SuSE 6.0 First Complete Look 125
Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well
justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE,
StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and
running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor,
as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive
things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy
read, check it out!"
CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian
CD.
Nothing beats SuSE!! (Score:1)
It also comes with almost anything you could download on the web (except WP8
SuSE's most endearing feature is it's SuSEconfig script that inserts and removes programs to/from your menus when you install or uninstall with YaST. (in about half of the window managers)
Not only that, everything works in SuSE!! I have used Caldera, RedHat, Debian, Slakware, TurboLinux, LinuxPro and SuSE, and SuSE wins, period.
Not for 'ordinary' users (Score:1)
Especially the average RedHat user would be much happier with SuSE...
Distributions from an Open Source POV (Score:1)
Red Hat passes -- they release everything as Open Source, and the only proprietary software is segregated elsewhere.
Debian passes, by definition almost.
Mandrake is a revision of Red Hat Linux that includes the QT library as a standard system library. The GNU General Public License allows linking GPL'ed software against standard system libraries. Thus KDE itself is not a problem, but the "old" QT license does present a license, since it is not Open Source. Thus Mandrake does flunk the Open Source "purity test", even though they do not violate the GNU General Public License. The "new" QT license, which does not apply to current versions of QT but, rather, to the next version of QT, will solve that problem.
Pacific Hi-Tech has some other problems. I have a copy of their latest boxed set and it includes programs that violate intellectual property rights if shipped as Open Source products in the United States -- 'ssh' and 'pgp'. I have recieved no response from their sales director about whether they have properly licensed these programs from the appropriate property right owners.
Caldera is not particularly interested in passing any "purity test". They have quite a bit of proprietary software mixed in with the Open Source software on their CD. Still, they do release much of the software that they write themselves as Open Source (if you connect to the Internet via PPP, much of the PPP code in the kernel is courtesy of Caldera, and the entire COAS project is apparently GPL).
SuSE tries to hold themselves out as being Open Source friendly, and has made many important contributions to the XFree86 project. However, they do not appear to be willing to release the YaST tool, a fundamental part of their install process, as GPL'ed software. Instead, they release it on a license that prohibits commercial redistribution (other than by SuSE).
Those are the distributions that I have installed recently or otherwise have first-hand knowledge about. Anybody have info on other distributions and and how they support the Open Source concept?
-- Eric
Many criteria for making a choice (Score:1)
-- Eric
Distributions based on Internet presence (Score:1)
Internet presence is comprised of a number of things: FTP site, mailing lists or publically-exported news groups, mirrors, and web site.
Turbolinux:
http://www.turbolinux.com gets you to PHT's web site for TurboLinux. This is a rather bare-bones web site that has few links to the Linux community or even to the Linux Documentation Project. PHT was advertising for an "Evangelist" whose responsibility it will be to improve the web site, so hopefully that'll help.
Their FTP site is a mess. TurboLinux is there, as is a number of contributed Japanes RPM's, but otherwise there is nothing to attract the discerning hacker to PhT's FTP site.
PHT currently has no mailing lists (at least, none that are mentioned on their web site). They have a single newsgroup, which apparently is only accessible via DejaNews.
--------------------------------------------
Caldera Systems Inc.:
http://www.calderasystems.com
Web site: Caldera has long had one of the better Linux distribution web sites. Their new web site does not have the wide variety of links to the Linux community that the old one had, but still is chock-full of information. The only complaint I've heard is that Caldera is slow to update their web site when security fixes and such come out.
Ftp site: Caldera's FTP site is not as comprehensive as that of some vendors, but has all of the essentials in a well-organized manner, including a small but available "contrib" section. Caldera also mirrors a number of other sites, such as the Sunsite archives. Their Caldera OpenLinux Lite (OpenLinux minus proprietary software) is available for free download.
Mailing lists: Caldera has an extensive set of mailing lists, upon which their employees regularly participate.
-------------------------------------
Red Hat Software
http://www.redhat.com
Web site: Red Hat, like Caldera, has always had an information-filled web site. Their web site tends to be a bit less organized than Caldera's, with confusing menu bars (some actions are on left, some actions are on top), but with a bit more information. They also have a large selection of 3rd party links like Caldera used to have.
