At 01:57 PM 9/2/2006 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Saturday 02 September 2006 12:23, Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

I'm about to install a Linux system on a new box. I have the SuSE DVD for 10.0 and I assume I can download the one for 10.1, possibly minus some proprietary stuff (where can I find that if I want it?)

Looking at posts here, it appears that people are having more problems with 10.1 than with 10.0; it looks like 10.1 has introduced a number of changes that broke things that were working in 10.0. So which one should I install?

Well if you can afford to experiment with this box you might try 10.2 (beta). If you need it for production use, I would stick with 9.3, and failing that 10.0.

-- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Is it possible to purchase a _package_ of 9.3 somewhere, and if so, where? (Without the proprietary OO, and the Adobe Acrobat reader, it would not be useful to me.) I would like to have a Linux version that would be more-or-less bullet- proof. 8.2 worked well, but I think I gave it to my son. I will try 10.2 when it is actually released, and a month or two after all those on this list have checked it out. --doug

Take a look at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/ at select the software category, then search for suse linux. HTH Keith ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.karsites.net http://www.raised-from-the-dead.org.uk This email address is challenge-response protected with http://www.tmda.net ------------------------------------------------------------ On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Doug McGarrett wrote:

To: suse-linux-e@suse.com From: Doug McGarrett Subject: [SPAM] Re: [SLE] New system -- 10.0 or 10.1?

At 01:57 PM 9/2/2006 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Saturday 02 September 2006 12:23, Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

I'm about to install a Linux system on a new box. I have the SuSE DVD for 10.0 and I assume I can download the one for 10.1, possibly minus some proprietary stuff (where can I find that if I want it?)

Looking at posts here, it appears that people are having more problems with 10.1 than with 10.0; it looks like 10.1 has introduced a number of changes that broke things that were working in 10.0. So which one should I install?

Well if you can afford to experiment with this box you might try 10.2 (beta). If you need it for production use, I would stick with 9.3, and failing that 10.0.

-- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Is it possible to purchase a _package_ of 9.3 somewhere, and if so, where? (Without the proprietary OO, and the Adobe Acrobat reader, it would not be useful to me.) I would like to have a Linux version that would be more-or-less bullet- proof. 8.2 worked well, but I think I gave it to my son. I will try 10.2 when it is actually released, and a month or two after all those on this list have checked it out.

--doug

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

On 02/09/06, Robert Lewis wrote:

I stayed with 9.3 when 10.0 came out as my configuration is complex and usually takes me a couple of weeks to get everything back working.

When 10.1 came out I decided to go with that. In my view, apparently not others, it is far superior to 9,3 and I have been happy every since. So much so that I now have installed 10.1 on about 10 machines. Sure the rpm update system has been problematic but in every case I have won the battle with little effort and have been happy with the results.

Anyone on the list with experience of Broadcom and/or Atheros wireless support in 10.1 or .2? Jeff.

All good points and from reading your quality feedback help I have high regard for your thoughts. Here is one biggy, I share this machine with my wife and others. We use the CTRL-ALT F[7-?] to switch to different environments. If two people need the machine at one time I use another machine to come in with ssh -X and access whatever I need. With 9.3 only the primary person (first one to login) could have sound. Therefor my wife typically did not hear any sound on the multimedia stuff sent as attachments to email. Now sound works for all people, very cool. Outside of that I don't have any biggies to throw your way. I do know that packman and other engineers prefer to stay with the yellow brick road rather than look backwards. I also have a bias to try and help with my comments any engineers that are attempting to further the state of the art and to be patient with stuff that isn't perfect while trying to sort out how to get it working properly. My software isn't always perfect from the get go so why would I expect others to be perfect. I am able to easily sort through the issues with the update process now with 10 machines and it is easy for my wife to respond to the orange/red Orb and g tolerable while the engineers work hard to make it better. Believe me they have been working very hard to do so and this group seems to be pretty hard on them at times. No I don't work for Novell. In my mind, it is a waste of time threatening to switch to another distro or another update method. Just do it if you need to in my view but otherwise tone down the emotion. I am not pointing to anyone specifically here just having a friendly philosophic expression hopefully. On another note, my new laptop an HP dv5237cl and a friends Lonovo notebook X-41 just installed beautifully on 10.1 recognizing natively the wireless card. It is ok for some people to be happy and others not with a specific release in my view.

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sunday 03 September 2006 12:56, Mike wrote:

Wrong.. You needed to download the updates using YOU from SUSE to play mp3's. They came up in the very first update. I think it switched in 10.0 because they couldn't host them either.

