FYI: Novell Suse Linux 10.0 has been released

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

https://secure-www.novell.com/products/suselinux/index.html

The most successful and best-selling Linux distribution worldwide, SUSE Linux has won numerous industry awards. For a quick look at the new and updated features in SUSE Linux 10.0, visit the what's new section.

SUSE Linux 10.0 includes a comprehensive selection of applications to facilitate a wide variety of computing tasks (office suite, e-mail, Internet, picture processing, multimedia and more), plus a subset of packages for advanced users, including key networking and development packages such as Samba, Apache Web server, KDevelop, Mono and more. SUSE Linux is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and provides more than 4,000 of the latest open source software packages.

It's available as a free FTP download or as a purchased box set.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Using it now ...

I set aside time this weekend to install and configure it on a new hard drive I got. I'd been using SuSE 9.2 previously and wasn't all that hot on doing an upgrade since I'd done so much customization with non-standard components and packages. I figured it'd take me most of a day to get it running the way I want.

It didn't. I'm sitting here feeling strangely disappointed that it didn't take me all day. I still have some customization I want to do, but most of that was accomplished simply by unloading a backup of my home directory I'd made of my 9.2 installation.

I'd read prior to installing 10.0 that the boot process is faster. I don't see it. It seems cleaner, for lack of a better word, but not particularly faster. That said, 10.0's implementation of KDE 3.4 is much snappier than on my 9.2 system. I'd upgraded to 3.4 previously from 3.3, but I'd had tremendous problems with it and reverted back to 3.3. Some of the default eye-candy is annoying to me, but it's easy to turn off.

The only thing so far I really don't like at all is that Thunderbird is not included in the release, which I don't understand at all. If my memory is not failing me, I did install Thunderbird from the install discs of 9.2, and Firefox is included, so I can't see why Thunderbird isn't. I don't like KMail at all, so the first thing I had to do was install T-Bird. There's an .rpm on OpenSuse, but at the moment the transfer rate is so incredibly slow (0.3 KB/s for me) I gave up on it and got the tarball from Mozilla. Everything is good now.

In short, aside from the small annoyance of no T-Bird, I am so far very pleased with this release.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Licensing issues

is probably why Thunderbird isn't included- did you do the download, or buy the boxed set? They left some packages out of the download version for some legalistic reasons I don't quite understand.

Glad to know it's still a good OS- I plan to get the x64 version for my AMD mobo. Should be fun to play with.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Download ...

I downloaded the Gold (GM), 5 CD version and then compiled it into a single DVD, which is supposed to be the same as the version distributed via the boxed set. The DVD iso you can get via SuSE's ftp server is the OSS version, which doesn't include things by default like Java, RealPlayer, etc. The one I got does include those. I actually have the set ordered, but haven't received it yet.

I doubt it's a licensing issue with Thunderbird. T-Bird is covered by the same GPL that covers Firefox, and as noted, the latter is included with this distro. Strangely, if you do a network install, you can get Thunderbird via the default installation because the .rpm for it is included on the OpenSuse ftp server. I dunno ...

The licensing issues involved Java, Realplayer, etc.that are not covered under the GPL, i.e. are not OSS. I don't fully understand the difference between a "free" online distrution of a commercial product that includes both OSS and closed source software and a fully OSS distribution myself, but I don't believe that is at work here.

[SKKY]

4. Where did you download it from? I can't find anything...

..other than the OSS version.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Linky ...

ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/suse/suse/i386/10.0/iso/

It's mirrored everywhere the OSS version is mirrored. You just have to look in the FTP directories.

The difference between the OSS and GM version are relatively minor for the typical user, btw, and you can easily download and install everything that is not included, such as RealPlayer, if you actually want it.

[jayfish]

6. Do You Need All Five Disks To Do...

a basic install?

Jay

[RoyGBiv]

7. Basic install ..

Depends on what you mean by basic. :-)

The default SuSE install requires more than one of the discs because of all the packages it installs. The default is right at 2 Gigs and includes a lot of stuff, everything from SAMBA to Apache to ... Rather huge. IIRC, all the important packages are on the first disc, so if you just want to get it in and get it running a skeleton install, I think the 1st CD will do you, maybe the first 2. I believe the latter two discs deal mostly with language and development support files and packages.

I haven't actually done this, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm just repeating what I've read on the forums.

[jayfish]

8. Bah....

Typical of Linux installs, it's a pain in the ass. Here is what's needed with the default package selections.

