On Thursday 05 April 2001 12:29, Greg Lentz wrote:
Thanks to Jerry and all who've been helping me with some of my SuSE 7.1 issues. I have some kernel HOWTO reading to do, so that will occupy some time.
In the meantime, I have some inane questions:
1. What is the proper pronunciation of SuSE? A student at the school I work at told me yesterday that it is pronounced soo-say.
Most will say it is 'soo-sah'. Personally I like Suzie and that's how I pronounce it! ;-) ('Cause she's sexy! ;-)
2. When building a kernel, do you have to build it from scratch? In other words, your existing kernel has a bunch of hardware support built in. In building a kernel, are you adding to that kernel, or are you building a completey new kernel to (eventually) replace it? My info so far sorta suggests the latter.
Everytime you compile a kernel you are builiding an entirely 'new' one! The file in /usr/src/linux called '.config' contains the settings that have been made when the kernel configuration program was last run. The command 'make menuconfig' starts a console version of the kernel configuration editor, allowing easy adjustments to the contents of .config. When you do make dep clean bzImage modules modules_install the gcc compiler uses .config and the file called "Makefile" (which contains rules the compiler follows to do the compilation) to control what it does. What really gets compiled sources of modules whose flags which have been changed.
3. I've seen many references to the German list being full of, well, Linux elitist snobs. What's the deal with the English vs. German lists?
Nothing, really. The German list is a 'tight ship' populated, as I understand it, by folks who are very technically oriented. You learn the drill or get run off. It keeps their list very 'efficient'. The Germans have put a lot into the Linux movement and the free software foundation. Check the various projects like KDE, GNOME, etc., and you will see a large number of Germans on the developer lsit. From what I've seen, America and other English speaking countries, are not represented in any great numbers. In my opinion the best Linux software comes out of Germany! American coders will have to get off their WinXX and VB addiction before they can contribute to a truely worthwhile cause, instead of increasing Bill Gate's wealth. Be of good cheer, though. From what I've seen of the VB camp (as an old VB coder) it is coming apart with VB.NET being so totally different it is a new language. Expect to see a large wave of GUI coders coming into the Linux fold in the next year. They'll really love KDevelop and although Glade has the look and feel of VB 1.0 they could shine to it as well.
4. Why do you use SuSE, as opposed to other distributions? I was attracted to it because I heard the latest version was good for newbies, though so far, I'm not sure if it's any easier than Mandrake (my previous distro). But it did seem to run a whole lot faster than Mandrake on the same machine and the FTP installation from a boot floppy was pretty swift (and actually faster than the 2 CD install of Mandrake, if you can believe that).
IMO, SuSE is best engineered of the distros I've tried (RH, Mandrake and some lesser knowns). The apps are pre-tuned to SuSE's paradigm and when you use YaST all users, groups, menus, dat files, etc., are setup to run. (Some commerical apps excepted.) SuSE has, for a long time, included more software on it's 6 CDs than any other distro, and their documentation is better than any other software house of any OS on the planet. And, I like that little green lizard 8-} JLK
Thanks.
Greg Lentz