Hello, This is a brand new review of SuSE Linux 8.0: http://www.distrowatch.com/review-suse.php It hasn't been officially published -- before I do so, I would like to consult the memebers of this mailing list as most of you have used SuSE a lot longer than I have. Anything you disagree with? Any more positive things I should mention? Any more annoyances? All comments are welcome; credit will be given where appropriate. Thanks very much for your time to read and express your opinion. Ladislav
On Saturday 06 July 2002 19:49, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
Hello,
This is a brand new review of SuSE Linux 8.0:
http://www.distrowatch.com/review-suse.php
It hasn't been officially published -- before I do so, I would like to consult the memebers of this mailing list as most of you have used SuSE a lot longer than I have. Anything you disagree with? Any more positive things I should mention? Any more annoyances?
All comments are welcome; credit will be given where appropriate. Thanks very much for your time to read and express your opinion.
Ladislav
I like it...Although wish to say I am not one of the worst members here :P. Impressive...Especially like the little touches, such as the terminology. SuSE really is quite a boring name when dissected. Things have been incorporated from the list, but might do little harm in suggesting using feedback@suse.com for any feedback ratehr than this list though. Matt
On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 11:36, Matthew Johnson wrote:
I like it...Although wish to say I am not one of the worst members here :P.
Impressive...Especially like the little touches, such as the terminology. SuSE really is quite a boring name when dissected.
Things have been incorporated from the list, but might do little harm in suggesting using feedback@suse.com for any feedback ratehr than this list though.
Sure, but before I do so, I would like to get some opinions of SuSE users, rather than some blurb from the company's marketing department :-)
"I would not hesitate to recommend SuSE 8.0 to Windows users as a complete and adequate, if not superior operating system replacement for their desktops." I second that statement. G.Berta On Sat, 2002-07-06 at 21:49, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
Hello,
This is a brand new review of SuSE Linux 8.0:
http://www.distrowatch.com/review-suse.php
It hasn't been officially published -- before I do so, I would like to consult the memebers of this mailing list as most of you have used SuSE a lot longer than I have. Anything you disagree with? Any more positive things I should mention? Any more annoyances?
All comments are welcome; credit will be given where appropriate. Thanks very much for your time to read and express your opinion.
Ladislav
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com
On Saturday 06 July 2002 19:49, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
Hello,
This is a brand new review of SuSE Linux 8.0:
http://www.distrowatch.com/review-suse.php
It hasn't been officially published -- before I do so, I would like to consult the members of this mailing list as most of you have used SuSE a lot longer than I have. Anything you disagree with? Any more positive things I should mention? Any more annoyances?
All comments are welcome; credit will be given where appropriate. Thanks very much for your time to read and express your opinion.
Ladislav I've never attempted to use this, but there are *.iso files on the ftp site: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/live-eval-8.0/
Not real sure what these have, but I suspect they have enough to get you started. The biggest problem I have with fetching stuff off the ftp site is the lack of synchronized mirrors. Just about every mirror I know of is out of date. I know of one reliable site, but I'm not telling. :-) I actually like doing the install over the net rather than using the iso downloads. There have been times when I didn't have the CD pack at hand, but I could get to the net, and I had a couple floppy disks. I just got a CD burner, so I have never attempted to install with the iso CDs off the net. OTOH, I often use the network installation option over the LAN. That does seem to require a reliable, and fast network with NFS. I've had failure when the collision rate is high. I don't believe the part about Red Hat and others never having a stripped down box is accurate. IIRC Red Hat did that before SuSE. I am no expert on Red Hat, so I could be wrong. I wouldn't even consider buying the personal edition of SuSE Linux for two reasons. First, I want all the features in the pro, and I want to have them on the dvd. Second, I want to pay SuSE for the hardwork they put into this product. They deserve it! As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I wasn't aware of the libdvdcss issue. I knew there was some kind of litigation over a DVD decoder. I guess this is the one? I don't find DVD on the computer nearly as attractive as the fact that I can install all of SuSE 8 from one DVD. I have a DVD player for a TV. Not that I every use it, but why would I want to watch DVDs on my computer? I guess if SuSE actually asserted that we could use SuSE Linux to watch DVDs and that wasn't True, they would be a fair target for the epithet of 'liar'. OTOH, it may simply be a misstatement. I can certainly access DVD media with my SuSE install. Indeed, that's what I used for the installation. Besides, as one of the SuSE technical staff put it, "I'm not in marketing. I'm far to honest for that." One of many things I like about SuSE is YOU (YaST Online Update). It is very easy to use, and they have implemented it in such a way that only the changes, rather than the entire rpm is transfered to your system. (At least that's how it looks to me.) This mailing list is another great asset SuSE have. I haven't spent a lot of time on other list, but form what I gather, this list is typically more polite, and helpful than the average RTFM list. If you get an RTFM here, it usually come with a file location or page number, and helpful hints about what might not be clear. Steven
On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 17:17, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
I've never attempted to use this, but there are *.iso files on the ftp site: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/live-eval-8.0/
This is not the real thing. The live-eval version runs directly from the CD and is intended for evaluation only -- you can't even save files.
