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SuSE Businesses

SuSE 6.4 ISO - Now Available 73

Posted by HeUnique from the go-get-it dept.
Well, as the title says - SuSE 6.4 Evaluation version is now available. Before you start using it seriously, take a look at some of the updates that SuSe already released for this version, such as the Netscape update which you need to install over your installation. Credits for this story goes to Linux Weekly News.
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SuSE 6.4 ISO - Now Available More

SuSE 6.4 ISO - Now Available

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  • if stef can do it, so can i :-)
  • i dunno.... that lizard thing is kinda cool

  • Re:second! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hi Mr. Tillmanns, Greeting from SuSE! SuSE, pronounced "SUE-zuh", means: "Gesellschaft fr Software- und Systementwicklung mbH", which can be roughly translated as "Company for Software- and System-Development". On October 21st, 1998, the official name has been changed from "S.u.S.E." to "SuSE" (without the dots), mainly because people were often misspelling the old name and it was very uncomfortable to type. However, you may still use the old name, even though it is expected to vanish. Hope this answers your question! Thanks & best regards, Marrisa w/SuSE, Inc.

  • Which "U" need? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What the hell? Only Prince (the dude now known as "The Artist") can get away with that crap. For example, Prince wrote "Nothing Compares 2 U" which was later sung by Sinead O'Connor. This was also the answer to a question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. But I've digressed...

    I can't believe so-called news site lets its editors use this kind of cutesy language. C U Later.

  • Can anyone comment on whether those rpm to fix Netscape will also work on RedHat/Mandrake?

    I'm almost frigging jack of Netscape lately. :-(

    --
    Simon
  • Taking a look at the ChangeLog [suse.com], it looks like this is mostly incremental bug fixes. Anything major new here? What should I be on the look out for, when I try to impress my date with this hot new distro?
  • I'm not sure all of these previews are necessarily a super deal. I had an incredible amount of font problems with the preview release of RH6.2 and so i've actually opted to hold off on the full release...maybe just upgrading my kernel manually (when i'm not too lazy).

    I've noticed that "beta" copies of OSes often have quite a few problems - perhaps because vendors are still deciding what to/not to include in the "actual" distribution when it comes out a month or so later. It is, however, good for the open source community as far as being able to make the full version much better than it would be normally. People get a chance to see it and make changes or tell the vendor what else they'd like to see in the upcoming release. So i suppose all in all it evens out. Good for the experienced user...not so good for the newbie.


    FluX
  • I'm sorry. I normally wouldn't post something so clearly off-topic, but I feel I need to.

    Reading Slashdot and coming across something so clearly ridiculous as "which u need" on the front page really devalues the whole experience. I come here to read the news and take part in intelligent discussions, but when these so-called editors come along with stories that look like they were written by a 5th grader, I can't help but feel a little annoyed.

    Now that the Slashdot editors are being paid for this, I'd expect a little better quality. CmdrTaco's spelling isn't the greatest, but that's an honest mistake and I know that he's responsible for most of Slashdot, so it's a lot easier to look the other way. But when HeUnique--who has contributed virtually nothing--comes along with a story like this, it's a lot more irritating.

    Please, proofread your stories before you post them, editors.
  • Go ahead and moderate this down now, because it's definitely going to be flamebait.

    I actually went out and bought SuSE 6.3 (the day before I bought my CD-R drive). Now I wish I hadn't. I tried it out. It looked like a bizarre combination of Red Hat and Slackware.

    Now, I used Slackware way back in the day when Softlanding Systems still existed, and it was good. I finally gave up on Slackware sometime in 1996 when I realized that the distro just wasn't getting updated on a regular enough basis for me. Regular enough being "whenever necessary." Especially for security reasons.

    Back then I was reading BUGTRAQ fairly regularly and I would see a bug report posted, an exploit posted, and Red Hat Linux's fixed package posted within a matter of hours. So I figured Red Hat is probably pretty cool. It took my box getting h4x0r3d through one of those exploits to really motivate me to switch, though. And once I did, I haven't looked back.

    And there are a few things that bother me about Red Hat Linux, but overall I really like it.

    Now I try out SuSE, and lo and behold, Patrick Volkerding wrote YaST? I don't get it. If he had spent the time maintaining Slackware, I might still be using it.

    ...and someone's going to come along and tell me to try Debian. Don't even go there. I did try slink, and well, that was a royal pain in the ass.

    ...and someone's going to come along and tell me to try BSD. Well, I have. I've got NetBSD running on a Sun 3/60 here.
    ---

  • afaik, the last decent release of netscape was 4.61 -- mozilla claims to be in beta, but in all honesty they are still very alpha. too many showstoppers to call that release beta, imho.

    as far as 4.72, there are a couple of hints on bugzilla.redhat.com to get the address book kinda working (in your ~/.netscape dir -- two of the .js files have a line with "locale" in them -- delete those lines). then it will stop crashing when you manipulate addresses between messenger and the address book. that was ugly.

    i have a copy of stormix on the way that i'm gonna try next. i hear it's a easy install, then just a simple edit of some config file, run two "apt" commands, and you get potato...

