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SuSE Businesses

Review of SuSE 8.1 Professional 323

Posted by timothy from the supersized-bells-and-whistles dept.
Gentu writes "SuSE 8.1 is out and it seems to be the main competitor of Red Hat 8. OSNews has the review of its Professional version. The new SuSE 8.1 seems to be sleekier and more powerful than ever." Eugenia, as usual, isn't shy about saying what she doesn't like. There's a review on Linuxlookup.com as well.
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Review of SuSE 8.1 Professional More

Review of SuSE 8.1 Professional

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  • Competition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jacer ( 574383 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @03:57PM (#4405330) Homepage
    It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with each other more than their common enemy.

    • Re:Competition (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @03:58PM (#4405341)
      "It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with each other more than their common enemy."

      You mean BSD?

    • "It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with each other more than their common enemy."
      Debian?
    • That just means they're competing in the "Linux Buyer" space, not the "Microsoft-Must-Die-A-Hot-Shrieking-Death Advocate" space.

      It's not always about Linux vs Microsoft, ya know.

    • Re:Competition (Score:3, Insightful)

      by albat0r ( 526414 )
      I think it's great that they compete each other. That way we will have better Linux distro for us, and better Linux distro to compete "their common enemy". That's why competition is good you know!
    • Of course, the LSB will fix all of this, including the bad relationships between the companys. Redh^H^H^H^H The LSB project says this is possible by the "Agree or shutup" (tm) method.
    • Yea!

      That means that our software rapidly improves in the presence of competition, while M$'s crawls along getting worse in almost as many areas that it is getting better.

      The Real Capitalistic market that open standards and source code is slowly bringing about is what will finally kill Microsoft.

    • Re:Competition (Score:1, Redundant)

      by wilburdg ( 178573 )
      Competition really is a good thing. By competing with eachother they will remain agile and efficient, so they have a better chance against other common adversaries. In the end, competition almost always benefits the end users. They should be encouraged to compete fiercely among eachother.
      • It's not for RedHat to be international diplomats. It's not for them to try to change the saws of each country.

        If some other country had a product with hemp in it, they would not be able to sell in the US. Even if you believe that hemp should be legal, it's not something for them to take a stand on, and loose a large market, just so YOU feel better.

    • Re:Competition (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TheToon ( 210229 )
      > It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with
      > each other more than their common enemy.

      I don't think so. I think this is a good thing, because it will give us better Linux distros. And better Linux distros will someday jam Linux into Microsofts monopolistic gears.

      The day every hardware gadget and game in stores comes with a anonymous note on the back that says "Supports Windows YX and Linux", the goal is reached.

      Through competition (and only competition) will Linux improve to that point.

      IMHO and YMMV :)

    • That's because you'll never get better while competing against a bad product. You'll always be content to simply slightly ahead of that one product.

      But really, All Linux products compete against Mic products. That's why we have nice easy installations and lots of bloated worthless eye candy when half the Linux users still use vi and the other half are trying to figure out how to play GTA in a window.

      I've always believed that people who ask "Can I use Word in Linux?" are simply trying to find a way to cuss Word in another language.

  • SuSE vs RedHat (Score:3, Interesting)

    by papasui ( 567265 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @03:57PM (#4405331) Homepage
    I've used several versions of both including RH 8 and my opinnion is that while RedHat makes a great server build SuSE has always had the edge in developing the workstation distro.

  • SuSE (Score:1, Interesting)

    by nogoodmonkey ( 614350 )
    When I used SuSE, I thought that it was a great workstation, but I still prefer Redhat for a server OS. Too bad all of the different distributions (Redhat, Suse, Debian, etc) can't work together and make one useful and simple OS.

    • Re:SuSE (Score:2, Funny)

      by Yokaze ( 70883 )
      You mean, something like a united Linux distribution. Let's call it "UnitedLinux", either that or "LASER".

    • The problem is that "useful and simple OS" has a different meaning to different people. Heck, it's even got a different meaning for you when you qualify it for the task (workstation vs server).

      As long as the distros keep seperate then they'll all pick a slightly different direction and have a slightly different idea on what is a simple and useful OS. This allows all of us to pick and choose for the particular problem we're solving.

