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SuSE Businesses Software Linux

An Early Taste of OpenSUSE 233

Posted by timothy from the open-suse-wide dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Finally the site OpenSUSE.org is up and includes some beta downloads. The stable version can be expected around September 2005. Looks like there are some differences between Novell's SUSE and Redhat's Fedora mentioned in the FAQ."
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An Early Taste of OpenSUSE More

An Early Taste of OpenSUSE

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  • diffs? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ossifer ( 703813 )
    Looks like there are some differences between Novell's SUSE and Redhat's Fedora mentioned in the FAQ

    Yast? It that it then? The FAQ answer doesn't exactly make the differences between opensuse and fedora sounds terribly large...

    • Re:diffs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rpdillon ( 715137 ) * on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:39PM (#13283394) Homepage
      Well, from TFFAQ:

      The openSUSE project explicitly looks beyond the technical community to the broader non-technical community of computer users interested in Linux. The openSUSE project creates--through an open and transparent development process--a stabilized, polished Linux distribution (SUSE Linux) that delivers everything a user needs to get started with Linux. (SUSE Linux is consistently cited as the best-engineered Linux and the most usable Linux.) To fulfill its mission of bringing Linux to everyone, the openSUSE project makes SUSE Linux widely available to potential Linux users through a variety of channels, including a complete retail edition with end-user documentation. Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience.

      So, more than simply YasT. One of the things that drove me away from Fedora was that it is publically acknowledged to be public grounds for vetting Red Hat's technology which will be the basis for RHEL. Novell is taking a very different approach when they indicate that OpenSuSE will be directed towards end users, and will focus on the user experience. That was never a focus of Fedora Core, and, IMHO, is why a lot of people are fed up with it.

      • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Informative)

        by homer_ca ( 144738 )
        "Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience."

        Umm.. Ubuntu?

        • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jdray ( 645332 )
          Umm.. Ubuntu?

          Umm... Is Ubuntu supported? I'm not trolling, I seriously don't know. I'm thinking that Novell may be considering themselves "only" because it's a distro with support behind it, sort of deprecating every distro put together by... um... non-professionals. Not that I support the differentiation, I'm just guessing at what they mean.

          Of course, that leaves one open to wonder about Xandros [xandros.com]. I've never used it, but it's reputed to be a very easy to use and approachable desktop OS and it's supp

          • > Umm... Is Ubuntu supported? I'm not trolling, I seriously don't know.

            Afaik for 6 months. Ubuntu wants to release a *single* release with 2 years support only next year. *All* releases of SUSE Linux have and will be supported for 2 years after release.

            • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Informative)

              by FictionPimp ( 712802 )
              Actually.

              Ubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or the current development release. Each release is supported with security updates for at least 18 months.

              source www.ubuntulinux.org

          • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by homer_ca ( 144738 )
            "Umm... Is Ubuntu supported?"

            I was talking more about being user-friendly for non-technical people. If you're talking about paid support, Canonical provides that for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is backed by a non-profit foundation with millions in funding from Shuttleworth. Although it's Free, it also has a polished commercial feel to it (as opposed to a hobbyist feel).

          • Re:diffs? (Score:2, Informative)

            by iwan-nl ( 832236 )
            Supported? As in paid tech support [ubuntulinux.org]? Ofcource it is.

        • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 )

          "Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience."

          Umm.. Ubuntu?

          Ubuntu is good, but I am pushing my small business customers more towards SUSE.

          The FAQ is certainly laced with a bit of marketing. That said, I have been really impressed by the progress Novell has made in the last year, and with their commitment to two aspects critical to long term success: following standards (trying to create genuinely open standards

          • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Erwos ( 553607 )
            "IMHO, Red Hat would like to "differentiate" itself and be the dominant Linux vendor. SUSE is aiming to be the best among cooperating organisations."

            This is so laughable. Novell's been pushing to get lock everyone into Netware and Groupwise. I can see you've never actually been to one of their real-life presentations before.