    I have to say I'm really impressed with that blurb in the article about suse fixing the netscape issues they had -- sounds like the compiler flags were different between the netscape 4.72 jre build and the XFree 3.3.6 build -- yech.

    sleep now.
  • What should I be on the look out for, when I try to impress my date with this hot new distro?


    Well for one you can optionally install XFree 4.0 instead of 3.3.6, that'll surely impress a woman ;)

    You can also use ReiserFS for all your partitions except /boot, which is great.

    The LVM has been upgraded and now works alot better.

    And finally, if you buy the boxed version, you get tons of software on those 6 CDs. I really appreciate that, living in Europe, because it cuts down dramatically on my online costs.

  • Re:Careful what you wish for... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, this is NOT a beta or preview. It's the final SuSE 6.4. SuSE call the downloadable version "Evaluation" because they include alot of proprietary software in the boxed version, which is lacking in the download.
  • maybe we're just being anal, but the 'u' bothered
    me too.

    i dunno, i just associate 'u' shit with script kiddies.

    (and yes, i used to use 'u' and 'ur' a lot...)
    --
  • sue-zuh, eh? well, it's been a while since i was in the high school marching band, but we'll see if i can blow my 75 trombones. :) almost everyone i know pronounces it sue-see, but then again, many people call linux lie-nix (as opposed to lin-ix, which everyone knows is right). but knowing a bit of german i should have been able to figure that one out for myself.

    ---

  • Ok, I'm not going to tell you to try Debian...

    ...But if you like RedHat, you should check out Mandrake 7 once. It's the only Linux distro I know of which has a security setup during install (you can go from "all the servers like RedHat" to "nothing listens to my ports"). It's not perfect of course, you still have to upgrade your servers when an exploit is published, but at least it gives the beginner some control over what his box looks like on the network.

  • If you're wanting to upgrade your kernel, there's not much point in getting a whole distro.

    Especially with Red Hat; 6.2 is not "kernel 2.4" ready. For instance, it ships with the wrong version of modutils, and they don't have an update yet, despite the presence of RPMs on the official modutils distribution site.

    A new distro is only necessary for two reasons:

    1) Upgrading so many packages at once, that you'd be wasting a massive amount of your presumably valuable time doing it manually.

    2) Having the new disk so when you install a new system, it's current.

    Otherwise, don't be in a hurry to upgrade; let somebody else find those bugs, while your system chugs along.

    About 2 or 3 months after a release is a good time to look the situation over and see if upgrading is the right thing for you.
  • This fall, get ready for MyYourSoft's newest and most exciting innovation since MS-Bob; it's

    ActiveIdle

    Yes, ActiveIdle, to make sure your PC is at its most optimal, responsive, state when it has been doing nothing for 8 hours. This new innovative technology monitors your computer, and waits for the 8 hour idle point. And since we know that here at MyYourSoft, no one can possibly stay away from their PC for very long //subliminal brainfeed//, it will automagically overclock your CPU, spin up your disks, and double your monitor's refresh rate, making it ready for your digital Internet multimedia experience in this new millenium!

    Also, look this fall for another one of our wonderful //kludges// innovations, IntelliIliad, which reads classic literature to you //you are illiterate//.
  • What should I be on the look out for, when I try to impress my date with this hot new distro? Dosn't this new distrobution come with Geeko, the stuffed Lizard? Girls would go wild over that. Nothing says 'I love you' like a reptile.
  • Yes! I was hoping someone else would notice this. I guess HeUnique isn't that different than the 40 million others who are too lazy to actually type the word "you".

    Pretty unique.

    -SG

  • "HeUnique" and you expect good grammer?
  • Having every release of the bigger distributions announced on Slashdot is a waste of bandwith.
    When the editors see something with a new distro\version they like, please post, but in cases like this, were there are only some small changes to the polish, don't post it.
    If you do decide to post, at least include a link to a full changelog for the distro.

  • SuSE 6.4 (Score:4)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @12:00AM (#1120044)
    For any of the SuSE users out there, this version really kicks ass. I really like the option of installing XFree 4.0 and ReiserFS as defaults (Reiser can be used on any partition but you might run into problems unless you make a separate ext2 partition with /boot and LILO there). Admittedly I haven't used RH in a long time (not since 5.something) but I think SuSE is probably one of the best distros for first time Linux users. The two reasons for this are YaST and SaX. YaST makes it very easy to do all the system administration you need and SaX does a really good job of configuring your X server for you. After upgrading my file server I tried installing 6.4 on an old NEC I have lying about, I wanted to see YaST2 and see if it was as keen as it looked. If it works it reminds me alot of a Windows 9x installation, it does require a bit of memory and processor power though. If you can't use X readily on your system don't bother with YaST2. The bundled software is also a real catchy part, out of the box it would be ten times more effective in a home or office environment than Windows 98 would be. This software is of course in the boxed version, the ISO in the article is just the basic SuSE distro which is everything but the commercial stuff. Pick it up or the iguana will eat you.
  • Yah. Impress the hell outta her when 4.0 crashes your system and/or makes your screen snow.

