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SuSE Businesses

'Sneak Preview' of SUSE 9.1 190

Posted by michael from the better-than-okra dept.
Roblimo writes "SUSE 9.1 won't be out until May, but Joe Barr got access to a 'secret' beta download and tried it out. He liked some of what he saw, and found things he didn't like, too, but is willing to overlook some of the negatives because, he points out, 'This is a beta. Bugs are expected. Work will be done before it goes gold.' The review's at Linux.com." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
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'Sneak Preview' of SUSE 9.1 More

'Sneak Preview' of SUSE 9.1

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  • Much Needed (Score:2, Interesting)

    by artlu ( 265391 )
    I have never been a huge SUSE fan because of their somewhat commercialized attitude, and based on the screenshots from the article it looks like this version is going to be no exception. However, if it gets more linux users on the wagon, go for it!

    My $0.02.
    • I have never been a huge SUSE fan because of their somewhat commercialized attitude

      They are a for profit bussiness, what did you expect?

    • Re:Much Needed (Score:2, Interesting)

      by richmaine ( 128733 )
      "Based on the screenshots"? Did you read a different article than I did? I saw one screenshot, which showed nothing particulary commercial.

      The article discussed some objectionable commercial stuff, but I have trouble fathoming your "based on the screenshots".

    • Re:Much Needed (Score:2, Interesting)

      by halosfan ( 691623 )
      Well, some of us are not really huge fans of any OS/distro, as we are just trying to get the work done. And as far as getting work done, SuSE, in my experience, has always been worth its price. I personally view it the way I view German cars: well thought-out design, excellent engineering and superb build quality let me spend more time using the product rather than maintaining it.
    • I on the other hand, have been a pretty big fan of SuSE. And you're correct, it doesn't look too much different, other than a completely new Kernal. With the new Linux 2.6 kernal though, we're going to see bugs, but once it's all over, we're going to see a more stable system also. And the world can count on that!

  • Just say no to OSNews (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:04PM (#8748902)
    Mod me offtopic, but I for one, welcome a review from someone other than OSNews. Why? Because I want a review containing real information, not gripes about screen antialiasing, the (in)ability to compile packages, and GRUB vs. LILO flamewars.

    • Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:19PM (#8749075)
      ...heaven forbid someone complain about something non-techies consider important, like poor anti-aliasing, the inability to compile packages, and the usability of GRUB and LILO.

      I read a review once where Eugenia complained about the spacing between menus. Yes, believe it or not, those are things that graphics designers would care about because it has to do with subtle factors in user interaction.

      But, go ahead and stick to the reviews that are techie-only if you wanna.

      • Re:Yeah... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Bwa ha ha ha! Eugenia's a graphics designer? LOL. Just for that, I will post this:

        Sweating and farting nervously on the verge of mental meltdown, ELQ reloads each of her precious OSNews pages, making sure all is well. Fifty Internet Explorer windows are open in Windows XP, it's gridning the hard drive to death. ELQ's cable modem and NIC activity LEDs are nearly solid from the raw frenzy of almost constant browser reloading. Eugenia's eyes twitch rapidly from window to window with Mercurial speed to make su

        • Re (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Damn truth.

      • Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Informative)

        by kkirk007 ( 304967 ) <kkirk007 AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:47PM (#8749316)
        99% of this article is complaining about configuring Gnome under SUSE. The average "non-techie" that you're jumping up to defend doesn't care whether their desktop is KDE or Gnome, so long as it works.

        The system, aside from the small fonts on install, ran very well.

        I agree with you though, I'd like to see some usability reviews from the POV of a non-techie. Especially considering ESR's recent criticism [slashdot.org] of Linux usability.

      • Here's a secret few people know: users aren't any more omniscient than developers. Particularly when it comes to usability. Users don't want usability, they want familiarity.

        This is especially true with OSNews reviews. This is the place where you get reviews from Mandrake users saying "Fedora sucks because it isn't Mandrake. And where you get reviews from Fedora users saying "Mandrake sucks because it isn't Mandrake."

      • Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DrWhizBang ( 5333 )
        Eugenia's reviews are actually the better reviews on OSNews. OSNews often publishes some really poorly done reviews from people who have no business even blogging, let alone on a public site. It's really hit-or-miss (more miss than hit.)

        poor anti-aliasing and improper spacing are valid complaints. ripping a distro because their default is gnome or kde is pointless.

      • These things are definitely important. My gripe with Eugenia's reviews is that they're generally just an excuse for her to spout her own (poorly researched, poorly informed) opinions on interface design as if they were God's Own Truth.

        I've never complained about slashdot's story posting (hey, I don't have to read the articles), but it does bug me that she keeps getting cred by having her rants posted.

    • Just say no to random babelling (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @05:06PM (#8750289) Homepage Journal
      Critiquing the quality of information in the article is hardly offtopic. My personal gripe is that the story is full of comments like, "KDE and Konqueror are OK, but I'd rather use Gnome and Mozilla." We all know that SuSE is KDE-centric, and that not everybody likes KDE, so what is he telling us that is of any interest? If you're going to do an unauthorized peek at a beta version of a product, you should use a writer who can actually talk about what's changed in the product. In the case of a Linux distro, that probably means a person who actually prefers that distro and uses it with most of its default options.
      • Considering Novell owns both SuSE and Ximian (maker of Ximian Desktop which runs perfectly well on SuSE) it would be natural to expect better GNOME support than in past SuSE releases.

        I have run both Red Hat/Fedora and SuSE, and I must say that SuSE's GNOME tends to be more broken than Red Hat's KDE. The latter actually worked well (though without any third-party KDE apps installed) until you try to use, say, KPilot..

        • Considering Novell owns both SuSE and Ximian (maker of Ximian Desktop which runs perfectly well on SuSE) it would be natural to expect better GNOME support than in past SuSE releases.

          If buying Ximian and buying SuSE was all part of a single coherent plan, you might expect them to do that. Probably that's the case, but it this crazy industry there are no guarantees. I wouldn't be horribly suprised if Novell told the Ximian people they had to rewrite everything to use Qt instead.

          Given the facts you just

          • This guy was not insightful. All he knew to talk about was whether SuSE supported his favorite desktop and browser.

            Indeed. He had valid points but his article just sounded like a rant. Some previous posters commented that Barr's needs are better catered by SuSE Professional, but I rather doubt it, what he needs is a newbie GNOME distro.

            For example, notice how he did not resort to opening a terminal window, su-ing and then running YaST when the link from the Gnome menu broke because gnomesu was not install

            • Considering Novell wants to push Mono, I doubt they would want to piss off Ximian folks by telling them to drop Gnome at this point, but I would not bet my life on that..
              Why should Novell worry about pissing of the Ximian people? They're the ones cutting the paychecks.
      • Why unauthorized? In the comment section a colleague writes he downloaded it from a "press only" server. So I would respect more deeper reviews soon.
    • I agree that the article was pretty detail deficient. What have they changed "under the hood" in this version? Just as a random example: If I want to manually reconfigure something, do I have to do it in three places and then find out that my changes were undone because I didn't go through the GUI config tool? I haven't used SuSe for a while, so I don't know what the current issues are with it but you get the idea. While, I'm sure the mountain photo is really cool, I'd appreciate some more "techie" det
    • For fuck's sake, anti-aliasing is very much a tech issue. No all of us wear glasses. Those of us who don't would like to avoid needing to in the future. When you spent hours late at night, everynight, reading reports and calculating figures, anti-aliasing makes it possible to get by without a bottle of eye drops and an Advil. Human interface design is a science, not a cutesy artform with the sole goal of producing 3D icons and splash screens.
  • It would be nice if they offered the beta version for public use, eh?

    I prefer GNOME, so I guess we'll have to wait until the release. I'll share the ISOs too, I'll just strap on my backpack [slashdot.org] and share the wealth!

  • "Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sirmikester ( 634831 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:05PM (#8748919) Homepage Journal
    The next least favorite thing for me was the dumbing down of menus to a single choice of application, especially when I found myself disagreeing with the choice in almost every instance.