            Red Hat, OTOH, came off totally differently in real-life. Very dedicated, willing to take on all comers while still staying true to the GNU dream.

            -Erwos
            • Uh, you must have had a very different sales team than I had. When we met with Novell IRL, they were happy to hear that we ran a lot of Linux, so they pushed SuSE, Open Enterprise Server, and Linux support. They mentioned Netware very briefly (mostly to note it wasn't a good fit for us) and never mentioned Groupwise. They seemed more interested in selling us Linux, as well as products like eDirectory and their web services stuff.

              Never met with Redhat, though. Ironically, we're running four (paid-for)

              • It could very well be. The presentation we had was for a very large public academic institution. It was also rather soon after the acquisitions of Ximian and SuSE - perhaps they didn't have time to get together a better presentation? But, still, these were guys from Ximian. They should have known better.

                Anyways, I would encourage you to get Red Hat over there. Everyone I've ever talked to from them (a couple large pimping/sales-oriented meetings, and a training pitch session) has been stunningly knowledgabl
                • How is SuSE not free as in freedom? I know there was some concern over YaST a while ago, but they open sourced it. Obviously, Novell has a lot of non-free products, but how is SuSE not free?
        • Ubuntu is good, and they're putting some damn fine work out. Having said that, it did take me several hours to get sound working on a friend's system at one point. That doesn't really qualify as "non-techie-friendly".

          This was about half a year ago so the particular problem I hit may have been fixed by now. I still wouldn't call Ubuntu completely polished yet tho.

      • Re:diffs? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Digital Pizza ( 855175 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @09:02PM (#13283491)
        Actually I think that Fedora is pretty user-friendly. I've loved the Redhat distribution ever since 5.1 (I think). I still love the "user experience" of Fedora, meaning its GUI for preferences and system settings, and the programs menu.

        It's unfortunate that some fundamental things about it suck to the point I'll sadly be forced to abandon it.

        They've moved from simple config files to cryptic and often compressed XML files for no good reason that I can discern, making it a pain in the butt to edit certain configs from a terminal.

        As far as I know, you still can't edit the Gnome menu from the GUI without doing a flakey hack.

        The worst thing is that they cut off updates for each release when the new one comes out every six months. Upgrade installs are unreliable and leave out new features, meaning you have to do a fresh install every six months! This is unacceptable to me, and is what will, sadly, cause me to switch to something else.

        I've used Suse before and liked it; I'm just too cheap to pay what they wanted for it each time a new version came out, and the FTP install never seemed to work for me (I kept losing my FTP connection during the long download). I look at OpenSuse with great interest - it just might take Redhat's place as the "good" free Linux distro with business support.

        • I haven't tried SuSE for a while (since 8.x)... At that point, I had finally abandoned SuSE for Red Hat a bit later.

          I do look forward to the increased competition. YAST is hardly an open standard, but it may be a good configuration tool (assuming that some of the corner cases have improved since I tried it last).

          However, there is one correction to your points though that I would like to make:

          The worst thing is that they cut off updates for each release when the new one comes out every six months. Upgrade

        • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LnxAddct ( 679316 )
          To edit gnome menus, you don't need a separate tool, just drag and drop, but because of many KDE folks not figuring that out, the next version will have a configue tool. As far as the compressed XML files go, I have yet to run across any of them, perhaps the GUI related ones are, but in all honesty if a tool is designed to edit a conf file, most likely you shouldnt be editing it by hand, and that holds true for quite a few popular open source CLI apps too. Fedora does *NOT* cut off updates until 2 releases
        • The worst thing is that they cut off updates for each release when the new one comes out every six months.

          Nothing like a big lie in there? Oh sorry, it's actually two lies in one sentence! Firstly, the minor lie is that Fedora's releases have actually had 7 or 8 months between them (FC5 will be out 8 months after FC4...and possibly even longer than that if it gets pushed back).

