How badly does SuSE suck? [Archive]

blackbelt_jones

09-14-2005, 08:13 PM

I switched to SuSe 9.3, from FC4, and also am very happy with it!

Well, that makes sense. If FC4 is anything like FC3, I would consider root canal surgery a pleasant change of pace.

I kept losing my internet connection with SuSE... both 9.0 AND 9.1, on my new computer AND on the old, dial-up AND dsl... plus there were a few other problems that I had blocked out, something to do with a labrynth of permissions that I had to negotiate. If I had paid full price, I would have been pissed. Yast worked really nice, but I rather disliked the bloated GUI-inside-of-another-GUI feel of it, especially on my older low-end machine.

But it did come fully loaded with a huge supply of good software, which is absolutely necessary for any RPM-distro. How much did it suck? Less than Fedora Core 3, anyway.

When it works (and yes, if you have the hardware) SuSE is incredibly easy. A chimp could probably be trained to operate Yast-- however, as a human being, I don't mind typing "apt-get install" into a system that (on my hardware, anyway) appears to be much more reliable and straightforward.

And that's how much, IMHO, SuSE sucks. Since you asked. :p :)

Lucas_Maximus

09-14-2005, 09:02 PM

Suse is Great.

In my time getting to grips with Linux Distros, I had some problems installing apps with RPM's, .debs, .tgz packages, and from source on various distro's. I had problems with hardware and all sort of other things. It called a learning curve.

If you like SUSE and it works for you, keep using it.

the only silly thing SUSE does is that KDE seems to be a dependancy for GNOME, which is a bit odd.

Fedora core 4 is quite nice compared to 3. Works well and a lot better than 3 (I used to hate redhat based distro's). Yum does all the hard work for you when installing new apps. been using now for about a month and I love it. Don't care what anyone else thinks, I happen to like it.

cybertron

09-14-2005, 10:13 PM

Well, I don't like SuSE that much anymore because its automation is a) ressource hungry and b) the longer the less forgiving concerning manual changes. I think SuSE is a wonderful newbie distro when one has the proper hardware, but I feel like I have outgrown it.
True, I don't use it on my own computer, but it's very good for trying to convert people at work who don't want anything to do with the command-line. So much can be done in SuSE without knowing anything specific about Linux, which I think is what it will take to get a lot of the people who don't give two hoots about Linux itself but want a better OS to switch. I'm pretty sure the guys I work with would look at me like I'm crazy if I tried to explain how to use Gentoo to them.:)

That said, I don't think it's the only distro that does that either, though it is prettier (like I said before). Mandriva has also worked great for me and is what I run on my laptop so I'm not dependent on an internet connection for installing new software. Can't really comment on the other beginner distros because I haven't used them, but that's okay because this thread is about SuSE.;)

Piko

09-14-2005, 10:20 PM

Using SuSE since 6.3!

It was the first distro I tried, and the one I've stuck with. Over the years I've played with others, and none of them come close to what SuSE has given me. Right now using SuSE 10.0 RC 1, and it feels awesome! It's like Linux, on crack! Though the Updates haven't been fixed. Like no Multimedia pack download, or Java, so you have to go get the stuff your self, other then that it's perfect.

Fast boot, fast shutdown. I saw a 8+ FPS increase in Doom 3, a 14+ FPS increase in Nexius, and over all improvement in speed of all applications. Also suspend to disk WORKS!!

My laptop is very happy! WiFI (With a linksys card, and ndiswrapper!), Suspend to disk, and Radeon DRI drivers. Look! It plays Quake 3!

I love SuSE, and now even more, becuase of OpenSuSE!

blackbelt_jones

09-15-2005, 01:43 AM

I seem to be in the minority here... which, in this case, may mean that I'm plain wrong.

Glad to hear your opinion that FC4 is better than FC3. I had a very positive experience with FC2. It may be that even numbered Fedora Core releases are better than odd, sort of like Star Trek movies. I downloaded the FC4 isos, and the first two disks came up bad when I tested them before the install. After FC3, that was enough for me to throw up my hands and forget about Fedora.

I still want to get some experience with rpm, so maybe I'll take another look at FC4... or maybe SuSE. Very well, then... I contradict myself!

Dr. Shim

09-15-2005, 04:20 AM

True, I don't use it on my own computer, but it's very good for trying to convert people at work who don't want anything to do with the command-line. So much can be done in SuSE without knowing anything specific about Linux, which I think is what it will take to get a lot of the people who don't give two hoots about Linux itself but want a better OS to switch.

I'd actually recommend SuSE for my grandfather!

Anyway, I've got a handful of expierence with Debian Woody, and I love working in the terminal. SuSE's terminal is probably the only one that looks pretty. ;) But I find it a nice change to do administrative tasks from a central GUI. That's what makes a modern OS attractive. I know for us sysadmin types it's not really required, but if my grandfather wants to install a package, he wouldn't remember yum install whatever or rpm -ivh for the life of him!

