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Debian Software Businesses SuSE Linux

New Releases for Debian and SUSE 223

Posted by timothy from the don't-move-along-something-to-see dept.
linuxbeta writes "With the recent SUSE LINUX 9.3 Live DVD ISO released, we get a sneak peek. (screenshots) of this much anticipated OS update. Cool updates in 9.3 includes Firefox 1.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Gimp 2.2, Beagle. Xen, VoIP client, and more." And while Debian's Sarge isn't here yet (give Branden Robinson a chance to find his plush new office!), wrochal points out that the fifth update to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 ("Woody" ) has arrived. 3.0 (r5) "mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems." Also, four packages were removed, three for license violations.
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New Releases for Debian and SUSE More

New Releases for Debian and SUSE

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  • Grr. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sexy Bern ( 596779 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:29PM (#12263832)
    It's "peek", not "peak", ffs.

  • The fourth package's removal reason? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:42PM (#12263905)
    It was too sexy.

  • Multimedia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spineboy ( 22918 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:44PM (#12263915) Journal
    Getting multimedia to work with Suse is still somewhat of a pain. Yes mplayer does a fairly good job, but there are still tons of files/formats that just don't play right off the bat. I'm a fairly advanced user and have been using Linux for six years now. I actually bought COdeweavers and have installed mplayer. I still get plenty of problems with various formats, but eventually get it to play.

    This strategy will not "draw" in the crowds - most people give up before tinkering with the system. It has to work smoothly right out of the install (mostly).

    I generally think Suse is one of the most polished distros out there, but it still has a way to go with multimedia, to get it to appeal to joe-computer user and Grandma who are scared of "breaking" things on the computer.

    Linux is on the cusp from going from "hacker" OS to main-stream, but still has some catching up to Windows in certain things - mainly multimedia. Yes I know there are plenty of programs that work great - but the average user, I think, would not have the expertise to get it to work easily right off the DVD.

    • Re:Multimedia (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:55PM (#12263969)

      These all work great on Debian and have for years, if you use the w32codecs package from a non-Debian package repository.

      I'm sure SuSE can't ship it because it requires packaging some potentially copyright-violating codecs that are the byproduct of reverse-engineered streams and other "unscrupulous" things.

      I can use mplayer, xine, xmms to play dvd, cd, mp3, mpeg, wav, ogg, ogm, avi, RealMedia, Windows Media, QuickTime, and probably a dozen of others that don't come to mind right now...

      Just because SuSE doesn't have it, doesn't mean it can't be done with Linux.

      • Software everyone can use is better. (Score:5, Informative)

        by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @05:26PM (#12264537) Homepage
        In addition to being copyright infringement, these proprietary codecs don't work on non-i386-based platforms. One of the hallmarks of FLOSS is portability. I think it's a good thing that I can give someone a copy of an Ogg Vorbis file and not have to care what hardware they're using because I know it's likely that there's a program to play the audio file on their computer. Now, even portable digital audio players play Ogg Vorbis files, so people can hear high-quality compressed audio without being near their computer.

        This is part of the reason why I'm anxiously awaiting Dirac and why I'm reading the Theora spec. I want to be able to point to a complete and competitive FLOSS codecs which are genuinely useful for movies.

        We also ought to promote the use of these codecs and not be so eager to distribute copies of files encoded with proprietary or patent-encumbered codecs.
        • Then bring on the windows and OSX versions.

          Once you have the p2p networks using the FLOSS codecs, you're set.

    • Re:Multimedia (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ssj_195 ( 827847 )
      Unfortunately, media formats are things that tend to be patented to the hilt, so I'm guessing Novell have to tread very carefully with what formats they can support out of the box. It's worth noting that in other distros (e.g. Mandrake via the PLF, and Gentoo; probably others, too), getting mplayer to play damn near every format in existence is pretty much effortless.

    • Re:Multimedia (Score:1, Interesting)

      by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

      I've just moved from Mandrake 10.1 to Ubuntu (Sarge in disguise) and it's beautiful. Almost everything I'm installing is saying "No, I don't want anything more thanks, I've got all my dependancies right here." The same goes for multimedia - most of it was ready for me, and the rest was remedied by a quick download and uncompressing of the essential codecs package at mplayerhq.