          The bigger lie though is the claim that there's no updates for any of the previous releases as soon as the latest Fedora is rele

          • amendments (Score:3, Interesting)

            by wild_berry ( 448019 )
            You missed saying that FC4 will upgrade you from previous versions of Red Hat (from 7.x, 8.0, 9 and FC1, FC2 & FC3), but only hinted at in the release notes [redhat.com]. I think that this, retaining your $home directory and other preferences is easier than a total reinstall.

            I suspect that Disk Druid isn't a stand-alone application because of the dangers of allowing people to alter the partitions of disks in use. The source is in the srpms (here [redhat.com], particularly anaconda-10.2.1.5-2.src.rpm [redhat.com]), and it shouldn't be too
          • SuSE has contracted for a 7 year support cycle. What sane shop uses OS's 7 years old in this security day and age? Even then, for Fedora and RedHat legacy support, there's www.fedoralegacy.org, which seems to go on providing legacy and kernel updates long after RedHat has given on OS's as a bad job, such as RedHat 8.0 and Fedora Core 2.

      • Yast, RH (Score:3, Interesting)

        by typical ( 886006 )
        So, more than simply YasT. One of the things that drove me away from Fedora was that it is publically acknowledged to be public grounds for vetting Red Hat's technology which will be the basis for RHEL.

        Uh...yes. But the kernel is just public grounds for vetting Linux technology which will be the basis for all distributions and so forth.

        It's not like RH doesn't have a pretty rich legacy of contributing back -- if you fixed something that really was Fedora-specific, like, oh, a package dependency, White Box

        • Re:Yast, RH (Score:2, Interesting)

          by ocularsinister ( 774024 )
          The last time I checked, YaST worked just as well from a console (albeit using ncurses) as it did from X. I'm definitely going to take a look at OpenSuSE. Having spent the last year on Gentoo learning how things work under the hood, I think I'm just about ready to move back to a more polished distribution. Not that I'm digging at Gentoo - it has some great features too!
        • "It makes absolutely no bloody sense for GNOME to have a VFS or KDE to have kioslaves. These functions have *nothing* to do with a desktop environment -- they are generic functionality that would be useful anywhere. They *should* be available in a separate library. You wouldn't make kxml and gnome-xml -- you'd use libxml So why all the tying into DEs?"

          1. because they can
          2. because they'd rather compete. you know, choice is good and stuff (sarcasm, indeed). anyways, the kde/gnome people are working together

      • Re:diffs? (Score:2, Informative)

        by dieScheisse ( 554308 )
        One of the things that drove me away from Fedora was that it is publically acknowledged to be public grounds for vetting Red Hat's technology which will be the basis for RHEL.

        also from the FAQ [opensuse.org]:

        Why is Novell starting the openSUSE project now? [opensuse.org] (last sentence)

        "They will also ultimately influence the commercial SUSE Linux products businesses use to run their applications."

        and

        What is the relationship of the openSUSE project to Novell? [opensuse.org] (last sentence again)

        "The SUSE Linux operating system and
    • What makes the openSUSE project different from Fedora?

      The openSUSE project explicitly looks beyond the technical community to the broader non-technical community of computer users interested in Linux. The openSUSE project creates--through an open and transparent development process--a stabilized, polished Linux distribution (SUSE Linux) that delivers everything a user needs to get started with Linux.

      When compared specifically to Fedora, the openSUSE project embraces and develops several additional im

      • Re:diffs? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Karzz1 ( 306015 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @09:00PM (#13283486) Homepage
        So YaST is there and such, but it seems like they are discounting any need for more technical users. Isn't it the technical users that give something like this the boost it needs to get to be more usable? I thought the whole purpose of opening something up was for the technical users.

        As I understood it, SuSE employed several KDE developers. I assume this talent went with the sale to Novell. The same Novell that has also recently purchased Ximian. I would say that if anyone in the Linux market had the wherewithal to polish the Desktop, it would be Novell/SuSE. Just my 2cents.
        • I never got this. Novell owns ximian and has all that pull on the gnome desktop and yet they still do not provide a very good gnome desktop and continue to focus on kde.