    I don't think a new user of a linux system would mind having some simple defaults to choose for. Since SUSE is aiming to please more than just hard core linux enthusiasts, I think that having a single choice is important.

    • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Maestro4k ( 707634 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:09PM (#8748957) Journal
      • I don't think a new user of a linux system would mind having some simple defaults to choose for. Since SUSE is aiming to please more than just hard core linux enthusiasts, I think that having a single choice is important.
      The only thing bad about this is having only a single choice for apps is very much a Microsoft mind-set. We want to see Linux to succeed, but I don't think any of us want to see Novell/SuSE turn begin acting/thinking like Microsoft. There are ways to give choice while providing easy single options. For instance the first time you log in, a script could ask if you'd like to change what programs you use for chat/E-mail/Web Browsing/etc. If you're more familiar with Linux and have preferences you'd say yes and pick out your favs. If you're a newbie, or just don't care, you'd say no and get the default options. I doubt this would be terribly hard to do, and shouldn't confuse new users.

      • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:29PM (#8749148) Homepage Journal
        For instance the first time you log in, a script could ask if you'd like to change what programs you use for chat/E-mail/Web Browsing/etc.

        Considering that this edition is aimed at least partially at first-time users... how do you expect them to know?

        Computer: "Do you want to use Firefox or Galeon?"
        User: WTF? This is weird... I just want to get the internet...

        After all, its not as if they can't add other software in the future. Its like the classic Microsoft Help question, "This is the first time you've used help. What sort of database do you want me to build?" Meaningless and intrusive. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and giving unnecessary choices to the user is not the impression you want to make.

        Remember, most people don't want to "use the computer." They just want to "get the TV listings," or "write a letter." Huge mindset difference.

        • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Maestro4k ( 707634 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:59PM (#8749481) Journal
          • Considering that this edition is aimed at least partially at first-time users... how do you expect them to know?

            Computer: "Do you want to use Firefox or Galeon?"

            User: WTF? This is weird... I just want to get the internet...

          Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, I agree that a question like that would confuse the hell out of newbies. What I had in mind was a question like:

          Computer: "Would you like to choose a different program to browse the web with, or will the default be ok?"

          except more of a single question that when you answered yes would take you to something to chose. If you said no, it'd just go away and that'd be that. Given that type of choice, most newbies would just accept the defaults, but power users could go in and tinker to their heart's content.

          • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Finuvir ( 596566 )
            Why ask at all? Just make it possible for power users to change their prefered programs (which I assume it is). Don't bother people with pop-up questions, just let them do what they want to do. Yes, people will usually just pick the default, but it'll make them uneasy. They won't know that they're making the right choice, and they may very well think they're making irreversible descisions. It's better just not to bother them.

            • menu options (Score:2, Insightful)

              by zogger ( 617870 )
              I like that idea a lot! Just expand on it easily. Menu *options*,and I don't mean emphasize "theming" and all that hoo-rah, the apps themselves, something like you get 3 choices a single click away, default-basic (one of everything basic, web, text reader/writer, media player, email client, chat client, etc), intermediate (more apps for different purposes, choices for each style of app),then power user with the entire kitchen sink in the menus, I mean every single last steenking teeny tiny app installed on
          • In my day power users could make such configuration changes themselves.
            These days they seem to need the computer to ask them questions.
            I guess they don't make power users like they used to.
        • Don't forget that your average new user would have absolutely no idea what "Firefox" or "Galeon" is. They could be just about anything, as could "Mozilla" and "Konqueror". In fact they all sound like game titles.

          Apple is just as bad with "Safari", although in most other areas they're better with "Mail", "iTunes", "iChat" etc.

          Microsoft on the other hand has "Internet Explorer" which kind of makes sense for a web browser, but "Outlook Express" doesn't make much sense to me as an email program.

          There's ple
      • SuSE 'limiting' your choices? Oh that's funny, considering they have one of the largest distributions on the market. SuSE 9.0 fills an entire DVD before you add in the source files.