    I think the Geforce support under 3.3.6 will do me very nicely.

    The inclusion of Broadcast 2000 (video editing software) is pretty neat... it should be fun to play with, or at least give me some interesting code to read.

    Broadcast 2000 Home Page [linuxave.net]

  • I have read the licence of Yast, but It's not so clear to me if I can burn CDs and sell them.
    I would like to know if there are limitations in burning the iso of RedHat, Mandrake, Corel...
  • What exactly is the difference between the "Evaluation" ISO and the boxed version? Is CD1 the ISO bit for bit? What is on the other 5 CDs?

    Is anyone worried where this is going? We can download a trial (a la Corel), but if we want the Full Version we have to pay $90? How long before we start getting pop-up windows asking us to register so we can unlock that cool new widget? (sharewere model)

    Remember, companies don't like giving things away for free that they already sell. Calling what you download and "Evaluation" or "Trial" version is a FUD tactic to get you to buy the box. "The download is only 1/6 the fun! Go buy the box!"

    I think I'll pass. Debian/Hurd, where are you?

  • I wouldn't call it poor quality of stories per se, but definately poor quality of writers / editors, as some have already pointed out.

    The second I see "u" or "r" or anything to that effect I cringe. If I can, I ignore the person. If they are too lazy to type out a three letter word (I still manage to type entire words correctly with one hand while the other is holding my five-month-old daughter), I figure they're too lazy to hold up a decent conversation.

    There aren't many things that bother me, but the whole "u", "r", "bye4now", "cya" and other such idiotic typing speed enhancements are a surefire way to start off on the wrong foot with me.

    Anal? I don't think so. Is it anal to want drivers to drive correctly? Or to expect a meal cooked properly? Or how about wanting news journalists to use the language they're writing in properly? It's just plain common courtesy to me.

  • All you people replying to this troll need to chill out. Son of a bitch! get over it. every single story has some idiot posting about how slashdot is going downhill because of repeat stories, poor quality stories, bad spelling...... trolls like this guy. GET OVER IT!

    go somewhere else. Write a filter that spell checks everything. Just stop posting stupid ass comments. And whoever moderated this up needs to pull that stick out of their ass. This is supposed to be a laid-back interesting news site. Not a spell-check nazi trolling ground.

    I would like to commend cmdrtaco and hemos and everyone else on a job well done!

    Andrew
  • In fact it comes out one week after the release of the English version. Consider this something similar to Red Hat's GPL version. Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses. -- H.H. Munro
  • Y'all are just being anal. If we're just poo-pooing script kiddies, then hey, I'll sign up for that club, but that's not what this is about.

    I assert that the use of "u" in place of "you" is no big deal.

    I am NOT saying that "u" is an acceptable geek-ism, that is, an inconsequential mangling of the written english language under the guise of Net Patois. The poster did not write "ur" which is significantly more annoying in light of the fact that "yer" gets enough abuse when people misuse "your" and "you're".

    I mean, what makes you assume that the poster did not proofread his/her article? That the use of "u" was not, in fact, deliberate? And what the hell makes any digitally stored content so fucking sacred? This is digital: You don't like it, you change a bit. It's not like you have to stop the presses and change the plate. After all, the article was timely and newsworthy. Anything else is nitpicking.

    Further, amplifying an editor's use of the colloquial "u" into "devalues the whole experience" is plain crazy talk. Slashdot is a community. Community is the value-added in the /. experience. Community does not mean just Taco, nor just good spellers. It means geeks, trolls, script kiddies, bank-robbers, halitosis-sufferers, etc. etc. all together in digitally rendered, sometimes uncomfortable, for-better-or-for-worse proximity. Holding editors to a higher standard may or may not be appropriate, but slashdot ain't the NYTimes. I mean, does /. even have an editorial policy aside from not saying fuckshitdamnetc?

    I say the comment should be moderated down to flamebait. The remark about hetz contributing "virtually nothing" comes off as just plain mean.

  • Re:Poor quality of stories (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How bizarre. Every other posting here contains IANAL, IMNSHO, or ROTFLMAO. Maybe if HeUnique used all caps for his abbreviations it'd be ok? Or perhaps you've got a hidden agenda of some kind... AC
  • The iso isn't the CD1. I have 6.3 full and a lot of things like kde is on cd2.
  • Hey, come on moderators. I think he was being funny. Whoever moderated this down has either never read Userfriendly or that haven't paid attention to the UF/SuSE banner ads that have been posted all over SuSE.com and Slashdot.

