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SuSE Businesses

SuSE 8.2 Announced 496

Posted by CowboyNeal from the yast-and-sax dept.
Venotar writes "It looks like SuSE's once more setting the bar pretty high. According to their recent announcement, SuSE 8.2's release date is set for April 12th. Amongst other nifty features, KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing" that allows remote control of other desktops, and several interesting new crypto/security features. Gnome 2.2 is also included, as well as a profile manager for mobile users, and gcc 3.3. Have a lot of fun!"
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SuSE 8.2 Announced More

SuSE 8.2 Announced

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  • SuSE doing it 8.2:th time! (Score:4, Funny)

    by sokkelih ( 632304 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:47AM (#5509415)
    Desktop revolution for the 8.2:th time.

  • MMMMM Suse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by batboy78 ( 255178 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:49AM (#5509420) Homepage
    I sure miss the day when you could download the ISO's for free. I think that is why Mandrake is so appealing.

    • Re:MMMMM andrake (-: (Score:5, Informative)

      by leonbrooks ( 8043 ) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Friday March 14, 2003 @01:09AM (#5509520) Homepage
      Speaking of which, Mandrake 9.1 final is due out next week, also with KDE 3.1 and other goodies. Free to download, 650MB ISOs so even the most antique CD drives and burners should be happy.

      Looking forward to Kolab maturing (due I think with KDE 3.2), will be an excellent tool for chasing the Borg-remnants out of many enterprises.

      • Mandrake 9.1- a bomb (Score:4, Interesting)

        by joestar ( 225875 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @10:01AM (#5511355) Homepage
        I tested the latest state of Cooker (which is the 9.1 pre-final), and it's incredibly good. They have:
        - a completely new and redesigned (and simplified) installation procedure, never saw something so efficient and fast
        - a completely redesigned desktop in GNOME & KDE (it's called MandrakeGalaxy and has *great* new icons...)
        - anti-aliased fonts everywhere, this provides a great comfort of use...

        There are also cool features such as NTFS partition resizing, WiFi support and others.

        And the best of all is that for 10 days they seem to be only focusing on intensive debuging and frankly it's hard to find any bug left in this distribution!

        My feeling is that MDK 9.1 is going to be a real bomb in the Linux world - it's so full featured, easy to use, powerful... I would call it "Ultimate"!
    • I'll say MMMM Suse when I see some MMMMm screenshots!

      • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dotgain ( 630123 )
        I can't understand how people can judge a distro by screenshots. A screenshot of a Newsreader, Media Player, fine, it can give you at least an idea of what it looks like.

        But a distro doesn't look like anything. You'd like a screenshot of Redhat 8, but use it, and you'd soon change your mind.

    • Do you realize that mandrake did fill for bankrupcy end of last year ?

    • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:4, Informative)

      by StarTux ( 230379 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:18AM (#5509736) Journal
      Well you can get it via FTP about a month after release for free.

      Personnally I don't miss ISO's.

      StarTux

      • Right? If I can't download the code, make ANY modifications I want and then redistribute it in ISO or other form what the hell good is it? That's not linux, that's some proprietary bullshit hassle.

        Suse may make contributions but the their software is Non-Free or "free as in beer" only. Thus in my mind their the same as Lindows, Xandros et al.

        Too many strings make Suse worthless to me and its why I'll never use it. That's also why it will never fit the definition of truly free software.
        • What are you smoking? Other than YaST and perhaps a few other proprietary apps SuSE is as free as any other commercial Linux. The sources are available for download at the same time the rest of the distro is put out on their FTP servers, if that's not fast enough for you they're also included on the DVD/CD sets that SuSE sells. Recompile and distribute to your hearts content.

          Better, use Debian ya deadbeat and stop raggin on people that like to make a few bucks off of their hard work.

    • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:4, Insightful)

      by littleRedFriend ( 456491 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @04:12AM (#5510017)
      Exactly, my point!