9.3 is to my knowledge the only suse version that didn't have mp3 capability out of the box. As you say, you had to download special multimedia packs through the online update 10.0 reinstated mp3 capability out of the box, using the libhelix backend, because Real has a valid license for mp3 And if I read the news articles correctly, in 10.2 or 10.3 (or whatever it will be called) we will even get Windows Media capability out of the box, again through the Real media player (and, through its libhelix backend, through other programs as well, amarok can use libhelix for example)

On Sunday 03 September 2006 02:56, Mike wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 11:11, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point.

Wrong.. You needed to download the updates using YOU from SUSE to play mp3's. They came up in the very first update. I think it switched in 10.0 because they couldn't host them either.

Oh, yeah, right, I remember now. I got them on the first update after installation, along with all the other kde upgrades. I didn't have to go to any third party. They came as part of a normal upgrade proceedure. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On 03/09/06, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 11:11, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point.

mp3s do work. Out of the box even. Use the helix backend and you can play all the mp3s you want

Lack of mp3/flash/dvd playback in Linux is a legal problem, not a Linux problem. If you want to see playback "out of the box" in Linux, please work on changing the law. Jeff.

On 03/09/06, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On 03/09/06, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 11:11, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point.

mp3s do work. Out of the box even. Use the helix backend and you can

On Sunday 03 September 2006 13:28, Jeff Rollin wrote: play

...

...

all the mp3s you want

Lack of mp3/flash/dvd playback in Linux is a legal problem, not a Linux problem. If you want to see playback "out of the box" in Linux, please work on changing the law.

Excuse me?

mp3 and flash DOES work out of the box

As I said in the message you replied to, even.

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg. Flash definitely did NOT work for me out of the box, even in 10.0 Eval with things like out-of-the-box support for Atheros wireless cards.

On Sun, September 3, 2006 4:53 am, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 13:46, Jeff Rollin wrote:

...

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg. Flash definitely did NOT work for me out of the box, even in 10.0 Eval with things like out-of-the-box support for Atheros wireless cards.

flash has always worked out of the box for me, that has never been a problem. I've never heard others complain about it either

There is a problem at the moment, in that some web pages have started requiring flash v. 8, which we don't have support for at the moment, but that is - as far as I'm aware - not a legal problem. Flash is not covered by patents in the same way mp3 is. It's just that so far, there hasn't been an open source alternative usable for anything. gnu gnash may eventually become usable, but for now we're stuck with what Macromedia/Adobe give us, and they won't give us an updated flash player until 2007, from what I read

Yeah, there's a blog going by the chief developer on the project. You can see the progress right here: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ I read somewhere that you can change a setting in FireFox which will fool websites into thinking you're running Flash 8, at which point 99% of those sites will work. I'll get to it once I figure out this SMART thingy. And yes - flash works OOTB in 10.0 and 10.1. I believe I had to install it in 9.x. -- Kai Ponte www.perfectreign.com || www.4thedadz.com remember - a turn signal is a statement, not a request

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:46, Jeff Rollin wrote:

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg

Congratulations on your good sense. By now people should be sick of being "patent hostages." I switched as soon as ogg became available, and I haven't missed mp3 whatsoever. I encourage everyone to dump mp3. Bryan **************************************** Powered by Mepis Linux 3.4-3 KDE 3.5.2 KMail 1.9.1 This is a Microsoft-free computer Bryan S. Tyson bryantyson@earthlink.net ****************************************

suse@rio.vg wrote:

Bryan S. Tyson wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:46, Jeff Rollin wrote:

...

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg Congratulations on your good sense. By now people should be sick of being "patent hostages." I switched as soon as ogg became available, and I haven't missed mp3 whatsoever. I encourage everyone to dump mp3.

Has anyone here used an ogg to mp3 converter? I have a large library of mp3's, and I really don't feel like feeding all my old CD's through again. I know they exist (with a quick google search), but I'd like to know people's impression of their quality.

Oops, that should be mp3 to ogg conversion, sorry.

On Sunday 03 September 2006 22:32, suse@rio.vg wrote:

Bryan S. Tyson wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:46, Jeff Rollin wrote:

...

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg

Congratulations on your good sense. By now people should be sick of being "patent hostages." I switched as soon as ogg became available, and I haven't missed mp3 whatsoever. I encourage everyone to dump mp3.

Has anyone here used an ogg to mp3 converter? I have a large library of mp3's, and I really don't feel like feeding all my old CD's through again. I know they exist (with a quick google search), but I'd like to know people's impression of their quality.

