SuSE 9.2 and audio, jpilot headaches
Hey Group; I have been monitoring the mail and have seen several unhappy persons that spent good hard earned money on SuSE9.2 (at a much higher price). I am among those that are rather unhappy with SuSE 9.2. I am a compTIA Linux+ person that has been fighting (on the same machine) things that did work fine under 9.0 and fail to work as well (or if at all) under 9.2. Like while listening to my pci bttv TV/FM card and alsa sound playing. If I type "lsusb" the FM freq. changes to a off freq. (aka noise). You might ask why I needed to use lsusb. Simple! To try to get my Palm Pilot to work. It seems no matter which /dev/usb or /dev I use the Palm Pilot is not synced. So /dev/ttyUSB[any #} fails All of this works correctly under 9.0. Too may scripts ruling every process running. I may need to look into Slackware. -- 73 de Donn Washburn __" http://www.hal-pc.org/~n5xwb " Ham Callsign N5XWB / / __ __ __ __ __ __ __ 307 Savoy St. / /__ / / / \/ / / /_/ / \ \/ / Sugar Land, TX 77478 /_____/ /_/ /_/\__/ /_____/ /_/\_\ LL# 1.281.242.3256 Dump Microsoft Software - Stop virus email Email: n5xwb@hal-pc.org " http://counter.li.org " #279316
On Sunday 21 November 2004 02:53, Donn Washburn wrote:
Hey Group;
I have been monitoring the mail and have seen several unhappy persons that spent good hard earned money on SuSE9.2 (at a much higher price). I am among those that are rather unhappy with SuSE 9.2. I am a compTIA Linux+ person that has been fighting (on the same machine) things that did work fine under 9.0 and fail to work as well (or if at all) under 9.2.
Like while listening to my pci bttv TV/FM card and alsa sound playing. If I type "lsusb" the FM freq. changes to a off freq. (aka noise).
You might ask why I needed to use lsusb. Simple! To try to get my Palm Pilot to work. It seems no matter which /dev/usb or /dev I use the Palm Pilot is not synced. So /dev/ttyUSB[any #} fails
All of this works correctly under 9.0. Too may scripts ruling every process running. I may need to look into Slackware.
Hi Donn, This is in line with a primary concern: Is this what happens when corporate agenda potentially takes priority within a linux distribution? I have always been under the impression that the idea of Open Source movements was to: 1. collect & reciprocate intellectual value from over various It communities 2. promote mutual growth between these communities 3. provide joint synergy between all participants 4. benefit participating IT communities that shared in the Testing/Problem Solving/Submissions/Developing 5. Share the progress and do so in the absence of Corporate Agenda (GPL licence) Could it be that you and me are both witnessing the potential demise of Open Source? Is this what we can expect as to the life cycles of major linux distributions?: 1. Distribution gets established. 2. Participation & support is obtained from community goodwill. 3. Distribution becomes a corporation. 4. Administration of the operating system is Obfusticated behind 1000's of scripts and becomes GUI dependent. 5. Stock standard kernels becomes unusable because it becomes necessary for 1000's of kernel patches to be installed (mostly available for only particular kernel versions), before it can be compiled. (Many features fall over if not) 6. Support & information becomes hard to find, especially on the distribution's website. 7. Paid support, courseware & purchase of additional manuals becomes no longer optional. The very reasons many of us abandoned MS, is for the very same reasons we are expressing similar sentiments when faced with the same threat. -- Johannes Cloete Tel: +27 82 224 8324 (Mobile) +27 12 804 9700 (Office Hours)
On Sunday 21 November 2004 02:56, Johannes Cloete wrote:
4. Administration of the operating system is Obfusticated behind 1000's of scripts and becomes GUI dependent.
Obfusticated? There is no part of SuSE that is obfuscated behind 1000s of scripts. And there is absolutely no part of SuSE that depends on a GUI. Everything is doable from a command line.