    • And don't forget. . . (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      it should fit on a single floppy.

      Look, you can have the slim and sexy Swiss Army knife. . .*or* you can have the one with all the doodads. What's more, to get all the doodads you want you might even have to have *two* of big mothers, each for a special range of abilities.

      That's just the way it is. I canna change the laws of physics Cap'n.

      KFG

  • why the wait? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:03PM (#4405369) Homepage Journal
    I don't understand why SuSE is only now coming out with Linux 8.1, and Red Hat only just came out with Linux 8.0. Meanwhile, Slackware came out with Linux 8.0 an entire year ago. Why do all the commercial companies find it so hard to keep up? I guess in some sense the open model really is better.
    • Wow, I hope that was sarcasm that I somehow missed
    • They didn't come out with Linux 8.1, Linux 8.0, and Linux 8.0. They came out with versions of their distributions with those versions. They are all based on the GNU/Linux kernel, most likely in the 2.4.xx line.
    • > I don't understand why SuSE is only now coming out with Linux 8.1, and Red Hat only just came out with Linux 8.0. Meanwhile, Slackware came out with Linux 8.0 an entire year ago. Why do all the commercial companies find it so hard to keep up? I guess in some sense the open model really is better.

      In the same understanding :
      It's time to switch to Mandrake they are at the Linux 9.0 One entire playing level beter than RedHat, Slackware and all other Debian (has only Linux 3.0) !!!!

      Oh my god, please save us !
      • Slackware has 9.0 in preview.
        Just download the current tree at slackware.org [slackware.org]
        Just installed slack 8.1 last night. Runs great on a p133 for a small server/
    • Yeah, but Slackware increases version numbers by
      leaps and bounds. Ever heard of Slackware 5?
      Neither have I. And I've been using the distro since the time when it was a bunch of floppies (some of which ended up suffereing a most painful death when some toddlers I'm related to decided to use them as bath toys...)

      • Re:why the wait? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Angry White Guy ( 521337 ) <CaptainBurly[AT]goodbadmovies.com> on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:22PM (#4405525)
        Yeah, and they did admit to version inflation, to keep up with redhat.
        From their website


        The following was posted to the Slackware.com Forum by Patrick Volkerding (Slackware Project Lead), at 21:43 10-10-1999.

        I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing.

        First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right? ;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...)

        I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right? :)

        Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again ;)
    • Slackware is also commercial, so the whole arguments fall down.

      On the other hand Debian, which is fully non-commercial is only at Linux 3.0, what is up with that? Those lazy mother******. They should be working hard on getting me Linux 9.0 like Mandrake right NOW. I hope Jeebus punishes them for their lack of effort.

  • Huh? (Score:1, Funny)

    by piznut ( 553799 )
    Sleekier?

  • "Sleekier" (Score:1, Troll)

    by negacao ( 522115 )
    What in the fuck does "sleekier" mean? :)

    Obilgatory "I'm gonna get modded down," comment so I get modded up.

  • linux installs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LinuxWoman ( 127092 ) <damschler@@@mailcity...com> on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:06PM (#4405400)
    To be honest, many of the recent "improved" install tools require the user to think exactly like the programmers did in order to use the installer properly. Otherwise, most of them require a bit of unnecessary trial and effort to get your install right.

    Knowing that the new install tool is tricky, I'll still stick with SuSE. It's stable and intuitive without the use my way and like it that redhat tends towards or the I work great if I decide to work of mandrake.

    If linux ever intends to become a mainstream (read: NON GEEK) OS, it needs to become dependable, easy to use and easy to install. For example, why did it take me almost 3 days to hack my way to using my qwest dsl connection without having to boot into windows? DSL is a standard technology now, you should be able to use it easily.

    • Re:linux installs (Score:5, Funny)

      by Phouk ( 118940 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:50PM (#4405726)
      To be honest, many of the recent slashdot posts require the reader to think exactly like the writers did in order to understand the sentences properly. Otherwise, most of them require a bit of unnecessary reading and re-reading to get their meaning right.

      It's stable and intuitive without the use my way and like it that redhat tends towards or the I work great if I decide to work of mandrake.