Well the usual caveats about converting from one lossy format to another... I've heard it claimed that the loss is not too bad, equivelent to a bitrate drop from 126 down to the 110-120 kbps range. The conversion can be as simple as mpg321 input.mp3 -w - | oggenc -o output.ogg - Someone has a script to automate the process which would allow you to run some tests and do some side-by-side comparisons. http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/mp3ogg/ -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On 04/09/06, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Hi,

On Sunday 03 September 2006 23:32, suse@rio.vg wrote:

...

...

Has anyone here used an ogg to mp3 converter? I have a large library of mp3's, and I really don't feel like feeding all my old CD's through again. I know they exist (with a quick google search), but I'd like to know people's impression of their quality.

I can sympathize with your wish to avoid the tedium of ripping (especially dealing with the error-prone CDDB or FreeDB and manually correcting and uniformizing the tagging scheme).

I think the best recommendation if you have or can acquire the disk space is to rip to FLAC or some other lossless format (or option within a format). From there you can produce a variety of compressed formats as needed and without the degradation of transcoding from lossy encodings.

I've found 320kbps is a good compromise in quality and space between the default of 112 or 128 kbps, which sounds lousy on a proper soundsystem (generally the only listening environment i use ATM) and lossless compression such as flac. It's also helpful since, though I try to avoid mp3's, I keep them around just in case. Jeff.

On Monday 04 September 2006 01:00, William Gallafent wrote:

My preferred solution is to store everything as FLAC, then lossily convert when appropriate to a format suitable for a given player, if that player does not play FLAC, or I need a higher compression ratio than that provides.

But Flac is no better than storing in WAV which is how its on the CDs, is it? I've converted some MP3 files to ogg with mpg321-->oggenc and found that my old tin ears can't really detect any degradation as long as I use ogg encode quality high enough to at least match the bitrate of the original mp3. (usually this means ogg quality=4 for 128bitrate and quality=5 for 160bitrate mp3s) There is still loss happing, I just can;t hear it, plus, my music is not so demanding... I usually save no file space with this scheme, so I give up that feature of ogg to prevent creeping loss. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 02:27 -0400, Bryan S. Tyson wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:46, Jeff Rollin wrote:

...

i don't know about mp3, as I use ogg

Congratulations on your good sense. By now people should be sick of being "patent hostages." I switched as soon as ogg became available, and I haven't missed mp3 whatsoever. I encourage everyone to dump mp3.

Only one small problem a lack of $300 for a portable capable of playing OGG. So I use my sony and put the MP3 on a cd. When OGG players get that cheap ill buy. CWSIV

On Sunday 03 September 2006 19:41, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 03:21, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 11:11, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point.

mp3s do work. Out of the box even. Use the helix backend and you can play all the mp3s you want

As long as you use realplayer. Nothing else uses helix to my knowledge.

amarok and banshee do

On Sunday 03 September 2006 22:15, Bryan S. Tyson wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:21, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

Use the helix backend and you can play all the mp3s you want

However, I believe this does not apply to xmms.

Bryan

Right. For xmms you need libmad. So I suppose soon there will be a version of xmms that uses helix and you will have to install realplayer even if you never fire it up. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 22:20 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 22:15, Bryan S. Tyson wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 September 2006 07:21, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

Use the helix backend and you can play all the mp3s you want

However, I believe this does not apply to xmms.

Bryan

Right. For xmms you need libmad. So I suppose soon there will be a version of xmms that uses helix and you will have to install realplayer even if you never fire it up.

Why do that when there is Packmann? CWSIV

On 03/09/06 03:11, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 01:09, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 02/09/06 17:15, John Andersen wrote:

...

<snip> , mp3s don't work

Get the stuff from Packman.

Already did. Wasn't necessary in 9.3. Thanks for making my point.

My bad.. it is the mpeg stuff that you need to get from Packman. As others have noted, mp3 support in 9.3 is available in a kdemultimedia3 update package.

On Sunday 03 September 2006 21:31, Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

Get the stuff from Packman.

What's the URL for Packman?

http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/your version There are mirrors, but I'm don't have the list. This one I just typed in today when I installed 10.0 on my laptop. Mike -- Powered by SuSE 10.0 Kernel 2.6.13 KDE 3.4 Kmail 1.8 For Mondo/Mindi backup support go to http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike 9:42pm up 12:44, 4 users, load average: 2.76, 2.42, 2.27

John Andersen wrote:

10.1: automount no longer works and there is no plans to fix it,

Really? autofs has gone? Or do you mean subfs? The former would be horrible. The latter, well, at least I can live without it; there are alternatives like autofs or ivman. Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany

Jan Engelhardt wrote:

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...