Red Hat has recently decided that their web site is a "portal". As far as I can tell, this just means that their web site is slower than it used to be because it pulls in some headlines from slashdot and freshmeat.
FTP site: Red Hat has reorganized their FTP site within the past six months into a group of FTP sites. It is very difficult to get into Red Hat's FTP sites any time after 12pm Eastern Time, but Red Hat does have a large group of mirrors. Red Hat has the largest selection of contributed software in binary format of all the commercial vendors, but many of the RPM's are of dubious quality (unless I know the person who packaged the RPM, I usually rebuild them from the ".srpm").
Mailing lists: Red Hat has an extensive set of mailing lists. Volume on these lists is so huge that Red Hat employees rarely monitor or participate in them. I can't blame them, it's almost a full-time job just to read them, much less participate in them. Still, the volume means that almost any question is swiftly answered by five or six different people.
----------
Debian GNU/Linux
Web Site: http://www.debian.org
Debian's web site ranks with Red Hat and Caldera's. They have an excellent bug tracking system, a reasonable amount of documentation, and other things of that nature. The documentation section is not as extensive as that of Redhat or Caldera, unfortunately, though the Debian Documentation Project is attempting to remedy that. Their links section also does not attempt to be as comprehensive as Red Hat's, but does give a good selection of sites like the LDP HOWTO's etc.
Mailing lists: Debian has a HUGE number of mailing lists. Often any given mailing list is monitored by the developer responsible for that particular area of Debian development.
Ftp site: It is a bit disorganized, but all of the right bits are there. Debian has one of the largest collections of contributed software on the net (a few less than Red Hat, but theirs are high quality and generally work, unlike random stuff downloaded from contrib.redhat.com). Their FTP site is currently on the verge of being overloaded -- as of 1pm Eastern it had 179 out of 180 users.
---------
Mandrake Linux
Web site: http://www.linux-mandrake.com
Their web site is nothing to write home about. The best that can be said is that it has all the right bits, and appropriately punts to Red Hat's web site where their own leaves off.
Mailing lists: Mandrake has two mailing lists, one for "newbies" and one for "experts".
FTP site: Unknown. The general public does not have access to the Mandrake FTP site. There are, however, a large number of mirrors and an excellent page telling whether a given mirror is in "sync" with the master FTP site. They also direct you to the appropriate Red Hat FTP sites for contributed software.
------
SuSE Linux
Web: http://www.suse.com
There have been many complaints about the SuSE USA web site, i.e., that it does not contain as much content as the German or British versions, that it is usually out of date, etc. Clicking on the "Europe" web site will generally get you more/ better information. The only thing on the USA web site that's anything other than pure "web brochure" is their Knowledge Base page. The USA site doesn't even have a link to updates/security alerts, unlike the European web site.
Generally, SuSE's web site is brochure-ware, whether U.S. or European. It is not the comprehensive set of resources that typify the Caldera, Red Hat, or Debian web sites.
Mailing lists: SuSE has an active English-language mailing list, as well as an English-language announce list. SuSE employees regularly monitor and participate in these lists.
FTP site: Their U.S. FTP site has very poor connectivity. At 1:40pm EST I am getting 50% packet loss. This is not unusual. Their FTP site has the SuSE Linux distribution, but they just recently added a "contrib" section. There are very few files in the "contrib" section ( 1 (one) file as of 3-10-99 1:44pm EST).
Conclusions:
Caldera, Redhat, and Debian pretty much come up a tie at the top on the Internet presence scale. Mandrake comes in below them because so much of Mandrake is just links to Red Hat's site. SuSE and PHT have disappointing web and FTP sites, and PHT lacks even a mailing list for support.
-- Eric
Re SuSE online support (Score:1)
Regarding the hardcore information online in German, unfortunately I have never studied any Germanic languages (I can piece out French, Spanish, and Italian, to a certain extent, but German is a different beast altogether). For English speakers, you must admit that the online information is rather sparse except for their "Knowledge Base" (which IS useful, of course). And the inexplicable difference between the U.S. English site and the European English site (the U.S. site doesn't even have a URL for errata and update announcements) further renders their web site presence rather negligible for non-German speakers.
