatic. In fact, this is the point that I am making all along. Suse doesn’t have a good, OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED, software installer. Debian and Mandrake do.
Unfortunately, I cannot switch distributions right now as the server that I am tasked to support runs well, even though it makes simple things such as the above difficult for me, and the company had standardized on Suse prior to my recent arrival.
Thanks for the info. I am new to Suse.
Apologies for being a bit rude. But next time please use “I don’t know a way” rather than “there is no way”.
Btw, what’s your objection to the ncurses interface? Yes, “yast -i” will be faster if you know what you require, but the menu system lets you browse what’s available when you’re not quite sure.
This still does not resolve the issue of adding additional non-suse repositories to my installation sources.
Haven’t got a SuSE box to hand, so I’m not sure. But there’s certainly a screen in the graphical and ncurses interfaces to set your installation source(s). I don’t know of any non-SuSE repositories though.
There’s 4 GB of stuff in the SuSE FTP repository (excluding sources). If you can’t find what you look for in there, Packman offers additional packages specifically for SuSE, although unfortunately not in the form of a yast-repository. And of course there’s always install-from-source …
I partially agree with you about the lack of officially supported tools to install software, but I believe that SuSe does this on purpose: this way they don’t have to take responsability for what hits the apt servers.
But I have also good reasons to believe that apt has SuSe’ unofficial blessing: there is a link to apt in Konqueror and this time it is quite remarkable that the component ‘base’ contains the same identical packages as the official CDs.
Now that you are saying that this is a server you are concerned about, I am really, really curious what uber-neccessary stuff you need that is not already on the suse CDs server-wise where suse is big-time into the server market whilst 99% of the other distros are not.
I went through dependency hell trying to give the Fedora Core releases a chance. I was coming from a solid and well-supported RedHat 9 experience. I’ve been doing admin work for fun and for pay since my first installation of Slackware 10 years ago. I know how to find my way around in a few distros, but mostly am interested in getting set up quickly with a minimum of hassle. It can be disappointing to struggle to build something equal to, or better than, what one had before. Fedora 2 in particular really had me steamed, and that’s no way to be. I found a home with Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0 and the “extra” rpms from FreshRPMS/DAG. Even my mplayer and xine installs are lovely. I like the idea that support will be around awhile, and I like the backported 2.6 kernel features (I’m in the minority here, I think.) The great thing is, there really is a distro for everyone – – it’s really about what you need or want to do with your Linux boxes.
This person is an idiot who is abusing the forum. If you don’t like Linux, idiot, then don’t read about it.
You’re complaining about that? Have you ever read Windows or MS comments? 90% linux zealot trolling. This is nothing.
I partially agree with you about the lack of officially supported tools to install software
What do you mean by that? Yast is a very good installer: it does all the dependency and download management you could ask for, it has decent interfaces both in X and on a text terminal, and it’s under the GPL now.
Access to apt or urpmi repositories is no use if the packages in there aren’t made for your distribution.
I must have used almost every OS in the world, ok exept for
some rare ones, i did not instantly love Linux but i can not live without it these days. Suse Linux is a great distro but its really made for desktop and it to commercial for me.
But from a business perspective you can not get anything better.
Mandrake and Xandros, even Lycoris (whoops where is the article??) and Linspire are trying to do that to.
ps. i am running the Linspire 5.0 alpha right now and its the best kernel 2.6 based distro out there. It reconizes every hardware piece know the men and it fast.
Suse is german (ok before they got bought by Novell) and its the same as german cars, overall good but sometimes it uses to many electronic and bloated feautures that often do not work well in the beginning. With Novell behind Suse and Ximian in the house i think Suse will become the most important operatingsystem (besides Windows) in the IT industry in a couple of years. I bet Novell and SAP are talking right now..
