vowe dot net :: Note to self: Check out SUSE Linux again

Note to self: Check out SUSE Linux again

by Volker Weber

After talking to Richard Seibt at LinuxWorld yesterday, I feel the sudden urge to try SUSE Linux again since most of my Linux experience so far is on RedHat.

2003-10-28 :: email :: bookmark :: digg

Comments

Go ahead, SuSE 9 for sure is a nice product. Just do yourself a favour and

- use the advanced package selection to get at least "evolution", "mozilla", "ncftp" and "links" in addition to the standard packages preselected by SuSE 9
- opt for the "Kernel Development" packages as well so you can compile additional tools if you want to
- don't even dare trying to use it on a notebook with a fancy resolution (like, let's say 1680x1050)
- and don't use the Nvidia drivers from Nvidia (current ones are broken badly)

Otherwise, it's easy going. Even repartitioned my Windows XP so it could create a (working!) dual boot system.

Oh, and while you're on it, please let me know if DVD install was broken for you, too.

Stefan Rubner, 2003-10-28 07:17

...and maybe its better than MacOS...
;-)

Fester, 2003-10-28 10:36

I am not in the "this OS is better than that"-business. They all have their merits. Having said that, I am a huge fan of Linux. All of the systems that I have been running with Linux have proven to be very stable. As has Windows 2000 Server, which is however much more expensive.

In terms of usability nothing has beaten Mac OS X for me yet. And I doubt that SUSE would be able to top that.

Volker Weber, 2003-10-28 11:00

> please let me know if DVD install was broken for you, too.

Ich konnte auf mehreren Rechnern ein interessantes Phänomen feststellen: Bei der Installation (egal ob DVD oder CD) war nach der ersten Installation der Kernel unbrauchbar. Eine erneute Installation lief dann problemlos.

Aber alles in allem ist Suse mit der 9er wieder ein guter Wurf gelungen.

Konstantin Pfliegl, 2003-10-28 11:30

My problem with the DVD install was/is mainly that it will give me an "unable to read package information" error and thus aborts the installation process. Haven't done extensive testing on all my DVD drives, though.

I have yet to run into the unusable kernel problem. All setups here worked like a charm. More or less at least, I don't count the (expected) troubles with the nvidia drivers ;-)

In general, SuSE is a quite usable (in terms of user experience) and very complete as well as up to date distribution. Now if they would finally, once and for all fix their mess-up with the networking subsystem and make evolution preselected, I'd probably stop bitching about SuSE desktop linux systems :-) (Servers are a whole different story)

Stefan Rubner, 2003-10-28 14:39

> My problem with the DVD install was/is mainly that it will
> give me an "unable to read package information" error

Stimmt, hatte ich vergessen - dass manche Pakete bei der Installation nicht lesbar sind, tritt auch bei der Installation mit Hilfe der fünf CDs auf.
Die Release Candidate 5 arbeitet dagegen völlig problemlos.

Hat denn schon jemand Praxis-Erfahrung mit dem neuen Standard Server 8?

Konstantin Pfliegl, 2003-10-28 16:03

Testing comments after installation of mt-blacklist. Please ignore.

Volker Weber, 2003-10-28 16:06

My problem isn't that SuSE 9 can't read *some* of the packages - which I most probably wouldn't mind at all - but that it's not able to read the catalogue ;-)

SLSS is buried somewhere in my software heap right now. Going to install it in the next few days. If it's true what they promise, it should be a mix between SLES and SLOX, which sounds *very* interesting.

I actually had SLSS installed once but can't remember right now what the general impression was ... so it at least wasn't seriusly bad ...

Stefan Rubner, 2003-10-28 19:40