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SuSE Businesses

SuSE 6.1 for Alpha 42

Posted by justin++ from the english-soon? dept.
Philipp Rumpf writes "SuSE began shipping the first official version of their SuSE distribution for Compaq's (former Digital's) 64-bit Alpha architecture this week in Germany. " I'm glad to see SuSE finally expanding into non-x86 platforms. With any luck, it'll be available in the states soon.
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SuSE 6.1 for Alpha More

SuSE 6.1 for Alpha

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  • Unfortunately, small bugs in KDE and XFree86 require rerelease of the whole package, not just the tiny part with the bugs --- that's most of the size right there.

    It's also not out of line compared to RH5.0....
  • I disagree. Errata is good. It shows someone is paying attention to problems and willing to fix errors. In this case, it is timely and thorough. More bugfixes, the merrier.
  • Consider the x.0 releases new that contains many changes and issues to be ironed out. I could say the same about Redhat 5.0. The rock solid releases were 4.2 and 5.2. If a person values stability, old is good and should stick with what has been fixed and proven, not the latest out the door.
  • SuSE 6.1 (for intel at least) has two very nasty bugs that I've been trying to get rid of (unsuccessfuly) for the last two month.

    First, there is a weird telnet problem. I have a LAN of 4 machines sharing a cable modem via gateway running Debian 2.1 / 2.2.9. Telnet from my computer (running SuSE 6.1 / 2.2.9) to the gateway is slow to the point of being absolutely unusable. Other machines work fine. And btw, windows on my machine works too. Never had this problem before I installed SuSE.

    Second, KDE keeps locking up. Once in a while it just freezes. I can still move the mouse but nothing works. The only way to "fix" this is by pressing ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X server.
    Never had this problem before either.

    Finaly, SuSE "tech support" is non-existant. I've been trying to contact them for over a month. They finally replied yesterday only to say that they've no idea. They also said they were very busy lately. So busy, I presume that they couldn't even change their autoreply message. Last I emailed them (beginning of July), it said that their office will be closed on May 25...

    I loved Debian ever since I installed Hamm almost a year ago. So I think I'll stick with it for both, server and workstation.
  • Thanks. What's the address of the mailing list?

    BTW, I did install KDE updates that I downloaded from SuSE's ftp site. Now it doesn't seem to lock up as often. But then again - it might be that I got used to it already ;-) (After all people do get used to win95 crashes...)

    As for the telnet problem - it persists. And I don't have a clue how to fix it. It's really driving me nuts. The gateway is a headless box and I need to be able to administer it remotely. As of now, I have to reboot to windows to do that.
  • Uhhm, no. I do not run X as root.
    And yes, I've found more bugs as well. It's just that these two are extremely irritating. I can live with the other ones, but these two are unbearable.
  • Please.

    The only proprietary thing about SuSE are it's setup tools, and all you "real" linux users don't need them. (YaST, sax)There is commercial software on the CD, but by default it is NOT installed, and you have a choice.

    As for the microsoft comment, why don't you take a look at all the commercial, proprietary software that is RedHat "only" and tell me which is worse.

  • Cool. (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )

    Hmmm... my RH5.2 Alpha is ticking along just fine, but I had been wanting to try out 2.2.x on it, so maybe I should just install SUSE...


  • Hah! For years the biggest thing holding up the Alpha platform were the three letters D, E, and C. Digital might have had it's day, but for years they've had the reputation of "legacy" and "going out of business".

    Since Compaq took over, they've discovered there's a pretty big pent-up-demand for Alpha systems and Tru64/DU - People who loved the technololgy, but couldn't pull the trigger on the vendor. Right or Wrong, that's the case.

    In short, Digital Equipment's brand name hasn't really had any weight for the last two or three generations of IT people. (Perhaps, it's still magic in the VMS market.) If Compaq hadn't bought DEC, they would have probably pulled a Borland and renamed themselves.
    --
  • Errata is good. It keeps systems bug free.

    Most of what gets fixed is not from RedHat's sloppy distribution, it is from fixes made by people who upgrade their own software. Then RedHat makes the latest available in the form of rpms. Example: the kernel. The a newer kernel was posted because it was less prone to DNS attacks. The kernel is not written by RedHat, they just make the latest available.