      I am a very busy, but I absolutely need the latest Linux desktop stuff (KDE 3.1 rulez). I go and mirror an archive or two from Suse. It won't install, not even several hours of Googling, tweaking installation script files, re-arranging partitions and file systems. I give up. I know that in theory it could be done, but they make it very confusing on purpose (and it changes every version).

      Now they are a company and need to make money. So far so good. However, it is not me who will buy the boxed set of CDs. It is way too expensive, when I know that in a couple of weeks I absolutely need to play with a new kernel, KDE 3.2, GNOME 2.something. Which renders my boxed distro worthless, without investing in getting intimately familiar with all the dependencies of glibc, bonobo and whatever.

      I would buy the boxed set, if they would allow me to download (in ISO format), Suse version 8.2 - 10 for example. I would even pay for that. Does this exist?

      In the meantime I am running Mandrake 9.1RC1 at work, and it sort of works very well. Productivity is up (mainly because I use a lot of terminals to connect to big iron). I haven't booted windows in more than two weeks. That is a record for me, a MS outlook/office slave for the last 10 years. Will certainly install 9.1 final when it comes out.

      It must be true, the Linux desktop experience (tm) is coming.

      • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:3, Informative)

        by negyvenot ( 582011 )
        Have you ever tried network install with Suse? All you have to do is to download the boot ISO image from a Suse mirror, and install Suse over network (current/boot/boot.iso, approx 18MB). It took about an hour and a half on my ~400kbps DSL connection to get a minimal system with core X running.

        The smallest configuration with X gives you a nice desktop with all the GUI configuration tools. Then all you have to do is start up YAST and install KDE to have the default configuration. While the download goes on,

      • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:4, Insightful)

        by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @09:28AM (#5511036)
        >> Now they are a company and need to make money. So far so good. However, it is not me who will buy the boxed set of CDs. It is way too expensive...

        Well, if they now know that you're not going to buy it, it doesn't make much sense for SuSe to give it away for free, thereby cutting into sales to people who would otherwise pay for it.

    • Re:MMMMM Suse (Score:2, Interesting)

      by BlackHawk-666 ( 560896 )
      SuSE still provide this, although it does tend to trail behind the CD release...but what the hey, they do need to get paid every so often, so this seems a decent compromise to me i.e. if you simply *must* have it as soon as it is released then be ready to pony up a little cash - otherwise, it'll be there soon enough.

      Remember, all the stuff they provide (except YAST/etc) can be downloaded/compiled/installed at any time.

  • SuSE and Red Hat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Karma Sucks ( 127136 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:49AM (#5509422)
    SuSE and Red Hat are the last professional distributions left in my opinion. I'm not very impressed with Mandrake overall. They seem to be a bunch of amateurs.

    SuSE's offerings are just plain mouth-watering. Red Hat is a bit of a controversial choice with overboard desktop nullification but the core is very good. SuSE's desktop is AWESOME.

    When it comes to package managers, SuSE also has much better network updates and doesn't require a paid subscription like Red Hat. The paid subscription is major bummer indeed.

    • Re:SuSE and Red Hat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Friday March 14, 2003 @01:26AM (#5509579) Homepage Journal
      When it comes to package managers, SuSE also has much better network updates and doesn't require a paid subscription like Red Hat.

      But for how long, I wonder.

      • Re:SuSE and Red Hat (Score:4, Insightful)

        by StarTux ( 230379 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:22AM (#5509747) Journal
        Well no ISO's probably bring in some more money :).

        Seriously, I'd be very surprised if they followed RH's example, the mechanism just does not seem to be there for it as they routinely mirror the updates to other servers.

        Add in Red Carpet too I just don't see this happening at least for quite sometime.

        StarTux
        • To be fair, RedHat does make freely available the actual update packages and are mirrored to all the other redhat mirrors.

          What you're really paying for (or if you're not paying for it and you're using one 'demo' account and floating a whole lot of systems between it) is the email notification, web based remote managment of the updating, and the automatic RPM depenedency resolution, which for a huge update (say after you install a machine) save a *lot* of time.
    • I've been looking for a professional desktop solution for a while.. I've toyed with Linux for years, but I've come to the point where I just want things to work. Thanks to numerous layoffs, the time to tweak is over, I need to boot up and chew bubble gum, and I'm all outta bubble gum.