      For example, why did it take me almost 3 tries to hack my way through the previous sentence? Complete punctuation and grammar are standard technologies now, you should be able to use them. Thanks!
    • Actually I think it'd go more mainstream if a large PC vender started seriously backing it and started selling Linux PC's at Best Buy, then all the whining about installers would go away.

      Not many people actually install Windows, they just live with what's on their PC when they buy it.

  • RPMS for SuSE 8.1 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Andreas(R) ( 448328 )
    Does anyone know where one can find rpms
    for SuSE 8.1? I know that lots of people
    with SuSE 8.0 and older would like to upgrade.
    The rpms are GPL'ed so where can they be downloaded?

    +5 karma to the one who gives a FTP or similar :-)
    • I know for the sparc versions, you can find the new 2.4.19 kernels and gcc 3.2 at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/kukuk/SPARC/ [suse.com] (Mirrors also carry the /people directories, use a mirror)

      Upgraded my SuSE Sparc64 8.0 to gcc3.2 and kernel 2.4.19, works great.
    • ftp.suse.com

      They probably aren't there yet, as it usually takes a few weeks for SuSE to get their FTP version ready.

    • Re:RPMS for SuSE 8.1 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by addaon ( 41825 )
      As other's have mentioned, they'll be downloadable shortly. But do remember, the RPM's are not GPL'd. The programs are GPL'd. That does not mean that you have any right to them, although, as I said, SuSE does make them available. It means that, should they be available, the source would also be available. I appreciate that SuSE, and most other distributions, are openly distributed. But it is also important to keep in mind that this is not a consequence of the GPL.

    • Re:RPMS for SuSE 8.1 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Turmio ( 29215 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @08:01PM (#4406961) Homepage
      Even if SuSE packaged GPL'ed software, they don't have to make rpms publically available. GPL says you have to give source to anyone you distribute binaries of GPL'ed programs. Therefore it's perfectly ok for SuSE or anyone only to sell rpms on CD to customers as long as you give a CD with source rpms too. Or give an account to a private FTP containing the source. You only have to give everything to those who get binaries by some mean. Then of course if you buy SuSE cd's, you can redistribute images of CD's without caring SuSE's feelings at all. But you don't have to. But back to the point, your conclusion was that rpms of GPL'ed software means they HAVE TO BE downloadable somewhere. Well, it just is not necessarily true.
      • This is insightful?

        However the binaries (RPMs) are distributed, so too must be the source.

        The binaries (e.g. the CDs) are NOT freely redistributable unless SuSE says so, mainly because of the non-GPLed, commercial software.

        You may redistribule the files on the source CD, so long as you only redistribute the non-commercial parts. Redistributing Yast will get you in deep legal trouble.
        • You may redistribule the files on the source CD, so long as you only redistribute the non-commercial parts. Redistributing Yast will get you in deep legal trouble.

          Wrong. FUD. read the fucking license terms.
          I don't know why people feel obliged to spout off such a nonsense.
          I shouldn't do it, but anyway, I digged out something which your eyes clearly have never seen before, the yast license:


          It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have been reproduced without authorisation for payment without the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG or SuSE Linux. Distribution of the YaST programme, its sources, whether amended or unamended in full or in part thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge require the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG.


          So check your facts next time, please!
          • Well, that means if you use if for any commercial purposes, it's illegial. I don't know about you, but that's too restrictive for me. Since most people don't make the distinction between commercial and non-commercial, you could just as well begin to stick an ad on a website served up off of a SuSE box, and be violating the licensing terms.

            If nothing else, Yast is not under the GPL, so it can't be dealt with as such, as the original post was implying.

            Fell free to bitch and moan about it more if it somehow makes you feel better.
  • That screenshot looked really nice -> much nicer than the RH8 screenshots I saw last week, I'm thinking about trying it (I haven't used linux since RH5). but the prices are confusing me. is it still possible to download a bootable disk image for free that I can burn and install from? any urls?
    • Probably in the next weeks or next month will be available an FTP version (without the commercial software). You can mirror that tree and install from another disk or an ftp/nfs server in your network,

      Also should be available in any moment in the ftp server of SuSE the Live-eval CD, you can't install it but at least can try it running from the CD.