None of the reviews that I’ve read have mentioned whether SuSE 9.1 supports Mount Rainier rewrite out of the box, although SuSE seem pretty quiet about it, too (despite employing the maintainer). I’d really expect reviews to cover this kind of stuff, especially since the current generation of distros is likely to be the first which doesn’t require kernel patching and extra userland stuff just to make things like CD-MRW work. It is news!
So, any reports of success, anyone?
The author forgot to mention what are the spec of his machine.
http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/prof/system_requ…
> At least 128 MB are required for the installation with YaST2
> in graphical mode;
I have 128mb of RAM and it told me he needed a swap partition to run the installation program. :/
Running OpenOffice and FireFox with SuSE9.1 it is really slow…I mean a lot of disk accesses when I have to switch.
Also my fan is running often even with only a terminal windows open…
My specs are:
celeron400, 128mbram, toshiba satellite
(My swap is located at the end of my hdd)
I don’t have those problems with NT4…
Can’t upgrade to 256mb…128mb is the max.
In my little experience running SuSE9.1 with 128mb is frustating.
Why do we care what the ‘expert reviewer’ du jour thinks? It’s always the same.. Most ‘reviews’ of a distro are actually reviews of its installer, with maybe a bit about installing packages.
I suppose if he is compiling kernels he can’t be totally clueless, but I for one find it hard to take any review seriously when it’s written by someone who can’t get his mouse wheel working. Especially after using linux for “four years.”
It’s almost as bad as the pridctalbe stream of “try this distro!” posts. What, are you waiting for someone to try your beloved distro and heap praise on you for recommending it? If there’s one thing less useful than yet another ewak review, it’s a one line endorsement by a random stranger on the internet. Thanks for trying to help us out though
I really shouldn’t stay up all night, it makes me cranky
You are an arch linux user? Sorry to hear that.. I was hoping arch linux users were smarter than that…
i am sorry to see this but why do you have to start about
Suse 9.1 not running fast on a !celeron 400! notebook?
Its just the way it is. Buy a better/faster notebook.
In this case it have little to do with you internal memory but a lot with processor, video, and harddisk speed.
Suse can run on a celeron 400 mhz but with kde up , openoffice and mozilla running things get a little slow, thats normal.
Do not start about NT4 its old , run XP with Openoffice on
your notebook and then come back again.
“access to apt repositories is no use if the packages in there aren’t made for your distribution”
You have just discovered the hot water: did you follow my link and did you notice that it was about apt *for SuSe*?
A Computer Engineering student that as been using Linux for 4 years and still can’t fix his Linux installation. Troll or newbie?
I always thought that most Linux distros were very similar (as in software). This is very weird that someone would change from one distro to another.
“Debian is a bear to set up.”
The new Debian Installer makes it much, much, MUCH easier to set up. It’s still text based, but it is dead simple. The developers have released 4 betas and are now working on a test release candidate. You can download a 110 megabyte Sarge base install iso to check it out.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
You can choose whether you want 2.4.26 or 2.6.6 kernel and then install Sarge, which is pretty much up to date (KDE 3.2.2 for example).
I encourage anyone who has thought about Debian but been scared off try the new installer. It rocks and will bring Debian to a whole new user base of people who thought the old installer was hard.
“access to apt repositories is no use if the packages in there aren’t made for your distribution”
You have just discovered the hot water: did you follow my link and did you notice that it was about apt *for SuSe*?
Nope I didn’t, but I did now. Great effort!
But what’s the point? Yast already provides the functionality that apt does, with good X and ncurses interfaces.
Rather than providing existing packages through a new installer, the effort would better be spent on a Yast repository with stuff that SuSE doesn’t provide. The Packman archive is nice, but it would be great if it could be accessed through Yast.