          I tried a paid version of suse. It was very pretty and slick and had good encryption support built in when the only other decent competitor was mandrake but it still had so many glitches (like tvtime, the kde tv app - basically no tv support that worked) that I went back to mandrake. ...At least until ubuntu came out. Ubuntu's desktop isn't
        • That's the word... I guess Novell wants to polish Suse to be able to complete dismish any complains from a desktop user perspective, and this way be able to compete against that other Evil(tm) OS.

        • Re:diffs? (Score:3, Informative)

          by ahillen ( 45680 )
          As I understood it, SuSE employed several KDE developers. I assume this talent went with the sale to Novell.

          Why? SuSE still is a strong supporter of KDE. They even still look for KDE developers [novell.com] (sorry, link in German).
    • To fulfill its mission of bringing Linux to everyone, the openSUSE project makes SUSE Linux widely available to potential Linux users through a variety of channels, including a complete retail edition with end-user documentation. Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience.

      I've never used Fedora* but judging from some of the comments here and on other boards Fedora is much but not polished. Also, the last SuSE versi

      • I like Fedora Core 4 a lot more than I liked Red Hat 9. I'd give it a try. We exclusively use FC on new machines at work, and it's given us no problems. It's always a happy day when we upgrade some of the old RH boxes to FC, too...

        -Erwos

  • Welcome (Score:5, Funny)

    by Elitist_Phoenix ( 808424 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:34PM (#13283369)
    I for one Welcome our new Novell overlords, I would like to remind them that as a trusted programmer I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground coding labs.

    • Re:Welcome (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cpthowdy ( 609034 )
      Seriously, you would shit yourself if you saw Novell's lab. I got to tour it since I'm President of a Novell User's Group.

      They call it the Super Lab, and it's nothing but rows and rows of computers so that they can stress test apps before they are released. They even have different companies come and rent it out for their own apps.

  • OpenSuSE at Linux World San Fran (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PenguinBoyDave ( 806137 ) <`david' `at' `davidmeyer.org'> on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:39PM (#13283392)
    There was quite a lot of buzz around the Novell booth today regarding OpenSuSE in San Fran at Linux World. I am not a Novell employee, but as my booth is right across from theirs, the interest from the public was obvious...then again it could have been the pea-green free hats!
  • How does OpenSUSE compare to OpenBSD or OpenSolaris which I can also afford to download?

    • Re:how does it compare? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bigbadunix ( 662724 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:49PM (#13283439) Homepage Journal

      It's sexy, it's stable, and has an emphasis on the desktop. I've used SuSE in one way, shape, or form since about 8.0. It's always been a reliable, well-put-together (although somewhat too 'commercialy' for me at times) system. Early provider of AMD64 support didn't hurt either. It's one linux distro that I never had an issue paying for, as they didn't go the "screw the users on pricing" or the "we're focusing on the server" attitudes that Red Hat did.

      I use it in some instances as a lamp server, used to on the desktop(with great results), and have never been underwhelmed by it's stability and completeness.

      If it weren't for OS X, I'd probably still be using it as my primary desktop. Bottom line is, use the right tool for the right job. Each system, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, GNU/Debian, NetBSD, Solaris, IRIX(gah!) each have their own place in the mix.

  • Just a new name? (Score:3)

    by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:44PM (#13283415) Homepage Journal
    So, basically this is a new name for the FTP version of SuSE that's always been available for download a few weeks after the retail version hits the stores? Eh, I guess that's nice.

    I like SuSE in general - they've always struck me as supporting the community because it's the right thing to do, rather than RedHat's feeling of being semi-forced to give back because it's good marketing and because of the GPL. Just my opinion, of course, but then, I spend days mostly working with RHEL (ugh)...