I don't believe the part about Red Hat and others never having a stripped down box is accurate. IIRC Red Hat did that before SuSE. I am no expert on Red Hat, so I could be wrong. I wouldn't even consider buying the personal edition of SuSE Linux for two reasons. First, I want all the features in the pro, and I want to have them on the dvd. Second, I want to pay SuSE for the hardwork they put into this product. They deserve it!
Even the free downloads from Mandrake and Red Hat include Apache, PHP, BIND, MySQL, GnuPG, Gaim and other packages that are missing from SuSE Personal. None of their editions excludes these.
As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I
Mandrake ships with 3 different ones and Red Hat includes xine.
wasn't aware of the libdvdcss issue. I knew there was some kind of litigation over a DVD decoder. I guess this is the one? I don't find DVD on the computer nearly as attractive as the fact that I can install all of SuSE 8 from one DVD. I have a DVD player for a TV. Not that I every use it, but why would I want to watch DVDs on my computer? I guess if SuSE actually
Many of us do.
asserted that we could use SuSE Linux to watch DVDs and that wasn't True, they would be a fair target for the epithet of 'liar'. OTOH, it may simply be a misstatement. I can certainly access DVD media with my SuSE install. Indeed, that's what I used for the installation. Besides, as one of the SuSE technical staff put it, "I'm not in marketing. I'm far to honest for that."
Hehe, fair enough...
One of many things I like about SuSE is YOU (YaST Online Update). It is very easy to use, and they have implemented it in such a way that only the changes, rather than the entire rpm is transfered to your system. (At least that's how it looks to me.)
This mailing list is another great asset SuSE have. I haven't spent a lot of time on other list, but form what I gather, this list is typically more polite, and helpful than the average RTFM list. If you get an RTFM here, it usually come with a file location or page number, and helpful hints about what might not be clear.
Thanks a lot for your comments.
I have the personnal edition, and I have installed xine from that, so it is included. I don't get it to work playing DVD's yet, but that is a different story. On Sunday 07 July 2002 10:11, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I
Mandrake ships with 3 different ones and Red Hat includes xine.
wasn't aware of the libdvdcss issue. I knew there was some kind of litigation over a DVD decoder. I guess this is the one? I don't find DVD on the computer nearly as attractive as the fact that I can install all of SuSE 8 from one DVD. I have a DVD player for a TV. Not that I every use it, but why would I want to watch DVDs on my computer? I guess if SuSE actually
Many of us do.
asserted that we could use SuSE Linux to watch DVDs and that wasn't True, they would be a fair target for the epithet of 'liar'. OTOH, it may simply be a misstatement. I can certainly access DVD media with my SuSE install. Indeed, that's what I used for the installation. Besides, as one of the SuSE technical staff put it, "I'm not in marketing. I'm far to honest for that."
Hehe, fair enough...
-- Frits J. Wüthrich (Sent with Kmail)
On Sunday 07 July 2002 15.33, Frits J. Wüthrich wrote:
I have the personnal edition, and I have installed xine from that, so it is included. I don't get it to work playing DVD's yet, but that is a different story.
I don't think any distribution includes the DeCSS code necessary to play encrypted DVDs (ie. most commercial DVDs). There are still too many legal unknowns about it. It is available on the net, though. There are links on the xine home page to rpms built for SuSE. //Anders
On Sunday 07 July 2002 13:42, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 07 July 2002 15.33, Frits J. Wüthrich wrote:
I have the personnal edition, and I have installed xine from that, so it is included. I don't get it to work playing DVD's yet, but that is a different story.
I don't think any distribution includes the DeCSS code necessary to play encrypted DVDs (ie. most commercial DVDs). There are still too many legal unknowns about it.
It is available on the net, though. There are links on the xine home page to rpms built for SuSE.