I agree with you.DEBIAN GNU/LINUX,FedoraCore,Slackware,MepisLinux(Based on Debian) etc. are free!Free as freedom!You don’t have to be club member,you don’t have to preorder or to search ftp sites so maybe you’ll find them.When they released you download straight!I don’t understand why ppl like to buy Suse and Mandrake?Let’s take from both distros away controlcenters then there is no use from both.when you use those distros you learn Suse and Mandrake you don’t learn Linux.Mandrake community or official the difference is community was beta or rc.Right?then why they sold to the people?Because the noticed people are not downloading and testing so they made up to release the beta or rc under name of community and they sold it and as well they made the users to test it!Then they released the official version to sell to the people again!When we compare to prices and stability package management and so on,I say DEBIAN GNU/LINUX FEDORACORE(FEDORACORE uses SElinux PERFECT!)SLACKWARE!MEPIS,KNOPPIX etc.
To everyone who is telling this guy to visit the pacman page, you will see that the number of packages available there is very limited compared to Debain’s repositories or Mandrake’s contrib and plf repositories.
Mandrake and Debian have always been community oriented distro’s while SuSE has always been a business oriented distro. SuSE does not encourage 3rd party software repositories because of the destabilizing effect incorrectly compiled software can have on their products. When customers complain to SuSE’s support network that package X isn’t working they don’t usually mention that they installed package Y which broke X’s dependencies.
Instead of putting Apache’s directory in /var/www where most distributions put it, Suse puts in /srv/www/htdocs. Ok, fair enough, I can adapt to that.
SuSE is LSB Certified and that means their filestructure follows the defined standards as set in the FHS 2.2.
But sofware installation of stuff that is not on the CDs is a huge pain as are a few major things.
You intend to install non-certified software on a production server at your company…….right, carry on. Do you at least attempt to install these packages to a test server first or are you installing directly to your production server?
By default, it makes all new users part of the same “users” group, which means that all users have read and write access to each other’s directories.
The way Yast is structured it requires a group to be pre-existing before a user can be added to it. I don’t see a workaround for what you want using Yast. Have you tried writing a bash script for useradd?
<p>But I have also good reasons to believe that apt has SuSe’ unofficial blessing: there is a link to apt in Konqueror and this time it is quite remarkable that the component ‘base’ contains the same identical packages as the official CDs.</p>
Apt4RPM support in SuSE is a result of SuSE’s UnitedLinux connection to Connectiva. I doubt that it will ever be fully supported.
For that matter, I don’t see what Apt4RPM does that Yast doesn’t when you are only installing the RPMs that SuSE officially distributes.
SuSE does not encourage 3rd party software repositories
Which is a bit of a shame. They still do provide instructions on how to do it though:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/02/yast_instsrc.html
because of the destabilizing effect incorrectly compiled software can have on their products.
Anyone using non-official packages has to be aware that that might break things and that resulting problems can’t be blamed on the distribution.
Packman is not the oh-so-great repository. As far as I am concerned, I reffered to Packman because of the video playback-stuff. That is what Packman is reffered to in 99% of the cases, if I assess this correctly. There wasn’t more criticism in this review beyond video playback and the “icon” issue…
Btw, this icon *does* make sense, even if there are no updates available. Only, the author was kinda in a rush to get his review out of the door. Next time, actually try to click the icon, then you will find that there is a use to it beyond indicating the availability of updates.
For a while now I have been a MEPIS(Debian based)user. Yet, every time a new distro is posted or reviewed on Distrowatch I’m like a kid in the “PC” candy store…I want to try this and this and that one. I’ve tried SUSE and I have to say agree with some of the writers views. As I continue to sort through distros for “the one” my main likes are; ease of install, speed of install, packages included and do they “work”. Pretty simple. I do like having my drives all set up on first boot, my mouse working and detected correctly. All the little quirky, silly things that are come pre-configured save me time. Which could save me money. I can’t tell you how sweet it is to boot up a system already loaded with software…Gimp, Open Office(though I prefer Koffice these days) etc, etc, etc. I don’t have to install MS Office, Photoshop, winzip, vuepro and other faves. A fresh Windows install with packages takes hours where MEPIS for example zooms in and comes full of goodies. I still have to fix somethings but how can you beat the price. SUSE just takes too much of my time to get it the way I want it. And if I mess up MEPIS because I’m tweaking too much it re-installs fast and has the option to save my root/home folder. That’s not only MEPIS I know, I just know SUSE takes up time. Now I haven’t tried 9.1 and I am tempted as I said I want to know what’s new and generally I will follow what makes my life easier and better. Once you have a good apt-get sources list, apt-get dist-upgrade or synaptic work great for updating your system. I had to learn how and I still don’t know very much but that’s part of the journey too…
Oy, time for coffee
Linux RULES!!!