BTW, didn't Novell "buy out" the GNOME project?

blackbelt_jones

09-15-2005, 04:30 AM

My grandfather is long dead, but if he were alive today, I think he'd be into Linux. He was an old-school IBM technician.

Parcival

09-15-2005, 04:50 AM

That said, I don't think it's the only distro that does that either, though it is prettier (like I said before).

Well, throughout my Linux career I have tried SuSE, Mandrake, and RedHat/Fedora, which are all classically considered to be userfriendly newbie distros. Based on my own subjective experience, SuSE (i.e. YaST) vastly outperforms the others in terms of automation. Mandrake and RedHat never did the same great job as YaST in terms of detecting hardware, so I uninstalled them again. I mean, what's the point on installing a distro for a newbie that "mostly" does everything by itself. I can't sit at a newbie's box 24h a day, so with SuSE both the newbie and I are a lot happier than with any of the other two. ;)

Dr. Shim

09-15-2005, 05:24 AM

So some of us don't use SuSE because it either (a) uses RPMs or (b) is too automated. How deep down in the system can I drill with SuSE anyway? How much can I do by hand, Debian-style?

Parcival

09-15-2005, 06:21 AM

Well, I quit using SuSE when I wanted to make manual changes to grub.conf by means of a texteditor resulting in a system refusing to boot. I undid the changes, booted, fired up YaST, did the changes again by means of YaST, rebooted, and it worked. Unfortunately for SuSE, this was the last time it booted. :D

crow2icedearth

09-15-2005, 06:51 AM

i wont never use SUSE or REdhAT again unless i had to in corp settings. i love doing everything manually and being in control of my system. thats why i still stick to slackware, debian , gentoo , LFS , openBSD and i dont mind freeBSD either

saikee

09-15-2005, 06:55 AM

I have used Yast a couple of times and did find it handy. For amending the Grub menu.lst I just use whatever gedit, kwrite, kate... happen to be available in the desktop of the running distro. If I couldn't access the desktop then vi is the last resort. I didn't have a problem with Grub that boots all 50+ systems faithfully in the box. OK Yast can be used to modify the boot loader for me but hell we are only talking about editing a maximum of 3 lines of text at a time if doing it manually.

I have Suse 9.1 and Suse 10.0 and yes they are very robust and reliable. Prior to Mandriva Suse is the one I go for when other distros have failed. However I found Mandriva look a bit nicer, Ubuntu is more versatile, many recent variants of Red Hat are equally amazingly in their desktops and most of the Slackware families take less time to boot and seem to be able to respond a wee bit faster.

I haven't quitted Suse and still rely on its Grub to boot everyting in the box.

Not to use a distro because it has a nice desktop full of ready-made features and unwilling to drop into its terminal mode is new to me. I can understand the familarity of one Linux family and its command structures make it less efficient/productive to work in another Linux system.

Parcival

09-15-2005, 08:27 AM

Well, just to make my point clear: there's nothing wrong with SuSE - it's just not exactly what I need anymore. In the end it's the same type of question if someone prefers chocolate or strawberry icecream. I like mango. :D

saikee

09-15-2005, 08:39 AM

Parcival,

With the sort of proliferation of Linux distros we have now I wouldn't be surprised one day you could be served by a Linux called Mango. :D

Parcival

09-15-2005, 09:25 AM

And the boxed set for 1599$ would come with a free beach, cool drinks, bikini girls and unlimited WLAN, right? :D

Lucas_Maximus

09-15-2005, 09:47 AM

And the boxed set for 1599$ would come with a free beach, cool drinks, bikini girls and unlimited WLAN, right? :D

Sounds good.

zeroth

09-19-2005, 03:07 PM

I've never uses SUsE or however that annoying capitalization thing goes, but I HAVEN'T tried it because I know its about as bloated as Red Hat.

I cut bloat from Slackware for the love of minimalism :-p

cybertron

09-19-2005, 04:11 PM

You haven't tried it yet you know it's bloated?:D

And since I apparently missed a bunch of posts to this thread, QFT:
And the boxed set for 1599$ would come with a free beach, cool drinks, bikini girls and unlimited WLAN, right? :D

Sepero

09-19-2005, 05:14 PM

So some of us don't use SuSE because it either (a) uses RPMs or (b) is too automated.
(a) RPM's have a history of breaking more than any other major package format.

(b) Most people don't have the "lastest&greatest" hardware, so all that automation can clog a system up. Remember, GNU/Linux is the most used OS to "revive" old 386(win9X) machines.

psych-major

09-19-2005, 05:23 PM

So some of us don't use SuSE because it either (a) uses RPMs or (b) is too automated. How deep down in the system can I drill with SuSE anyway? How much can I do by hand, Debian-style?

I'm a Slackware enthusiast, but on my OpenSuSE box at work, I was able to compile stuff by hand, as I already had the source files downloaded for my Slack box. I was also able to make some subtle changes in /etc/X11/xorg.conf without running YaST.