5. Stock standard kernels becomes unusable because it becomes necessary for 1000's of kernel patches to be installed (mostly available for only particular kernel versions), before it can be compiled. (Many features fall over if not)
What are you talking about? I've been using kernel.org kernels for years in SuSE. Works perfectly. Sure you're not getting the functionality provided by the patches SuSE applies, that's sort of the idea behind applying them in the first place, isn't it? If you want that functionality in kernel.org kernels, go bother the kernel.org people to get them included in their kernels.
6. Support & information becomes hard to find, especially on the distribution's website.
There is a full text search.
7. Paid support, courseware & purchase of additional manuals becomes no longer optional.
I've never bought anything aside from the boxes. What do you mean 'no longer optional'???
On Sunday 21 November 2004 10:04, Anders Johansson wrote:
There is no part of SuSE that is obfuscated behind 1000s of scripts. And there is absolutely no part of SuSE that depends on a GUI. Everything is doable from a command line.
What are you talking about? I've been using kernel.org kernels for years in SuSE. Works perfectly. Sure you're not getting the functionality provided by the patches SuSE applies, that's sort of the idea behind applying them in the first place, isn't it? If you want that functionality in kernel.org kernels, go bother the kernel.org people to get them included in their kernels.
There is a full text search. I've never bought anything aside from the boxes. What do you mean 'no longer optional'???
Thank you for your insights. I am a loyal Suse fan. But decided to repeat sentiments expressed by colleagues. I've been under constant attack from them due to my support of open source inititiatives. This is an excellent response. Yours is so far the 1st and thank you for your candor. I've also been monitoring the sentiments of user group members. Something a lot of users forget is that you cannot have growth and development along with 100% super stability. I believe that the Linux Desktop has progressed a long way from it's infancy years. The fact is that operating systems will always have to put forth effort to keep up with the latest and improved (?) hardware. An operating system will never be able to become 100% stable while we have growth and improvements. Growth is good, but there is a price to pay and we cannot have both. -- Johannes Cloete
On Sunday 21 November 2004 10:07, Johannes Cloete wrote:
An operating system will never be able to become 100% stable while we have growth and improvements. Growth is good, but there is a price to pay and we cannot have both.
There is a lot to this, I think this is why SuSE has their SLES offering, which doesn't have as new software as the 'Professional' version, but on the other hand is more stable and more thoroughly tested. It's really two different market segments. One market wants the latest and greatest with all the bells and whistles ('Professional') while another wants something they can stick on a server and leave it running there for years ('SLES'). It's difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy both markets in a single version.
On Saturday 20 November 2004 7:53 pm, Donn Washburn wrote:
Hey Group;
I have been monitoring the mail and have seen several unhappy persons that spent good hard earned money on SuSE9.2 (at a much higher price). I keep seeing this "much higher price" but as I remember it was the same price as I got it for the last time I bought the full boxed version. Please tell me how much more it is costing you. And how long ago it was you bought the version before this one.