“One of my mayor gripes with Suse is with the Yast2 configuration program. While it is nice to have all the configuration in one place, the whole thing felt quite cobbled together and is missing important features. The hardware section has an icon for setting up the mouse, but nothing for the keyboard. How is anyone supposed to know that to set up the keyboard they need to go into the KDE Control Center instead of Yast?”
Ummm..the keyboard config is in the hardware section, and it is labeled keyboard. I don’t have any idea about the FTP install however as I buy the professional version. The FTP install could very well be different with what it allows you to configure through there.
@ DrillSgt — I just checked with my bought 9.1 pro install — there is no keyboard entry either in Hardware — maybe a bug report is due..?!
I stand corrected on the keyboard config as I just looked again. I was thinking of SaX2. You are correct there is no entry in Yast directly. I apologize for my confusion. Too early and not enough coffee yet
I really have problems with this article. I find it very hard to believe a guy who claims to already have 4 years experience with Linux would find SuSE Linux 9.1 difficult to install and configure. Though actually it’s not suprising when you read the beginning of his article where he himself drove his Debian system into the ground basically due to his own user screw ups.
The cordless keyboard and mouse issue I also found hilarious since I have the same dam keyboard and mouse which was auto-detected by YaST during my installation in both the previous SuSE 9.0 and SuSE 9.1. It’s a Logitech Cordless Freedom Keyboard that came with the Cordless MouseMan Optical 4 button mouse (if you include the cordless wheel). Oh, yeah the scroll on pages works by default. Though just like when I used this Logitech cordless keyboard with Windows XP the special feature buttons didn’t work by default. In XP I had to download the software from Logitech but Logitech doesn’t offer support for Linux. So for SuSE Linux I went to http://www.kde-apps.org/ did a quick search and found a nifty little utility called Media-Detect which works with such keyboards and mice. Guess this guy missed that site during his years experience but make you wonder what he really did to screw up the installation himself.
The complaints he had with YaST and the desktop made me laugh again. First YaST and SuSE over all is not slow. This is most likely due to the hardware he had which he failed to list which may have been improperly detected or configured by the user. The latter I would presume since he already stated he screwed up his Debian system over time with constant user end issues. I’ve tested SuSE on two older systems Celeron 1 GHz/512MB RAM/Geforce FX 5200 and a Celeron 500 MHz/128MB RAM/Geforce 2MX and both ran SuSE Linux fine even back at version 9.1. YaST also partitioned WinXP (NTFS) quite smart and my dual boot systems worked fine under the 2.4 kernel and 2.6. If this guy spent any real time with SuSE and YaST he would of seen it offers better hardware plug & play detection than any other distro only comparable to Windows XP. Installing programs with YaST is a breeze since it has an auto-detect dependency checker built in which gives advice to the user when an error or conflict is detected. YaST is found in the SuSE start menu but I guess this was not easy enough for the writer of the article to locate. So what about the KDE Control Center….not good enough either? SuSE Plugger and Watcher has no place on the toolbar? Well if you don’t like it then just remove it by right clicking your mouse on the toolbar. Oh that’s right you some how screwed up your hardware configuration. Besides being able to remove the icons do you really know what they do and why they are running?
