On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 19:49, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

On Wednesday 26 January 2005 8:42 pm, Doug McGarrett wrote:

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At 10:19 PM 1/26/2005 +0000, Sean Rima wrote:

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I am about to buy the Professional package but am concerned that 9.3 or 10.0 will come out in a month or two. Is this likely?

/snip/

No, it is not likely. SuSE s/w comes out at about 6 month intervals. Since the last release was in November 2004, the next will probably be May or June 2005. If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

--doug

well, that may well depend on what sort of things he needs, does it not? Ass long as I can remember the list is roughly divided into two camps, those of us who buy every upgrade and have no problems, and those who sometimes buy or at least download and install the new version and often spend eons bitching and moaning that somehow SUSE is out to get them "just to make money" . Although I should imagine the goal of any commercial company is to make a profit ( money ) Generally, what you hear/read on the list after we earlly adopters have had our innings, is more and more of the other group , who jump into each question about upgrades to basically say no, and never !! It doesn't change, no matter the majority have few or no problems, research on the site would make most folks wonder why anyone would have ever bought/used ANY SUSE product since, uhm, maybe 6.5 ???? :)

If you want or need any or all of the new items in the 2.6 kernal, and don't want to or need to "roll your own" 9.2 is your baby.. because it is the default install. There are large improvements in multimedia handling, and the handling of things like, "I'm thru w/ the CD now, eject it dammit!! And you can often spend hours during which time the computer will tell you it's too busy using the CD in question!! OR your (flash) card reader may exhibit similar tendencies and you can't change the thing for days. That no longer happens w/ 9.2 . There is much better recognition of hardware, even if, on occassion the OS isn't certain what to do about some card or other.

Generally speaking, most folks have either had uneventful or suprisingly easy installs. At least the ones I've been responsable for . Including my Kid who is in the middle of the country w/ a damaged computer from that company that puts cow prints on it's boxes.. er, cartons. The computer was hit by a lightning strike, and ever since can't boot from a cd.. However, it boots from a floppy and that tells it to go look for the install stuff on the cd..

As for the company that sold her the computer. They won't even discuss any problems she might have until and unless she puts W2k back on the box. Since "that was how we sold it" No wonder windows users don't buy upgrades, or even consider changing OSes..

For her Windows partition, she has gone back to 98 as neither W2k nor Xp want to run.. and her hubby needs to use a windows PC to do his homework.. ( Yet another school/company etc. that refuses to recognize that none of those systems are secure at all, and especially when they insist work be done only thru ( wait for it...) I.E. for , "Security" reasons... I think her husband hates Windows so much once he is thru or they get a new box, he wants to deep6 all windows partition.. Tho they have "dialup" and have had repeted problems getting it to connect properly in linux. The latest escapade has something to do w/ wvdial AND kinternet both dialing also when the other one does, and they they both want to send the logon and pwd... and they get hung up upon as the ISP believes they are trying to make multiple connections. <sigh>

So far, between our long phone calls where we just go thru every possible location to find where these things are finding the instructions to both send whenever one dials, rather than one or the other doing it... ( It's one of those times when neither of us is certain which or what question to ask )

But even w/ a completely bolloxed box, all her family prefer to work in the Suse linux 9.2 version... They all like it better than any of the Windows stuff they have tried. Which is saying something, when you consider teen aged kids who want to be "cool" also live in that house. <VBG>

I found this thread interesting and informative and perhaps my experience would be useful to others. I have a laptop and desktop at home and tried installing 9.2 on both. On both I had multiple problems, so much so that I gave up on 9.2. But I had seen so many positive comments on the list that I went ahead and installed 9.2 on four other desktops of friends of mine. All of those installations went very smoothly (except for two winmodems and having to play with the monitor resulutions on two). But all of my friends are extremely happy with it, like it much better than previous distros I had installed on their machines and they find it easiest to use! So I went back and tried to figure out why I had so many problems. It turns out I have two hardware problems on my laptop, one partition has errors that I can't seem to fix or trace (still working on it) and my CD-Rom drive is also faulty, I have to take the laptop for servicing. The Desktop I can't figure out yet, but 9.1 seems to install and run fine on it (on the partition 9.2 failed). I'm fairly convinced now that it is not 9.2 that is the problem there, but some hardware issue. Which brings me to something I've noticed often. I'm not saying this is always the case, but it seems most often when people on this list have had problems with 9.2 it has been related to some hardware issue. Just my opinion. Gustav Degreef.

On Thu, 2005-01-27 at 12:45, Jack wrote:

On Thu, 2005-01-27 at 15:27 +0530, rada and gus wrote:

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I'm not saying this is always the case, but it seems most often when people on this list have had problems with 9.2 it has been related to some hardware issue. Just my opinion. Gustav Degreef.