Disk One
857MB from disk II
452MB from disk III
124MB from disk IV
32MB from disk V

I attempted to weed out some of the packages but there were too many dependency conflicts that, being a newbie to Linux, I didn't feel comfortable attempting to resolve. How hard is it to present an option to do a minimal install? I'm doing the install now but downloading all of the disks from a T-1 is taking forever. I'll probably finish dl'ing and burning the rest at home. I hear a ton of complaints about Windows being bloatware but this is ridiculous. Every-time I get a bug to dive into Linux something always comes up that turns me sour on the whole idea. I'm gonna stick this one out though.

Thanks for your help and sorry for the rant.


ON EDIT: I noticed that you run KDE as your GUI any thoughts on Gnome?

Jay

[RoyGBiv]

9. Rant understood ...

I had/have the same complaint to a degree. One has to wrap their mind around a philosophy that is somewhat difficult to accept in order to deal with it well. What I mean is that when you think about going to Linux, you are actually making several different decisions, two of which summarize all the others. One is the basic decision of using a different OS. The other is deciding how you want that OS to function for you, which determines, in part, the distro you choose.

The thing is, this is SuSE, a specific implementation of GNU/Linux that is designed to make the transition from a Windoze environment to Linux a bit more painless. Your issue is with SuSE, not Linux per se. A minimal install is possible, but you need a different distribution, and with that distribution comes other issues for newbies, anything from not having a graphical interface to figuring out how to install a server.

SuSE is meant to be full-featured, out-of-the-box. You don't just get the OS. You get the OS with a windows manager and an office suite, three separate web browsers, two mail clients, some FTP managers, 2 dozen games, a windows emulator, a web server, a full featured image manipulator ... I could go on. What we're talking about here is a software package that is the equivalent of Windose Server 2003 plus MS Office plus several game packages plus drivers to run hardware, plus Photoshop ... again I could go on. So, I get what you're saying, totally, but when you think of the magnitude of what you get with it, the number of discs required, not to mention the cost even if you buy the retail version, isn't all that much.

A more minimalist approach is to go with something like Mandriva Personal, which I think is three CDs. Some distros require only one; I believe Slackware is one of these, and it doesn't even install a GUI for you. What you lose in terms of software packages is significant, but you can download these and install them once you're comfortable with the process of doing so. That last point can be a big deal for newbies (and I'm still one of those), and the point of SuSE is to prevent as much of this as possible.

About Gnome, I actually prefer it because I tend to like the cleaner, more basic look most of the time. I've just been in a mood for eye candy lately and like some of the more interesting options KDE offers. I also went with a default install of SuSE this time, which means using KDE, because I was putting it on a clean hard drive and wanting to make an actual effort at reducing my Windoze usage significantly. The easiest way for me to do that was to do it as a default and then customize for my tastes as I learn more.

[jayfish]

12. Posting This From My 2nd SuSE Install.

For the first install I cobbled together and old Celeron 600 with 256MB of PC133 and and an integrated Trident graphics card. The install went well, save a cd-rom issue that required a re-boot. To my surprise the install continued as if nothing had happened. I finally got to a desktop and what a dog it was. I'm pretty sure the FX card was the bottleneck but it was a severe one. I'd call it unusable. Not wanting to turn away discouraged, I cobbled together a better box. This time I went with an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with 256MB of PC2700 DDR-SDRAM and a GeForce MX400. The install went well except for, once again, a CD-ROM drive issue that required a reboot. I wasn't concerned though, knowing how my first install went. I pushed on. I got to a desktop on this install and things are drastically improved. Things are still a little sluggish but I believe the hard drive I used in this box is the culprit. It's an old 6GB ATA33 unit. The rest of the GUI seems snappy enough but I need some more play time with it. I'll update when I've got a better feel for things. I'm also going to try some different themes on the first box to see if I can up the performance some.


Jay

[RoyGBiv]

13. Themes, KDE, Performance

I should have mentioned this when you asked.

Performance is my issue with KDE. It seems to be a hog on system resources. I can run the same system using GNOME, and the sytem runs much better on older hardware. The "eye candy" is likely the culprit, but I am certainly no software developer, so that is just a guess. I just know what I experience. GNOME generally runs better, as in smoother.

Themes can be a serious issue on top of this. Prior to getting 3D accerlation working with my ATI graphics card, some themes simply would not work in any way that I consider acceptable. I could change themes and suddenly experience multiple second wait times for windows to minimize. Change to another, and it would get better. Change again, and it got worse. I'm running this on system with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB Corsair XMS memory, 250GB HD w/ 4ms access time and an 8MB buffer. This isn't top of the line, but it isn't shabby either.