So I guess I'm trying to say that even though YaST is cool for the n00bs, or me when I'm lazy, most things can still be done the old-fashioned way.

justbill

09-19-2005, 06:50 PM

So I guess I'm trying to say that even though YaST is cool for the n00bs, or me when I'm lazy, most things can still be done the old-fashioned way.

So, my question would be (even though I am running SuSe 9.3), is where is the best place to begin learning "the old fashioned way" ?

Justbill

psych-major

09-19-2005, 07:02 PM

You could try here (http://www.ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54).

If that doesn't work, installing Slack a couple of times will definitely get you there! :D

cybertron

09-19-2005, 08:27 PM

When I started out with Mandrake I just started doing configuration things like lilo.conf (probably grub.conf in your case) and X configuration by hand. Of course, once you do that, you have to understand that it may break the GUI tools if they're expecting a very specific format for a config file. Might be that's not a big deal anymore though, I don't know.

Of course, that's just what I did. YMMV.

psych-major

09-19-2005, 10:48 PM

Another informative thing to do is to open a console and cd into various directories like /bin, /usr/bin or /usr/sbin and read the man pages for each of the commands you find there. There's some pretty neat stuff in there!

Parcival

09-20-2005, 03:34 AM

I've never uses SUsE or however that annoying capitalization thing goes

The name "S.u.S.E.", later shortened to just "SuSE", was originally an acronym for the German phrase "Software- und System-Entwicklung" ("Software and system development").

Wikipedia entry on SuSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suse)

(Nouns are always capitalized in German)

thread_killer

09-20-2005, 05:02 AM

If I can add my two cents...

I've been dorking with SuSE off and on for, oh...about two years now. The last job I had was an almost entirely Novell enterprise, and when the rumors started circulating that the big red N was going to buy SuSE, it fell on me to start testing it and figuring out how (or if) we'd integrate it into the existing net.

Anyway, overall I like SuSE. About a week or so ago I but 10 beta X86_64 on my dual boot box. I've run every version since 8 and even built a few Nterprise servers in a lab environment (test trees and the like. I've since switched jobs so I don't know how well they went live) Even though that is (was? I'm not keeping up) UL rather than traditional SuSE, it was still distributed via Novell.

Anyway...anecdotally, SuSE doesn't manage CPU fans very well. I heard someone griping that in a dual boot environment his SuSE partition on his laptop would overheat but that it never happened in Windows. He suspected the CPU fan wasn't being well regulated. Just a couple of days later, I installed the folding @ home client on my SuSE box (which had been running fine for three or for days) and within a couple of minutes of firing the client up, I got an overheat message and the system went down.

Okay, boot into windows, put the client on there, start it up and....nothing. Even with >97% cpu utilization just about all the time, this box has been cool for days. As soon as this particular WU finishes, I'm going back on the SuSE side of the box and I'll try to tweak it some.

The next problem with SuSE is the same problem I have with almost every popular distro. It's a jack of all trades, master of none. As a server, the default install is extremely bloated. As a desktop, slightly less so (though still fat). Like any linux distro, the desktop isn't quite ready for the average clueless user in a business environment. The learning curve is just too steep for Suzy Secretary who knows how to do exactly what she needs to in Windows...and nothing else. In my not-so-humble opinion, the only desktop ready *nix derivative out there in the world is OS X, and that poor thing has been too neutered to be much good to a power user without adding a whole bunch of dev tools that apple makes you pay for.

Why distros don't specalize a little bit based on their intended environment is beyond me. I know RH does it to an extent, but again, bloat bloat bloat. Especially on the server side. The SuSE installer doesn't give you an easy way to make really granular selections. If they could combine the power of Yast with slackware's package selection and perfume that pig enough that it looks pretty, behaves simply, and resolves dependencies, they'd be on to something.

Finally, (and this is a recent gripe) with the 10 installation I just did, I didn't want to accept the default partitioning scheme. So I changed it. It didn't write grub correctly. I went back and did it several times, always tweaking something. A string of error 16 and error 17's later, and I finally got fed up and accepted the default scheme. Worked right away. If you are going to give the option to change something, at least make sure it works.

Okay, those are my big gripes. SuSE is a great desktop distro overall. Yast is pretty darn good. The eye-candy is nice, and overall, everything works. I even got my dad (an apple zealot since the early 80's) to put SuSE on a box. He's running his webserver off of it and (after a few install glitches) really likes it.

One of these days I'd like to give the Ximian desktop a try that Novell is pushing to see how that sucker works. Perhaps they're 'there' already and I don't even know it.

zeroth

09-20-2005, 11:00 AM

You haven't tried it yet you know it's bloated?:D

I've done my research on the more popular Distros ;-)

And I did say that I cut bloat from Slack. Slack and bloat are polar opposites :-D

I stay away from Red Hat (Fedora), SuSE, and particularly Mandriva, if it anything like Mandrake was. About the only other distro I have an interest in is Debian, though I have not tried it. I've also been wondering about the BSD scene... don't know much about that except that its kernel is more focused on fewer and more specific features than Linux, which is probably not in my favor.

psych-major

09-20-2005, 11:23 AM

Actually, I haven't tried Gentoo, but I believe that by definition, the only bloat there would be what you put there...