        There is nothing wrong with giving people a default setup. If they aren't the most technical people too many choices will just scare them off and anyone who's interested can change the options at any time. This is NOT Microsoft-like lock-in.

        Furthermore, SuSE/Novell are shooting for a corporate market and corporate markets

        • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Maestro4k ( 707634 )
          • SuSE 'limiting' your choices? Oh that's funny, considering they have one of the largest distributions on the market. SuSE 9.0 fills an entire DVD before you add in the source files.

            ...

            Furthermore, SuSE/Novell are shooting for a corporate market and corporate markets do not want choice, they want a standard. Most sysadmins will further reduce the available choices even more.

          If you've been reading the posts about this, the general feeling is that Barr was actually reviewing a beta of the Personal edi

          • That's great, now when Joe Average installs SuSE and it boots up with all his programs set and doesn't even ask him if he'd like to change them, where's the choices? Joe Average won't even realize there are alternate choices ON the DVD, much less how the hell to change the defaults.

            On the other hand, a quick look in the user's guide reveals a chapter each about Konqueror as webbrowser, Galeon as web browser and Mozilla as web browser. There is a chapter about kmail, one about korganizer, there is also one

    • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:10PM (#8748972) Homepage Journal
      Absolutely, but have both "Default" (Dummy) and "Advanced" (Geek) buttons on the first page, with something like "If you are new to Linux, click Default or expect problems". Just because you are making it easier for new users is no reason to assume everyone is...

      • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mortenmo ( 95589 )
        The point is here (which some other people also pointed out) is that the personal edition is not for geeks. Geeks should buy the Professional "swiss-army" knife edition that got everything you could possibly want.

        Personal should be for people who doesn't care or doesn't know enough to care; they just want to use the computer.

      • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:5, Informative)

        by zurab ( 188064 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @04:00PM (#8749494)
        If you haven't used the recent (3.2+) versions of KDE, then you don't know what you are talking about or what that abomination of a "review" is probably referring to. In those recent versions of KDE, if there's only one item inside the menu group, then the sub-menu is not displayed. Rather, the name of the group is displayed and acts like a menu item that you can click on to run an app. When you do so, it runs an app that is the only entry under the menu group.

        So, for example, if in the menu you have Internet->Chat group, and Chat group contains only Kopete entry under it, then when you click on K->Internet, the Chat entry will show up as an application item, rather than a sub-group, and clicking it will launch the only entry under it - Kopete. If you install more chat apps, or edit menu and add more entries under that group, then it will display as a sub-group.

        What was to be expected anyway? KDE desktop with GNOME defaults? Did he expect GNOME to have KDE and QT app defaults? Did I mention the "review" was abysmal?

        As far as I know, SUSE 9.1 is supposed to include the new KDEfied OpenOffice, better quickstarter, new KOffice. Is 2.6 kernel faster? How does OO.org look? Did the "reviewer" do anything other than try to click on the SUSE website links, documenting every banner ad and pop-up, and try to install xchat? What kind of a "review" is that?

      • Re:"Dumbing" Down? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Finuvir ( 596566 )
        Why would a geek need an 'advanced' button? Just make the power-user options less visible and the geeks will still find them but the novices won't. There's no need to ask for an experience level and list of qualifications before deciding what options to offer a user. Besides, how does the user know what the developers consider 'advanced'? I'm sure I'd want some of the advanced options, but I'm new enough to Linux. Which should I choose?
    • I believe that you are correct. As long as choices can be easly added this is a "good thing"
    • Given the fact that both Novell and HP are pushing SuSE for the desktop, providing simple choices and not alot of options makse sense. In fact, SuSE as a distribution may not even try to please hardcore linux enthusiasts a single bit in the near future if both organizations are intent on making it sell as an alternative to Windows for your everyday Joe Sixpack and ESR's Aunt Tillie...
    • Just add a property for the menu options to change the "default app" for that kind of app...