      If we can just hold off the European patent laws a little longer then I think we've almost arrived at user-friendly linux.

      • Re:Multimedia (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "Ubuntu (Sarge in disguise)"

        I think you mean Sid in disguise.
    • I'm running SUSE 9.1 and know just what you mean. What really seems strange to me is that Kaffeine is included as a standard component with the system, but the default "run with" application for most media files seems to be Noatun, which, as far as I can tell doesn't play much. Almost every time I try to play something, it won't play in Noatun but plays fine in Kaffeine. [grumble, grumble...]

      The biggest pain is that, without a convoluted chain of software installation that I can't seem to accomplish (I'
      • A roaming profile tool came out with 9.2 and is still with 9.3. Update your system.
      • Forgot to mention this earlier but it's not that hard to watch DVDs in Suse. Install apt. apt-get update, apt-get install MPlayer.

        • Re:Multimedia (Score:4, Interesting)

          by xanadu-xtroot.com ( 450073 ) <(moc.tibroni) (ta) (udanax)> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:22PM (#12264851) Homepage Journal
          Why does eveyone always suggest MPlayer? Yes, yes, I know it plays a lot of stuff but there is Xine you know. (http://xine.sf.net/ [sf.net])

          1. $ emerge -pv xine-lib

            These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
            Calculating dependencies ...done!

            [ebuild R ] media-libs/xine-lib-1.0-r1 +X -aac +aalib +alsa (-altivec) +arts +cle266 -debug +directfb +dvd +dxr3 +esd +fbcon -ffmpeg +flac -gnome -i8x0 -ipv6 -libcaca +mng +nls +nvidia +opengl +oss +png +samba +sdl -speex -theora +v4l +vidix +vorbis +win32codecs -xinerama +xv -xvmc 0 kB


          That's a pretty impressive list, if you ask me.

    • Re:Multimedia (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is what's frustrating me especially now as linux draws ever closer to working just how an OS should. I'm getting old too, and the constant poking at ever changing (but almost there!) systems is wearing thin.

      At times, I feel we're always taking another step half way to completion. 5 years ago it was 50% there, later, 75%. Wasn't long until 87.5%... then 92%... the closer we get, the slower the refining a good desktop OS. the SuSE multimedia isn't too bad a problem all up, but as an oldbie I'm tired of

    • Re:Multimedia (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kosmosik ( 654958 ) <kos@kosmoMONETsik.net minus painter> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @04:09PM (#12264043) Homepage
      > I generally think Suse is one of the most
      > polished distros out there, but it still has a
      > way to go with multimedia, to get it to appeal
      > to joe-computer user and Grandma who are scared
      > of "breaking" things on the computer.

      They removed some multimedia support (DVD, MP3? I think it is about it) from some *reasons* not just because they cannot make it right. These reasons are legal difficulties - namely MP3 codec distribution issues (it is not free, when you distribute more than 100000 copies you need to pay Philips AFAIK) and DVD-CSS issues (I think it is illegal in US). SuSE is now US based (Novell) and they need to be legal. I belive only free (as in beer) version is crippled without multimedia. If you actually *buy* boxed set it should play MP3 and so on (I don't know how with DVD-CSS but they just could attach some propertiary program to play DVDs). So if you wish to pay you will get paid multimedia features, if you wish not to pay you don't and need to get it running on your own (which is perfectly legal - it just cannot be distributed this way).

      So it is not like Linux distributors don't want to distribute this stuff - they cannot.

      > Linux is on the cusp from going from "hacker" OS
      > to main-stream, but still has some catching up
      > to Windows in certain things - mainly multimedia.

      I use Linux on daily basis as my workstation and never had any problems (well actually there were some like 5 years ago - now it is close to perfect) with multimedia. Mplayer plays just about any file format you can imagine - I often find Windows Media Player to not play some files, mplayer does it all out-of-the-box - no problems with searching for codecs etc. with proper setup you just click on file and it plays - I don't have any problems with multimedia and Linux. There are some areas that Linux is lacking, but IMHO it is not multimedia...