Agreed. I think that could be a large part of the problem. Of course, most of the people on this list have probably forgotten more than I know. That being said, I've been with SuSE since 9.0 and I think each distro is better than the next. 9.2 works great and is the best yet.

Just my 2 cents.

Jack

Hi Jack, You wrote "I think each distro is better than the next." I presume, you mean "each new release is better than the previous one". ;-) Besides that, hardware was, is, and probably remain the biggest problem. As long as manufacturers refuse to provide specs, no drivers can be written. (if they don't provide them themselves) Just as example, ATI (and clones) producing for years and years nice grapics boards using Rage200 and Rage300 chip-set, but the people from the Gatos-team were not able to write anything because of lack of documentation. Same for pci-dsl-modem boards. Compared with ten years ago, the situation is getting much better. Rough estimation would be that (except for bleeding edge technology) about 80% is supported. In the bad old days of kernel 1.0 that was the other way round: 20% supported. It's getting better as time goes by. But it is something that Suse can do little about it, i'm afraid.... Hans

On Monday 31 January 2005 04:15, John Andersen wrote:

On Thursday 27 January 2005 02:45 am, Jack wrote:

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I've been with SuSE since 9.0 and I think each distro is better than the next.  9.2 works great and is the best yet.

Well had you been with Suse longer you would not think so.

8.2 is/was supurb. 9.0 couldn't touch it. A step backward.

Back in the 7.X releases a similar thing happened.

But how great you think a particular version number is/was has a lot to do with luck and hardware happenstance - for example I found 9.0 consistently the best install and that it worked the best on my various hardware combos. Cheers Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk

On Monday 31 January 2005 04:15, John Andersen wrote:

On Thursday 27 January 2005 02:45 am, Jack wrote:

...

I've been with SuSE since 9.0 and I think each distro is better than the next.  9.2 works great and is the best yet.

Well had you been with Suse longer you would not think so.

8.2 is/was supurb. 9.0 couldn't touch it. A step backward.

Back in the 7.X releases a similar thing happened.

I have almost given up with 9.2 and am seriously thinking of going back to 9.1. Why? I think that the fonts in 9.2 look terrible! They are thick, look rather pale in colour, and the edges are ill-defined. Installing the NVidia driver with YOU makes them look even worse. I have spent many hours trying to find the problem and solve it, but can't. I have now run out of ideas to try. There are no font problems with 9.1, or with two other distros I run. These all look excellent. I haven't read of anyone else having these problems. Cheers Keith

On Monday 31 Jan 2005 11:25, Fergus Wilde wrote:

On Monday 31 January 2005 10:24, Keith Powell wrote:

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BIG SNIP <<

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I have almost given up with 9.2 and am seriously thinking of going back to 9.1. Why?

I think that the fonts in 9.2 look terrible! They are thick, look rather pale in colour, and the edges are ill-defined. Installing the NVidia driver with YOU makes them look even worse. I have spent many hours trying to find the problem and solve it, but can't. I have now run out of ideas to try.

There are no font problems with 9.1, or with two other distros I run. These all look excellent.

I haven't read of anyone else having these problems.

Something's up, then - fonts are fine here. No idea where you should start looking for your glitch but there's nothing about 9.2 per se making them bad.

Best Fergus

Thanks for the information, Fergus, that there is no general fonts problem with 9.2. It really must be a problem just with this set-up, but I have no idea what it can be. Cheers Keith

Success!! On Monday 31 Jan 2005 14:15, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:

Keith Powell wrote:

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Thanks for the information, Fergus, that there is no general fonts problem with 9.2.

It really must be a problem just with this set-up, but I have no idea what it can be.

I could be wrong, but I think it usually has to do with the monitor settings. Try adding the actual screen size (x & y settings) and checking the refresh rate to make sure which freq the monitor is using, as well as the dpi settings.

Thanks, Joe. I did not think that the x & y settings, which were both at zero, needed altering. They have now been properly set and the fonts look great! The monitor freq and dpi settings were correct, and had been experimented with at great length over the course of many, many hours. A dis-satisfied 9.2 customer, is now a very satisfied one :) Cheers Keith

On Monday 31 Jan 2005 14:19, Ernest Byaruhanga wrote:

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I have almost given up with 9.2 and am seriously thinking of going back to 9.1. Why?

I think that the fonts in 9.2 look terrible! They are thick, look rather pale in colour, and the edges are ill-defined. Installing the NVidia driver with YOU makes them look even worse. I have spent many hours trying to find the problem and solve it, but can't. I have now run out of ideas to try.

There are no font problems with 9.1, or with two other distros I run. These all look excellent.

the fonts look terrible - i agree : right after installation - but you can beautify them to your liking from the Control Centre -> Fonts.

This will not change the look of the fonts in Gtk apps.. when you get to this, you can look in the archives here for the solution.