At any rate, if I was setting up a file, web, or whatever kind of server, I would probably install Slack with no GUI or maybe just xfce. I have run Slack on some really crappy machines that way and it manages to perform well, even with not enough memory.

As for OpenSuSE, the only gripe I had was listed earlier, specifically it not picking up my onboard video, nor offering a helpful error message. I've also installed the commercial version of Novel Linux Desktop, and it's quite smooth and was 100% successful on a desktop and 2 laptops.

As far as rolling it out to the users, in my past experience as a data center manager, the users had no choice, if management decided to make a platform change of any kind, we implemented it in the training center, educated everyone, and rolled it out. Some didn't like it, but that's just the way the world works. A desktop OS change would be no different, and Suzy Secretery would soon learn how to do her several things the "new" way, or be replaced by someone who could. It sounds harsh, but it really is getting that way out there. People with no or limited computer skills are quickly finding themselves very limited in their employment options.

Parcival

09-20-2005, 11:52 AM

Actually, I haven't tried Gentoo, but I believe that by definition, the only bloat there would be what you put there...

100% correct.

Dr. Shim

09-20-2005, 01:52 PM

Interesting that most responses are about all the extra software in SuSE. I agree, it installs a lot of crap I don't need, such as AbiWord and OpenOffice. If I want either of these I'll go download them myself...

Anyway, this'll be OT, but shouldn't a good "newbie-friendly" OS be a little, shall we say, closed off? "Automated" perhaps is the word. My grandfather doesn't want to configure is system at a really imtimate level. He doesn't care, nor do I. I would think the best mix would be a system that initially configures itself, such as SuSE does (to some extent) with YaST. Then you can optionally install some configuration utilities that give you the power to configure your system as you wish. No "hand-holding," so to speak.

TheSpeedoBeast

09-20-2005, 03:31 PM

zeroth

09-20-2005, 04:19 PM

Ubuntu, anyone?

I thought about adding Ubuntu to my list of bloated linuxes, but I don't know that much about it to judge.

Dr. Shim

09-20-2005, 04:34 PM

Ubuntu, anyone?

I've used it a little bit. I don't remember any really significant automatic system configurations that it did, other than configuring my X server. I know APT will configure packages for you. (Apologese if I sound ignorant. Do extrapolate.)

Lucas_Maximus

09-20-2005, 07:15 PM

I cut my teeth on slackware ages ago, I done Gentoo installs, installed Arch, I am trying some LFS at the moment to learn more linux.

However...sometimes I just couldn't be arsed to play around all day to understand how to get something working.

Fedora Core 4 and SuSe 9.2 worked just fine for me, and run fine on all of my machines. There seems to some linux snobs who look down on us mere mortals that just like things to work.

SuSE, Redhat and Debian based distro's are better supported than some other distro's, it a lot simpler to find the solution for a problem with these distro's because all three have extensive forums, how-to's, which stops me having to drudge my way through google or some obscure forum for a solution and saves me time.

Yeah a default fedora workstation install is about 2-3 gb. I got a 160gb hardrive. I couldn't give a monkeys about a gb or two.

My 2 cents

zeroth

09-21-2005, 08:27 AM

There seems to some linux snobs who look down on us mere mortals that just like things to work.

We just like to know how things work :-)

SuSE, Redhat and Debian based distro's are better supported than some other distro's, it a lot simpler to find the solution for a problem with these distro's because all three have extensive forums, how-to's, which stops me having to drudge my way through google or some obscure forum for a solution and saves me time.

Linux support is Linux support. anyting that applies to Slackware, will most likely apply to any other Distro. then again, I can't say the same for distros like Red Hat or SuSE -- they have their own utilities to make things work.

the old saying goes:If you learn Red Hat, you learn Red Hat. If you learn Slackware, you learn Linux.

Yeah a default fedora workstation install is about 2-3 gb. I got a 160gb hardrive. I couldn't give a monkeys about a gb or two.

that sounds a bit small, especially for a Red Hat product.

Parcival

09-21-2005, 09:11 AM

If you learn Slackware, you learn Linux.

Well, if this were true, then nobody would learn Linux in Europe. ;) I have noticed that Slackware seems to have tons of fans in the US, but overhere it's almost completely unknown. Since RedHat stopped selling boxed sets nobody cares about them anymore, same counts for Fedora. Overhere, SuSE is the best selling distro - and those who "want to learn Linux" go for Debian or Gentoo.

zeroth

09-21-2005, 09:48 AM

Well, if this were true, then nobody would learn Linux in Europe. ;) I have noticed that Slackware seems to have tons of fans in the US, but overhere it's almost completely unknown. Since RedHat stopped selling boxed sets nobody cares about them anymore, same counts for Fedora. Overhere, SuSE is the best selling distro -

I download my Distribution. Someday when I get financially secure enough to have extra money, I'll buy Slackware to help support it. Slackware isn't a "Store Shelves" Distrubition. You have it mailed to you. I'm sure it ships from within the US, so that could make a bit of difference of why its mostly an American distro. Though, I've never payed any attention to distribution popularity, let alone from foreign countries. (yes, I'm in the USA)

and those who "want to learn Linux" go for Debian or Gentoo.