I have not made any comment about SuSE technical support, except to state that their people do closely monitor the support mailing list and participate heavily. Support is one of SuSE's strong points, but the subject of the message was Internet presence, not support.
I continue to hold that SuSE's Internet presence under-represents the technical quality of their distribution.
-- Eric
Politeness (Score:1)
In Europe, there seem to be two imperatives operating: 1) Technical superiority is the #1 priority, and 2) Avoiding non-European software is the #2 priority. The Free Software movement does not appear to have made many inroads into Europe, unlike in the United States, and thus adherence to the principals of the Free Software movement does not appear to be an issue for European adopters of Linux, who appear to be adopting it for other reasons (technical and patriotic -- i.e., it's technically superior, and it's not made by some multi-billion-dollar American company).
-- Eric
PHB... Slashdot's demograph (Score:1)
Hehehe
SuSE 6.0/6.1 (Score:1)
TedC
subscription? (Score:1)
SuSE automatically sends you the new versions when they come out. It's cheaper ($35 vs $50) and you can cancel anytime. Not a bad deal.
BTW, I assume 6.1 will have GNOME, since SuSE tends to throw in every window manager and desktop in existance. It will be nice to have a stable, tested distro with both KDE and GNOME.
TedC
Hellrot Linux! (Score:1)
Good review (Score:1)
PHB... Slashdot's demograph (Score:1)
(Do this... Do that... what your doing is crap... you can't use that product... etc.)
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
SuSE USA (USA: a country somewhere west of here) (Score:1)
You can't copy SuSE CDs???? (Score:1)
SuSE doesn't mark what's non-free?
When you select a package, it will display a description that includes the license. It will even show popups in some cases!
You are just parroting something you heard somewhere else.
/boot, SuSE not the only one (Score:1)
In fact, if I remember right, the FHS *requires* the booting kernel to be in
Other than that, isn't it a bit paranoid that because their choice of LILO configuration doesn't match yours they are "forcing" you to something?
Upper and Lowercase (Score:1)
BTW: my guess is that SuSE used to be S.u.S.E, and in german the nouns *must* be capitalized.
Try! (Score:1)
Gee, wonder how that happened.
Please go and check the YaST license.
If you didn't read the article... (Score:1)
:-)
Linuxconf is not Red Hat's (Score:1)
Read "man lilo.conf" or use yast (Score:1)
Regards
Tobias
Be *VERY* careful with Staroffice 5.0(1) (Score:3)
Soffice crashed my whole system more than once by uncontrolled memory allocation / memory leaks. I suffered severe data losses, as it messed up my filesystem. Make sure xosview is always running while soffice is.
You should try creating a text with more that 5 pages, chapter numbering and some pictures in it. You will experience twice as many crashes as pages are in you text. The best thing is some behavior I call it the "Crazy Cow Mode". When soffice plunges into this mode you will experience the strangest things. From pictures vanishing after clicking on them to text boxes having a undeterminable size. Only a soffice restart can help here
Jeez, it is not usable.
Best Regards Tobias
Good Read (Score:1)
I found the article to be pretty insightful. As a user who loves playing with the different distros and whose current box has packages dating back to RedHat 4.1 (or so) I gotta say this makes me consider using SuSE instead of RH 6.0 when it comes out to redo that system. In any case, I suppose I'll wait for the RH 6.0 review before I make my decision. The article was fair and even handed and highlighted a lot of the excellent things about SuSE that no one else has, like Star Office and Mesa (with 3dfx support).
Anyway, looks like it will give RH 6.0 a good run for its money.
SuSE 6.0 - (Not) ready for 2.2 (Score:1)
Seriously... SuSE released their 6.0 just a few days before the first 2.2.0pre kernels came out. I find this practice not very professional. They should have been waiting a few weeks for 2.2.0 to appear. So we have a new distro relase number with an old-fashioned, yet rock steady kernel.
The bad thing(tm)? SuSE claim their distro is 2.2-ready, but they dont have a clue on how to get 2.2.x to work. "If you want to print, use 2.0.36", they say on their site.