Thanks, Ernest. The problem was caused by the desktop resolutions not having been set. They were automatically set correctly in 9.1. Cheers Keith

* Doug McGarrett [01-26-05 20:44]:

No, it is not likely. SuSE s/w comes out at about 6 month intervals. Since the last release was in November 2004, the next will probably be May or June 2005. If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

You don't like SuSE. Why don't you go back to windoz instead of bad- mouthing a distro that *you* have problems with? On second thought, don't answer that. It was not intended to be a question. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/photos

On Wednesday 26 January 2005 15:31, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Patrick,

On Wednesday 26 January 2005 18:11, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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* Doug McGarrett [01-26-05 20:44]:

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No, it is not likely. SuSE s/w comes out at about 6 month intervals. Since the last release was in November 2004, the next will probably be May or June 2005. If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

You don't like SuSE. Why don't you go back to windoz instead of bad- mouthing a distro that *you* have problems with?

What sort of an answer is this?

I'm inclined to agree. If 9.2 were anywhere near as problematic as Doug insinuates, the list would have been inundated with problem reports for several weeks, now.

I must say 9.2 is the worst on my system since I started using SuSE (7.0). KDE crashes all the time , multimedia ( almost nothing is working). Firefox takes minutes and minutes to fire up. Mozilla , hallo where are you? I cannot burn Cd's , oh I better shut up. -- Greetings from /bill at 169 west , 19 south. Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."

At 09:11 PM 1/26/2005 -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Doug McGarrett [01-26-05 20:44]: /snip/

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If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

You don't like SuSE. Why don't you go back to windoz instead of bad- mouthing a distro that *you* have problems with?

On second thought, don't answer that. It was not intended to be a question.

/snip/ Patrick could have quoted the last part of my note, which said: "Don't get me wrong: I'd like to see Linux win the battle with MS, but the problems are not small, nor are they subtle." I have been with SuSE for at least 3 major releases, and/or their subsets. Up until 9.2 I thought they were doing a very good job. I have to say that not only my own experience, but the problems expressed on the list indicate that 9.2 was half-baked. Anyone who doubts that has only to look back at the list. I don't remember anything of this magnitude occurring after 9.0 or 9.1, or even 8.2. I don't have any problem with SuSE trying to make money, as someone on the list implied, but a product should not be released to a schedule if it is not ready. Even MS tries, to some extent, not to do that. (Someone pointed out, here, just the other day, that Longhorn will certainly be late.) I was employed by a Fortune-500 company which was taken over by a very major multinational, and I know from first-hand experience what happens, and it is not good. SuSE seemed to be doing fine until Novell took over. Whether it can ever be what it was remains to be seen. While the American suits walk around the German offices and tell everybody what to do and when, and _how_, I have little confidence. (In the case of the company I was with, virtually all of the higher-level competent people were replaced, or quit. At that point, I took advantage of my aging status and retired.) Well, enough. When I get ambitious, I will install the latest Mandrake and see what happens. I will stay aboard this forum to find out how the SuSE system fares, and I certainly wish it well, and perhaps will rejoin the users of it if and when the suits go home and let the programmers do their jobs. --doug

N. B. Day wrote:

On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 23:45 -0500, Doug McGarrett wrote:

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At 09:11 PM 1/26/2005 -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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* Doug McGarrett [01-26-05 20:44]:

/snip/

...

...

If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

You don't like SuSE. Why don't you go back to windoz instead of bad- mouthing a distro that *you* have problems with?

<Whack>

...

Patrick could have quoted the last part of my note, which said:

"Don't get me wrong: I'd like to see Linux win the battle with MS, but the problems are not small, nor are they subtle."

I have been with SuSE for at least 3 major releases, and/or their subsets. Up until 9.2 I thought they were doing a very good job. I have to say that not only my own experience, but the problems expressed on the list indicate that 9.2 was half-baked. Anyone who doubts that has only to look back at the list. I don't remember anything of this magnitude occurring after 9.0 or 9.1, or even 8.2.

<Whack>

...

Well, enough. When I get ambitious, I will install the latest Mandrake and see what happens. I will stay aboard this forum to find out how the SuSE system fares, and I certainly wish it well, and perhaps will rejoin the users of it if and when the suits go home and let the programmers do their jobs.

--doug

I'm running Mandrake 10.1 in my lab and the SuSE 9.2 in my office. Neither is perfect, but I had no trouble installing either on my two somewhat-behind-the-curve computers, or getting the things I need working. I'm an eternal newbie; maybe a little better able to do this than the average joe, but certainly not an expert.

The Mandrake list has about the same number of people complaining that MDK 8.2 was the high point and everything has gone to hades from there. I remember some of the same folks saying that about 7.x when 8.2 was the latest.