//Anders
Mandrake 8.2 will play encrypted dvds witn xine out of the box so it must have dcss. They must be taking a chance, so don't tell the authorities. That having been said it wasn't for me worth switching from SuSE to Mandrake just for that. Its not hard to find up to date versions of xine and ogle for that matter which will work fine. Mike
On Sunday 07 July 2002 21.06, michael norman wrote:
Mandrake 8.2 will play encrypted dvds witn xine out of the box so it must have dcss. They must be taking a chance, so don't tell the authorities. That having been said it wasn't for me worth switching from SuSE to Mandrake just for that. Its not hard to find up to date versions of xine and ogle for that matter which will work fine.
Interesting. I haven't tried mandrake, but everything I've seen on the net, like this http://www.linux-download-cds.com/help-playing-dvds.shtml has led me to believe that it's the same in all dists. Do Mandrake have different versions for Europe and the US? //Anders
On Sunday 07 July 2002 18:19, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 07 July 2002 21.06, michael norman wrote:
Mandrake 8.2 will play encrypted dvds witn xine out of the box so it must have dcss. They must be taking a chance, so don't tell the authorities. That having been said it wasn't for me worth switching from SuSE to Mandrake just for that. Its not hard to find up to date versions of xine and ogle for that matter which will work fine.
Interesting. I haven't tried mandrake, but everything I've seen on the net, like this http://www.linux-download-cds.com/help-playing-dvds.shtml has led me to believe that it's the same in all dists.
Do Mandrake have different versions for Europe and the US?
//Anders
I don't know, I got iso's of Mandrake 8.2 from a UK magazine (PCPlus as I recall) installed them including xine and when I fired it up it was xine 0.9.9 and it played encrypted dvds. Mike
On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 21:33, Frits J. Wüthrich wrote:
I have the personnal edition, and I have installed xine from that, so it is included. I don't get it to work playing DVD's yet, but that is a different story.
Sorry, you are right. It is included in Personal, but missing from both the Professional and FTP editions.
On Sunday 07 July 2002 10:11, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I
Mandrake ships with 3 different ones and Red Hat includes xine.
wasn't aware of the libdvdcss issue. I knew there was some kind of litigation over a DVD decoder. I guess this is the one? I don't find DVD on the computer nearly as attractive as the fact that I can install all of SuSE 8 from one DVD. I have a DVD player for a TV. Not that I every use it, but why would I want to watch DVDs on my computer? I guess if SuSE actually
Many of us do.
asserted that we could use SuSE Linux to watch DVDs and that wasn't True, they would be a fair target for the epithet of 'liar'. OTOH, it may simply be a misstatement. I can certainly access DVD media with my SuSE install. Indeed, that's what I used for the installation. Besides, as one of the SuSE technical staff put it, "I'm not in marketing. I'm far to honest for that."
Hehe, fair enough...
-- Frits J. Wüthrich (Sent with Kmail)
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com
As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I
Mandrake ships with 3 different ones and Red Hat includes xine.
Even without DeCSS decoders DVD players use algorithms and decode things for which you might have to pay royalties and license fees. MPEG, AC3, etc. all are samples of those and are needed for DVD viewing. Ciao, Marcus
At 11:03 07/08/2002 +0200, Marcus Meissner wrote:
As far as the DVD player goes, I don't know if other distros provide one. I
Mandrake ships with 3 different ones and Red Hat includes xine.
Even without DeCSS decoders DVD players use algorithms and decode things for which you might have to pay royalties and license fees. MPEG, AC3, etc. all are samples of those and are needed for DVD viewing.
Ciao, Marcus
What is wrong with paying for a service? So long as the price is not ridiculous, I don't mind paying for it. And not continuously, but once. I paid for SuSE Linux 8.0, after all. I don't know if the owners of the patents or copyrights are charging so much for licensing that the Linux companies can't afford them. If RedHat is shipping DECSS code, it has paid for it, and when you buy it, you will pay it back. But RedHat IS expensive. And it doesn't like KDE, which is why I abandonded it some years ago. If RedHat can't buy DECSS code, I think there is an "abatement of trade" -I think that's the legal term for making it impossible to compete--(I'm obviouly not a lawyer)-and perhaps the Linux companies should join with Redhat in a joint action suit against whoever controls the DECSS. (Probably Microsoft.) But even with a billion-dollar corporation, it's possible to win in court. We've even seen MS lose, IIRC. I know for sure that there are laws in the US that anything that makes it impossible to compete is absolutely against the Constitution, and the Supreme Court will uphold that. Eventually. If you have enough money for the lawyers. But, surprisingly, some simple cases do sometimes come to court and are adjudged.