That makes sense. Debian is a great Distribution. all I know of Gentoo is that its package management system is based on compiling Sources. I had a small interest in Gentoo a while back but from what I was reading, decided that I would like Debian better.

Edit: SuSE Linux PCs Fail to Sell in SA Retail Outlets (http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=608)

blackbelt_jones

09-21-2005, 09:54 AM

(but that's just my opinion.)
Thought I'd try it again, so I installed SuSe 9.3 about a half hour ago, and I've already got a brand new list of reasons why I hate it. It says that Gnome has been installed, so why can't I start a Gnome session? Why did it try to dictate what partition I installed it to? Why is there a dialup utility in the menu, but I have to go to Yast to set up DSL (very confusing)? Why doesn't it have two out of the free GNU software programs I wanted to install? Why am I fumbling with CDs when I could be downloading and installing with a single apt-get command? Where did I put my Debian disks? Think I'm going back to a single-linux lifestyle, for the time being.

Oh, and why did I just have to reconnect the internet? Why do I keep losing my connection?

Ah well. I know this distro works well for other people, and it does seem very fast and responsive on this higher-end hardware. But I hate it. Can't wait to get rid of it.

To recap: SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCKITTY SUCK! :mad:

zeroth

09-21-2005, 10:04 AM

(but that's just my opinion.)
Thought I'd try it again, so I installed SuSe 9.3 about a half hour ago, and I've already got a brand new list of reasons why I hate it. It says that Gnome has been installed, so why can't I start a Gnome session? Why did it try to dictate what partition I installed it to? Why is there a dialup utility in the menu, but I have to go to Yast to set up DSL (very confusing)? Why doesn't it have two out of the free GNU software programs I wanted to install? Why am I fumbling with CDs when I could be downloading and installing with a single apt-get command? Where did I put my Debian disks? Think I'm going back to a single-linux lifestyle, for the time being.

Sounds like it just needs some tinkering with settings. every distro has its quirks out of the box that need to be addressed. I always have hard time getting sound to work in slackware, and video drivers are a pain in my, only because I've got an ATI card :-p

To recap: SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCKITTY SUCK! :mad:
Tool: Ticks & Leeches?

Calipso

09-21-2005, 10:23 AM

I tried SUPER SUSE the other day. The idea of a single cd SUSE got me a little excited. I installed the gnome version because I just prefer gnome. Few things I didnt like. The first time I installed it, it for some reason used a high resolution. I wanted 1024x768...guess what...I couldnt change this after installation. Yast said I was missing something called "sax2-gui" and the gnome resolution feature only had the really high resolution available. Solution?? had to reinstall and before installing had to change my prefered res using one of the F keys. Found that a little weird. Once it was installed I noticed that surfing seems really slow and draggin windows around my desktop is really slow too. Leaves a trail while dragging. I have a feeling it has something to do with my monitor refresh rates. The refresh rate on the suse installation is I think 60hz while in my fedora installation its 85hz. I dunno if this is actually the reason for it but Its a good guess. Once again I of course cant change my refresh rate becuase yast claims Im missing that above file.
The last thing I found strange was the Applications menu. I know that Suse is normally a kde distro so maybe they dont put much effort into gnome but it was disappointing. First, why is Yast available in 3 different places?? Wouldnt one launcher be enough?? Speaking of multiple launchers, why is K3B in the applications menu 3 times as well?? Not only is it there 3 times but a menu called ".hidden" contains two launchers to k3b! One right above the other!

Any way, I know this is based on a RC of suse 10 and its the first SUPER release, so weird things are expected. Im definatelly gonna give it a try again once suse 10 final is released.

psych-major

09-21-2005, 10:44 AM

I always have hard time getting sound to work in slackware

Ditto on this, what is it with Slackware sound, anyway? More often than not I have to reinstall alsa from the ground up to get it working, although occasionally running alsaconf will work.

And lately on my Dell Latitude, I have to run alsaconf everytime I boot linux???

That being said, however, on my IBM Thinkpad T20, sound worked with no issues, so maybe it's not Slack, but the hardware.

psych-major

09-21-2005, 11:05 AM

To recap:
There are obviously as many distro preferences as there are Linux users, but the bottom line is, OpenSuSE is a great distro. That doesn't mean it's perfect, or that you have to like it, but it has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and at the office where I have it installed, everything just plain freakin' works. And I'm not talking about just video settings and stuff, but 2gig fibre cards and quarter-million-dollar tape libraries and disk subsystems.