      But there is no free installable ISOs for SuSE since 7.0 or so. You must buy it to install it.

  • "not sure if I am very fond" (Score:4, Funny)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:13PM (#4405464) Homepage

    From the story: "I am not sure I am very fond of the way SuSE expects you to click to different parts of the installation instead of going step by step."

    When an American woman says that she is "not sure I am very fond" it means that she is certain that she doesn't like it.

  • Dammit (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ruis ( 21357 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:17PM (#4405488)
    So I just got done installing Suse 8.0 and while doing the online update, I decided to see what's new on slashdot. Guess what the first article I see is.

  • Not enough raw data dumping on me like feces (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:26PM (#4405563)
    SuSE just doesn't have enough CDs. I want SuSE to install every utility for every OS I can, at least in theory, emulate. I also want all optional features enabled and support for every language and file format just in case. I'm talking something like a 20GB minimum install, and SuSE just isn't there yet. Maybe next release, though.

  • Suse 8.1 (Score:3, Informative)

    by moss1956 ( 246946 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:29PM (#4405584)
    I have already loaded it onto my laptop.

    For some reason the advanced power management doesn't work, (it did with 8.0). Also, although the wireless stuff recognizes my wireless card, there are links missing for it to make in internet connection. Too bad. Also its hard to put Latex on the computer anymore, you have to hunt it down, and emacs did not install automatically.

    I don't know...

  • Sleekier? (Score:2, Troll)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 )
    The new SuSE 8.1 seems to be sleekier and more powerful than ever.

    Sigh.

  • Does that mean she likes it, or not? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:35PM (#4405626) Homepage

    "However, if SuSE fix some of the issues they have, get rid or redesign that package manager, license the Web Fonts, add some more GUI settings panels for wireless support, FTP & HTTP servers, better integration with Windows, fix some of their untested or buggy applications they include in their CDs, modify Star Office and GTK+ application to look more as their primary Qt platform and other such details, I believe that Red Hat's 'empire' in the Linux world will be in jeopardy."

    Does that mean she likes it, or not?
    • It means she doesn't really know what she's talking about. After all
      1. most of these packages are from third parties. It's not up to the distro people to fix them
      2. Sun won't lilke you modifying Star Office (so download openoffice and bitch about the stuff that was left out THERE because of patents, etc).
      3. "GTK+ applicaton to look more as the primary Qt platform" - WTF. Nobody home there - GTK - The Gimp Toolkit - Gnome vs. Qt - Trolltech
      4. "Better integration with Windows" - Why? If you want Windows, run Wndows. If you need to share files, use Samba.
      Unfortunately, this has been the trend with too many reviewers - they look at the superficial stuff, and make up their minds based on whether the colors are pretty, and this passes as in-depth journalism.

      It was thinking (if you can call it that) like this that gave us the dot.bomb crash.

      go ahead, mod this as flamebait, but I think the original article was a real POS, and that reviewers should be required to actually USE the product in a production environment for more than a few days before writing about it.


      • "Unfortunately, this has been the trend with too many reviewers - they look at the superficial stuff, and make up their minds based on whether the colors are pretty, and this passes as in-depth journalism."

        I agree. Someone taking the review seriously, and having no basis of comparison, would think that SuSE was a terrible distribution. Also, it is somewhat irrelevant that the distribution doesn't install well at the resolution used by 24" monitors.

        I also agree with this: "It was thinking (if you can call it that) like this that gave us the dot.bomb crash."

        It wasn't the reviewer's best work.
        • it is somewhat irrelevant that the distribution doesn't install well at the resolution used by 24" monitors.

          Interestingly, I have an old (4 years) Dell branded 21" Sony Trinitron. Installation of Suse 8.0 would not allow me to configure the monitor to 1600X1200. After installing at a lower resolution I spent an hour or two playing with various configuration tools to enable the monitor at 1600X1200.

          Suse 8.1 Professional, which I just finished installing, allowed me to configure this directly resolution during installation (although it wasn't the default, which I would have preferred). The tool should also allow an expert user to enter specific modelines, without resorting to the command line. In fact I didn't need to do this, as I could select 1600X1200 from a check box.