10.1: automount no longer works and there is no plans to fix it,

Really? autofs has gone? Or do you mean subfs?

subfs is gone, autofs (or any other automounting mechanism that _includes_ console) is not in place by default.

But those who use the console, and use neither KDE nor GNOME (which have other automount capabilities, AFAIK), can be expected to install (via yast or apt) and configure it, can't they? Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany

On 9/6/06, Basil Chupin wrote: <snippage>

and reading the man pages is like trying to understand ancient Latin. (Manuals are specifically written for those who don't need manuals.)

LOL! that is so freaking true. It boggles my mind that a man or info page often lacks even a basic: "here are some commom command examples:" section. Gees, how hard could it be to identify the top 4 or 5 uses for a command, and give examples of these? I've often though about just doing this for myself, as a way to work through learing various tools, and then I would have a nice functional cheat sheet for lots of command. <sigh> time is such a rare commodity ... Peter

Joachim Schrod wrote:

Basil Chupin wrote:

...

autofs is there but not activated. You have to activate it yourself.

Now, if you know what to put into the config file would you please let me know? :-) . I can't refer to what's in 10.0 'cause I longer have it installed and reading the man pages is like trying to understand ancient Latin. (Manuals are specifically written for those who don't need manuals.)

In /etc/auto.master:

/media /etc/auto.media

In /etc/auto.media:

cdrom -fstype=iso9660,ro :/dev/cdrom sda1 -fstype=auto,umask=0,quiet :/dev/sda1 floppy -fstype=auto :/dev/fd0

or whatever else you need in mounts. (sda1 is an USB stick, as an example.)

Start with rcautofs start Activate at boot time with chkconfig -a autofs

That said, I think that autofs is not the best solution for CD/DVD automounting; ivman is probably better. autofs is suited to realize automounts for NFS and CIFS partitions, and there the configuration files above are typically placed into NIS, LDAP, or on an NFS share.

HTH, Joachim

Thanks for this, Joachim. I've made a copy of this and will play around with the info to see how it works out. Cheers.' -- This computer is environment-friendly and is running on OpenSuSE 10.1

On Saturday 02 September 2006 6:49 pm, Robert Lewis wrote:

I stayed with 9.3 when 10.0 came out as my configuration is complex and usually takes me a couple of weeks to get everything back working.

When 10.1 came out I decided to go with that. In my view, apparently not others, it is far superior to 9,3 and I have been happy every since. So much so that I now have installed 10.1 on about 10 machines. Sure the rpm update system has been problematic but in every case I have won the battle with little effort and have been happy with the results.

But if I read you correctly, you have no data on 10.0 vs. 10.1, only 9.3 vs. 10.1. So your results are consistent both with 9.3 < 10.1 < 10.0 and with 9.3 < 10.0 < 10.1. Paul

On Saturday 02 September 2006 15:31, Lívio Cipriano wrote:

I can't upgrade to 10.1 cause the actual RALink wireless driver don't work with the kernel of 10.1.

Hell it barely worked in any distro. I've use it with ndiswrapper, but it was never very satisfactory. I understand the latest version will work if you compile if. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Paul Abrahams wrote:

On Saturday 02 September 2006 6:49 pm, Robert Lewis wrote:

...

I stayed with 9.3 when 10.0 came out as my configuration is complex and usually takes me a couple of weeks to get everything back working.

When 10.1 came out I decided to go with that. In my view, apparently not others, it is far superior to 9,3 and I have been happy every since. So much so that I now have installed 10.1 on about 10 machines. Sure the rpm update system has been problematic but in every case I have won the battle with little effort and have been happy with the results.

But if I read you correctly, you have no data on 10.0 vs. 10.1, only 9.3 vs. 10.1. So your results are consistent both with 9.3 < 10.1 < 10.0 and with 9.3 < 10.0 < 10.1.

Paul

I would agree with your statement.

Go with 10.0 and pray for 10.2. I bought a new bare bones system thru Tiger Direct from MSI. Onboard sound, graphics and Nic but they assured me each could be separately disabled to use my stuff. for a test I kept my stuff out and did the install. It worked without issue but the graphics is not 3D. I would not dare try that with 10.1 with its three different installers only one of which is reliable out of the box YAST, after a few updates. CWSIV

On Saturday 02 September 2006 8:24 pm, stephan beal wrote:

IMO the only major hiccups with 10.1 belong to the online update tools. Aside from that i would take 10.1 over 10.0. There isn't a lot of visible difference between 10.0 and 10.1, so if rock-solid stability is your thing, as opposed to having a newer version of gcc and KDE, 10.0 is a good bet.

Can't I just update KDE to the same level as 10.1 after installing 10.0? Paul