    More info on the alliance between SuSE and UF here [suse.com].

    kwsNI

  • I know lots of people have been waiting for this ISO, so thats why I published it. I'm sure that if you contact Sourceforge peole - you'll see several hundreds of downloads for this..

    As for the "u" - Sorry, I guess I need to sleep more :)

  • Re:Again... (Score:3)

    by HeUnique ( 187 ) <hetz-homeNO@SPAMcobol2java.com> on Friday April 21, 2000 @02:19AM (#1120056) Homepage
    Well, I'm a slashdot author (like Rob, Hemos and others) and I don't post so much - When I find something interesting and I cannot post it - I email it to Hemos.

    as for my nick HeUnique - this nick goes with me from the early days I used IRC (from 1991 I think), and its just a nick..

    Oh, and I think I'm the only /. author who isn't living in US. I live in Israel, and I'm not being employee of Andover.net or VA Linux, and I don't have any stock options either. And for the person who suggested to send me back to AOL - well, here in Israel we don't have AOL (but we got much worse ISP's)

    As for the "u" mistake - I'm sorry. I posted it 2 minutes before I went to bed. I'll check myself better next time.

    If you want more details - then click my nick - there is an email address there :)
  • OK OK I will re-check my spelling next time. I promise.

    I was VERY tired (torturing Mozilla M15 with various Hebrew web sites) and then I found this on LWN - and I know that many people wanted it - so I posted that.

    I already corrected that mistake in the story.
  • Okay.. think here for me. This is this first post I saw that was not a critique or a "hihgly moderated" troll that I read first. wah wah wah.

    You guys whine about sig to noise WHAT do you call that. I wanted to see about SuSE 6.4 Not HeUnique's use of u in the stead of you.

    In the past hes used the three letter word..

    cut him some slack and dont make a big deal of it, it happens once and you guys is ready to crucify him.

    Jeremy
  • i agree, suse kicks ass..im new to the linux scene..ive only had linux a few months. the First distro i got was redhat 5.2 and i hated it..then i got caldera openlinux 3.2 and i thought it was cool..real easy to use and ideal for a new user..now i have suse 6.2..i know its out of date now that 6.4 has been released, but i think SuSe 6.2 owns..It's my favourite distro so far, but i did have some problems with gtk packages and my c++ libraries were messed up but once i got that fixed everything was fine. Yast is real easy to use and SaX just kicks ass. i configured X in about 2 minutes with SaX. Then i ran windowmaker and got some themes from windowmaker.org I'm going to get suse 6.4 pretty soon. I hope it is as good as 6.2 later
  • I already corrected that mistake in the story.

    Ummm...no you haven't. Look again. Or are you not really heunique.
    --
  • I agree, but for additional reasons. I agree that the spelling could be better, but also insist that this story is not timely. SuSE posted the news of its 6.4 distribution *weeks* ago, not yesterday, and SuSE 6.4 has been available in a local (Fairfax, VA) computer store for at least a week. This story ought to have posted (if at all) sooner after SuSE released 6.4.
  • You don't have to apologize for your post. OK, so the "u" was a bit unnecessary, big fucking deal. I can't believe a comment biching about something that insignificant was moderated to +5.
  • Perfectly intelligent people can spell.

    Being intellectually gifted on some dimensions but being unable to spell would be better termed imperfect intelligence, as would imprecise use of words.

    It's a ridiculously atrocious perversion of the english language,

    And what's the failure to capitalize "English" called? :) In any case, I quoted your statement because it is deeply wrong. If you were to study linguistics, here's what they would teach you: humans have a particular ability to learn to use language -- and I'm referring to "natural" languages -- starting very young. This ability declines dramatically after about age 5 or 6. So, any meaningful definition of "language" must encompass this particular facet. Something is a language if a population learns it as children. The reason this is significant is that it implies that language is a spoken thing. Writing systems represent languages, but they are not part of the language. So, by what orthography should the word "you" be represented? It is certainly not a "perversion" to choose (and not even through ignorance) to use "u".

    It is through language that we communicate. By the use of "u", HeUnique was trying to communicate something, a subtle amalgam of informality and "hip", i.e. expressing that he's wise to the use of "u" by marketing types ("U-Haul"), and that's how you should interpret it. You, through your umbrage, are also trying to communicate something, that you like standardization and obeisance to the heritage handed down to us, what HeUnique would call rulez. Both of you communicated quite effectively, so I don't see where the discord comes from. :)

  • YaST makes it very easy to do all the system administration you need

    I'm a Redhat user (but don't really have anything against the other distros...) but personally I don't like stuff like that. Redhat ships with something similiar, linuxconf. Sadly, even if you tell the installer not to install it, it will. So I always remove it after installation.

    vi is the only true sysadmin tool! :)

    The bundled software is also a real catchy part

    It bothers me when distros ship with tons and tons of stuff.