Multimedia support also made me laugh. Crap how many times do we need to hear people wine about not being able to have codecs that Windows doesn’t even come standard with out paying for? I didn’t realize Quicktime comes with Windows. Though I did notice that I have no difficulty surfing sites that require support for codecs such as Flash, Quicktime, AVI, etc. The first thing I did to test this was to go to movie trailer site and streaming radion stations to test both Kaffeine and XMMS. If I require any licensed codec not included due to cost of licensing issues then I can easily download the codec from the developer or another not so legal developer like those for MPlayer. Anyway, the point is it can be done and those that bitch really have no clue or interest in the legality of licenses for codecs.
What I’d like to know is did this guy really explore SuSE or did he just set out to bash it in typical Troll like fashion being a Debian user? Seems to me that he made several points that either make him seem very computer illiterate or that he’s out to be a Troll against SuSE because of his love for Debian. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ve used Windows since it first came out and tested a variety of distros both RPM and Debian based. SuSE Linux is the only one I’ve found that gets it right on so many levels. It’s the only distro I really felt comfortable coming from Windows to Linux. The reasons this guy had issues with SuSE are clear to me and they had nothing to do with the distro itself.
Arch users are the new Gentoo users – which in turn replaced Debian users as the most zealoty distro fanatics.
I mean they are all fine distros, but is this distro bashing needed?
I really hate there is no way for a user to edit their post once it’s posted. Anyway, in the second paragraph I meant to say “if you include the scroll wheel”. In the third paragraph during the comment about the test systems it should be ” and both ran SuSE Linux fine even back at version 9.0.”.
As I apply yet another patch to my “other platform” X-tra P-lump clients, I wonder how many more times I can patch this proverbial tire before it falls completely apart.
Yet another lost opportunity to install a distribution of Linux.
>I really have problems with this article. I find it very hard to believe a guy who claims to already have 4 years experience with Linux would find SuSE Linux 9.1 difficult to install and configure
I have years of Linux experience as well and bought two previous versions of SuSE (full store-bought boxed sets) and never did get either one working right. The CD-Rom completely stopped working and my USB mouse & keyboard only worked if I unplugged them, rebooted and plugged them back in. I don’t find his experience with SuSE unusual at all.
SuSe apt4rpm happens to offer about 1,500 packages on top of what you find in the CDs, and many of them are very useful.
It seems very simple to me why it is needed.
When you next try to change from Debian, give Slackware 9.1 a try, because this was the only Linux distribution that recognises ALL of my hardware without a hitch.
“A Computer Engineering student that as been using Linux for 4 years and still can’t fix his Linux installation. Troll or newbie?”
Newbie for sure. Familiarity with Linux does not equal familiarity with rpm. Familiarity with Debian does not equal familiarity with rpm. Familiarity with apt does not equal rpm.
Additionally, these distros that include control centers, such as Yast or Mandrake Control Center are not all that they are cracked up to be. These control centers do accomplish their purpose in placing system administration/configuration all in one place, as well as greatly simplifying those tasks for newbies.
There is a price though. The distro makers make certain assumptions for the users, which the user may not know. For instance, if you set up just one network card via dhcp in Mandrake, a dhcp server will be installed. The Mandrake Control Center will then wish to setup any additional network cards as having their ip addressed assigned from that server. That works well if you expect it and know it has occurred. If you don’t, you can spend hours tracking down the config file which must be edited to allow static addressing of your other cards. And this is just one example. Another is Nvidia drivers. Yes the control centers may find and load them, but have no way to add additional options you may wish to use, in the XF86config.
Other posters have included links to third-party Suse repositories that would have solved the author’s problem installing the video codecs. But how would the author have possibly known those repositories existed? Even if the author did know of those repositories, that doesn’t mean the author would have known how to add those repositories in Suse.
I guess I just can’t understand why so many posters are ragging on the author, thinking familiarity with Debian translates to familiarity with Suse.