      Right now all my desktops run RH8, it's nicely integrated and I don't have to worry about missing things from menus, the install was a breeze, everything looks OK. I think this is largely thanks to the Gnome 2 and KDE 3 work

    • When it comes to package managers, SuSE also has much better network updates and doesn't require a paid subscription like Red Hat. The paid subscription is major bummer indeed.

      Hmm, well I use SuSE 8 at home, but Red Hat at work, both by choice. When GNOME2 came out, I decided to give Red Hat 8 a try, and was very impressed. One of the things I liked about Red Hat was the RHN - the fact is that SuSEs online update thing hardly ever worked for me (and I know I'm not alone in that), and if there was a way t

    • Network Updates (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dusty123 ( 538507 )
      WHAT ???
      The SuSE Online Update (YOU) is the worst piece of s*** I've ever seen.

      Before downloading the actual packages, first so called package descriptions are downloaded. Although this is a good idea, they download one file with the description for every single available update package. This description downloading - although the sum of the descriptions is less than 1MB, takes around 2 hours now. (At the beginning, when SuSE 8.1 was new, it was fast as there were nearly no updates, now there are hundreds)

    • Re:SuSE and Red Hat (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Surak ( 18578 )
      When it comes to package managers, SuSE also has much better network updates and doesn't require a paid subscription like Red Hat. The paid subscription is major bummer indeed.

      I've had KDE 3.1, Desktop Sharing and Gnome 2.2 for quite a while now. The whole reason is my package manager, which doesn't require a paid subscription.

      My package manager: Gentoo's portage of course. :)

  • No!! Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:50AM (#5509426)
    KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing"..

    Oh, you mean just like every other distro that has kde 3.1?

    • Re:No!! Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyTurbo ( 537363 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @09:07AM (#5510853)
      KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing"..
      Oh, you mean just like every other distro that has kde 3.1?
      True, but SuSE is the main funder of KDE developers and has contributed the most to KDE; so in a sense these partially are SuSE accomplishments, that wouldn't have happened as quick if SuSE didn't support KDE as much as they have.

  • Lets see.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:50AM (#5509429)
    I could buy Suse 8.2 CD's or I could download Mandrake 9.1 CD's. I think I'll stick w/ the distro that lets me know what I"m getting ahead of time. (And just FYI, after I tried a bunch of distros and decided I wanted Mandrake I joined the Mandrake Club so I'm AM supporting those who support my computer.)

    • Re:Lets see.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by batboy78 ( 255178 )
      I totally agree, you could download the Suse Live Eval CD and do an FTP install (if you have the bandwidth) but I still like having the install CDs when I make a major foul-up and have to reinstall. And to anyone who is a Mandrake fan, you can always see the progress that the team is making on the newest releases. I think I have about 15 Mandrake 9.1 CDs laying around from the various incarnations that they went thru to get to the final release. I only wish Suse was as accomodating. But I agree that the
      • Or revenue to pay for bandwith...

        5 CDs/2 DVDs is about 3.2 Gb of ISOs, assuming the second DVD doesn't contain extras not on the CDs. Actually, with DVDs being 4.7 Gb, there must be something else...

        Multiply that by every /.er who hits the mirrors -- they'd probably owe their souls to DT (or whoever supplies their bandwidth) by Monday.

        I can see why they don't do full .iso images...

    • Re:Lets see.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eagle5596 ( 575899 )
      Just download the boot ISO, and the file tree to a spare hard disk, then install over your own ftp link. I personally support SUSE's choice not release ISO's, it ensures the truly lazy will buy the distro and give them more money. I personally have used SUSE faithfully since 6.4, buying every major version to chip my wealth into the pot and help my favorite distro.

      At least the updates are free, unlike other major distros.

      Bottom line: It takes less time to just DL the tree and boot ISO than to DL a numbe
      • Yeah right. Not if you have no choice but using a USB ADSL modem, unless you want to patch & recompile the kernel, go through 20 outdated mini-howto's.