Im printing with SuSE and 2.2.3. Strange, huh?
And, another bad thing(tm): Beginning with 6.0, they put the kernel image into some
Patronized by SuSE (Score:1)
Untar a stock kernel, compile. The machine will come up with the original SuSE kernel.
If it wasnt for the great localization support, I would have already turned my back on SuSE.
/boot - tnx you guys for telling me the truth. ;-) (Score:1)
too many choices (Score:1)
Mandrake Power Pack or SuSE?
aargghhhh!@*&*^##%.
I can't make up my mind.
Linuxconf is not Red Hat's (Score:1)
Red Hat is listed as a sponsor on the Linuxconf Web site [compiled.com], but there's nothing I saw in my quick look to indicate that it's a Red Hat project.
Why does KDE need SMB capability? (Score:1)
I'm not sure it's the job of a file manager to have SMB capability, at least if your OS's kernel has an SMB client pluggable file system, as Linux does; does the KDE file manager have NFS capability, or does it just treat an NFS-mounted file system the same way it treats a local file system? If the latter, than you presumably get your SMB capability from "smbfs", unless you want to get at, say, NT server capabilities (e.g., viewing and modifying ACLs) that you (currently, at least) can't get at through the kernel's file system API.
Not Racist (Score:1)
Second, the original poster complained about the poor priorities of European buisnessmen. You turn around and call all Americans (singling out Slashdot readers) bigots and racists. I would say the latter is much more discriminatory and sterotyping than the first.
The rest of the World and morons (Score:1)
german stuff (Score:1)
> to make any impact on the US market. The SuSE
> distro is released in GERMAN first, by an
> anal-retentive bunch of Europeans who have (yet
> again) failed to understand the importance of North America.
What's your point? North America is more important than anything else? Now, YOU get emacs, bash andsoforth running with german umlauts, 8bit charset and stuff. I'd like to see RH or any other us-distro shipping databases of typical german providers so you just choose one and PPP works. Now, you go and get ISDN stuff working fine...
get the point?
regards
kampi
Package managers (Score:1)
big tarballs (Score:1)
0. Become a Visual C++ developer annoyed by bugs
1. Go to microsoft.com
2. Find the Visual Studio 97 Service Pack
3. Wonder why they offer VB-only and VB+all
Service packs only...
"Most customers use more than one product, so it's
easier for them." -urgh
SuSE 6.0 CDs (Score:1)
http://linuxcentral.com/products/lccd/suse-6.0-
I took awhile for the cheap, english version CD to come to market.
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
SuSE 6.0 - !(Not) ready for 2.2 (Score:1)
On my SuSE CD's there's an option to select between 2.0.36 and 2.2.0.pre-something. They had waited for a while, but it was uncertain if 2.2.0 would ever officially come out, so they just went for it. I'm running 2.2.3 on my suse 6.0 box right now, and everything works beautifully. 223 compiled nicely with egcs (which also came with SuSE 6.0, finally), all I had to do is download the kernel source. That's not too much work.
BTW: Gosh damn that's a beautiful install. I'd reccmend everyone that likes linux check it out, if for no other reason than to see one possible good direction distribs could take.
--Danny, ex-slackware user
Suse encourages to copy and give away CDs (Score:1)
you're a misinformed troll and bad at that, I might add.
The handbook of every Suse distribution since I started using it (somewhere around 4.x) had a nice and well worded foreword that explained quite exactly what Linux is about and how the community works.
In this foreword, they also encourage you to give away or copy the CD and that you do not need to buy a second CD to install the distribution on a second computer.
They do not allow you to make your own commercial distribution and include yast with it, though. But does Redhat allow other commercial distributors to include some of their enhancements (e.g. xconfigurator or whatever it was called)?
Bla bla ("avoiding non-European software") (Score:1)
In discussions with a lot of fellow (German) Linux users, the origin of a software's author never was an issue that made us not to choose it. Never.
Of course, German Linux users like the fact that there are a lot of German developers contributing to KDE. This is some silly pride thing, but nothing more than that.
You've never used SuSE 6.0 (Score:1)
I have used Debian, Caldera, and Redhat, but now use Suse exclusively, because IMHO, it has the best, most flexible install, and administration of any of the others.