It’s nice to see that, when someone talks about a linux distro. Everyone try to say : “hey linux xxxxx is better than yyyy, yyyy sucks!”. I believe that’s the worst manner to convert users to the penguin.
Never tried directly Debian, i’ve tried Slackware, SuSE 9.1, Red Hat since the valhalla release, Mepis and other live distros. Every distro has strenght and weakness, but the most important thing is: it’s linux, not ms.
These are just your personal observations not a real review,just sounds like your whining.
I wrote a similar review shortly before this was posted.I tried out SUSE 9.1 Pro for the same reasons: I wanted to try out an “easy” distro since I managed to trash Gentoo, and see if I wouldn’t have to fuss with all the little settings. I tried to be as unpretentious as possible, but it’s hard to do when you’ve used distros that like you said, just work, such as OpenBSD, Debian, and Gentoo.
I experienced all of these problems and more. I think the largest problem I had with SUSE (that’s so easy to do with other distros) was trying to add outside software. While I eventually stumbled upon the packman site and managed to get everything working with Mplayer, it definitely took a lot more work than I ever had to do with any distro. Dependency hell is still there, as I soon found while attempting to install Python2.
Texstar just released a new PCLinuxOS LiveCD that absolutely trounces this distribution. Once I discovered dependency handling is centered around apt, SUSE was immediately wiped from the drive. I have to give SUSE credit in that I guess if you just use the default setup, it’s wonderful, as the office suite and miscellaneious customizations are top-notch.
First, most reviews are prefaced with the standard, “I have used distro X for ? years but I decided to give distro Y a shot for 4 days”. This is a rediculous basis for a review as 90% of it will be filled with bitchiness because some nagging little thing isn’t done the way the reviewer has always done it before.
What I want is a review by a long time user of that distro detailing how the new version has changed and improved from previous versions.
SuSE 9.1 is very different from SuSE 9.0 in more ways than if the installer detects your mouse and keyboard.
For instance, SuSE seems to have dropped Apache 1.3 for Apache 2. PHP was segmented into more than a dozen sub-modules, how can the begining admin understand which module is the right one for their needs?
SuSE decided to default to the use of submount, an issue which has confused a great number of previous SuSE users and something that should have been discussed more. In some ways it’s as controversial as GNOME and spatial file viewing.
If you’re going to complain about YaST then pick something other than package installation because YaST does about 50 other things. How well does it handle partitioning? What’s the LVM management like? Samba config? MTA? Proxy? Firewall? How about the VNC Remote Administration setup?
Essentially, if you’re going to do a review, do something usefull and don’t just rehash what everyone else has already said.
It appears a bit strange to me that quite some posts here find fault in Suse (yast), in that installing “outside” software is hard, especially that dependencies are not resolved gracefully. Yup, that is the very nature of “outside” software! You can not criticize that.
If you want to install software on your distribution which is not covered in its repositories, why not use source packages? That is the intended way!
Suse Sucks….I been saying that forever! No apt no swaret not even a sensible method for building from source….it blows. Basically you have to “re-learn” Linux. I mean who puts the Cdrom and floppy under /media when /mnt already exists. Stupid.
-Nx
Sorry, I don’t have much time to reply to all the comments (holy crap there’s a lot of them) so I’ll just say a few things to the general points I found in the comments (not real quotes).
“The packman site has all this” – Yes, but 1) A new user wouldn’t know about this and 2) It’s still just some random site, there is no assurance that it will be there tomorrow.
“Use apt4rpm, it will solve all problems” – I considered this, and actually did install it, but had several problems with it.
1. There was no “official” suse sources. Suddenly I’m moving to an installation method that Suse doesn’t support, if anything goes wrong I can no longer depend on Suse’s support department. Not an option.
2. Why do I have to install a package manager from some random third party site just to get decent installs of my software? This is an integral part of the system!