    Another example: Netscape 4.6 is in there. It's essentially just an upgrade from the included 4.5. You don't have to get it, but it's nice to have!

  • well, now there's a second big linux player on alpha. I hope this is the beginning of a move towards platform independence(neutrality?) for linux distros. When you can choose a mainstream linux distro for your sparc/ppc/alpha as well as your x86 box, then I think the distro makers will have moved linux up to the next level. Making a "shrink wrapped" linux distro that can run on nearly any machine would be a signifigant contribution to the community.

    Now that they've brought installs up to a level where mere mortals can handle it, and built some intelligent sys-admin tools, the distro makers are presented with several new challenges:

    • multiplatform distro (Redhat was first? with RH-alpha)
    • mid-large server versions for serious servers
    • development on better smp/clustering (kernel & apps)
    • stablize linux desktop/workstation environments (ala gnome/kde)
      assist efforts to develop quality drivers for USB/Firewire/3D-Video-Cards to linux. hw vendors might be more cooperative with a "corporate partner" that they have with the myriad of kernel hackers that have developed the code so far.

    It's good to see debian making progress in an area that I consider critical for the distro makers to address. On a separate but related note, I think I'm going to make my next linux box debian instead of using redhat again. I'm disapointed with the 6.x release, and debian's been getting good (peer) reviews on /. lately.
    -earl
  • SuSE Doesn't make their Linux flavor available for download in any way. I guess thats the way their license reads and all that jazz. Therefore, if you want it, you have got to shell out alotta clams for it. I know it also has something to do with the fact that SuSE has some proprietary Video Implimnetation stuff (MetroX? Something like that..)

    Hmmm.. I wonder why they had more income than RedHat, yet RedHat has a greater install base

    It does sound interesting, but I only play with things I can get for free. S'pose if I needed it I would buy it.
  • I can confirm this. They made more money and they even have some winnings, unlike Red Hat.
    See here [suse.com] their numbers
  • I like Beta-Testing Software, but only when I decide to do so. At other times I just want good clean software that does its job, and does it well. Nothing worse than wasting time repairing other peoples mistakes.
  • Did you open your X-Session as root? If yes I would recommend opening it as your normal account and using the su command if you want to be the root. Some X-Software is buggy and if it is allowed to run as root eats up your resources happily. BTW you found only two "bugs". Thats quite okay regarding the amount of software they compile for you - I found more but I am not telling...
  • Sorry, i just made that mistake in my early days ;-). Try installing a sshd. Maybe it is something about how your telnet client talks to the server. If the other data flows quickly (http, smtp etc.) its propably not in the net. If you can reproduce those KDE hangs - tell the KDE people. They will be happy to hear from you. But be sure to install the latest stable release. BTW I usually run the X-Server as root - it needs access to that hardware. I was talking about X Applications.
    Nix für Ungut - as we germans would say :-)
  • DEC still exsists. It's just a part of Compaq now. But the archetecture still technically belongs to Digital.

    Why must Compaq disolve all the corporations it merges with? First it was Tandem. Nobody even knows who or what Tandem is anymore. Then DEC. Slowly Compaq has started to erase the Digital name from its websites, products and manuals. They suck. DEC is a historic corporation ... Compaq shouldn't be allowed to disolve it.
  • Right now I'm using Slackware 3.5 for general desktop apps. However, I'm looking to switch to another distro which is more easily configurable, and has better package support. I've been comparing docs and flames from a lot of source and have determined IMHO that SuSE and Debian seem to be the most complete/stable distros out there (I don't like Redhat 5.1 from experience). I would like some _serious_ input as to the quirks/features of either of these systems especially in the areas of setup utilities, glibc2 support, and security. And yes I know that Yast isn't published under GPL and that really doen't matter to me. All I want is a reliable, loaded, desktop and ftp site on one machine. I know this is a lot to ask but it would really be helpful if you told me some real experiences instead of flaming distros.

    Thanks
  • I agree: RH 6.0 is not so good! Is More than 100MB of errata a record?
  • It's great to see another big player in the Linux world, expanding like this. This move by SuSE, the biggest European dist (afaik), represents a big boost to the future of Linux.

    Mong.

    * Paul Madley ...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
  • Maybe he's on holiday? It being summer and all that. Even nerds need a break I guess (I know I do!)

    Mong.

    * Paul Madley ...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *

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