    Honestly, it really seems like SuSE takes the stuff that I don't like about Redhat and does them better... I actually don't think I know anyone using SuSE - Redhat is by far the most popular distro on campus, a few Debian users, couple Mandrakes. Everyone else is using *BSD, Solaris, or Windows. Odd.

  • ISO (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    single white male iso a bowl of hot grits down his pants, serious replies only. thank you.
  • SuSE posted the news of its 6.4 distribution *weeks* ago, not yesterday

    Actually, Lenz Grimmer just posted news of the iso 2 days ago, to both the SuSE-english list, and Linux Weekly News.

    Remember, this is the downloadable .iso image for the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation CD, not the whole 6 CD SuSE 6.4 distribution.
  • I bought SuSE 6.4 because I figured that it would be easier to upgrade to 6.4 (from 6.1) than to download and install the latest in, for example, glibc, egcs, JDK and other tools. I needed the latest in those tools because Apache JServ (which allows Apache to run Java servlets) requires it. The latest JServ also requires Apache 1.3.9.
    An added benefit to getting SuSE 6.4 is that the manual is *much* better than the manual for, say, 6.1 (but it still needs considerable improvement).
  • What exactly is the difference between the "Evaluation" ISO and the boxed version? Is CD1 the ISO bit for bit? What is on the other 5 CDs?

    Is anyone worried where this is going?

    Relax. SuSE has been doing the .iso image thing for a long time. If you go to www.cheapbytes.com and want to get the $1.99 version of SuSE, this is what you get. Basically a completely functional version of Linux.

    If you want to get a lot of the extra libraries, games, X-applications etc. you would want to buy the full distribution. But it is only $29.95 from www.chumbo.com and it includes 60 days of support (which is completely unnecessary - mine expired without a single call). As far as I am concerned it is the best deal in Linux land.
  • I'm finding that odd, as I bought a retail copy of SuSE 6.4 from Best Buy over the weekend.

    I started using SuSE nearly two years ago after I started working for a company with limited bandwidth. I used to download everything I needed at work, burn it to a CD and take it home. SuSE solved that problem for me with the 5/6 CD set they distribute.

    So anyway, I was at Best Buy on Sunday with a friend who's looking to get into Linux usage at home and as we turned the corner to the OS's isle, it was like a light from heaven was cast down upon the SuSE 6.4 retail box. Needless to say, we quickly snatched up a couple copies, and made a break for the check out line.

    Yast can be quite time consuming if you really want to take a look at all the packages you can install, but I must say it beats downloading and compiling all those packages over a 56K dialup. I also think the time is well worth getting a bunch of packages you don't want installed on your system. SuSE combines the best of the "Workstation or Server?" type of setup that RedHat uses, and the "Nuts and Bolts" approach where you go with the bare minimum then download and build from source. You can choose a preconfigured set of packages that suits you and customize from there.

    SuSE Rocks...Hopefully I'll be able to install 6.4 on a system with enough resources to run Yast2 on next week.
  • Now that I've said that, I just want to say that it is the best distro I've ever used. I was into redhat back in 5.?? and switched to SuSe at version 6.1 - now that it supports my GEforce right out of the box I am almost completely satisfied. (If only linux in general supported USB better...)
    One small note:
    I think SuSe numbers their versions by the size of a full install --(6.4 GIG is actually fairly close if you install all the commercial software and demos and source code)
    I make it a point to buy each new version from SuSe because it is my way of contributing to their Xfree86 work - which they are very involved in...

    A little late /. -- but better late than never I guess.

    btw - Gnome & Enlightenment run noticably faster than in the previous version of Xfree86! woohoo!
  • I TOTALLY agree.
    It's one thing to abbreviate, and yet another to parody, but, in stories like this, there is no excuse for this type of grammar.
    Slashdot is propagating the 'cool script kiddies' talk, in order to ...well. God only knows why...
    This has been a peeve of mine for a LONG time. The use of 'z' instead of 's', the never-ending pipes instead of 'i'.
    Give us a break Slashdot. We get enough trash from the trolls.

    This from a guy with alphanumeric characters in his nick...hmmm...

    "Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
    Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
  • New SuSE evaluation ISOs get announced, but not Caldera's new full-blown eDesktop? Let's not forget that anything Red Hat does gets posted. Hmmm, sounds like business as usual at Slashdot.

    I wonder if SuSE will drop off the Slashdot map just like Caldera has once they go public. Thanks, Slashdot. I can't wait to see the community die.

  • ... I actually don't think I know anyone using SuSE - Redhat is by far the most popular distro on campus, a few Debian users, couple Mandrakes.