“Suse is meant for begginners, you should analyze it from that point of view” – Suse Personal Edition is meant for beginners. Suse Pro, which is basically the FTP version, is not. It includes compilers and servers and is most definitely meant for the advanced user. The speed of configuring and ease of software installation IS important. It just detracts so much from the overall perception of the OS if something as simple as changing an IP address takes a long time.
“You’ve been using Linux for 4 years and can’t get your mouse wheel working? You must not be qualified to write this review then.” – I clearly stated that I wanted an easier distro than Debian. Yes, I can get my mouse wheel working by editing XF86Config-4 by hand but that does not excuse Suse’s graphical tools from not doing the job.
And @ Dark_Knight:
I agree that the reason my Debian installation was screwed up was mainly my fault. I recompiled the newest kernels with probably not enough knowledge about configuration options, ran a bunch of programs that were pulled directly from CVS, and ran some experimental packages. However, this does not make me unqualified for a SuSe review and really has nothing to do with it.
Your hardware working has nothing to do with mine not working, even if it is the same hardware.
Yast is slow in performing common tasks that would be fast in Windows (like changing an IP address).
The Yast software installation, while great for installing the packages on the CD, is limited otherwise, I explained why in the article.
suse is the _only_ distro that cant detect my network card!!!
thats really sad – i thougt id try it but now…
I’ve got 2 installs of Gentoo and 2 installs of SuSE, one desktop and one server of each. So far I’d have to say SuSE is by far the most polished and user friendly distro I’ve seen. I’ve had zero problems with it.
When it comes to getting your media codecs I have to ask, how is going to Packman.de and getting the necessary stuff different from any other rpm based distro? Fedora, Mandrake you name it, you have to go hunt this stuff down on all of them. This is a problem with non-apt rpm based distros, not SuSE. Gentoo, Arch, Debian-apt don’t have these problems because they have public, not corporate, repositories that say here I am and also here are all your dependancies that don’t worry or care about copyright or dmca violations. What would be nice is if they offered a single rpm that enabled EVERYTHING on the video and web browser front for a fee or something. Like $10 bucks or whatever and here you go so the newbie can avoid a hassle.
I’ve found SuSE 9.1 to just work and work well for basic everyday desktop or server needs. I personally don’t like it as a Linux power user. I prefer the way Gentoo empowers the skilled admin whilst providing the ultimate (IMHO) package management system. I also have zero tolerance for rpm hell. I really hate rpms as much as I hate Windows, but thats another subject.
This is the fouth time I give SuSe a chance 7.2, 8.1, 9.0, 9.1 but still very slow compare to Mandrake 10 and Fedora 2
Why It is Slow???
Ener Slower than WinXp? Why???
Thanks for the help , please let me know
Robert, Please Contact me at [email protected]
When it comes to getting your media codecs I have to ask, how is going to Packman.de and getting the necessary stuff different from any other rpm based distro?
Very true, I should have mentioned this in the article.
Also since people have said that I didn’t include my hardware specs, here they are:
Athlon XP 1600+
256MB Ram
Realtek 8139 Network Card (8139too)
3Com OfficeConnect Network Card (tulip)
Logitech Elite Desktop Combo (Mouseman Optical cordless mouse and Cordless Keyboard)
Geforce 2MX 400 64MB Video
I didn’t include the specs in the article because I didn’t think the information was particularly relevant. The only hardware I had problems with was the mouse and keyboard, which I mentioned.
On another note: I managed to basically fix my Debian installation. It needed some serious spring cleaning of the cruft that had accumulated over the years.
Forgot the soundcards:
AC97 Builtin Sound (disabled in bios)
Diamond Monster MX400 Soundcard (almost as crappy as the onboard sound
)
Just wanted to say thanks for your time and effort. Your experience was very much like mine although I went from gentoo to suse and then back to gentoo. Suse didn’t really *work* like gentoo and debian do. Nothing against suse. I did like the centralized management for most things, although it was clunky at times. It is great for someone starting out on linux, but for someone who has run linux for a while (5 years for me) it wasn’t what I wanted. Personal opinion, that’s all. Once again, thanks for your time!