    • Re:Just a new name? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rpdillon ( 715137 ) *
      No. They provide ISO's (both CDs and a DVD) for download, free of charge. The ISOs are images of a complete retail version of the product, despite the "eval" in the name.
      • last i checked they didn't provide anything but a live cd upon initial release. The FTP and regular ISOs get updated later...this last time it was a month or two. Of course the stuff is there on FTPs for people to get at for the most part if one wanted to roll your own...they just don't have them setup for a nice clean upgrade in Yast right away.
        • 9.2 and 9.3 were different. Eval CD's (which are install CD's without some packages, perl-mods, apache, tomcat, etc). Basically End-User CD's, not full "SuSE Professional".

          They were released to the FTP site practically the same day as the boxed release.
      • I donwloaded DVD ISOs for the last couple of versions of SuSE, and there were just a few releases where they stopped distributing CD ISOs... I can assure you, I did not pay [SuSE/Novell] for those downloads. :)
    • It's a new name for the now open development process of SUSE Linux. The main difference for end-users will be that FTP installation and ISO images will be available about two weeks before the boxed retail versions in the shops rather than one month later.

  • Yast is considered a feature of SuSE (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:48PM (#13283437)
    YaST is the absolutely worst part of SuSE, but Novell is lauding it as one of their key features? YaST gets just about everything wrong: handling chroot cages with symlinks *OUT* of the chroot cage instead of *INTO* the chroot cage, an insistence on wrapping vendor software packages in badly written install scripts that are wildly inconsistent with the underlying RPM package management, the world's most complex and least organized auto-install system, and overfriendly GUI's that refuse to let you manage more than two kernels on one machine and overwrite your hand-edits? And that YaST package management and update system that doesn't have the concept of handling both an update and base OS package site, or allow unattended operation for cron scripts or kickstart installs? Novell should take the money they overpay the YaST team and give it to the author of fou4s, which actually works, and the http://packman.links2linux.de/ [links2linux.de] website which actually keeps packages like Mplayer up-to-date and compiled with all the options, instead of forcing you to recompile packages to actually contain all the available features built into the SRPM. And especially they should take the money away from their kernel team, who couldn't publish a working SRPM if their lives depended on it because they have this custom "build system" that actually prevents the SRPM's from being compilable without hand-editing.

    They also pretend that their freely downladable versions of things are the same as their commercially published ones. Roughly half the packages are different: if you use the commercial installations, you cannot use the free mirror sites for package installations due to the YaST stupidities I mentioned and their inconsistent release numbers. This is why even if you buy SuSE licenses, you should always install from the free download sites, to keep good access to updates and consistent OS numbering with them.

    • Re:Yast is considered a feature of SuSE (Score:5, Interesting)

      by debilo ( 612116 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:53PM (#13283448)
      Things must really have changed then. Back when I still used SuSE, I found YaST awesome and extremely helpful. I didn't make use of all its modules, but I never ran into problems. And quite often I hear others ask for YaST to be ported to their distro because they found it great when they saw it in action.

      The FAQ is a bit weird, though - calling YaST a "standard" is a total exaggeration.
      • Things must really have changed then. Back when I still used SuSE, I found YaST awesome and extremely helpful. I didn't make use of all its modules, but I never ran into problems. And quite often I hear others ask for YaST to be ported to their distro because they found it great when they saw it in action.

        What made me give up on YaST back around 8.0 was that it did not properly handle two ethernet cards if the ethernet cards required different drivers. I assume that this problem has been fixed by now or a
    • I don't know what color the sky is in your world, but SuSE is by far and away the easiest and most user-friendly of the distros. YAST really sets SuSE apart by being the best installation and configuration tool around. I've tinkered with just about every distro under the sun and I always come back to SuSE at the end of the day.

      Max
    • For a seasoned, knowledgable system admin, YaST is a horrible mess. BUT, for the majority of people, who aren't sysadmin's 80hrs/wk, YaST is a very useful, powerful tool.

      I'm an admin, so I absolutely hate the damned thing. It's a scripting language that has 99% of what it does hardcoded in a number of interdependant library packages -- God help you if you ever need to fix so much as one damned line of that shit. "YOU" recommends upgrading packages you don't even have installed...