    Well SuSE is really big here in Europe. Linux Magazin (a german mag) have published a reader poll in their latest edition and the results were:

    SuSE: 75%
    RedHat: 11%
    Debian: 8.5%
    Caldera, DLD, easyLinux, Mandrake, others: 5.5%

    This is out of about 5000 readers who responded. I wonder how the numbers would look in the US (SuSE - RedHat position reversed?)

    It bothers me when distros ship with tons and tons of stuff.

    I don't really see why. As long as you get the opportunity of manually selecting what you want and what you don't want, I'm perfectly happy with a little application overkill. I like to get as much stuff as possible on the CDs, because online time is still paid for by the minute where I live.
  • You know, I agree with that fellow, though I don't like the way he said it. It does look bad, and there's no reason for it. That sort of shortcut really irritatates my eye, and interrupts my reading.

    This kind of thing is what editors are for. It's hard to spot your own mistakes. You slashdot authors really should start editing each others submissions. Helping others with their writing will make you a lot more aware of the quality of your own, too, I think.
    Nels

  • FYI: With Suse 6.4, I could for the first time flawlessly update from a previous Suse installation. So for those of you having experienced similar problems and who are unsure about getting 6.4, you might want to give it a try. Of course my single experience still isn't a guarantee...

    Another hint: AFAIK, you must use the old text-based yast for updating, yast2 (the graphical version) is only for a new install. Correct me if I'm wrong here...
  • YaST makes it very easy to do all the system administration you need and SaX does a really good job of configuring your X server for you.

    I used SuSE exclusively at my last job (disclaimer - I work at Red Hat now), and have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed with it. The most annoying part, IMHO, was YAST. It seemed like I'd go make a manual change to a config file, then the next time YAST would run (often when I was least expecting it), it would overwrite my manual changes with the YAST defaults. Kind of like a more invasive version of linuxconf, from what I can tell.

    Also, if I'm remembering correctly, they don't have the version numbers on their RPMS, which makes it hard to do a quick eyeball of your version numbers with an rpm -qa or whatnot.

    SaX, however, kicked a lot of ass, and I was highly impressed with it. It was also nice to have all those apps on CD, but I had a hard time finding which app was on which CD without using the little installer tool.

    It was a decent distro, but I personally doubt if I use them again anytime in the near future. YMMV. They're certainly worth checking out.

    $.02

    These opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer - but you knew that.

  • This is out of about 5000 readers who responded. I wonder how the numbers would look in the US (SuSE - RedHat position reversed?)

    Probably that's about right. I think the Debian numbers are a bit higher here in the US (maybe 10-15%?).

    I don't really see why. As long as you get the opportunity of manually selecting what you want and what you don't want, I'm perfectly happy with a little application overkill. I like to get as much stuff as possible on the CDs, because online time is still paid for by the minute where I live.

    Well, I suppose it's less of a problem for SuSE (it ships on something like 6 CDs, right?), but Redhat is only 1 (actually I think 6.2 is 2 now, but one is all documentation), but it seems like packages that should be shipped with the basic distro aren't, while fairly useless things are included. For instance Mesa wasn't in the basic distro up until 6.2, and if you want to use anything but sendmail as an MTA you have to go get the source and build it yourself.

    It would be kinda nice if Redhat shipped on 2 or 3 CDs: one a basic install (basic stuff like the kernel, emacs, netscape/mozilla, games, KDE + GNOME, etc), one with development tools (and I mean every development tool and language there is, *-devel packages galore, etc), and one with server related stuff (Apache (plus mod_*), telnetd, ftpd (perferably several versions, like wu-ftpd and OpenBSD's ftpd), SSHD [probably OpenSSL/lsh], BIND, and with sendmail, smail, qmail, and postfix all available as MTAs). That would make my day. :)
  • Well, I know that I do from time to time, but I'm still human and mistakes happens. I think the time I posted this was night in US (morning here in Israel), so probably none of the author have seen this.

  • This is the perfect Example why All /. Readers should set the Lowest comment score to +2. Some of these comments are aweful, even one for the kkk?! goodness. I brought my score down to the lowest while I was moderating a few days ago and forgot to rais it back up.. . This bunch of comments is what did it for me =) Let the moderators do there job and filter out the bad stuff. You'll Enjoy /. alot more (Hint. Thats why CmdrTaco created moderation and a point system for /. ... Use It!)

    Thanks =)

  • Redhat DOES come on 3 CDs - 6.2 has the install CD, the documentation CD and the source CD.

    Yes, but how useful is the source CD? It certainly doesn't come with anything extra. If I wanted to port Redhat to PowerPC (or whatever), yeah, the source CD would be great [just to a great big rpm --rebuild *.rpm], but otherwise it's useless. And the docs CD doesn't seem terribly useful to me...
  • This was posted on Everything Linux a [eunuchs.org]few days ago [eunuchs.org]... But I digress.

    Just going live last night is a review of Red Hat 6.2 [eunuchs.org] for the curious, with more on the way.