On Tuesday 09 July 2002 07:43, Doug McGarrett wrote:
o compete--(I'm obviouly not a lawyer)-and perhaps the Linux companies should join with Redhat in a joint action suit against whoever controls the DECSS. (Probably Microsoft.) But even with a billion-dollar corporation, it's possible
Nobody controls the DVDCSS library (although there are those who would love to). It is a free, open-source and GPL-ed piece of code developed by some clever guy in Norway who simply wanted to watch DVDs on his Linux machine without worrying about regional encoding. But according to the infamous "Digital Millennium Copyright Act", it is illegal to distribute this library in the US. This has been challanged in court, but without much success. Some Linux distributions outside the US do include it and so do the source-based distributions such as Gentoo, since they do not directly distribute the library, only supply a link to the library. Ladislav
I'm looking for a good HOWTO for Sendmail. I want to be able to sendmail between two Linux computers on my network. After trying to setup one computer it will no longer receive any mail at all Not even from itself. Computer 1: mailx User@computer2 < testfile Computer 2: mailx User@computer1 < testfile At the moment mail is not working at all om computer 1, I screwed it up. Any tips. Jay
"henjay"
I'm looking for a good HOWTO for Sendmail.
See http://www.sendmail.org/ for resources.
After trying to setup one computer it will no longer receive any mail at all. Not even from itself.
Many sendmail problems are related to incorrectly configured DNS. Anyway, basic configuration is simple and can be done via YaST2 without any HOWTO. Advanced configurations are usually performed by administrators only and there are books about sendmail for them. -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se
On Sat, 13 Jul 2002 11:04:48 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time)
"henjay"
I'm looking for a good HOWTO for Sendmail. I want to be able to sendmail between two Linux computers on my network.
Any tips.
Did you read the nice sendmail summary posted about a week ago by Oliver Fuchs? Search the titles of this months archives for Re: [SLE] Setting up Sendmail -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation
On Sun, Jul 07, 2002 at 10:49:18AM +0800, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
Hello,
This is a brand new review of SuSE Linux 8.0:
http://www.distrowatch.com/review-suse.php
It hasn't been officially published -- before I do so, I would like to consult the memebers of this mailing list as most of you have used SuSE a lot longer than I have. Anything you disagree with? Any more positive things I should mention? Any more annoyances?
All comments are welcome; credit will be given where appropriate. Thanks very much for your time to read and express your opinion.
Additional Pro: One of the major differences between SuSE and other distros is that SuSE includes the latest version of ALSA. This gives multimedia users more programs and options. A strong plus. Additional Con: SuSE 8.0 added the new hotplug system and completely overhauled the networking scripts. This has caused a big problem in configuring wireless PCMCIA cards in 8.0. I've used wireless since SuSE 7.2 but had real problems getting it work in 8.0. I've also helped many users try to get wireless working on this list, usually with success but not always. I think SuSE will have this fixed in 8.1. Best Regards, Keith -- LPIC-2, MCSE, N+ Right behind you, I see the millions Got spam? Get spastic http://spastic.sourceforge.net
On Sunday July 7 2002 09:06, Keith Winston wrote:
On Sun, Jul 07, 2002 at 10:49:18AM +0800, Ladislav Bodnar wrote:
As a new purchaser of Suse 8 Personal Edn, i was disappointed in not having gone for the Pro version, but not many detailed differences between the two versions were spelled out in your great review. I am still trying to learn the simpler things and the road is not easy! I believe it is a great O/S anyway, and your advice helped muchly. BrianB.
Hi Brian and All,
As a new purchaser of Suse 8 Personal Edn, i was disappointed in not having gone for the Pro version ...