I will always be a Slacker, but OpenSuSE has definitely earned my respect and I'm thinking about putting it on my laptop as a replacement for slackware current that's on there now. The reason for this move, if I make it, isn't because of Slack, either, but more because my Dell hardware sucks and I'm hoping SuSE will interface with it a little better.

Alright, that's my rant. Thanks for listening ;)

zeroth

09-21-2005, 11:57 AM

Ditto on this, what is it with Slackware sound, anyway? More often than not I have to reinstall alsa from the ground up to get it working, although occasionally running alsaconf will work.

I recall Slack 10.0 not having ALSA, and I downloaded it and tried to get it to work but, I think I didn't know how to compile source back then. it scared me a little, seemd very complex.

Slack 10.1 came with ALSA for sure, and It worked A-Okay if you did a full installation, But i NEVER got it to work when I installed minimal packages, including what ALSA requires.

Slack 10.2, same as 10.1, however using alsamixer to unmute ouput and turn volume up fixed things.

And lately on my Dell Latitude, I have to run alsaconf everytime I boot linux???

Are you booting into Runlevel 3 or 4? you need to, otherwise boot-time modules won't load. that sounds like the case. make sure you run alsaconfig as root. Another thought is that the config file that alsaconfig writes to doensn't exist. make sure /etc/modules.conf exists. or maybe the file name is /etc/modules, I dont quite remember, and I'm not near a Linux box.

Generally, to get ALSA working, as root you run 'alsaconfig', 'alsamixer' to unmute everything and turn up volume, and then 'alsactl store' to store the settings. If that doesn't work, then its time to download the latest alsa and compile.

That being said, however, on my IBM Thinkpad T20, sound worked with no issues, so maybe it's not Slack, but the hardware.

I've got a SB Audigy ZS 2 Platinum, of which I used for all slacks since 10.0. that is relatively new hardware, and is supported, so I dunno.

To recap...

I respect all Distros in that they are congregations of pure and true human effort, but I prefer to cut off the fat when it comes to configuration and installation methods. All I need is vi, Google, and if things get rough, a supportive forum like this.

blackbelt_jones

09-21-2005, 12:12 PM

I think that my opinion of SuSE (i.e.that it sucks) doesn't matter as much as someone who runs it (even though it sucks) since I don't run it myself (because it sucks) I don't really think my opinion (man does it ever suck!) is all that important. I would, however, caution newcomers against taking the popular idea that this is a great newbie distro as gospel. It may be true for some, but I found it convoluted, frustrating and unreliable. The same goes with my opinon of SuSE. People who like SuSe and say it works for them aren't lying and possibly not even wrong. They just have different hardawre, a different approach, or different needs, or they're smarter than me. For me, Debian really does work great out of the box, after a single apt-get command to install everything I need. I'm not trying to push Debian down your throat, just suggesting that you might want to try it, if, like me you find that SuSE sucks sucks sucks sucks hey nonny nonny suck suck suck!

Sure beats Windows, though!

P.S. If someday I decide that I actually LIKE SuSE, I'm not going to be the least bit shy about that. It's all part of the process.

zeroth

09-21-2005, 12:37 PM

For me, Debian really does work great out of the box, after a single apt-get command to install everything I need. I'm not trying to push Debian down your throat, just suggesting that you might want to try it
Apt-Get is great. I'm not a Debian user, but I'm a fan of Slapt-Get, a Slackware equivalent. LOVE IT.

psych-major

09-21-2005, 12:39 PM

So, while my XP workstation reboots, I'll post this over here at my Slack box...

Are you booting into Runlevel 3 or 4? you need to, otherwise boot-time modules won't load. that sounds like the case. make sure you run alsaconfig as root. Another thought is that the config file that alsaconfig writes to doensn't exist. make sure /etc/modules.conf exists. or maybe the file name is /etc/modules, I dont quite remember, and I'm not near a Linux box.

Generally, to get ALSA working, as root you run 'alsaconfig', 'alsamixer' to unmute everything and turn up volume, and then 'alsactl store' to store the settings. If that doesn't work, then its time to download the latest alsa and compile.

Thanks for the tips, I actually discovered these the hard way some time ago. I left my notes for posterity (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137197&highlight=alsa), though! :cool:

Sound was actually working fine all along until my most recent swaret upgrade the other day, (The one that took me to 10.2) I have alsa excluded from my upgrade, so I may need to recompile it again to match all the other new stuff. And I boot to runlevel 4, BTW.