  • A lot of people are asking what the diff between this ISO and the multi-CD set they sell. And I will be redundant and state that the 'Eval' ISO is a full install of linux itself, and some of the extra packages, but no copywrighted software.

    This CD is great if you don't feel like coughing up $50 every 3 mos. for the new distro. You can do the base install from the CD, and you get the basics (YaST2, XFree 4.0, E, Gnome, K, etc). You will prolly look at it and go, 'Hey there is no kjukebox package! I wanna play my mp3's!' And this is where the magic of SuSE comes in.

    You can do the base install from the EVAL.ISO, then launch yast (from any shell or xterm), and do all your user admin crap, etc. Then go to the adjustment of install and get the REST of the 6.4 full install packages via automated FTP/install within YaST!

    This is great because you can do the core install off of the CD and not hog all the bandwidth doing the base install. The point is moot if you have a T3, but for those of us in the DSL stone age (only 384 incoming), this can save a lot of time!

    -Steve
  • The evaluation version is just a 1 cd trial for SuSE Linux. It doesn't have a lot of packages I use, but is useful for getting a system up quickly and trying out SaX and Yast.

    I wanted to clarify something for the whiners who assume things they don't have a clue about.

    The boxed 6-cd set has a lot more, but you don't have to buy it unless you want the commercial software and the excellent book (the books from Red Hat, Caldera, Corel, etc. really suck, though Corel's has a section on mc, which is cool). After you install the CD you can run Yast and set the installation source to ftp. It will automatically pick ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/6.4/suse for a site. It's not there yet, it might be a week or two, but you can browse the 6.3 directory if you want. You can also change it to a mirror site like ftp.rpmfind.net if you want.

    There! Now you can select a shitload of software. Anything from the boxed set except commercial software. There are commercial demos and trials, though, and MySQL and xv are placed under the commercial diskset. I believe it would take up ~5.5GB of space if you installed everything from the ftp site.

    You can even grab a single boot disk and set the installation source to ftp and use the mostly complete ftp distribution.

  • hehe. i stand corrected.

    ---

  • The reason there are a number of distros, is that many of us don't like the same thing. SuSE, by the way, IS the largest disto. world wide, not that it matters much. I not only use it at home, but also here at Cornell, where I'm a Sys. Admin. I booted NT out on it's ugly butt when I replaced it with SuSE 5.3. Like all other distros, it's "rock solid." One of SuSE's "hot buttons" for me is the amount of GOOD software that ships with the boxed releases. SuSE is the best!
  • I picked up SuSE 6.4 full boxed set Wednesday at MicroCenter in Sunnyvale. I'm kinda surprised that a few days later I can get an ISO image. What?!?

    Anyway, here are my impressions. I'm a Slackware guy, so I'm biased. Over all, SuSE 6.4 is an excellent distro.

    But it comes with too many packages. It took me two hours to scroll through the list to select the ones I wanted. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have thousands of packages readily available. But it's overwhelming during installation time. My suggestion would be to limit the initial installation to packages just on the first CD. Leave all the rest of later after the installation is over and done with. I was thinking about using the "default" installation, but it would have added packages I didn't need or want anyway, so I would be right back to square one going through all the lists deselecting them.

    YaST2 simplified stuff too much. I could select a package, but I couldn't find out what it's dependencies were like you could in YaST1. I selected xmms, my single favorite audio application, only to discover afterwards that it included the gnome applet, which depended on the gnome-panel, which depended on a whole bunch of other gnome packages. In short, I had about 75% of Gnome installed without my awareness. I'm sure there's Gnome fans who got KDE installed without their knowledge as well.

    I ended up with about 50 users by default! Huh? If Apparently, these are the user accounts needed for certain packages, such as empress. But I didn't install any of those packages. This is a potential security problem having all those users. Additionally, a lot of applications had their directory structures already set up even though they weren't installed. /usr/local/share and /opt were chock full of empty directories that didn't need to be there.

    Okay, the pluses. SuSE seems more stable. YaST is not a apt to go and change all your manual settings on a whim. The goofy SuSE icons for KDE have been replaced with more aesthetic versions. YaST2 is a great installer for newbies, but I would recommend YaST1 for intermediates or experts. And SuSE has the best Linux manual in the business, period.

    But I'll still stick with Slackware. Small, compact, just the essentials. BSD-style inits. But I still like to play around with other distros, and SuSE is one of the best I've seen.
  • actually they don't include very much proprietary software, just a huge amount of free software (think redhat + powertools - or whatever it's called). i think there is also a running image on a cd. you get a lot of value for the money and it's very high quality. the iso it's just the bare distribution - later (if it's not already on the ftp) you can get all of it, something like 6 cd's, ouch!
  • In person, you will be judged by your appearance, whether you like it or not. In print you will be judged by your grammar and spelling.

