Hi!
On 4/11/06, Per Jessen
HG wrote:
Ok, perhaps companies or institutions who want to standardize. But home users... the biggest problem with SUSE has been that you need to reinstall everything when you want the versions of something (for instance, some small application that happens to need newer KDE).
Well, if you're reinstalling for that sort of thing, I can see why you think it's a problem. I would tend to turn that around and say the
Ah, that is just a sample - at some point this will happen... but perhaps it's just not that small program. It might also be that you do not get the security updates anymore... or that the KDE that was shipped is filled with bugs (like SuSE 9.0) or... well you get the point. At some point you need to upgrade something big and it is only possible by upgrading the whole distribution. So with SLICK, is this all fixed? Are there anymore different SLICK versions?
small application is the problem, not SUSE. Chances are you might very well be able to just rebuild that small app instead (using your current KDE).
Yes, the source code is available... but I really do not have the time to get the source code and then spend a day to get it to compile and then wait 2 days for it to compile. :-) There are different kinds of Linux users here, I'm one of those who are quite happy to get pre-compiled versions of the software. Actually many are such SUSE users that they only ever instal those programs that are available through YaST. I'm almost one of these. Kynaptic seems to make this selection much wider. There is already too much to configure with the current Linux softwares, we can just use all our time to compile source code and then configure the software - we never have the time to use them. :-(
Last question, would this be _the_ version to install to a laptop that doesn't have a CD drive (and therefore all SUSE updates are a pain..)?
You can always install an update over the network.
Yes, but - at least always before - with SuSE one needs to boot from the new CD. Update was not possible from running the old system and going to YaST. Even though, it looks like it. I've tried it last with some 9.X versions and ... well, it did not work at all. (I started with SuSE/Linux at around 9.0... so I didn't know this then.) So, I think I need to start from CD/DVD (impossible) or floppies (about 6-8 of them) to either install completely new system or to do the update.
I presume this can be installed with floppies and network?
Probably even easier - USB-stick.
USB doesn't work for this (or on this machine). Network boot would be ok, but it's too hard for me to set up with SUSE. I've tried it with knoppix though and it works just fine. Actually, I could see a tremendeous benefit for small business if SUSE would include a easy to setup network boot installation. Large businesses can take the time to use the current systems, but smaller can not. It's easier to just go around the computers with a DVD (usually the installations are slightly different for different needs) - so Knoppix style (=easy, "start server here") network boot installation would help there. -- HG.