          So I'm not sure why the reviewer had the problem she had with her monitor, but my experience shows that Suse 8.1 monitor and resolution selection is much improved over the last version.

          -Spyky

  • No DVD problems to report like the reviewer encountered. However, the software configuration in the install is still quite poor (no change from 8.0 from what I can see). It did a fair job on hardware but I still had to hit Sax2 to properly configure my monitor.

    That said, once installed, it has a nicely polished KDE desktop. I like the icon choice but default "curved" windows I just don't like, back to KDE 2 window decoration it goes. I do like the changes the made to the Yast character mode interface, much easier to navigate. I'm also a little disappointed that it shipped with 2.4.19 instead of 2.4.20.

    Overall, not bad but non-techs would require a small amount of hand holding trying to install this release from scratch. The DVD has a very complete collection of software on it that is relatively up to date. It a nice tool to have handy when you're on the road.

    • Re:Just got my copy today (Score:5, Funny)

      by oever ( 233119 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @05:39PM (#4406153) Homepage
      I'm also a little disappointed that it shipped with 2.4.19 instead of 2.4.20.

      That's not all. Here's a list of what else is missing:
      • OpenOffice 1.2
      • Mozilla 2.0
      • GCC 3.4
      • GNU/MS Office


      I guess we'll have to wait for 8.2.
    • No DVD problems to report like the reviewer encountered.

      OK, explain something to me. SuSE ships with SEVEN CD's and ONE DVD. The reviewer has a DVD drive, but encountered a bug loading the CD's in the DVD drive.

      Why wasn't she using the freaking DVD in the DVD drive? (She couldn't tell them apart is not an acceptable answer).

  • XFT Font Properties (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:55PM (#4405763) Journal
    YaST2 and SaX2 can be better, but even as they are today blow most of Red Hat's preference panels away. On the other hand Red Hat's XFT font properties are no match to any other Linux distribution so far, while Red Hat has good integration for Qt and GTK+ toolkits, something that SuSE doesn't.

    This is very important! People keep bitching about Anti-Aliased Font support, well why is RedHat the only including an advanced utility? Fonts are 99% of your visual aspect of your desktop, good looking fonts make a BIG difference. (side note, Mosfet Liquid engine/theme is a must..)

    I'm a SuSE (sparc64), Mandrake (x86) user. Mostly because Mandrake had the better font support. I've switched over to RedHat 8.0 due to the XFT font support.

    BTW, I shouldnt have to recompile the desktop to have decent font support. So dont keep saying "Compile yourself". If I wanted a source based, compile everything yourself distribution, I would use Gentoo. (Gentoo doesnt include all the custom applications for preferences.)
    • This is very important! People keep bitching about Anti-Aliased Font support, well why is RedHat the only including an advanced utility? Fonts are 99% of your visual aspect of your desktop, good looking fonts make a BIG difference. (side note, Mosfet Liquid engine/theme is a must..)

      When the next official X release comes out with support for XFT2 and the next official qt release comes out with support for it, then SuSE will put them in the supplementary version of your favorite mirror. SuSE does not ship beta versions of core componentes like glibc or X.

      SuSE has been antialiased (XFT1) for more than a year now, KDE3 offers a good way to install fonts, I do not know what is missing exactly. I think Eugenia did not know about kcmfontconfig. No problem here (SuSE-8.0).

  • I have to agree with the reviewer's sentiment that they should have included Gnome in SuSE. While KDE is pretty good for newbies from the Windows and Mac world, it's still missing the eye-candy that even basic Gnome 2.x has. Of course this is all my opinion, and highly subjective. But, I will say that if you happen to be a fan of the Gnome environment, you're going to feel a bit restricted by KDE. Some major features are missing in KDE:

    -themeable login manager
    -flexible bitmap themes that allow you to tweak window behavior into something that you want
    -granular control over the look-and-feel of the environment (multiple toolbars, drag and drop launchers, etc...)
    -a more standarized approach to where binaries go: '/usr/local/bin' rather than '/opt/kde' (Of course it would be better if things were more like '/usr/local/kde', but thene again I compile everything I use.)