For mission critical systems i use OpenBSD, besides that
i personally think SuSE linux 9.1 is the best currently
avaible linux desktop derivate.
Don’t take very many of these comment personal, I don’t believe for one minute that one person who has commented here has enjoyed the perfect Linux install without having some, or many, problems.
I am retired and my hobby for the last four years has been the search for that elusive perfect Linux install. I have installed more distributions of Linux than I can remember. I buy CD’s by the hundred packs. I have three test computers running 24/7. I have no life. I am obsessed. I live on coffee and soda crackers.
What day is it? I mean, what day is it?
I have never found a Linux distribution that didn’t display some shortcomings.
Out of all these hundreds of tries, I have come to one conclusion: it doesn’t exist! IT DOSEN”T EXIST! But it might be out there — it could happen! So I will keep trying. I will go on.
The best one can hope for is that you get an install that nearly does it all, and that whatever it doesn’t do is an easy fix.
Just remember: The definition of insanity is making the same mistake over and over and expecting different results.
The Mad Installer — OUT!
PS: Wanted, good cheap CD burners. I keep wearing them out.
:-/
First, most reviews are prefaced with the standard, “I have used distro X for ? years but I decided to give distro Y a shot for 4 days”. This is a rediculous basis for a review as 90% of it will be filled with bitchiness because some nagging little thing isn’t done the way the reviewer has always done it before.
I tried to stay away from nagging at little differences, I don’t care about how KDE looks or what applications are installed by default. My main complaints were with the software installation system and Yast which are not exactly little things.
Sorry I didn’t discuss more Yast issues, most of the things you list don’t apply to my setup.
Our mission critical systems use a mix of Redhat EL3 and AS2.1. I myself use RH9 which when tuned and updated properly is the best desktop distro (IMHO). peace!
>-
Wow..
Take it easy man.. I thought retirement was supposed to be about relaxing on the beach with a Corona. We don’t want to find anyone slumped over their keyboard because their install of UltimateHardcoreEasyLinux 9.32 didn’t recognize their soundcard for the umpteenth time
Thanks for the comment. Maybe you should write the review to end all reviews.
Cheers,
Leo
Well, i went the other way … =)
Been doing debbie for a while workstationwise but went for Lizzard King 9.1. Downloaded and installed both Mplayer and Ogle, both doing their jobs perfectly after installation with Yast. On graphics and programming tools, its all what one can want with the default install. Language, fonts, keyboard logitech coordless, no glitch. As for a simple install with all the needed candy, it works just as one would like it. It would be nice to have Mplayer and Ogle or something alike on the default install though. On the other hand its an easy komplemetary install.
I didn’t know WinXP could play Quicktime, Real Player and encrypted DVD out of the box…
Any you would want real player because????? Any quicktime….thats a tough one to download and install.
Real Player Sucks Ass
Fedora doesn’t put “experimental” or “unstable” packages in its distro, It’s kinda like Debian testing but with security updates.
What are you smoking? Selinux, 4K stack, etc.
Fedora is a testing ground for new technologies that are going to be incorperated into Red Hat’s commerical branch.
Fedora is HIGHLY experimental!
Honestly I can completely see the point of this post. Most of the problems that people complain about in Linux Distro reviews are all problems that Windows has overcome for the most part or does at least solves these problems in a much cleaner way. Don’t get my wrong Linux has many advantages over non open source OSs such as Windows but I honestly think it could be much better than it is currently. With all problems it seems Linux desktop users having still I’m beginning to think that Linux is much further that I expected from being a replacement for Windows on the desktop. An interesting point may be that I almost never hear about people complaining about linux or particular distros when it comes to comand line usage and non graphical usages of linux. I guess when it comes to GUI and destop usage that Linux still has some improvement to be made until people can satisfied for the most part.
why move from debian ??
whats the bad in debian ??