        I tried it, lost a lot of time and this only resulted in my having personal vendetta with the Suse marketeers, who package and document the ftp distribution.

        Other option. The old non-free software way: anyone interested in mirroring some ISOs for Suse 8.2? P2P maybe?

    • Re:Lets see.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Centinel ( 594459 )
      Word is that Mandrake iso's starting with 9.1 will only be released for public downloading well after the retail boxes are shipped and they're made available to paying members of Mandrake Club

      Gas, ass or grass, nobody rides for free

      • As a Mandrake user and Mandrake club member I can tell you that I don't value the ISOs as much as having a say at what the distribution is. It feels a bit like using debian (the users drive the development) except the stuff is up to date.

  • GCC 3.3 ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alex ( 342 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:52AM (#5509435)
    From the website,

    "SuSE Linux 8.2 also includes a pre-release of gcc 3.3"

    Interesting choice - apparently GCC 3.3 includes a lot of work SuSE have contributed. Will this be as controversal as Redhat's compiler choice of 2.96 a while back?

    Alex

    • Re:GCC 3.3 ? (Score:4, Funny)

      by josh crawley ( 537561 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:57AM (#5509457)
      Come on! Redhat's GCC 2.96 compiler wasnt unstable atKERNEL PANIC.

    • Re:GCC 3.3 ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @01:54AM (#5509672) Homepage

      Interesting choice - apparently GCC 3.3 includes a lot of work SuSE have contributed. Will this be as controversial as Redhat's compiler choice of 2.96 a while back?

      Probably not. GCC 3.3 will be an actual official FSF release. By the time 12 April comes around I doubt SuSE's gcc lags behind the official FSF release much. Remember, 2.96 and 2.97 were basically continuations of the 2.9x branch, after the FSF had basically stopped working on it and started working on GCC 3.x.

      Thing is, gcc 3.x broke things. Also, Red Hat had a collection of IA-64 improvements for gcc that may not have made it into mainline yet. So, they made the unofficial releases because they felt that's what served their customers best. 2.96 was, I understand, the best gcc for IA-64 for a while. It just happened to have problems in other areas, unfortunately ...

  • GCC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cos(0) ( 455098 ) <pmw+slashdot@qnan.org> on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:52AM (#5509437) Homepage
    GCC 3.3 is not released yet; are they hoping that it'll be out before their deadline, will they include an unstable 3.3, or is this a typo in the announcement?

    • Re:GCC (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zurab ( 188064 )
      GCC 3.3 is not released yet; are they hoping that it'll be out before their deadline, will they include an unstable 3.3, or is this a typo in the announcement?

      In that case, most likely they will include the stable GCC as well as the pre-release, as they have always done, and provide choices to users. SuSE offers a lot more choices and flexibility in their setup than people give them credit for. Consider the selection between 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels before 2.4 matured and caught on. And, while they do supp

  • Last night.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:53AM (#5509440) Homepage Journal
    This was reported last night on OSNews. What's with the 24 hour delay, editors?
    Anyone know if 8.2 will support ACPI?
    • Subscriber probably had earlier access and us scum have had to wait :)
    • Yea a couple other stories I thought were a bit behind aswell. I always had Slashdot as my home-page because it was fast loading and I would stumble upon some stuff everynow and then that I hadn't read anywhere else. I still find stuff that I haven't read anywhere else... but I'm finding a couple that were from quite a while ago. It really sorta waters down the experience a bit when you see a story you had read somewhere else a full day or so earlier. I only see this as a problem that can get worse as t

  • If i'm not mistaken... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @12:56AM (#5509448) Homepage
    ...the "Desktop Sharing" feature is part of KDE 3.1, so any one who upgrades to that version gets that particular functionality - not just those on SuSE 8.2.

    *Looks at the KDE 3.1 menu on his RedHat 8.0 machine*

    K-->System Tools-->More System Tools -->DesktopSharing

    Yup, I'm not mistaken. (APT4RPM [sourceforge.net] and KDE For Redhat [sourceforge.net] are great together, BTW.)