      My distro of choice is Fedora - it also comes without some multimedia support - but adding it is as simple as adding one line to config file and issuing one command. For grandpa or smth. it is a matter of opening terminal and copying and pasting
      one command. And then it works so please don't dramatize. Or go get boxed paid distribution and you will get it all out-of-the-box.

      > Yes I know there are plenty of programs that
      > work great - but the average user, I think,
      > would not have the expertise to get it to work
      > easily right off the DVD.

      Look it is like installing one program and running it and you got DVD running. It is exactly the same as on Windows (does Windows Media Player play DVDs?). Actually I usually recommend anyone using Windows to install VLC Media Player - from my experience it works best. It is like somebody IMs or calls me and asks "look I've got this AVI file from my mail and I click it and it does not play - what should I do?" and I just point them to website or give them setup.exe URL and it works for them, where Windows Media Player does not. And VLC is aviable on Linux too.
      • Can Linspire [linspire.com] play DVDs? Why, yes. It can play DVD's. [linspire.com] What's more, the Linsoire DVD player is Xine. Some how, little Linspire has managed to figure out how to legally play MP3's and DVD's.

        If Linspire can do it, then there is no excuse for any commercial distro not to be able to play MP3s and DVDs. Just like real commercial distros such as Windows [microsoft.com] and OS X [apple.com] are capable of.

        • Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Informative)

          by kosmosik ( 654958 )
          > Can Linspire play DVDs? Why, yes. It can play
          > DVD's. What's more, the Linsoire DVD player is
          > Xine. Some how, little Linspire has managed to
          > figure out how to legally play MP3's and DVD's.

          So? It is exactly as I've said - you need to pay for it. They bought paid licenses for DVD support and distribute closed/propertiary version. And you need to pay for it. So what exactly is your point?

          • Re:Excuse me? (Score:2, Redundant)

            by FreeLinux ( 555387 )
            They bought paid licenses for DVD support and distribute closed/propertiary version. And you need to pay for it. So what exactly is your point?

            The point is the SuSE/Novell have chosen to not pay for the license and there is no excuse for this. There is no DVD support in the paid-for version. There is simply no legal DVD playback support or MP3 encoding in SuSE. Yet little-ole Linspire was able to afford this "heavy" licensing fee and still ship its distro and DVD player for a lower price than SuSE 9.3.

            Th

            • Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Informative)

              by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
              If the dvd is data, that's a moot point. If the dvd is video, then it depends on whether or not they used any encryption for the disc. The only time you really need special apps like decss is to decrypt encrypted video dvds.
            • The point is the SuSE/Novell have chosen to not pay for the license and there is no excuse for this. There is no DVD support in the paid-for version. There is simply no legal DVD playback support or MP3 encoding in SuSE. Yet little-ole Linspire was able to afford this "heavy" licensing fee and still ship its distro and DVD player for a lower price than SuSE 9.3.

              On the other hand, it seems to me that Linspire does not allow you to copy and share the distribution with friends (you get a 'Family license' for

    • Getting multimedia to work with Windows XP is still somewhat of a pain. Yes Windows Media Player does a fairly good job, but there are still tons of files/formats that just don't play right off the bat..

      Annotated Links: http://www.google.dk/search?hl=da&q=windows+%2B%22 can't+play+divx%22&btnG=S%C3%B8g&meta= [google.dk]
    • Mods are on crack today. Modding up as Insightful some idiot who can't install Mplayeron Linux? Especially a distro that has precompiled MPlayer rpms built for it?

    • A little more on the multimedia debacle (Score:5, Informative)

      by LibrePensador ( 668335 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @05:00PM (#12264393) Journal
      Right on brother. And here are the facts that no one in the Suse camp wants to face up to:

      1) Turbolinux, a distribution with a lot less mindshare and less money can afford to ship you a legal DVD player for $69 but somehow Novell cannot do so?

      1a) Unless you are a corporate buyer, you see HP's Suse notebook comes preloaded with PowerDVD.

      2) Slide two of the Suse silliness presentation is not that they not ship multimedia codecs out of the box. If that were our only problem. Debian, Red Hat and Mandrake do not ship libdvdcss or any of the other codecs, but once you add them, your existing Totem or Kaffeine players play.