    If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.

    RedHat's Blue Curve approach is probably a little stronger than SuSE's version of KDE. I've only seen screenshots, but it's much prettier.
    • /usr/local/bin is as standard as /opt/kde. Read the FHS. /usr/local/kde, on the other hand, is everything but standard.
      • If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.
      Excuse me? What do you do with your PC all day? Tweak themes? People use operating systems to work done. Oh, and maybe play games and listen to music, but relatively few people use a computer as an end in itself.

      For me, the absence of themes and other crap in KDE is a bonus. Call me old-fashioned, but I like consistent, functional user interfaces and no surprises. That's why programs like Mozilla, Java Swing, WinAmp3 and dozens of other programs, including "webbified" Microsoft apps and GTK+ apps on Windows, are offensive, because they impose their own UIs and interface conventions on users, thereby alienating users.

      Consistently-designed eye candy, such as that provided in Mac OS X, is fine. Inconsistent eye candy is not. Eye candy that slows your system down is downright evil. Ultimately, all these skinned, semi-transparent drop-shadowed non-rectangular windows are taking CPU time and resources away from what these apps are supposed to be doing. Even relatively conservative apps like Mozilla suffer from the overhead of custom UI painting, the result being an app that "feels" inexplicably bloated.

      If you need to dress your operating systems in mother-of-pearl and velvet with singing angels and fluffy pink clouds, then be my guest, express yourself. Just don't pretend it has anything to do with an operating system.

    • First let me say, that GNOME1/2 are part of SuSE-8.1. This part of your post is wrong. All other things you said are missing in KDE are there.

      -themeable login manager

      KDM is themable. How often do you log in? Does Gnome force you to log in more then once a week?

      -flexible bitmap themes that allow you to tweak window behavior into something that you want

      No tweaking necessary, kwin is configured by GUI. Just rightclick on the title bar and configure it. Support for the old gtk-bitmap themes has not been ported to the new qt3-theming engine yet, that is true. Most of them are low quality anyways, so KDE has just about 10 nice and fast coded themes.

      -granular control over the look-and-feel of the environment (multiple toolbars, drag and drop launchers, etc...)

      Sounds like a cereal to me... What is missing? toolbars? drag and drop? What are you talking about in KDE that can not be configured? I think you have no idea what you are talking about at all.

      -a more standarized approach to where binaries go: '/usr/local/bin' rather than '/opt/kde' (Of course it would be better if things were more like '/usr/local/kde', but thene again I compile everything I use.)

      This is depending on your distribution. On SuSE Gnome is in /opt/gnome2 for example. Just set the KDEDIR where you want it before compiling it, e.g. /usr/local/kde or even home/eno2001/I/have/no/clue/about/kde/ if you want.

  • Mostly irrelevant... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivanandre ( 265129 ) <ivan...tamayo@@@gmail...google...com> on Monday October 07, 2002 @04:59PM (#4405817) Journal
    I think this Eugenia distros instalations chat irrelevant.

    The OSes have more important aspects than installations. Anyway, the OS is installed ONE time, but used MANY times...

    Why in hell she rates an OS by its installations process?

  • Eugenia will never like anything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @05:18PM (#4405980)
    Just read the review...

    First she complains about the installer not making enough decisions, then she complains about SaX making decisions.

    In reality, the installer DOES make all decisions. All it does (and that was obviously confusing Eugenia) is SHOW these decisions to you and allow you to change it. But it doesn't force you to do anything at all.

    What's wrong with that? The below-average complete moron (which everybody seems to be targetting these days.) just presses "Install" and it installs without any need to configure anything. On a computer with one clean harddrive or partition, the install should work just fine with the default settings.

    Hell, even Eugenia was able to install the damn thing, so it's dumbed down enough.

    Also, unlike Eugenia sais, SuSE comes with CDs *AND* DVD, not "or".