So, when I talked about KDE running snappier on this install than it had before, I meant it has improved to marginal status. Prior to this upgrade, it was intolerable until I got 3D accleration working.

I do not have that problem with GNOME. The counter-problem is that several applications I like to use require KDE libraries to function.

That said, with my 3D accleration working, I don't have a problem at all, but I still notice a difference between the current implementation of KDE 3.4 and prior versions.

Also, thanks for the heads-up. I'd planned on spending this weekend getting putting together a box out of spare parts for a computer-less friend, and your experience will dicate some of my choices. I have several old processors lying around, but I think I'll work with the fastest one I have just to avoid as much frustration as possible.

[jayfish]

14. Your Setup Is Nearly Identical To My...

main system. I thought of running SuSE on it with the live DVD but that won't really be a good indicator of performance either. Do you know if the live DVD supports using a USB storage device to save user/system settings? It would speed things up a little and might make another 4GB DL worth the effort.

Jay

[RoyGBiv]

15. It's possible, but ...

I have no clue how to do it. I followed a conversation on linuxquestions.org about doing this sort of thing with Knoppix, and it was done, but the person doing it went through a tremendous amount of hassle. (I looked for the thread just now, and I'm having trouble finding it. If I do so, I'll post it later.)

Speaking just intuitively, it would seem to me like you could mount a USB device then create a ~/home directory in it that you could use to save personal settings. The downside of what I'm thinking is that you'd have to mount it manually every time you started up.

But I could be wrong. A lot of things are possible with Linux that I can't even begin to guess at how to accomplish.

[jayfish]

16. The Only Reason I Asked...

is because Puppy Linux has this feature. It also has the ability to write back to the live cd. It's pretty cool if you ask me. After playing around last night I'm just not happy with the GUI's overall performance. I can't quite put my finger on it but it just seems slow. Even tasks that shouldn't need to read from disk seem to have a slight delay. Tasks like bringing up the application menu or authenticating the passwords. Other than that it seems very nice. It looks very good and system management is more intuitive and more accessible via the GUI. The big tests for me though will be application, device and device driver installation. I'm not going to play around with those things until I can get my performance issues worked out or at least come to the conclusion that that's just the way it is.

Jay

[jayfish]

17. Small Update.

I was working on the celeron box today (it's at work)and I discovered that I did not have 256MB in the box as I had originally thought. I actually had 192. The DIMMs are just loose in a box and one that I thought was a 128 turned out to be a 64. I located a 512 chip, installed it and that machine is a much better performer. I also found some settings that helped quite a bit. One in particular allows for the acceleration of the menu system. Why that kind of stuff isn't enabled by default is beyond me (prolly compatibility). Things are looking pretty good.

Jay

[hobbit709]

10. Finally got it downloaded.

After 6 tries on 2 different computers, 3 OSs and 3 different burning programs, and off the original Novell and 5 mirror sites-kept getting bad CD4. Checksum was ok each time but when install did media check, it failed 4 every time. Finally got pissed and downloaded DVD version-worked. Now my problem is that it won't let me play media(Audio CD or video) says permission denied. I'll mess with it some more later and see what happens. Outside of that everything else appears to work great.

[RoyGBiv]

11. Edit fstab ...

This is another recent annoyance I discovered.

By default, SuSE 10.0 does not mount CD drives and does not give users permission to do so. What you can do is manually edit the /etc/fstab file, insert "users," into the line(s) for your CD/DVD drives and then either mount the drive manually or reconfigure the startup to do so.

Some programs you use that access the drive will handle the mounting. Others do not.

[Deja Q]

18. You do realize that best-selling/successful gibber was from when SUSE was

NOT A NOVELL PRODUCT?

The product went to smeg once novell bought it.

And I've used SuSE since version 6.0, but for ever solid release since 7.3. (7.3, 8.0, 8.1, 8.1, 8.3, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3)

Having a tussle with those cretins (I mean tech support staff) who summarily decided without investigation that a recurring bug was not a bug, I told them to bugger off. Especially for the price I pay for ever point-x release! (Also note that SUSE used to be $70 per point release. With 8.3 it jumped to $100.)

These days I use Red Hat Fedora. A little more initial tweaking, yes, but the price is right for what is tantamount to the same bloody thing: F R E E .