    SuSE is a great distro, but credit where credit is due, please.

    Soko

    • From the writeup:
      Amongst other nifty features, KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing" that allows remote control of other desktops,

      From the parent:
      If i'm not mistaken... the "Desktop Sharing" feature is part of KDE 3.1, so any one who upgrades to that version gets that particular functionality - not just those on SuSE 8.2.
      SuSE is a great distro, but credit where credit is due, please.

      I've heard of not

      • I've heard of not reading the article, but not reading the /. writeup? Come on!

        It apparently has nothing to do with not reading the writeup. It apparently has everything to do with Slashdot lameness. Let me translate the writeup do you can understand how apparently lame it really is:

        "Among other nifty features, Gnome 2.2 apparently includes a file manager, the ability to grab mail from IMAP servers, a new administration tool that let's you change your desktop wallpaper."

        Okay, maybe not as bad as that, b
  • "In addition to CD/DVD writing applications, sound mixing, editing, and an integrated synthesizer, SuSE Linux 8.2 is the first distribution to include MainActor, a professional video editing application, enabling customers to compose and edit digital movies. The KDE scanning application Kooka and the commercial OCR tool Kadmos enable users to scan both printed and hand-written texts into the word processing application."

    Is MainActor a commercial Linux video editing application or is this a Suse created ap
    • Is MainActor a commercial Linux video editing application or is this a Suse created application?

      It's here [mainconcept.com]. It's a commercial video editing app. It's pretty cool when you know what the hell it is you are doing. As far as I was able to use it was editing frames in movies, but hey, I don't want to give out too many ideas to the goatse.cx guy.

  • SuSE... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ElGuapoGolf ( 600734 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @01:06AM (#5509501) Homepage
    I feel compelled to post this, because I'm sure in a few hours there will be tons of RedHat fanboys slagging SuSE and going on about how RedHat is the greatest.

    I use RedHat pretty extensively at work (Advanced Server and 8.0) and I am not at all impressed with it. I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't feel as complete as SuSE. And RH folks, why did you cripple KDE so I can't shut the machine down from KDE? Even your sales reps were amazed when I showed them my SuSE box with it's shutdown screen. What was your reasoning for this?

    SuSE seems stable as all hell, and it's hardware detection is second to none. I'm suprised nobody else has something like suse's little hwscan program (or do they). I just pop in a USB device (like a cdrw or a floppy drive) and it's configured, and appears on my KDE desktop. It's automagical.

    SuSE plays mp3s out of the box.

    It seems like the playing field these days is being narrowed down to RedHat and SuSE. Here's hoping it doesn't get narrowed down any further.

    • Not quite true... (Score:2, Informative)

      by leonbrooks ( 8043 )
      SuSE seems stable as all hell, and it's hardware detection is second to none.

      Both Mandrake and Knoppix clearly out-detect SuSE in some areas.

      • "Both Mandrake and Knoppix clearly out-detect SuSE in some areas."

        How? Where's the compasrison? or is it just the usual Slashdot "It's true because I say it is".

        Backup your statements or label it as opinion.

    • Re:SuSE... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blimey85 ( 609949 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @01:29AM (#5509590)
      the playing field these days is being narrowed down to RedHat and SuSE

      You left Mandrake off of this list because of what? Maybe your lack of experience with Mandrake products... or maybe your simply biased. I use RedHat for my servers and Mandrake for my desktop units. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses. Mandrake is slowly becoming better and better for servers and RedHat has never been very good for desktops, and is continually making things worse... at least if your a KDE fan/user (I use KDE exclusively).

      SuSE plays mp3s out of the box.

      What distro doesn't play mp3's out of the box? Oh wait, I know this one... RedHat... right. Forgot about them not bothering to ship the proper software for mp3 decoding in 8.0. At least that is what I read was the problem. I haven't tried playing mp3's with RH 8.0 so I can't say for sure. See, I've been too busy enjoying my Mandrake desktop with KDE 3.1 and the new version of Mozilla (which freakin rocks btw)

      Anyway, my point is that before you make a statement about the playing field being narrowed down to only 2 of the many distros, why don't you do some research and see just how many users the other distros have. I would wager that Mandrake has a considerable user base. Everyone I know uses it for desktops (and almost everyone I know uses RH for servers... with a few FreeBSD installs for good measure).