      2a) But no, Suse has to go way beyond what's required and actually goes into the source code for Xine and Kaffeine and cripples so that even if you add the missing codecs/libraries, it still will not play.

      2b) So what do you do? You have to remove kaffeine, xine, xine-libs ad nauseam and then install apt-get and install those programs from a third-party and hope that it doesn't break anything else. Why is this bad?

      Because you no longer get updates for those packages from Suse and because mixing apt and yast sources can often leave your system in an inconsistent state.

      All of this is a damn shame, because Suse is an awesome distribution with some stupid, stupid, stupid policies that have no legal or logical basis.

      Hopefully, this long response will serve as a permanent rebuttal to all of the Suse fanboys. Liking a distribution should not be tantamount to giving them carte blanche to screw you over.

      Summary of facts:

      1) Suse ships DVD-playing software whenever the hell it pleases it.

      2) Other distributions manage to ship a dvd player for $69, yet Suse costs $85-99 or more.

      3) Suse cripples standard libraries and thus has disqualified itself from the home market. I will not touch it for these reasons and I have stopped recommending it to friends and clients.

      • Re:A little more on the multimedia debacle (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jonny_eh ( 765306 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @09:48PM (#12265951)
        Hmm, it wasn't too tough for me to get DVDs and other media formats working. Just install kaffeine and company (i.e. libdvdcss) from packman's yast repository. And since it's not apt-get, it won't break the system's consistency. Worked great for me! Just add this to yast as an installation source, don't forget to refresh it from time to time since they do update it!
        packman's yast source
        Type: HTTP
        Server Name: packman.iu-bremen.de
        Directory Name: suse/9.(whatever)
      • - price has sometimes more to do with positioning than production costs + margin

        - I've bought DVDs, I've bought DVD reader (which comes with software for Windows). I don't accept the fact that I should pay 50$ more to watch them.
    • Some other commercial distros are pretty well thought out as well.

      Example: Xandros3.

      ( oh, and they offer a community edition you can actually download and install, not some 'ftp only' garbage )

      Mepis is also pretty far up there for 'well planned out'.

      Both debian based, which is a plus for the future.

  • OpenOffice 2.0????? Isn't it in beta still? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kwanbis ( 597419 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:44PM (#12263917)
    OpenOffice 2.0????? Isn't it in beta still?

  • Congratulations editors! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Metteyya ( 790458 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:53PM (#12263961)
    Direct link to ISO file on Slashdot main site. Let the slashdotting begin!
    • Hey, providing ISOs for FTP without also providing Torrent files was their own choice - it's not like Suse's never issued a popular release before, so if the Novell takeover made them forget to use the torrent, that's their own choice.

      However, I haven't found a torrent for it. Torrent Reactor [torrentreactor.net] has some 9.3 versions, including a 5 CD set, but not this one LiveDVD version.

    • And currently, in the midst of a ./ing, I'm getting 368Kb/sec down on that DVD ISO.

  • 1+1=2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CygnusXII ( 324675 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @03:59PM (#12263992)
    So we have the recent crying session, over ubuntu and kubuntu being harmful to debian,when actually it comes to be a concern over "Release" dates and Press. Smells fishy to me.

  • Let's clear something up right now (Score:5, Informative)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @04:05PM (#12264019) Homepage Journal
    I got Suse 9.3 Friday after ordering from Novell.com 2 weeks ago.
    mp3s work out of the box using Juk.
    I watch DVDs using MPlayer which I installed using the apt port for Suse.
    There are 4 mulitmedia packs you can download from Suse using Yast.
    Understand?

  • NEVER, ever do this again, editors! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stupid Dog ( 133756 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @04:10PM (#12264045)
    I just thought that Debian Sarge was released and was already ordering a church service to thank god at last!
  • This screenshot [osdir.com] shows what appears to be a "ximianized" version of OpenOffice 2.0. The Ximian page [ximian.com] doesn't seem to indicate this has happened.

    Does anyone know where to get binaries of this little gem? A few higher-quality icons REALLY goes a long way...