      Oh, and the ISO images av
      • I Smell the blood of a Gentoo bum. Yast is a hell of a lot better then endless config files and in obscure locations. Prefect? Hell no, but a good start. I have yet to see any Linux distro be bug free or completely ready. But the worst part of any Linux is the management. Yast starts well and for those willing to just start out then it's a good place to start. BTW, a lot of us are Admins here, being one does not make your words the absolute truth. Save that for the watercooler set. You have been so deep in
        • I Smell the blood of a Gentoo bum.

          I don't think he was a Gentoo bum, as he didn't point out the things that Gentoo users usually do.

          But I am, and I also spent many years with SuSE (I can see 6 packs of SuSE Professional up on the shelf for starters), so I can comment on both.

          Gentoo may have the most dreadfully appalling install system of all distros (actually, it's more correct to say that it doesn't have an install system at all), but that's overcome trivially by using 3rd-party derivatives like Vidalinux
          • Portage is great, I agree, and I like gentoo and use it, but as I get older I find I can't afford to wait 8 hours while the latest X.org compiles, just because it was a dependency of some toolkit library which a small, handy GUI app relies on.

            Yes, exaggeration, but you get my point.

            Anyway, that reason is why Debian and it's derivatives are still where I turn when I want something that works and will be a dream to maintain.

  • I just switched to Suse from Fedora (Score:5, Interesting)

    by edyu ( 259748 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:49PM (#13283440)
    I've been a long time Redhat user starting with Redhat 6.0 all the way to Fedora Core 4. I was having a lot of problem with FC4 on my particular x86_64 machine so I went out to purchase the SuSe 9.3 Professional DVD and installed on another machine. What I found is that the default installation of SuSe is very good because it has a good balance of open/closed software that makes it very easy to use Linux as the primary work machine. After I got the hang of YaST I started to really like using it. It is more encompassing than Yum and seems like a very good balance for people who know how thing work but don't feel like always spending time treaking things.
    Over all, I give high mark for SuSe for the engineering.
    Of course there are still some problems with SuSe but so far I like it more than the current version of Fedora.

  • ISOs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by datadriven ( 699893 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @08:58PM (#13283470) Homepage
    So are there ISO images or do you still need to take several hours doing an FTP install?

    • Yes there are (Score:2, Informative)

      by Original Buddha ( 673223 )
      9.3 is 5 cd's and 10.0 is 4 cd's.
      • 10.0 release will likely not have only 4 CDs, the beta doesn't contain Java and OOo for example. All 10.0 packages will only fit again on a DVD.

    • Re:ISOs? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by codemangler ( 811903 )
      So are there ISO images or do you still need to take several hours doing an FTP install?

      I prefer an FTP install because
      (1) it's faster if you don't use all the packages
      (2) you don't waste time checking md5sums and burning CDs
      (3) you don't waste media, except for the boot CD

      Once you're done downloading, your install is almost complete.

  • Desktop (Score:2, Informative)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 )
    For those of you like me wondering what the desktop looks like, I found this image on of regular SUSE linux:

    SUSE DESKTOP from OSDir.com [eightyford.com]

    And I'm quite aware that the desktops are highly configurable and very much the same on most distributions.

  • 4 CDs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theantix ( 466036 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @09:05PM (#13283503) Journal
    I guess I've been spoiled by using Ubuntu where you only need the one CD to get things working and then download the rest. Can anyone tell me if all four CDs are actually needed?

    • Re:4 CDs? (Score:3, Informative)

      by (H)elix1 ( 231155 )
      Can anyone tell me if all four CDs are actually needed?

      Yup. Mostly disk one and two, but I always seemed to pick an install that would require a few packages off the other two CD's. Best to download all the ISO images.

    • Re:4 CDs? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 )
      No, there's a 50Mb install CD that's downloadable. Grab that, and let the rest of the installation install over the wire overnight.
    • With standard SuSE, you can download a boot cd or floppy and use that to do a ftp install. I assume it would be the same for opensuse.

  • Biophysics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @09:08PM (#13283519) Journal
    Why does Anonymous Cowards' link go to user Biophysics?