      A bit like windows have in that featured add/remove programs tab that appears after the instalation of a SP...
    • Better would be to have a choice between menu systems that the user can make easily fromthe control panel: something like the following set of choices would be appropriate:
      • Simple Menus (GNOME)
      • Simple Menus (KDE)
      • Full Menus (GNOME)
      • Full Menus (KDE)
      • List absolutely everything

    • The year is 2104. The system is SuSE 99.1. Here is the conversation:

      Joe: "Why is there only a single choice of application in every category?"

      Bob: "Because we've always done it that way!"

      Joe: "But why have we've always done it that way? There must be a reason."

      Bob: "Because new users of Linux systems want simple defaults."

      Joe: "New users? What new users? We've had in-utero Linux training for twenty years now! The average age of LCSEs is six!"

      Bob: "They might want to thaw Ballmer out of cryo someday, a

  • Interesting screenshot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:07PM (#8748930) Homepage
    The "My Computer" icon shows Tux sitting in front of what could only be... an iMac. Is this somebody's idea of a joke? A peek at Novell/Suse's long-range goals? A rogue OS-X-boosting employee waiting to be slapped down? Inquiring minds....

  • SUSE 9.1 Professional (Score:5, Informative)

    by Karma Sucks ( 127136 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:07PM (#8748931)
    He doesn't say whether he reviewed SUSE 9.1 Personal or Professional.

    Fact is, it sounds like he reviewed SUSE Personal which is geared to novice users and with the "one task, one app" philosophy. No wonder it has only KDE and various spit-and-polish suitable for novices. By cutting out the cruft SUSE because all the more usable for this demographic.

    Fact is, Joe Barr isn't a novice user so he's going around looking for stuff that isn't there. SUSE 9.1 Personal provices a swiss-army knife selection of choices including GNOME. So he should use Professional instead of Personal if that's what he's looking for.
    • Argh various typos. What I meant to say is that SUSE Personal goes with the less is more philosphy, while SUSE Professional goes with the swiss-army knife policy.

      Basically, pick your poison. It sounds like Joe Barr made the wrong choice and is unjustly ranting about it.

  • JDS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:07PM (#8748940) Homepage Journal
    Suse and GNOME? It will probably end up being a lot like Java Desktop System. The demo CD of JDS I've tried is niiice. It's fast, smooth, and even detects 3D hardware automatically. I have not once been to the console in it or experienced an unexpected crash.

    • Suse and GNOME? It will probably end up being a lot like Java Desktop System.

      Pretty funny that Sun quite simply takes GNOME, rewamp it, and call it the Java Desktop. Except, most of the desktop is not run in Java.

      • Actually, Sun is a big contributor to the GNOME project. So it's a little hard to say that they "just take GNOME". I do agree that the Java Desktop name is a bit silly though. Still, it's a really nice system, and Webstart applications work without any fiddling.

  • likes? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by viniosity ( 592905 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:08PM (#8748944) Homepage Journal
    After RTFA I can't say I saw much of what he liked about 9.1. "The next least favorite thing for me.."

    I've never used SuSE before but, beta or no, this hardly encourages me to give it a try. Not that that's so bad.. there's a distro for everyone after all.. still I would have liked to hear more about the integration of Ximian and SuSE under Novell's stewardship.

    • SuSE 9.0, which I'm using now, doesn't suffer from any of the problems listed. My guess is that they'll polish a lot of it up, unless they don't want people to upgrade from 9.1.

      But yep, apart from a few interesting features, I couldn't see what was so great about it. I'll probably upgrade when it comes out, though. Assuming all the bugs have been fixed and the quality of the distro is as professional and smooth as usual.

      The pop-up ads and banners mentioned was decidedly annoying though. Very, very bad pol

    • Re:likes? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Quantum Jim ( 610382 )

      FYI, SuSE [suse.com] produces Knoppix [knopper.net]-like bootable CD [google.com] called "SUSE LINUX for i386 Live-Eval" [suse.com]. I revieved a copy via a magazine [linuxformat.co.uk]. It is kinda slow and not the best for using from the CD-ROM, but it provides a good intro and demo of SuSE Linux without having to install it to your hard drive.