As for the Thinkpad, there are lot of differences between it and my Dell. As near as I can tell, things like volume, power control and keyboard buttons are all handled in hardware on the IBM, where they are emulated through Windows on the Dell. Therefore on the IBM everything works under Linux, but on the Dell a lot of things only work in Windows. But that's a whole separate story anyway...

psych-major

09-21-2005, 12:50 PM

zeroth

09-21-2005, 02:07 PM

Thanks for the tips, I actually discovered these the hard way some time ago

As did I. This problem might hava chance for the "Most Widespread Linux Problem That Nobody Ever Talks About" Award. if such an award exists.

debian is actually a great distro, at least as I experienced it via Zen Linux (http://www.zenlinux.org/zenlinux). And after all, who needs updated software more than every 2-3 years anyway? :o

I upgrade like every day. :-p
Zen page isnt loading for me. Theres a Slackware based distro called ZenWalk...used to be MiniSlack.

psych-major

09-21-2005, 02:17 PM

try www.zenlinux.org

It's a Debian-based live cd with a slick install program that is 100% Debian compatable.

blackbelt_jones

09-21-2005, 03:09 PM

debian is actually a great distro, at least as I experienced it via Zen Linux (http://www.zenlinux.org/zenlinux). And after all, who needs updated software more than every 2-3 years anyway? :o

My problem is that I'm required to use SuSE and RHEL at work, and I use Slackware on my personal machines, and I just don't have the time to learn yet another distro. If I did, I would take the time to get to know both Debian and Gentoo, but oh well, that's life.

For Debian I don't imagine there's really anything much to learn, if you know Slackware. Just a handful of apt-get commands and you're good to go. I think the filesystem may be a little diferent, but that's not a big problem. Am I right about that? Anybody?

One things certain. I have found every Linux distro you mentioned to be harder to learn than Debain... but that's just me.

Okay... I can't remember, I may have mentioned that I don't really like it, but I decided to keep SuSE installed as my second Linux. I mean as long as I'm not dependent on it, why not keep it around so maybe I can find out what I'm missing? :)

psych-major

09-21-2005, 03:15 PM

For Debian I don't imagine there's really anything much to learn, if you know Slackware. Just a handful of apt-get commands and you're good to go. I think the filesystem may be a little diferent, but that's not a big problem. Am I right about that? Anybody?

I actually had no trouble finding my way around Debian in my few brief encounters with it.

And I tend to compile things by hand on RHEL and SuSE, force of habit I guess!

./configure && make && make install all the way, BABY!!!

RPM's? We don't need no steenkin' RPM's

Sepero

09-21-2005, 03:59 PM

I think that my opinion of SuSE (i.e.that it sucks) doesn't matter as much as someone who runs it (even though it sucks) since I don't run it myself (because it sucks) I don't really think my opinion (man does it ever suck!) is all that important.I think he meant Slackware.

debian is actually a great distro, at least as I experienced it via Zen Linux (http://www.zenlinux.org/zenlinux). And after all, who needs updated software more than every 2-3 years anyway? :oI sure hope that second part is a bad joke. Apt-get(and emerge) makes it easy to keep security up to date.

Otherwise you might as well use Macrosuck.

psych-major

09-21-2005, 04:02 PM

I think he meant Slackware.

I sure hope that second part is a bad joke. Apt-get(and emerge) makes it easy to keep security up to date.

Otherwise you might as well use Macrosuck.

Guess the humor was too subtle.
I was referring the the time between major releases. Of course apt-get is almost as slick as swaret for Slackware... :D

zeroth

09-21-2005, 04:34 PM

try www.zenlinux.org
address not found. it works for you?

I think he meant Slackware.
I hope he didn't ;-)

I sure hope that second part is a bad joke.
I think the smiley face denotes that it was indeed a joke....

psych-major

09-21-2005, 04:56 PM

address not found. it works for you?

I actually pulled up the site to cut/paste the url???

I hope he didn't ;-)

I think the smiley face denotes that it was indeed a joke....

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/08/1231233&tid=172&tid=90&tid=8

the debian crew isn't always the fasted to 'market' with patches and software... the joke part was the grossly exaggerated timeframe listed

It seems we Slackers are much more laid back when our distro gets picked on!

Lucas_Maximus

09-21-2005, 06:48 PM

We just like to know how things work :-)

Linux support is Linux support. anyting that applies to Slackware, will most likely apply to any other Distro. then again, I can't say the same for distros like Red Hat or SuSE -- they have their own utilities to make things work.

the old saying goes:If you learn Red Hat, you learn Red Hat. If you learn Slackware, you learn Linux.

that sounds a bit small, especially for a Red Hat product.

That all well and good, but I need to get some work done. I like Slackware, I used to use it all the time on my laptop, since Slackware 8 I think, and it works nice. However I need stuff to be simple on my desktop, I don't mind trading a bit of speed and hardisk space for some nice GUI config tools that most of the time make my life easier.

SUSE/Fedora/Redhat can be used with Apt-get if you so wish. Slackware package via slapt-get or swaret has always been troublesome for me.

When I get another hardisk and some time I will probably stick gentoo on both my laptop and my desktop. But at the moment Fedora works for me, SUSE works for me as well.

It all very good being super geek and having sub 100mb installs etc. I all for less CPU/Hardisk/Ram utilization but at the moment it too much of an effort when I got real life stuff to sort out.

I am Penguin powered in my own way and it works. :D

Sepero

09-21-2005, 08:51 PM

It all very good being super geek and having sub 100mb installs etc. I all for less CPU/Hardisk/Ram utilization but at the moment it too much of an effort when I got real life stuff to sort out.