  • Incendiary Story (Score:5, Funny)

    by stare_at_the_sun ( 884017 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @09:20PM (#13283560) Journal
    I have taken the liberty of checking out the author of this story. It seems that this "Anonymous Coward" fellow has very long a history of all sorts of trolls, offtopics and soforth. He is quite obviously trying to incite a flaming distro war. Pay him no mind.

    (btw - just to set the record straight: you can have your redhat and suse. Everybody knows Linspire is the most hardcore distro out there...)
  • Out of the box? If this is for "the masses" guy, joe bob is going to want to mash ANY media link and a player popup and play it, and Little Suzy on her Suse box will want to IM her friends immediately.

    With no extra downloading/tweaking/hoop-jumping.

    The goal (near as I can see it anyway, YMMV) isn't to match windows or mac, it's to be *better* with a default install.

    • Of all the major distributions, SuSE has always been ahead in supporting multimedia for the average user. As far as IMing, well, that shouldn't be any sort of a problem as long as GAIM or some other client finds it's way onto the install. Keep in mind that these applications may need updating, as is common practice on any system, obviously. This is where YaST helps a lot with easy upgrading. I personally don't like YaST for much else, but I'm a configuration file freak.

      Note that http://forums.suselinu [suselinuxsupport.de]

    • Re:How's the media and IM? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lmb ( 32460 ) *
      Well, it is a question of licensing. Do you really think SUSE/Novell does not want to bundle these packages directly too? Java, Media Players, Codecs? That they are left out as a deliberate hurdle for end-users?

      You really can't blame openSUSE for the licenses and software patent issues.

      Trust me, if it was possible right now, all of these additional packages would be included. Please help with rewriting superior OSS packages for them and abolishing software patents by engaging in politics and lobbying.
  • Okay,

    How is having to update just to get Java and Open Office user friendly? I smell marketting BS *holds nose*

    From:
    http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Download [opensuse.org]
    Please note that the OSS edition or SUSE Linux 10.0 do only contain open source software. Therefore some packages do miss in SUSE Linux 10.0 OSS distribution. This does include Java and all depending packages like OpenOffice.org.

    Java and OpenOffice.org packages can get installed afterwards by adding the following repository to the installation sources
    • In all fairness this is partly the fault of Sun and the OO.o team for making the ENTIRE OpenOffice project so heavily dependent on Java, just to have an "access-like" tool. They should either open-source Java under an LGPL license or something or they should have reconsidered that decision on what to use to develop the database program

  • 21st century linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Space_Soldier ( 628825 ) <not4_u@hotmail.com> on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @10:44PM (#13283896)
    This is not a troll. This is what I believe that users want: the Firefox model.

    Maybe Linux will evolve into the 21st century with Novell and SUSE.
    My ideal Linux distro:

    • 1 CD (less than 250 MiB)
    • Gobo linux [gobolinux.org] style file system hierarchy (mac style)
    • YaST
    • Only base KDE/base gnome
    • base system (system binaries)
    • No other applications (exactly, don't need 10 text editors, 5 databases, 20 audio players, etc.)
    • All programs are provided by their developers directly via Autopackage [autopackage.org] or BitRock, and other windows-like installers sice no one in the linux community seems to like app folders


    My next computer will be a Mactel.

    • Re: 21st century linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by natrius ( 642724 ) <.niran. .at. .niran.org.> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @04:35AM (#13284753) Homepage
      It seems like you're trying to compare Firefox and it's additional features to a barebones Linux distro and extra programs the user gets on his own. I don't think that's what most users want. They want to be able to finish the install and get working, not spend hours customizing their computer beyond little things like wallpaper and shortcuts. Firefox is meant to perform one main task: browsing the web. Any features that aren't necessary or very complementary to that task are provided as extensions. That only works because it only has to browse the web. An operating system is expected to do everything users do with their computers.