      Notes: I recommend that you try it if you have enough memory - 256MB isn't enough,but 512MB or 768MB should work well (since it has to be loaded into RAM with no HDD install). I perfer Fedora [fedora.us] Core 1 [redhat.com], but my advice should give you

  • Unable to resist... (Score:5, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:12PM (#8748990)
    Well, now IBM is chummying up to Novell who now own SuSe (how long will the umlaut last?) and planning open source processors to run Linux, the Grand Plan is coming to fruition.

    OS X for creative types under the sky
    Solaris for server farms in halls of stone
    Windows for mortal men doomed to die
    Linux for Big Blue on his deep blue throne
    In the land of East Fishkill where the big fabs lie.
    Suse to package it, Reiser to file it
    Novell to service it, Gnu to compile it
    In the land of East Fishkill where the big fabs lie

  • light on details (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kbrannen ( 581293 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:12PM (#8748991)
    Ok, it's a beta; but could we have a few more details? #1 on my list is: What's it like with the 2.6 kernel?

    Closely followed by how is the driver scene and hardware compatibility list is, what X version is being used, and so on.

    The hard thing will be having to wait for this release. :-) If it's coming out in early May in Germany, it'll be the 3rd or 4th week of May before it gets to the US. Or at least that's how it's been historically. It'll be interesting to see if Novell's recent ownership changes that.

  • PowerPC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Goo.cc ( 687626 ) * on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:17PM (#8749048)
    Does SUSE still make a PowerPC version of their OS? I seem to remember one being announced but I didn't see it in their online store.

  • Yawn... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 )
    ...Yet Another KDE vs Gnome and Dependency Hell Article. Can't call it a review, contrary to the billing....
    Personally, I prefer KDE, but that's like saying I prefer dental surgery with a hammer and chisel vs. brain surgery with the same implements.

  • Installing Gnome on SuSe (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tarantolato ( 760537 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:18PM (#8749063) Journal
    It's relatively painless if you do the Ximian Red Carpet install from the Ximian site.

  • This review.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jvagner ( 104817 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:23PM (#8749103)
    ..doesn't bother to explicate what makes SUSE any different from any other distro. Why not Fedora, or Mandrake? What makes SUSE, well, SUSE?

    He never says.

    • Re:This review.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RPoet ( 20693 )
      You're too kind. This "review" provides no information at all. I'd like to hear about hardware integration, how well the distro specific tools worked and how well they fit with the desktop environment. This is just a brief story about one guy trying to make SUSE as much into Fedora as he could. All he says is "it came with KDE, so I installed GNOME, and it didn't go smoothly, but this was a beta anyway, bye."
    • 4 letters: YAST

      Of course, the review was just a report of missing dependencies that could happen in a beta, and how the user disliked some of the choices taken by the distribution. Most of the "good" things of the distribution (yast, how gnome apps integrates in kde or special packages that it could include, manuals or packaging, installation process describing anything that wasn't the time it took) is missing from the article.

  • Review? (Score:2, Informative)

    by trtmrt ( 638828 )
    This guy just installed SuSE 9.1 without Gnome (his choice) and then complained about not having Gnome and Gnome applications!? I have installed SuSE 8.0 and 8.2 (both home and pro) a couple of times and never had any problems installing Gnome (I prefer KDE but install Gnome just in case). I don't think it's very likely that they would brake YaST so bad that you can't install Gnome. Yes, it complains about dependencies but it resolves them and installs everything you need. SuSE is by far the easiest OS I h

    • Re:Review? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, he installed without Gnome because he
      could NOT install with Gnome due to dependency
      issues.
  • that it doesn't say that if any chameleons were hurt in the making of SuSE 9.1...

  • SuSE is commerical - and that's good. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DR SoB ( 749180 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:38PM (#8749205) Journal
    The Linux community _needs_ a vendor that is commerical based, it helps spread the word. I recently attended SHARE in L.A. and the only Linux retailer there was SuSE.

    SHARE is mostly a mainframe conference but since z/OS (and s/390) now supports omvs (Unix System Services) it makes sense to start pushing more Linux.