  • 7 cds?! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Erpo ( 237853 )
    This is getting to be a real annoyance. I don't want to have to download (7x650) 4.550 GB of data just to try out the latest linux distro. Some people aren't even able because they're either on a modem or have capped broadband. Personally, I'd like to see all distros cut down to three:

    1 CD to install the OS. This would be the only cd necessary to install the operating system. With just this one cd, the user would be able to install their chosen distro of GNU/Linux and get a graphical desktop with some very basic apps (I'm picturing basically everything on the accessories menu on windows).

    Up to 2 cds of apps - an office suite, dev tools, games, whatever. After using the single OS install disc, the user would then be able to pop an apps cd into the system and choose what they want.

    No source cds. I'm not saying that distro makers shouldn't provide source code to the binaries that they distribute (they should!) and I'm certainly not saying that source is useless (it's not!). I'm just saying that making ISOs of source packages available for download is a great way to waste bandwidth for users and mirror sites that don't bother to mark them as non-essential to the process of 'getting something working'. Windows doesn't have a loop device to check out isos before they're burned, so newbies from windows can't help but be confused. (Yes, I know about Daemon Tools. Does everyone else?)

    It would eliminate bloated 2GB default installs and cd swapping. Sure, there wouldn't be a (start|hat|k|foot|swirl) menu that takes up 10MB of space on disk just for the items it contains, but that's probably a good thing.

    I'm not bashing suse or RH or any of the other GNU/Linux distros. I'm just saying that the default install/CD bloat is way out of hand and this would be an easy way to solve it. The way I see it, it's a no-brainer like replacing "scary" printk's during kernel startup with a booting progress bar (by default).

    • Re:7 cds?! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by oever ( 233119 )
      I don't want to have to download (7x650) 4.550 GB of data just to try out the latest linux distro.

      Don't worry. SuSE doesn't allow others to distribute their iso images. :^)

      In a few months you'll be able to download the SuSE rpm's you do like.
    • Suse releases an 18MB bootable CD that will let you do an FTP install. From there you can pick the packages you want. On my cable modem, 8.0 took about 1.5 hours to do this. Worked great, and you get the same installer as with the boxed set.
      • Suse releases an 18MB bootable CD that will let you do an FTP install.

        That's cool. Debian does the same thing (except with a floppy or two) and with gentoo it's practically mandatory. ;) It's certainly a neat way of circumventing cd swapping.

        On my cable modem, 8.0 took about 1.5 hours to do this.

        This is what tends to worry me. If you're using (just an estimation) a 1.5Mbps downstream cable modem and you're getting half that in throughput (due to local contention for bandwidth, server capacity, whatever...) then you've downloaded about 500MB of data. It was probably compressed so it's probably taking up more than that on your hard disk (and even more if the installer kept the packages around) but downloaded 500 MB of data would take over a day of continuous connectivity on a 56k modem assuming optimal conditions.

        Some people like ftp-based home installs, and they certainly make sense in a corporate environment with fast ethernet and an on-site ftp server or when broadband internet access is available and you don't mind waiting 1.5 hours. In a home setting, though, internet installs trouble me for a couple of reasons. First, they don't work (well) with modem-speed connections. Second, they depend on the company too much. I realize that suse probably isn't going to do anything evil, but imagine what the reaction would be if windows required you to connect to microsoft to install in a similar manner. Just look at the (admittedly ineffective) uproar over product activation in winxp.

        Of course, users that don't want to do ftp installs can always use the 7 cds, but then we're back where we started.

  • SuSE migrated me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday October 07, 2002 @05:32PM (#4406094)
    Let's face it, friends:
    Distros save you cooking the cuisine but therefore give you fastfood. You can't have both. And SuSE is the best darn distro I've ever seen - making the best job of offering a fastfood cuisine compromise.
    It's that simple.
    For instance: the documentation simply 0wnz RedHat and all the rest - and a dead tree is something good to hold on to when your box won't budge and you haven't been told the "man 'your one-word question here'" trick yet.
    SuSEs YaST got me so far with me knowing nothin' 'bout Linux, I would have found it silly to give up again.
    Shure this automatic stuff tends to be a pain a year later when your "/usr/lib/java ->jsdk1.4.1" gets changed to "/usr/lib/java ->jsdk1.1.2" every time you fire it up once again, but when you are ready to notice the fault in some distros config I guess you're ready for Debian.