And there is always the "upgrade" option, which gives you everything except the manuals. Not to mention discounters, Chumbo and some others ... probably Amazon has folks selling them at discounts, as well. And there is always the install from the ftp site option. The only thing that didn't happen and wont apparently is the Home version. That was always less money, but it had a lot less in it. Still, if you bought any of it you can download and install any of the individual programs from Suse's ftp site. I remember them saying the last time, and probably before that one that they would be putting more stuff on the dvd, to encourage people to get them and reward those of us who had them... I rather imagine there was something similar w/ the old switch from floppies to cds. It's just so far back in the dark ages... none of you children can remember it. <G> Lord, 5inch floppies, and having to put two of them into two different slots ( prior to the now ubiquitous hard drives..) I am sure there are things wrong w/ every version of everything that comes out. And as, they always used to tell me, "if you have a working system, unless there is something you MUST have, don't upgrade to a newer version. And for all of you who have more than one box, how about doing a shakedown on a non necessary box. So if you find something that is going to take time and effort, you will have the time to work it out. IF you are having serious problems going from one release to another in the same number, something odd is going on. Since as far as any info in the various 9.x releases haven't made mention of the stuff that was going on during the 7.x thru 8.x releases. Where they were making major modifications to the locations of things in order to comply w/ the United Linux ideas.. and eventually that is going to pay off for all of us. The other thing I don't get is people bitching about the price because "Linux is free and so no one should get charged anything for it.." Well, bollox!! IF you want a completely non paying system, download the bits from all the sites and roll your own. Suse in particular, I know from a guy who doesn't work for them , heavily customizes scripts etc to make certain everything you want to run works as it should. For those of you complaining, we here do not work for Suse. It's simply our favorite distro. They kindly provide us w/ this forum to rant, or help each other. Suse also pays programmers who work on the so called "Free" software ( KDE for instance), and that money must be recouped. Companies that are constantly awash in red ink just go away... ask anyone who fell in love w/ BeOS. When Jean Louis ran out of cash, it basically died. And as we repeatedly say programmers have to eat, pay rent, feed the kids, cats, dogs, car, tax man etc. etc. too. Of course, if you are willing, as a grownup who must support themselves, as in pay your own living expenses and you aren't living in mum and dad's house, w/ mum doing the housekeeping , cooking laundry etc, and dad paying for the house costs and car upkeep ins. and all that sort of stuff. And you are willing to work for a for profit company and do it for free, well, feel free to send Suse your info and qualifications .... and even better, if you have about 20 friends who wouldn't mind doing the same... well, maybe then it could be at this magic price point that seems to me to be irrational. After all, who produces the cds or dvds? Someone has to get the stuff all organized and ready to go to the pressers. Someone has to pay for the boxes and all.I strongly suspect even the web developers want to be paid a meaningful wage. Togan said, imagine if the cost is just one cent per cd, how much it costs to press the minimum number the presser will accept, and it's probably, assuming his price of one cent is right, it's likely at least double that for the dvd. That money, like the programmers and designers and all the other folks salaries are outgo that is in advance of any expected sales. This stuff isn't made up one box at a time. I know there are places on the web that do make cd's and dvds of various distros or other softeware.. they do the sort of job you can do, make a copy of what they buy for cost plus a small amount and I mean SMALL amount, because it makes it easier for people who don't want the boxed sets but find the phone lines too unreliable for installations. It's all trade offs. And should you decide you can not put up w/ Suse's deliberate insistence on breaking your installation, farewell, sorry to see you go, and I wish you happiness. -- j nemo me impune lacessit quis custodiet ipsos custodiates?'
On Sunday 21 November 2004 02:41, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:
On Saturday 20 November 2004 7:53 pm, Donn Washburn wrote:
Hey Group;
I have been monitoring the mail and have seen several unhappy persons that spent good hard earned money on SuSE9.2 (at a much higher price).
I keep seeing this "much higher price" but as I remember it was the same price as I got it for the last time I bought the full boxed version. Please tell me how much more it is costing you. And how long ago it was you bought the version before this one.
If I recall correctly, 8.0 to 9.1 Pro were all originally $79.99 when released. 9.2 is currently $89.99 at CompUSA. That's $10. I'm not complaining. (Well, MAYBE it would have been nicer if they included a licensed binary for playing encrypted DVDs.)
And there is always the "upgrade" option, which gives you everything except the manuals. Not to mention discounters, Chumbo and some others ... probably Amazon has folks selling them at discounts, as well.
I always buy the full package. I like printed manuals. In any case this is still far cheaper than when I had to pay the yearly ransom for various virus utilities and security software to keep my laptop (barely) functioning with Windows. [snip]
I remember them saying the last time, and probably before that one that they would be putting more stuff on the dvd, to encourage people to get them and reward those of us who had them... I rather imagine there was something similar w/ the old switch from floppies to cds. It's just so far back in the dark ages... none of you children can remember it. <G>
There's a much bigger difference between a 1.44M floppy and a 650M CD than there is between a 650M CD and 4.7G DVD. Given the nearly negligible cost of pressing CDs I don't see why they couldn't have put all the software on CDs. The new plastic box that the 9.2 media came in has room for a lot more discs. And I remember installing a commercial application that occupied over 80 floppies.