    • My friend, you have hooked my attention on the automagicality of SuSE, I require only screenshots to titilate my senses!

    • Re:Anyone notice.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:16AM (#5509730)
      You present it as if you SuSe is a victim of Redhat users here. The fact is that Redhat holds the "Most Hated Distro Award" among Slashdotters, and if there was ever a distro that was 'slagged', it was Redhat. You're presenting the post as a preemptive defense of SuSe from Redhat users is bullshit, because I never see these types of posts. You just want to rag on Redhat and tell everyone how you think SuSe is better, so you should just come out and say so.

      You claim that Redhat feels less complete, yet you give no real examples. I agree that Redhat was silly to not include the shutdown button in KDE and I'd love to know why they removed it, but you are acting as if it is some killer feature or something.. In fact, that is the most discussed item in your post, and you even speak of how your sales people were in awe as they watched you click on it (do you realize how silly that sounds?) and I wonder if you have anything better to mention besides the lack of a silly shutdown option from the K menu. I mean, I'm picturing some guys in suits, jaws dropped, watching in lust as you expose this unbelievable "Log Out" option in the K menu..

      Just come out with the the real point you want to make, which is the same one many other Redhat slaggers make: Redhat sucks because they did such and such to [insert KDE component here], my personal preference is [insert distro here].

      I'm getting really sick of the distro war bullshit. Use what you like, let other people use what they like. If your distro of choice is truly a good choice for someone, they will eventually try it and use it on their own. Quit beating dead horses.

    • Re:SuSE... (Score:2, Informative)

      by GammaTau ( 636807 )

      SuSE seems stable as all hell, and it's hardware detection is second to none. I'm suprised nobody else has something like suse's little hwscan program (or do they). I just pop in a USB device (like a cdrw or a floppy drive) and it's configured, and appears on my KDE desktop. It's automagical.

      As far as I understand, many tools SuSE has developed for their own distribution are not available under GPL or some other free software license. The tools Mandrake and Red Hat develop can usually be used in other d

      • Re:SuSE... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Organic_Info ( 208739 )
        To a point I'm OK with the distrobutions providing non GPL management tools.

        Each distro requires something to differentiate it form the others. If I was CompanyA and I spend a lot of time/money developing a tools that is then ripped for nothing by CompanyB on release which Company will survive longer?

        Its still OSS but sometimes you need some protection for your work - I don't see a problem with this.

        .

    • Re:SuSE... (Score:2, Informative)

      by schrottie ( 637365 )
      I'm afraid you're right about SuSE being more preofessional, BUT my personal little "annoy me again in the next release, my little bug"-list just keeps getting longer and longer. I really can't see the point in adding more and more features when the bugs just don't... wait! This is nothing new at all- sorry.

  • What about PowerPC? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SuSE for PowerPC [suse.com] desperately needs an update!

    7.3. Seven point three!

    We're two point releases into version 8, and the current PPC stable is from the 7 series. Isn't Linux simple to make cross-platform?
    • "Isn't Linux simple to make cross-platform?"

      I doubt its the most difficult thing but I would imagine its quite time consuming (hence expensive) to do all the required testing.

      If your gonna make that ort of investment you need to make sure your gonna make your money back.

      If its less commercially viable you won't see the release often (to often?) as seen with x86 versions.
      .
  • Releasing a release date will be their downfall - they will be late almost guarenteed ;)
    I'm not sure this will be the last commercial distro, perhaps a couple more, but surly their days are numbered.

  • RTF Press Release (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dago ( 25724 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:13AM (#5509719)
    2nd paragraph of it :
    "Available April 14, SuSE Linux 8.2"

    and not 12th ...