    I'm not buying SuSE anymore, as I am not buying any Distro anymore. I'm expierenced enough to get Gentoo or Debian rolling from scratch and if anything it's them getting a donation.

    But for n00bs like I was one once, I know no better way to turn to Linux and *never* look back on Windows again than SuSE. This company has earned itself a solid reputation for a reference grade quality Linux distribution and every word of it is true. If you're thinking of giving Linux a try, try SuSE.
    I can only recommend it.

  • Feh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @05:43PM (#4406167)
    Why do we listen to what Eugenia says all of a sudden? It seems Slashdot has one of her reviews every few days lately. This is not News For Nerds, is it?

    I, for one, think you'd have to try pretty hard to find SuSE's installation difficult. She complains about the problems for newbies, but this is SuSE 8.1 Professional. Yes, it's for professionals.

    Having said that, I think the installer is wonderful for newbies. I like the fact that you get a summary (which is like a web page, as Eugenia said), and you can drill down as deep as you want to customize it. If you like the defaults that the installer has chosen, you can click OK and go right to the installation. I can't imagine why a linear progression through a wizard would be preferable.

    If you honestly have a hard time installing SuSE, then I just can't imagine what kind of installer you'd find easier. (I guess that's why I don't design installers.)

  • OT but must ask (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LinuxInDallas ( 73952 )
    I have been a RH user since 4.2 and a KDE user since before their first 1.0 release. I just bought RH 8.0 and the tweeking of KDE that they have done irks me to no end. I have just started to look at it, but it appears that you can't simply change themes back to the KDE default to recover the KDE 3 look and feel. Would anyone like to share their experience with how they recovered the KDE 3 look? I know it must be simple but I haven't had time to probe into it much. Sorry for the OT post.
    • To solve your kde problem.

      Just select the K menu and select control panel. Select the default theme. After that find the sytles menu. From their select kde default instead of bluecurve. Last click on the upper left hand Window title bar on any running program. I am not a on a linux machine currently but I believe you can change the Window decoration on one of the settings by right mouse botton clicking it and selecting docarations. Browse and find the default kde2. This will get rid of the bluecurve default titlebar. You may want to keep the default font since the orignal kde ones are ugly as hell.

      The only problem I noticed is the default kpanel is gone and replace with the gnome one. I know this because I played around with some of the settings and they are almost identical to the gnome panel. Also you may need to download the default icons from kde's website.

      Doing all of these will bring back %95 of the kde desktop back.

      What really annoys me more then the gui is the exclusion of apache1.3x and perl 5.6!

      Do you have any perl cgi scripts that access a mysql database? Your SOL. Redhat included the older gcc 2.9.5x compiler but not the older perl or apache. And no, perl is not fully source compatible with perl 5.6 like the perl mongers say it is.

      I am learning perl programming from a college level book called "How to Program Perl" by Dietel and Dietel. Many cs majors have used their c and c++ books. I tested all the example programs and noticed alot of problems. Particularly with return statements, threading, mysql access, and cgi since mod-perl has not been fully ported to apache2 yet. The return statement problems seems to be caused by some changes in default scoping rules. I can easily changes these but I want to learn how to program and not learn how to deal with perl 5.8. Everything else can not be ported. I do not mind the newer versions of apache and perl being included. I would just like the older ones installed optionally as well as gcc. Apache 2.x is not ready for anything besides static webpages.

      In other words avoid this release if your an internet developer.

      On the other hand my gripe with suse is that their distro's have always been buggy and not as reliable as redhat or debian.

      For my games which require low latency sound(sucks on w2k), and low ping times I will stick with redhat. I have noticed ping times cut in half in some circumstances and my scores are higher due to low latency for sound. I am already dead before I hear the rocket sometimes under w2k. For software development, I will stick with Windows2k.

  • The author of the package manager emailed me a few weeks back and told me that this is a tool only for professionals and experienced users

    LOL...
    Come on, grab ARCHIVES.gz from the first CD, use zgrep and rpm to install. Yast2 is the worst, I have ever seen/used. Using SuSE since their first distro (4.2).
  • I know SuSE doesn't distribute it but does anyone else?

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