I would guess that if you HAVE tried suse, you did the streamlined install, which does not, if I recall correctly, install gnome.
--Jason Bell
Lovely distro's (Score:1)
I have not had luck using YAST to configure a PPP setup, but I prefer to roll my own scripts anyway, so it was not a big deal for me.
--Jason Bell
I don't like SuSEconfig (Score:1)
As for YAST messing up your configurations.....Yast is the only configuration tool that I know of that is not all or nothing. You can either turn the whole thing off, or tell it specific configurations that you do not want it to modify, and it will leave them untouched.
--Jason Bell
What nouns? (Score:1)
You are wrong. Why are you giving english words for a German distribution?
SuSe is mixed capitalization, because it is an Acronym for "Gesellschaft für Software- und Systementwicklung mbH" which roughly translates to (You were close though) "Company for Software- and System-Development"
This was taken from the Suse FAQ (english version) found at The Suse FAQ Page. [suse.com]
Your meaning does make sense, if Suse were an english speaking company....
--Jason Bell
Nothing beats SuSE!! (Score:1)
linuxconf (Score:1)
I like it (Score:1)
XF86Setup has been out for a while and it is better than XF86Config.. I can't wait to get hot sax
SuSE 6.0 - (Not) ready for 2.2 (Score:1)
get a clue (Score:1)
SuSE is released first in german cause it is made in Germany
RH is not ALL THAT.. it is usually bleeding edge, which sometime meanse things don't work... (glint sucks)
I must have missed Dell buying into Redhat. I thought that they were going to distribute linux, adn were working with Redhat....
yet you can download it off there site (Score:1)
by several distributors... duh... go to ftp.suse.org/pub
SuSE considered harmful (Score:1)
It's a good idea to hide system administration behind an easy interface, expecially for new users. But yast demands to be exclusive, it doesn't cooperate with other tools or manually edited config files. The complete configuration is stored in one file,
There are other tools which do that job better. My favourite is smit for AIX. The interface just collects the data an passes it to a command line driven program and documents that in a logfile. So you have hidden everything below a nice interface, documented the changes and you can see what happens.
There are some other points I dislike with SuSE Linux (not only since 6.0, which is already available in germany for some time), for example the braindead command completion in tcsh. Ever used that with "cp fubar.c fubar.c.bak"? But I think YaST is a good example how you get patronized by SuSE.
Is YaST like AIX's SMIT? (Score:1)
YaST uses a text file with variables. But YaST creates the configuration files in
As you said, AIX has a binary object repository, but that is only used for AIX specific things like device configuration or package management. Almost everything else is done as usual with text files in
But - independently from using text or binary files - AIX has a complete set of homogeneous command line utilities for almost every administration task. And these utilities change existing text files, they don't overwrite them. Beside that, the set is much more complete than YaST is.
Okay, so you have a set of command line utilities with smit glueing everything together vs. a menu driven binary. I prefer the first approach. IBM did that years ago and it is still a very good concept.
Is YaST like AIX's SMIT? (Score:1)
Modifying text files thought to be edited by humans with a stupid program isn't harmless. I remember problems with sam under HP-UX years ago. But that is nothing compared with the fun I had with SuSE Linux.
Lovely distro's (Score:1)
And I don't know why my previous comment was send as AC, but that's not true.
The rest of the World and morons (Score:1)
SuSE 6.0 (Score:1)
SuSE 6.0 - (Not) ready for 2.2 (Score:1)
SuSE USA dead in the water (Score:1)
Package managers (Score:1)
In Redhat terms (which seems the common lingo
here) YaST combines the abilities of glint and
linuxconf, so it allows you to install/delete
packages (rpms) as well as configures your system
Once you try it you find that it does all this
very well.
SuSE USA dead in the water (Score:1)
See how easy it is to get people fired up?
Anyway...Irrelevant? Where have we heard this kind of reasoning before? So what about the millions of people who're using windows? We might as well giv up then, and all install NT on our servers, right?
Not to defend SuSe here, I'm using Slackware...But I always was under the impression that the general idea here was: I _do_ have a choice!