  • Red Hat, Mandrex, Suse (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kurt Russell ( 627436 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:14AM (#5509725)
    I tried them all.
    Their all the same, just got different gui install
    stuff.
    Give FreeBSD and or Debian a try.
    If you like them throw some bucks at em'. Once you get past
    the GuI hand holding you will love a BSD or Debian.
    BTW you can use KDE on them too.
  • If the only way to get it is to buy it, screw that. I want to see what I get before I buy it.
    • It hasn't even been released yet. Just finishe betas for crying out loud (lol).

    • Re:Is there anywhere one can download SUSE? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ctid ( 449118 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:50AM (#5509828) Homepage
      DISCLAIMER: I am a SUSE (8.1) user, but I've never tried this.

      What you do is to download their Live Evaluation CD [suse.com]. You then use that to download the rest via ftp. The link is to version 8.1.
      • Alternatively, just ftp the whole shebang to ur hdd. (if you can manage without the source rpm:s it's a couple of gigs. Then run the live cd, and youll have the possibility to mount your directory containing your packages. This will keep you fromin blind rage throwing your computer out the window when the ftp link dies mid-install. (And it probably will, trust me)

        DISCLAIMER:I tried this one or two minor versions ago, and it worked then. They may have changed sometheing now, to make it not work. Also, I don

    • Re:Is there anywhere one can download SUSE? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This version of SuSE isn't out yet, but yes you can do an FTP install of SuSE. If you go to ftp.suse.com and work your way through to the 8.1 tree of it [as 8.2 isn't out yet ;o)] then you can download the floppy disks / boot iso which should enable you to do an ftp install.

    • Re:Is there anywhere one can download SUSE? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alanp ( 179536 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @05:13AM (#5510163) Homepage
      This really pisses me off.
      This is a typical example of take it for free, give nothing back.

      SuSE have put a lot of work into their distros and deserve to be paid for them.
      Once you buy it, you can update it for free.

      Why should they give away all their hardwork for free.

      Yeah yeah, debian do it, but they aren't paying people and don't have bills to cover.

      Stop whinging about getting it for free.
      SuSE costs money and if you don't like it don't buy it.

      I usually *purchase* one version in each major series of SuSE, not because I need to, but because I think
      a) it is worth it
      b) to support the company

      On the distro wars, f*ck it use which ever bl00dy distro you want and stop bitching about others.

      Free choice doesn't mean you have to slag off the competion.

      I think SuSE rocks and is the best distro by a long way for professional users.... if you want to use redhat or pinkcoat that's your choice....

      • SuSE costs money and if you don't like it don't buy it.

        Well, I think that was the original poster's point: s/he doesn't want to buy it if s/he doesn't like it. My experence of SuSE is that it is so bunged full of stuff that a free download has only a fraction of the utility of the bought version simply due to the lack of a manual. Why not let people try it on the basis that those that like it will buy the "real" thing to get the manuals?

        Also, of course, when you say "Why should they give away all their h

  • Apparently...someone is behind the times (Score:5, Informative)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @02:33AM (#5509775) Homepage Journal
    Amongst other nifty features, KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing" that allows remote control of other desktops, and several interesting new crypto/security features.

    Wake up and smell the coffee! All these nifty new features are standard in KDE 3.1. Nothing apparent about it. You might have just as well said "SuSE will include KDE" and be done with it.

  • And Slackware 9 won't have... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rooktoven ( 263454 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @03:42AM (#5509941) Homepage
    oh, Slackware 9 (which is already at rc2) will have all these features. In fact, those of us running slackware-current already have them. I'm not saying Suse's not a nice distro, but we aren't exactly breaking new ground here.

    <wait for Gentoo/Debian comment>5 seconds</wait>

  • Linux won't take off whilst Windows is free. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrkrittman ( 548065 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @03:44AM (#5509945) Homepage

    The best thing that could happen for all Linux distributions is for Microsoft to finally crack the activation process, so that you have no way of installing Windows without a license and a properly activated copy

    The thing is, anyone with any technical skills and access to the internet can get hold of a copy of Windows XP and install it for nothing. Same goes for office. Witness the activation cracks, Devils-Own releases, and so on. Bottom line, Windows XP/Office XP is effectively free, and it's a better desktop/gaming/multimedia experience than any Linux distro. The day that you can no longer install Windows for free is the day the average slashdot person finally puts all of his/her effort into Linux.