Novell can bankrupt itself. :spit:


Doom3 also installs properly on Red Hat and brings up features I never once saw in SuSE. Seems different distros DO matter after all... :D

[RoyGBiv]

19. Distros, Doom, etc.

I'm not sure where you're getting your pricing, but I paid $85 for 10.0, not $100. I'm also not real sure how this matters. I don't intend that to come out sounding like a snide remark, although I realize that's how it may come across. I know many people have complained about SuSE pricing, but I don't really understand it.

Novell is a company trying to make a profit, as all companies are, as most of us are when we get up and go to work every day. Offering technical support is expensive as is development, and the prices they charge have to cover both, including a profit margin for the company to continue to bother. However, at the end of the day, you don't *have* to pay one red cent for any of the software offerings that fall under the title of a SuSE distro. If the tech support isn't good, don't pay for it.

The official release of 10.0 to the FTP servers came before I received my ordered set, so I decided to find and download the distro to get myself started. The download I got for free, perfectly legally, is identical to what you get with the set you can order from Novell.

I paid for SuSE because I wanted to do so, wanted the value added extras of the set (which did not come in the form of software) and wanted to encourage further development with my dollars. I've had good luck with it as a distro that includes most of the things I need without requiring me to find a lot of stuff to make things work the way I want, most of which I wouldn't know how to start finding because I don't know the names of the software packages. By contrast, Fedora and Gentoo didn't like my USB ports, which was a rather serious problem because my keyboard was attached through a USB port at the time I tried them. I could tell those distros to ignore the ports when it installed, but I could not provide any keyboard input when I did that, so I went out and bought an adapter for it. After doing this, the "little more initial tweaking" turned out to be a deal breaker for me, plus I hate Fedora's update process, but that's another issue.

What I guess I'm wondering is why people hate Novell specifically, aside from the basic "anti-corporate" thing. Few of the posts I see in Linux forums offer anything in the way of specifics, and since I'm not a regular poster on these boards, I've not been inclined to ask and risk instigating a flame war. So, what I'm getting at here, is asking you since I respect your opinion and don't expect such a flame war here.


As for Doom3, I had it running under 9.3, no problem, at least no problem after I got the 3d acceleration running. It ran almost as well as it did under Windoze on my system, and I'm convinced if I hadn't had to deal with an ATI graphics card and its associated problems with Linux regardless of distro, it would have run as well. I never tried under Fedora, so I can't comment on whether it runs it better, but I can't see it running that much better, at least on my system.

For me, that last comment is sort of what this boils down to for me personally. I like using Linux. I'm not married to any one distro because I have quickly discovered that different distros worked differently on different machines. I still use Gentoo, for example, on a couple slower boxes I use for experimentation because it seems to run better on a slower system.

[Deja Q]

20. Here are the only prices I'd bother to look at: (from SuSE 9.3 Pro)

CompUSA: $99
BestBuy: $99
NOVELL'S WEB SITE: $99 + SHIPPING (which is a killer, the shipping costs...)

The street prices from when SUSE was its own company were $20-30 less.

Of course, BestBuy is looking like it's going to drop it and I'm not sure what CompUSA is up to. Borders bookstore, which used to carry it religiiously, dropped it long before they dropped the IT Computer Book section...

Doom3 runs under SuSE quite nicely, but it sure as hell gave me problems when going to online games that weren't the standard 4 that came with D3 and required a download; Doom3 just wouldn't download them on Suse. Let's just say I saw additional functionality under Red Hat that I was most appreciative of. (and I wasn't appreciative of Suse's autoload hacks, which I went in to manually disable...)

BTW: For Linux 3d games, use Nivida. Period. ATi's Linux drivers are shite. Always have been. Always will be. For ATi has a longer history of crap windows drivers too.

[RoyGBiv]

21. Weird about the prices ...

Maybe I got a better deal because I pre-ordered. I got it from Novell direct.

Anyway, as for ATI and Linux, you're absolutely right. I actually like the card I have, but, at least on my Windoze installation, I use a set of drivers based on ATI's, but tweaked severely. They actually work pretty good. The standard drivers are crap.

And on Linux, it's just a huge headache. It's not quite as bad as it once was since ATI developed an installer that doesn't require you to recompile the kernel manually, but I still don't get the performance level I expect from my card, and it's one of those things you pray about more than work with when you're installing. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.

I'm in the process of building a new system and will be installing an nVIDIA card when I do so. I actually already have the thing, but I don't have a processor or motherboard yet for it.