Re: [LUG] Ignore Previous Burbling - Brief look at SUSE Professional 7.1 - LDE relevant(ish)

[Tony Atkin <tony at nimbus.uklinux.net>]

I have been running this distro since... 1st March and concur with pretty 
much all of what you have to say -  with these additions...

On Tuesday 10 April 2001  5:15 pm, you wrote:
> Typical nice Linux install - graphical install worked.

7.1 is the first time the SuSE gui installer (yast2) has worked for me, seems 
to have improved a lot over previous versions.  There have been a lot of 
changes since the last version, new kernel, c libraries etc. and a far 
greater integration of kde.  If we drop the marketing hype it would have been 
better to call the last version 6.5 and this one 7.0 

> Packages are groups into Mega-Bundles which whilst simple to choose,
> swallow up disk space pretty quickly, but you can dive under the simple
> interface and just select the individual packages you need (In my case
> "Wireless tools").
>
> Lots of CD's with lots of extra software, some of it commercial, some
> demos of commercial, most of it free.
>
> Included KDE 2, 2.4 Kernel (Option), Reiser filesystem, so lots of
> newish stuff.
>
> I still ended up tweaking XF86Config by hand to get the resolution
> right, and I swapped pcmcia and network in start-up, and had to make
> some inspired guess work to figure out how it was deciding which network
> cards to start when and how.

I had problems with installing over a network.  The boot disks have lots of 
network card drivers, but not the "natsemi" driver needed by my cards, even 
though it is in the standard suse kernel modules.

>
> Default kernel didn't need rebuilding for my Laptop (First Distro ever)
> although some of the multimedia stuff is not 100%.
>
> KDE2 seems a bit slow - or is that my Reiser filesystem?! Seems to be a
> lot of processes lurking when running KDE2.
>
> Why does everyone else swear by YAST? I was swearing at it, and sax2,
> okay my patiences with GUI is fairly limited these days, but it really
> didn't seem to understand laptops at all. HP's SAM doesn't make me swear
> as much. Too many config files say things like don't edit else sax/yast
> or friends will eat your changes for my liking - GUIs that undo your
> setting in difficult to determine ways - not the Linux way IMHO.

T'was ever thus, even with yast1 (console based), and I don't like it either, 
it can be turned off, but SuSE warn that if you do that, then they won't 
answer support queries (you get 90 days email support for your money).

>
> My first glance at Koffice - my first attempt to export html failed
> miserably - sorry guys go Star Office if you don't want to pay for a
> Word Processor. Does ThinkFree run on Linux properly yet?

I agree with that, koffice is not well developed yet, although it seems to be 
improving fast.  Just don't try running Star Office with 64mb ram or you will 
find out how slow your swap partition is.

> Overall SUSE 7.1 well worth £40 to get the whole boxed set if your going
> Linux or thinking of it - which is what it was selling for in Staples in
> Exeter (Staples have loads of Linux distro's in stock, even if some are
> a bit old - they have marked down the old ones).

Good price!  I paid £53 from the Linux Emporium http://www.emporium.co.uk (I 
think)

A couple of other points

SuSE 7.1 includes XFree 4.02, which should install by default provided it 
supports your video card.  I have just upgraded this to 4.03 using the binary 
upgrades from xfree.org (4mb ish download) and can report that it seems to 
have worked fine.

There is an automatic ftp upgrade facility with yast2 which also seems to 
work fine, it checks for security and "recommended" upgrades, downloads and 
installs them.  Over a 56k modem last week it took about 45 minutes to 
complete.  If you are on a slow connection don't use the automatic option so 
you can check what is due to be downloaded. I deselected the mysql stuff 
(installed but unused) and saved me about 6mb download.  The interface allows 
you to select from a small number of suse sites, but none in the uk. If you 
want a different one you have to set it manually (I used 
ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.suse.org/ )  - quick for me, your mileage may vary.
One more point -- the program pings your selected server before attempting an 
ftp connection.  This causes a problem if you are behind a firewall that 
kills pings.  (sarcastic comment about empoyer and security policy deleted)

The distro contains a "personal firewall", or as they explain in the 
documentation, - I paraphrase "it's not really a firewall, its packet 
filtering, but people understand what we mean if we use the word firewall" 
-er... ok.  I have not tried this yet, but intend to, there's probably some 
script kiddie destroying my files as I type :-(

Overall I have to say I was very impressed with this edition.


Cheers


Tony Atkin




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