On Sunday 21 November 2004 9:53 am, Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:
There's a much bigger difference between a 1.44M floppy and a 650M CD than there is between a 650M CD and 4.7G DVD. Given the nearly negligible cost of pressing CDs I don't see why they couldn't have put all the software on CDs. The new plastic box that the 9.2 media came in has room for a lot more discs.
But it isn't a 4.7GB DVD !! It's a 9.4 or 6 ( the extra fudgey stuff they do to make media somewhat compatible w/ older stuff. ) And that too is a huge jump in the amount of data. If they were doing it the old way. w/ a 4.7GB disk, they would need to have 4 dvds.
And I remember installing a commercial application that occupied over 80 floppies.
Yeah, I uninstalled windows 3.11 and filled the whole laptop w/ OS/2 .. they tried to hide the fact it was on the lappy at all, or offered you the choice of deleting it, but not how to boot it.. unless you were somewhat savvy at the time, you would never have even see the thing.. but you might notice you didn't have as much disk space as you thought was supposed to be there. I forget how many disks it took, but the backups, which were also to those HUGE 1.44 floppies took 17 floppies for personal settings and data. Soon the idea of a CDROM drive didn't seem to be as outlandishly expensive. ;^) ( Of course we also had made the jump from the TurbographX16 to a PCEngine, which was the follow on, and came in one unit w/ the cdrom. The origional version had an option to ADD a cd, but there wasn't any media in the states at the time. But they were talking about folks in Japan having used the cdrom w/ their computers. But getting the PCengine,I could play games from all over the world. I had needed a weird hookup to play non us games on it.. It looked a lot like a circuit board ( well it was one ) w/ a place to put the as if you were putting it into one of those adapters they use for cf cards so they can fit iinto your laptops and the other side of it translated the US pin configuration into the one that was used on PCengines all over the world, no matter the names. <G> We were really happy to see the cds come into use. No more funny extra cicuit board hanging off the game console that eventually became the PS/2 . Seeing the difference it made, we were happy then to get a CDROM, when we bought the first home computers, we got them w/ CD drives even tho they were extra, as they weren't still universally in use.And when the Cds got to be 7 or9 whatever it was... it just seemed like the revenge of the floppies <VBG> -- j nemo me impune lacessit quis custodiet ipsos custodiates?'
On Sunday 21 November 2004 01:53, Donn Washburn wrote:
All of this works correctly under 9.0. Too may scripts ruling every process running. I may need to look into Slackware.
I've seen this a few times lately, and I just want to know: why announce it? Why not try slackware (or Debian, or gentoo, or...) and let us know if it works more to your expectations? That way you would be able to say "this is the way it works in $DISTRO, and it's soooo much simpler than in SuSE, why not do it this way?" I'll make a small prediction: when you've tried it, I think you'll find the difference not so great. There are no super secret, double-binary-only things working behind the scenes to ruin your life. Yes, SuSE uses resmgr, which isn't in all linux distributions, and can confuse at times. But mostly, SuSE is about default settings, about SuSEconfig/YaST helping you configure things. The programs themselves are, mostly, the same you'll find elsewhere. If you have problems with permissions in SuSE, odds are you'd have the same problems in other distributions that do even less to help you set up a working environment In 9.2 there has been a few problems with ownership of devices, notably a few have complained about the sound. Am I right in thinking the people who have trouble with this are logging in to text mode and using 'startx' to go to X? Is there anyone who logs in with kdm who has that problem?
participants (5)
-
Anders Johansson -
Donn Washburn -
jfweber＠bellsouth.net -
Johannes Cloete -
Synthetic Cartoonz