      Your last point hints at a desire for a more decentralized model for distribution building. It could work, but there are lots of benefits you miss out on as a distribution by not maintaining your own packages. For instance, the large Ubuntu repository allows us to show the users all the programs available to them and let them search among them. [niran.org] For most users, the things they want to install will be there. I think Autopackages work better as a complement to the centralized repository system. When a distribution isn't providing packages for new software as quickly as users want them, it'd be nice to be able to install them in a user friendly way without an official package. Autopackage gets this done, but I think centralized repositories still have their place.

  • Marketing rubbish. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by paul.schulz ( 75696 )
    The FAQ in question says:

    There are also many other significant open source projects, such as Debian and Ubuntu, that serve active user and development communities. Generally speaking, these open source projects focus on engineering-centric issues that serve their technical community of Linux developers and users.

    The openSUSE project explicitly looks beyond the technical community to the broader non-technical community of computer users interested in Linux. ... (snip) ...

    Only the openSUSE project refines its

  • Suse Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Allnighterking ( 74212 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @12:21AM (#13284236) Homepage
    SuSE Linux .... now with open source. Am I alone in seeing the irony here. Somehow it seems that Novel is teaching SuSE how community and Open Source work. Though in the long run it is nice to see the return. Novel opened Yast, and now they are pushing SuSE back towards its roots. Kinda nice in a way.

    • Re:Suse Linux (Score:2, Informative)

      by thorsen ( 9515 )
      I can see why you would think this, but it's far from the truth.

      I used to work for SuSE back some years ago, and the process of going more and more open has been running since SuSE started business back in 93.

      Novell does not tell SuSE what to do - they're clever enough to let the SuSE people run their own distro. And it's SuSE people that have driven both GPL'ing YaST, OpenSuSE, ISOs on the ftp server and so on.
    • SuSE Linux .... now with open source. Am I alone in seeing the irony here. Somehow it seems that Novel is teaching SuSE how community and Open Source work. Though in the long run it is nice to see the return. Novel opened Yast, and now they are pushing SuSE back towards its roots. Kinda nice in a way.

      It's simply a matter of interest. SuSE, while it was independent, was interested in selling boxed copies of SuSE as it's highest priority. That meant keeping close to it's chest some of it's best technology,
  • I use SuSE on some of my machines. It's probably the easiest to install and use of the various major Linux distributions. It has tons of hardware support, excellent auto-detection, and a good and intuitive installer.

    It's not quite as flexible as some other Linux distributions, and command-line based maintenance can be a little harder at times. But, altogether, it is a good choice for people looking for a desktop experience similar to what they are getting from Windows or Macintosh. In fact, I think SuSE
    • I used SuSE for 3 years. And most of what you say is true. However, with 9.3 they started using Beta versions of some very important software (like OpenOffice). I, personally, saw the writing on the wall and switched over to CentOS. I think it's MUCH better than SuSE, personally and I really liked SuSE.

  • Will they accept patches now? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by badfish99 ( 826052 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @03:34AM (#13284642)
    I found a bug in the free-download version of Suse last year, and tried to send them a patch. All I ever got was emails from marketing droids saying "you must purchase a copy of Suse and register it before you can receive technical support".

    I didn't want technical support. I was giving them support, for fscks sake. I was sending them a patch. Yet they refused to accept it.
    I've used Debian since then. They are even happy to receive fault reports without a patch.

  • /. editors: PLEASE link to the mirror list! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jdfox ( 74524 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @04:13AM (#13284712)
    The OpenSuse home page [opensuse.org] links to a sensibly large mirror list. So it doesn't really make sense for you to link straight to the Göttingen mirror from here, does it?

    Please change that link to the download page [opensuse.org], and let your readers select the mirror closest to them.

    Sheesh.

  • I am a long time SUSE user, having put it to work as a workstation and as a very capable server. I have almost no complaints about it save for the same one that everyone has had up to this point (no ISO's/unreliable FTP). That being the case, I went on the hunt for a really good alternative, at least in the server realm and have landed on CentOS. Man, what a great distro! There are certainly things about SUSE that I like better (which I won't take the time to go into here), but having a RHEL4 server tha

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