Surely Brian doesn't need to worry - you haven't made a bad choice, and you'll still be able to do anything you need to do with a little help from your friendly local mirror. I'm a bit surprised how hot people are getting under the collar about this one. SuSE simply tried to put together two fairly rational ways to buy tailored versions of their distro. (three if you include the money-saving pro update version which I heartily recommend, though I realise people in some locales have had difficulty finding this). Personal was intended to provide a cheaper way to get desktop users going, pro to provide about as many packages as someone setting up workstations or servers could expect to find anywhere. But let's straighten this out - stop me if I get this wrong, but AFAIK the personal edition isn't crippled or broken in any way. If you decide Apache is vital for you as a home user to 'test your webpages' (though viewing them in your browser from a local filesystem that replicates your intended file structure on the server should be more than sufficient for this), then you can freely download all the relevant rpms and set it up. If you decide you need anything else on the distro, you can pick it up from any one of dozens of mirrors. We're just talking about different collections of packages here, that could be used to make up hundreds of thousands of different Linux installations, not some kind of computing Berlin wall. If you wanted to make your personal edition the exact match of your buddy's pro installation, it will just involve you in a bit of downloading and tinkering. Or you could just ante up the few dollars difference first time round. We're not exactly talking about big money here, are we? SuSE still represents quite unbelievable value, really folks, look at what this outfit is doing for you and then compare it with what others are willing to sell you. Put me right if I've misunderstood the functioning of Personal, until then continue having a lot of fun, Best Fergus
the reply is bellow the quote On Monday 08 July 2002 17:04, Fergus Wilde wrote:
I'm a bit surprised how hot people are getting under the collar about this one. SuSE simply tried to put together two fairly rational ways to buy tailored versions of their distro. (three if you include the money-saving pro update version which I heartily recommend, though I realise people in some locales have had difficulty finding this).
Personal was intended to provide a cheaper way to get desktop users going, pro to provide about as many packages as someone setting up workstations or servers could expect to find anywhere.
But let's straighten this out - stop me if I get this wrong, but AFAIK the personal edition isn't crippled or broken in any way. If you decide Apache is vital for you as a home user to 'test your webpages' (though viewing them in your browser from a local filesystem that replicates your intended file structure on the server should be more than sufficient for this), then you can freely download all the relevant rpms and set it up.
If you decide you need anything else on the distro, you can pick it up from any one of dozens of mirrors. We're just talking about different collections of packages here, that could be used to make up hundreds of thousands of different Linux installations, not some kind of computing Berlin wall. If you wanted to make your personal edition the exact match of your buddy's pro installation, it will just involve you in a bit of downloading and tinkering. Or you could just ante up the few dollars difference first time round. We're not exactly talking about big money here, are we? SuSE still represents quite unbelievable value, really folks, look at what this outfit is doing for you and then compare it with what others are willing to sell you.
I agree 100% with what Fergus said. There's no way SuSE can statisfied every need with personal version. There might always be someone who feel that SuSE need to put at least 1 more package... And SuSE did good to seperate the pro as more to server solution and personal as more desktop solution. Although Apache might be usefull for user want to test their web pages, but it's more to the network. And for average joe installing apache and having broadband is not a good idea, it could lead to security issue if he didn't know he has some web server running. I do believe if you need apache, or other network component, then you should be the pro user.
My experience with the 8.0 distribution has been pure frustration. I can't comment on how well it works once installed because I haven't yet been able to install it. (I have the Personal edition.) Why? It's because I'm updating from earlier versions of SuSE and the version of Yast2 on the CD simply doesn't work for updating from anything earlier than 7.3. SuSE support is utterly unwilling to help if you're updating from such earlier versions. I've tried it on two different computers, one running 7.1 (with many packages updated to later versions) and one running 6.2. On the 7.1 computer, when I select the "update installed packages only" choices, I eventually get the message "There is nothing to update". On the 6.1 computer, the update proceeds through about 200 of 300 packages and then produces a red screen with the message "An error has occurred" that stops the process. No more information than that. I don't doubt that if I was doing a clean install rather than an update, it would work far better. But I'm not alone, I'm sure, in considering a clean install to not be a reasonable option. I have far too much customization in my system to want to deal with that. Eventually, I suppose, I'll go through the effort of a package-by-package update using the packages on the CD. But it shouldn't be necessary. Why should someone have to buy every single release in order to be able to update? (When I updated to 7.1 I had no such problems.) I should also mention the way that SuSE has replaced the functional but ugly Yast1 with the pretty but less functional Yast2. Sure, a graphical interface was long overdue --- but why did it have to come at such a great cost in lost functionality? Paul
participants (18)
-
Alexandr Malusek -
Anders Johansson -
Brian Berrigan -
Doug McGarrett -
Fergus Wilde -
Frits J. Wüthrich -
Gordon Berta -
henjay -
Keith Winston -
Ladislav Bodnar -
Ladislav Bodnar -
Marcus Meissner -
Matthew Johnson -
michael norman -
Mojojojo -
Paul W. Abrahams -
Steven T. Hatton -
zentara