The SuSE linux distribution has been on people’s radar in the past year since it became an acquired property of Novell. One of the flagship features of SuSE has always been YaST, SuSE’s installation and system management tool. Interesting to see what YaST was like now that it has been open source’d by Novell & share the results here with the screenshots.
Looks like SUSE 9.2 is being released on Nov 1.
http://www.linux-knowledge-portal.org/de/news-187.php (German)
YAST in the screenshots look, well, a lot like YAST. It’s a good GUI for admin’ing Linux. For simply managing software packages, Red Carpet is much more my cup of tead, though.
As for the 9.2 release, I am v-e-r-y curious how, or if, it will differ from the fortcoming Novell Linux Desktop (NLD_. There’s been, I think, an assumption that NLD will be released as a consumer product, priced like SUSE. I’m not convinced; it may be targetted as an enterprise release and priced accordingly. In any case, some interesting things are happening in parts of Novell/SUSE — Mono, Project Utopia, Beagle, Dashboard, Tomboy, Robert Love’s kernels — here’s hoping they ship. somewhere, soon.
I wish I could share the enjoyment of Suse and Yast like many others did. I installed Suse from Novell’s resource kit they were giving away for free a month or two ago. It was nice and all, but as the above poster stated, its just not my cup of tea. Something about the interface just didn’t sit right with me.
Sorry, but it doesn’t look any different from 9.0 version does it?
The same theme, the same icons, the same menus hell even the same mouse cursors and windecs
I was expecting to see something beautified, at least on look and feel front. Maybe some integration with GTK could help too. How is NLD going to live with this YAST look’n feel?
Also, screenshots have been resized and the text on screenies is near to unreadble here.
My biggest problem with SuSE is that the version of GNOME included although Ximian patched is pretty cruddy in comparison to 2.6, 2.8, or even the default 2.x included with RHEL.
GNOME is a second class citizen to SuSE, and until they change that, I won’t run SuSE.
Presumably, NLD or SUSE 9.2 or both will include a decent Gnome installation. I’m sure those Gnome developers Novell brought over from Ximian aren’t working in KDE.
Also, look at James Cogley’s new 2.8.1 version of ULB-Gnome for SUSE. It’s quite nice.
I was notified by SUSE tech support that SUSE 9.2 will include many additional wireless drivers. Hopefully this also means WEP will function and no more messing with the ndis wrapper module. I loved 9.1 on my Dell Inspiron 8100 but didn’t have much success with configuring my wireless card, which for me is essential. I found YaST quite convenient and easy to use.
I wonder how long Novell will keep the Suse name alive for…any clues? Long term frankly I would think they would want to rebrand it as Novell, the Suse brand itself really doesn’t have much presence in American businesses…
“Also, screenshots have been resized and the text on screenies is near to unreadble here.”
I also had this problem. Usually when a screenshot has been reduced like that, I can mouse over the pic and my cursor changes to a magnifying glass with a +. Clicking the picture will enlarge it to full size. I think they forgot to enable this feature. Or their saving bandwidth ($$).
… they have just been reduced in the browser. Try right-clicking and selecting “View Image” to see the full screenshots. Inconvenient, yes, but hardly a major issue.
I wonder how long Novell will keep the Suse name alive for…any clues? Long term frankly I would think they would want to rebrand it as Novell, the Suse brand itself really doesn’t have much presence in American businesses…
Apparently longer than the Ximian brand, not what happened to http://ximian.com/ . And in contrary to the Ximian logo the SuSE logo early on got extended by an “a Novell business” subtitle which suggests that the brand is there to stay, at least in Europe where the brand is known already anyway.
Very nice. 🙂 SuSE just keeps rising. I see that the detractors are out in force, though. Novell has nothing to worry about, though; they should just keep the ol’ nose to the grindstone and plow on ahead. There are detractors with every OS (and sometimes for no other reason than jealousy of the wonderful features and look of things).
I checked out the downloadable demo of SuSE awhile back, and was pleasantly surprised, and very pleased to hear about the 64-Bit version. Coupled with WINE–and it’s interesting to note one of the guys with WINE wound up with SuSE–what more do I need in the interim before my own OS is finished.
–EyeAm
“Where inspiration meets the light.”
http://s87767106.onlinehome.us
Seriously… it’s good but from the praise it got I was hoping for better. I got SuSE hoping that yast would generally make admin less of a pain, and well… it didn’t. For beginners it’s not much better than other distros and for anything advanced you always end up resorting to the commandline to sort things out.
I’ve been using SuSE Linux Professional with highend software Maya, Shake, etc since 9.0 and even back then I was happier than a pig in poop to drop Windows entirely in the network for SuSE Linux. Red Hat Linux is nice but I found when comparing RPM based distributions that SuSE Linux AG and now Novell at the helm understand consumers wants and needs. Not only are they cost effective but also know how to simplify the transition for users (corporate and private) from Windows to Linux. I’m excited to see what they’ve improved on in the next release of SuSE Linux 9.2 Professional and Novell Linux Desktop. Does anyone know if Novell has any plans to release a new server line too?
>>Does anyone know if Novell has any plans to release a new server line too?
Open Enterprise Server looks like it might be out by early 2005.
http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/
>>I am v-e-r-y curious how, or if, it will differ from the fortcoming Novell Linux Desktop
Well NLD is going to be severely stripped down (not even a text editor!). I think SUSE 9.2 will be upgraded packages with some backporting from NLD. Things like:
– beagle + gtk fileselector intergration
-YAST 2 gtk theming. There was a screenshot a few months ago, looked *VERY* nice.
-netapplet
I have only one problem with suse: the /opt mania. All things goes to /opt directory: the KDE, the Gnome, etc.
I dunno about Yast (or any other GUI config apps for that matter). When I was running SuSE I found that I had to correct my network preferences that YaST couldn’t get right. I did like the network profiles thing for roaming between networks though.
I like the /opt system, it means /usr isn’t bulging with a couple of thousand programs and config files are easier to find. That said, the best option would be to have a /usr/kde symlinked to /usr/kde-2.3.1 and likewise for gnome. It’s already been done for X11 so it’s hardly that big a deal. Unfortunately the FHS people have been wasting time with frankly unimportant stuff (anyone remember their /mnt mess?) instead of tackling the big issues.
As regards YaST, it was great back in the late ninties (my first distro was SuSE 6.0), but it’s kinda showing it’s age now. A lot of modules are a bit hard to use, and more are just glorified text editors – the DHCP configuration being a case in point. You have to look up all the man pages before you have even the smallest idea of what to do. They really need to work on making it easier to use and building in support for common network tasks like DHCP, web-server maintenance, FTP-server maintenance and mail-server maintenance.
NLD has been in beta for a while, so, presumably, some folks know for sure, but are NDA’d.
If SUSE 9.2. is released on 1 November, I can’t imagine it will include Beagle. There’s been a burst of activity around it the last few weeks, but it is still essentially at the 0.2 stage. Frankly, given the lead time needed for manufacturing and shipping, I would be surprised if it had Gnome 2.8
On the other hand, I might be wrong.
In any case, SUSE/NLD is clearly the reference platform for things like Mono, Beagle, Dashboard, inotify, etc.
gnome = 2.6 not 2.8 in suse 9.2