    I don't see sloppy spelling, I just see sloppy. I see someone that is either too stupid to spell "you", or so adolescent that they still think funny spellings are cool.
  • Suse has a nice little script called harden_suse. This basically locks suse up tight, then you open up anything you need. (For instance, users by default cannont start any X applications. But a quick addition of that user to the group xok solves this.)

    Yes, I know that this would be hell for the beginning user. But it made it easier for me since I knew what to do to open my system back up to the required level.

  • This is out of about 5000 readers who responded. I wonder how the numbers would look in the US (SuSE - RedHat position reversed?)

    I heard a few months ago that Mandrake [mandrake.com], recently forked from RedHat, was being installed a higher rate than RedHat now, mostly due to the fact that it's packaged in the US by a very large book publisher (Macmillan? I can't remember) so it is in a lot of stores. Interestingly, it comes from France.

  • quick answer: Yes.

    I saw this article this morning and decided to try SuSE. I've installed a lot of

    • RedHat since version 3.
    • Prior to that I used Slackware but not recently enough to comment on.
    • I've also tried FreeBSD several times (the last time was pretty good: the ports [freebsd.org] system is really cool, automated tarballs: rpm, source rpms, and rpmfind all rolled into one) and
    • Debian very recently (clear, informative, step by step...and VERY tedious; do you want to install ftp? do you want to configure ftp? do you want to start ftp? do you want to change that configuration? do you want to move on now? did you think you'd be done by now? do you wish you were done now? do you want to slit your wrists now?).

    So, getting SuSE downloaded too all day. (I had previously started once before, so I knew to go to sourceforge where they make life a lot simpler than at SuSE where they really want you to buy a disk).

    I just completed the install, and I have to say, SuSE is a very nice system in comparison with RedHat. Uses RPM, BTW, so you won't have to throw away that knowledge and you can keep benefitting from rpmfind [rpmfind.net], but it also has "yast" which is like linuxconf, except it works! It also does a lot more, from hardware config, /etc config, X config (SaX is a better way to configure X, too), to package management. And, since they use the same yast during install and for later admin, it has that nice feel of "everything I learn is useful as reference later, and if I make the wrong choice now I'll know how to fix it"

    Redhat should ditch linuxconf and adopt yast (and "ports" too, while they're at it). If you are new to linux, you should give SuSE a look, I think you'll find it easier to admin. If you already use RedHat, it's not so much better that it's worth switching to, but you should not fear trying it if you are curious because it will be a painless transition. The purple lizard on the desktop is kinda cute, too, though I wish they'da spelled it Geecko?

  • i'm making a mirror of this available in *.au/*.nz it's pretty slow updating currently - about 320M down and about the same to still download. you won't be able to access it outside au/nz from our mirror unfortunately.

    ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linux/suse/i386/
    http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linux/suse/i386/

    -jason
  • Ok, this is how Suse handles a new version:
    1. Release Commerical version (aka "What pays the bills")
    2. Release Iso version, nicknamed the "evaluation " - not as in beta, as in you evaluating the distro itself
    3. Dump all packages on ftp.
    FUD? Suse isn't using any fear tactics, but your $90 [digitalriver.com] comment is somewhat [linuxmall.com] extreme [cheapbytes.com]. I think what you were trying to say is that they encourage you to purchase the boxed set. Yes, this is how business works.

    If you have the bandwith, you can then install the whole thing if you like. If there is any difference, it might be the packages available in PAY*, which I don't use anyway.

    And as for Debian, tell them to fix the boot disks [debian.org], k?
  • You CAN do Updates from YAST2 now. The limitation was only for SuSSE 6.3. BTW: YAST2 is not graphic ONLY! It'll work in a text mode, too, if necessary. E.g. try "minimal installation" (which doesn't install X) and you'll see YAST2 text mode at the end of the procedure ...
  • I really planned on upgrading to 6.4, but the more I consider it, I keep asking myself "why". SuSE 6.3 has been working great on my system, everything is the way I like it. Except for upgrading kmail,krn and netscape, I have nothing that I would like to upgrade.

    Perhaps I will change my mind later, as I learn more about the added benifits of using SuSE 6.4. However, for now I will stay with 6.3, if it ain't broke, don't fix it....

    I orginally started with Redhat, but really glad that I switched to SuSE. RedHat was ok and is very popular, but for me SuSE has been much more pleasant to use. Some people I know often offer me copies of the latest distros, but I always turn them down, I am sure they are nice, but if my system is working fine why would I want to change? Let's be honest, all linux is similar, especially if you choose which window manager you want to use. My favorites are XFCE and ICEWM, both work well, and on occassion I use kfm as well. KDE is nice, but a bit too much for my system.

    I do recommend SuSE 6.4 for anyone new that is still in the process of searching for the best distribution for their personal tastes. SuSE people are great to work with, and the mailing lists are very informative and friendly.

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