    • Re:OpenOffice 2.0? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:57PM (#12265302)
      Gentoo has had a ximian openoffice in portage for a while. It uses the openoffice source with some added patches. I'm not sure how one would get this working without portage, but it may be a good starting point.

      Keep in mind though, you need over 4gb of free disk space just to compile the darn thing. But I'll admit it looks nicer and integrates better into KDE.
    • Well, I decided to just go ahead and build it. It's been compiling for about 12 hours now...

  • Torrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by dlichterman ( 868464 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @04:14PM (#12264068)
    Join the torrent
    torrent link [isohunt.com]

  • rats (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mortonda ( 5175 )
    I just downloaded 9.2.

  • XEN (Score:2)

    by bstadil ( 7110 )
    Anyone gotten Xen to work. My Thinkpad throws a

    Oiee CPU0 is history.

    No harm done but kind of a scary error message.

    • Yup, every system I have access to (including a T41p that I'm writing this message on) run Xen just fine.

    • Re:XEN (Score:2, Informative)

      by Lemming Mark ( 849014 )
      That particular error isn't very user friendly ;-) Come on the xen-devel list (see http://lists.xensource.com) and we may be able to sort you out. Alternatively, someone on #xen at OFTC may be able to help.
  • This is only the beginning, grab what you can now for tomorrow it may be gone.

  • Torrent Available (Score:2, Informative)

    by Quash ( 793610 )
    Here's a torrent for SuSE 9.3. Go swarm happy!
  • I don't have money to pay for a DVD recorder drive, or even a reader, I just have this nice CD-RW 52X from LG and I'm happy with it. So how can I install suse 9.3 by downloading cd isos to burn? (no ftp install, thanks). I supose I'll have to wait it to appear on torrent sites or emule?
    • You'll either have to find someone nearby who would be willing to let you borrow their SuSE 9.3 CDs, or you'll have to order the distribution yourself (not cheap). Your other option is to wait for the FTP release (usually happens half way between releases) and download the DVD iso, mount it, extract it to somewhere on the harddrive and try to install from that (what a pain). Forget about CD isos - SuSE doesn't make those. This option is still better than compiling from source RPMS.

      So, if you want to try Su

  • Why screenshots? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by billcopc ( 196330 ) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:14PM (#12264812) Homepage
    I don't keep up with every single distro (I just do servers), but what's the point in showing screenshots ? Every distro looks more or less the same because it's always a rehash of the same software.. different package managers, different default background images, different color schemes during INIT.. that's pretty much it.

    What do screenshots mean in such a scenario ? I know I'm being overly critical but any default X configuration tends to look like 1994 nostalgia. Why can't we style KDE to look like Panther or something ? Always that "blah" blocky gray bar nagging at my subconscious. No shadows/depth, no perception of interactivity. Yes I know I'm being overly artsy but if I'm looking at a GUI that's slowing me down vs the command line, that GUI had better make up for its inefficacies by being intoxicatingly sexy and curvy.
    • Stop making sense and move along.

      I too think screenshots don't do anything. How about a review of performance for the new apps rather than a change of the color of the title bar to the application?
    • Why screenshots? ... What do screenshots mean in such a scenario ? I know I'm being overly critical but any default X configuration tends to look like 1994 nostalgia.

      How would you know it still looks that way if it weren't for the screenshots? Would you rather have to install every distro in the hopes that it looks sexy, only to be pissed off at the time and effort required to find out it looks the same?

      It takes someone with a capable system, the correct graphic acceleration drivers installed, X.org wi

  • Debian (Score:3, Funny)

    by Princess Tarja ( 876619 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:30PM (#12265174)
    Websters Dictionary: "Debian" Once a Mainstay in linux distributions and somewhat innovative in package mangagement with "apt get" it fell into
    stagnation no doubt helped in part by it's so called "Debian Social Contract" and painfully slow release schedule. In later days it was surpassed by other more up to date distributions with other package systems with more flexibility and power.Debian R.I.P
  • I just upgraded to SuSE 9.3 and all I can say is so far everything is working smoothly and seems stable. It comes with the 2.6.11 kernel with some nice add-ons like subfs. My setup is not typical, either.

    This upgrade was actually one of the smoothest SuSE upgrades I've done.

    -Aaron

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