    Microsoft know this, and that's why they still make it possible for the average techy to install and run Windows XP/Office XP at no cost, therefore negating the major benefit of Linux. They prefer people to pirate Windows and Office because it stops them making an effort with Linux.

  • Random features (Score:4, Informative)

    by Asdex ( 554247 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @04:37AM (#5510068)
    Suse promises to include:

    "The KDE scanning application Kooka and the commercial OCR tool Kadmos enable users to scan both printed and hand-written texts into the word processing application."

    "With the comfortable and enhanced SuSE configuration profile manager, notebook users, who commute between different locations, can switch to the network and hardware configurations of every office site and therefore, can use scanners and printers of the respective location with a simple mouse click."

    "[...] and the possibility to store folders in the running system in a crypto file system without the need for a new partitioning." That sounds really cool.

    Read the full announcement at http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_release s/archive03/82.html [suse.com]

  • 5 cds or 2 dvds? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joeler ( 45203 )
    Prior versions had 1 dvd that contained everything contained on the included 6 cds. Now they use 2 dvds and only 5 cds - it appears the people without dvd players to install the software will be getting less in the professional package. How else can they explain the need for another DVD at the same time they are reducing the amount of software cds. Is it SuSE way of slowly abandoning those customers that do not own dvd players?

    • Re:5 cds or 2 dvds? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by riggwelter ( 84180 )
      The second DVD contains the sources, the first mirrors the binary contents of the 5 CDs. It's controversial, but complies with the GPL (they are distributing the sources along with the binaries).

      The number of people without DVD drives is dwindling too...

  • steering AWAY from the xenophobic right wing nuts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ilumin8d ( 658997 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @08:32AM (#5510653)

    Im not sure where so many people have got the idea that SuSE is not free any more. SuSE, like all linux, is and always will be free.

    Perhaps part of the confusion stems from the commercial (ie paid for by SuSE) software that is bundled with SuSE when you purchase a distro but is not available to download for free. I buy the professional distro EVERY minor version release, not because I need to but because I want to support SuSE. In yast, the SuSE set up tool, you may set the installation medium to be the SuSE ftp site and update all you want. You can install from scratch like this as well and even update your core system (although this will require you to burn a FREE to download cd also)

    Just because a company lets you buy their linux distro in a shiny box with a bunch of lovely manuals, some cool stickers (which im glad to say are back in 8.1 after 8.0s notable absence) and literally tens of thousands of software packages, many of which you would otherwise have to PAY FOR, I really dont see why anyone complains.

    ISOs are available for non i386 SuSE distros, but as has already been pointed out, downloading nearly 6 gigs when you are not even going to install it all seems a tad wasteful on the old bandwidth. Bandwidth which I might add SuSE have to pay for somewhere along the line. If you can afford the time online to download 7 CDs then you will have no problem installing the system you want over ftp.

    SuSE Linux can be downloaded for FREE from: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/

  • Install via FTP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ElJosho ( 642871 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @05:34PM (#5515489)

    I'm running SuSE 8.1 on three machines right now - my home system, my laptop, and my work PC. I am still learning Linux, but I have tried quite a few distros and the lack of ISO images for SuSE dosen't bother me. Why? Because the FTP install is bulletproof! All I've ever needed to install SuSE on anything was three floppies and the IP of a local mirror.

    Sure, it takes hours, but just check off the packages you want, light fuse and get away! Set it before you go to bed, it's done in the morning (at least on cable/T1) - no swapping discs or anything like that. If you're looking to install onto multiple PCs, just mirror the distro locally. It's no bigger than a few ISOs would be. SuSE is also the ONLY distro I've gotten to install via FTP - most others made it so difficult that I had to download the ISOs.

    Just my experience, your milage may vary.

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