    I can recommend SuSE to some of my less technical friends and they will see that it's easy, and has good commerical support.
  • I have only install Linux once; sometime ago. This is not about Linux, but about my thought on interfaces. There has been a few slashdot articles recently about it. But it's funny how we are standardizing in some respects: clock lower right with other current running program icons. Start somewhere left, with a menu of some sort. Upper left Icons concerning Networking, My Computer, etc.

    I guess it's really that it's like the phone. The design is so simple and elegant that it's hard to radically change

  • What a Rant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adler187 ( 448837 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @03:45PM (#8749282) Journal
    I really didnt like this review. He complained that the menus were too simple. I have used SUSE since 8.0 and am currently running 9. As far as the menu's go in 9, if you only have 1 app of a certain type, it defaults to renaming that app to whatever type it is. For example, in a default install you will only have Konquerer for a browser, so when you go to Internet->Web Browser, it will launch Konq. Now if you have Mozilla installed too, Web Brower will become a sub menu containing both Konq and Mozilla.

    One way to get around the small font in the install he complained about was to change the resolution. Before you hit enter at the install bootloader, hit F3 (i think) and it will give you a list of resolutions to use. The menu is located at the bottom of the bootloader. He also complained that it didnt come with the stuff he wanted. Well cry me a river because you are a little more advanced than their target audience and are too lazy to install and configure the apps to your liking.

    Also, in YAST there is an autocheck dependencies which should automatically resolve all dependencies when installing things, so he shouldn't have had to figure out what was not making his GNOME install. Maybe it is disabled for some reason in the beta, or maybe he didn't see the checkbox down there?

    Maybe he should complain less and use the system more.

  • I've said it before ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DrugCheese ( 266151 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @04:09PM (#8749608)
    And I'll say it untill something else replaces the fact that SuSE is the best all around distribution. From linux newbies looking to switch from windows for the very first time to system administrators needing to drop in a box here or there that they can setup and never think about again.

    And if they need to think about it again they can remote administer it through YAST or SuSE's desktop sharing.

    • And I'll say it untill something else replaces the fact that SuSE is the best all around distribution. From linux newbies looking to switch from windows for the very first time to system administrators needing to drop in a box here or there that they can setup and never think about again. Moreover, the so-called minimal install is not minimal when it insists on installing X and qt, when it should not.

      And if they need to think about it again they can remote administer it through YAST or SuSE's desktop sh

  • What?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by srcosmo ( 73503 ) <ultramegatronNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday April 02, 2004 @04:35PM (#8749934) Journal
    Only one screenshot??!

    This is slashdot, guys! What are you trying to do, make me read the article??

  • Lame Lame Lame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Friday April 02, 2004 @06:24PM (#8751160)
    Disclaimer: I have viewed this Joe Barr guy as a complete lamer ever since his huge rant against MPlayer for not supporting his buggy GCC

    This is a really really lame review. The whole thing can be summed up in about three lines:

    "I installed SuSE Linux. The install went great, but I don't like KDE and none of my Gnome apps were installed off the bat, and I couldn't install them properly because I don't know how to work YaST, so it sucks. Hopefully this will be corrected when it goes gold".

    Basically, he installs it, and is upset to find out that all the default apps are KDE apps. Well hello, SuSE has *always* been a KDE distro. And guess what, that is the exact same way *I* feel eevry time I am forced to install RedHat, and I have to use all Gnome apps.

    If you want a Gnome-centric distro, why are you using SuSE at all?Another waste of everyone's time by Mr. Barr.

  • Good choices (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tarantolato ( 760537 )
    Personal Edition, on the other hand, is for "non-professionals" in home environments, and Novell/SUSE doesn't want to overwhelm these consumers with too many options, Schlaeger said.

    Ya know, much as I'm a big gnomefanboy and all, I think this is a good choice. My girlfriend (big guineapig on all ease-of-use issues) gets freaked out when she sees two different [x] available.
  • With Novell's announcement that YaST is to be distributed under the GPL, is this new SuSE release free, or are there remaining esential non-free parts? (Junk like Acrobat Reader, etc. doesn't count, as long as it is simple to choose not to install it.)

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