For the last year or so I've found it easier to install a mainstream boxed Linux distro than to install WinXP. There's only a small chance that XP will properly detect all your hardware and a 100% chance you'll pick up something really nasty if you connect to the internet before you apply SP2 and all the latest hotfixes, which you need to have burned to a CD in advance.

I decided to look at SuSE again precisely because Novell bought it. The IT people have _heard_ of Novell and will be more likely to listen to my oft-repeated plea: "you don't have to support Linux or MacOS or whatever but don't make it impossible for those of us who need or prefer them to use them."

My 2cs. Suse 9.2 is the most reliable os from any one I have tried for donks. I have tried mandrake 10 and heaved it; xp needs to be reinstlled or repaired every second day. I have thought for a while that a lot of problems could be solved by running hd checks before install using one of those programs that run off a floppy. If your hardware is sus you can't blame the os (none). I also feel that some people do not want a particular os to run well and screw with it and then blame it. Read the specs, check your hardware, decide if you need to upgrade or change your os. I have friends who are still run win98 from initial install in the late 90s and it has never crashed.(maybe they should buy lottery tickets). Chris

Chris wrote:

N. B. Day wrote:

...

On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 23:45 -0500, Doug McGarrett wrote:

...

At 09:11 PM 1/26/2005 -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Doug McGarrett [01-26-05 20:44]:

/snip/

...

...

If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

You don't like SuSE. Why don't you go back to windoz instead of bad- mouthing a distro that *you* have problems with?

<Whack>

...

Patrick could have quoted the last part of my note, which said:

"Don't get me wrong: I'd like to see Linux win the battle with MS, but the problems are not small, nor are they subtle."

I have been with SuSE for at least 3 major releases, and/or their subsets. Up until 9.2 I thought they were doing a very good job. I have to say that not only my own experience, but the problems expressed on the list indicate that 9.2 was half-baked. Anyone who doubts that has only to look back at the list. I don't remember anything of this magnitude occurring after 9.0 or 9.1, or even 8.2.

<Whack>

...

Well, enough. When I get ambitious, I will install the latest Mandrake and see what happens. I will stay aboard this forum to find out how the SuSE system fares, and I certainly wish it well, and perhaps will rejoin the users of it if and when the suits go home and let the programmers do their jobs.

--doug

I'm running Mandrake 10.1 in my lab and the SuSE 9.2 in my office. Neither is perfect, but I had no trouble installing either on my two somewhat-behind-the-curve computers, or getting the things I need working. I'm an eternal newbie; maybe a little better able to do this than the average joe, but certainly not an expert.

The Mandrake list has about the same number of people complaining that MDK 8.2 was the high point and everything has gone to hades from there. I remember some of the same folks saying that about 7.x when 8.2 was the latest. For the last year or so I've found it easier to install a mainstream boxed Linux distro than to install WinXP. There's only a small chance that XP will properly detect all your hardware and a 100% chance you'll pick up something really nasty if you connect to the internet before you apply SP2 and all the latest hotfixes, which you need to have burned to a CD in advance.

I decided to look at SuSE again precisely because Novell bought it. The IT people have _heard_ of Novell and will be more likely to listen to my oft-repeated plea: "you don't have to support Linux or MacOS or whatever but don't make it impossible for those of us who need or prefer them to use them."

My 2cs. Suse 9.2 is the most reliable os from any one I have tried for donks. I have tried mandrake 10 and heaved it; xp needs to be reinstlled or repaired every second day.

I ditched SUSE 9.1 for the reasons I gave here and installed XP on 6 June 2004 at 1536 hours (Australian Eastern Time) - and XP has been running without a single hitch since. Agree with you re Mandrake. And I'll add Fedora Core 3 to the list of "don't waste your money or time on this" category. [Rest pruned] Cheers. -- "The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously."

Hello Doug, Thursday, January 27, 2005, 1:42:35 AM, you wrote:

At 10:19 PM 1/26/2005 +0000, Sean Rima wrote:

...

I am about to buy the Professional package but am concerned that 9.3 or 10.0 will come out in a month or two. Is this likely?

/snip/

No, it is not likely. SuSE s/w comes out at about 6 month intervals. Since the last release was in November 2004, the next will probably be May or June 2005. If you've been reading this list for a while, I should think you would not want 9.2 Pro, and if you could find 9.0, you would would buy it. I would!

I used to use SuSE until 9.1, the wife needed acess to various MS apps so I put XP back on this PC, after a while I got sick of it and bought her a laptop. But I have some apps that I would like to use under Wine and also do some development work as well Sean -- ICQ: 679813 YAHOO: thecivvie Jabber: thecivvie@jabber.org AIM: tcobone Vodafone +353879120530 :irl-flag: A girls best asset is her lie ability. (Fuhrman)