I am Penguin powered in my own way and it works. :DSimilar story here. I used slack for a long time and thought it was the shnit. "Once you turn slack, you never go back!"
Wrong.
Once I found Debian, I discovered I could get things done more efficiently, still have a rock-solid system(sorry rpm's), and get around to real work(and play).

Dr. Shim

09-22-2005, 06:30 AM

the old saying goes:If you learn Red Hat, you learn Red Hat. If you learn Slackware, you learn Linux.

But why couldn't I learn the same things with SuSE or Redhat? Isn't a Linux system the same anyway? Aside from using the exact same kernel, aren't there always a set of standard libraries and executables (such as 'ls') on 99% of all Linux systems?

Just wondering, how much "low-level" milage could I get out of SuSE, and why would it be more difficult? Currently I couldn't care less how the thing works, I just want it to work. I'm no professional sysadmin or anything. Sooner or later though I'd like to dedicate some time to learning the internals.

P.S. I'm not wanting to start a "this distro's better" style thread. I'm just some newbie who's found a cool, functional, Linux. I know how much SuSE will do for me, I'm wondering how much I can do on my own with SuSE without having to reformat, repartition, reinstall. (Tempting yes, but I'd rather not.:) ) Thought I'd clarify why I'm rambling here. ;)

Parcival

09-22-2005, 08:46 AM

Just wondering, how much "low-level" milage could I get out of SuSE, and why would it be more difficult?

Well, the biggest difficulty probably is that SuSE is so easy and takes care of almost everything by itself. The learning experience usually is being triggered when a distro doesn't do something you want it to do and you put al your efforts into making it doing it.
When I had SuSE I hardly ever used the command line unless I really had to - my learning curve was the steepest when doing my first Gentoo install, because there you have nothing but the shell. In SuSE I had no clue why my scanner would sometimes work and why sometimes it wouldn't - installing it manually in Gentoo taught me the steps and packages needed to make it run myself.

When I originaly started out with Linux I was a typical newbie who thought he really knew computers after installing and reinstalling Windows every once in a while. Linux was all new for me, so I was happy for having SuSE hold my hand for a little.
After two years I got sick of SuSE because I didn't wanna wait half a year for my software to receive major updates, because I wanted to see beyond YaST, and because I heard Gentoo can be perfectly tailored to one's computer, so Gentoo was next.
After another year I got sick of Gentoo as a desktop distribution (still run it on my server) because of the errors I kept running into everytime major updates had to be done. It's just too much of a hassle to fix something that has been nicely working just minutes ago. I wanted a distro with a package system similar to Gentoo's and takes care of most of the dirty work for me without hiding it behind an incomprehensible YaST, so Debian was next.
Earlier I believed that I could never be happy with debian and that it just sucks too much for my taste - not userfriendly enough for newbies, not 31337 enough for the pros, software release cycles that make you narcotic - yet right now it's for me the best distro out there because it's just working the way I exspect it to, and having KDE 3.3 instead of 3.5 isn't really gonna kill me. ;)

A long story made short: "What's best changes every one or two years" - these words by my LUG's president have definitely proven true, so just stick with the distro which is currently best for you. :)

cybertron

09-22-2005, 06:27 PM

Yeah, you won't get a lot of low-level mileage out of SuSE, but it might help you get started with Linux and it can be a springboard to a more low-level distro. That's basically what I did with Mandrake and now I'm happily running Gentoo largely because of everything I learned in Mandrake.

pcheaven2k

09-24-2005, 05:41 PM

First let me say that I am not a linux newbie, but I am no linux guru either. Over the years I have installed numerous linux distros on numerous computers, servers and laptops. However, Suse 9.3 was the second easiest I have ever installed. As far as newbies go I would recommend:

1.) Linspire - The easiest to install and use, but with limited features
2.) Suse 9.3 - Extremely user friendly, very advanced features for newbies
3.) Mandrake 10 - Very user friendly, tons of included apps and stuff

For a Middle-Of-The-Road linux user like me or even a more advanced linux user Suse 9.3 kicks butt. There are a few minor annoyances but they are easily resolved.

Well, I quit using SuSE when I wanted to make manual changes to grub.conf by means of a texteditor resulting in a system refusing to boot. I undid the changes, booted, fired up YaST, did the changes again by means of YaST, rebooted, and it worked. Unfortunately for SuSE, this was the last time it booted. :D

This is one of those minor annoyances. However, if you login to KDE or Gnome as root you can manually edit any system files with Kedit or most of the other editors like Xemacs (recommended because it automatically creates a backup of the original file) with no problems. Additionally Yast2 makes it very simple to edit most of the configuration without having to know where to find the files. It even gives you lists of edits that can be used for almost everything.

As far as hardware support Suse 9.3 has all other distros beat hands down. I just installed Suse on my Sony Viao PCG-K35. I tried 10 other distros before Suse and couldnt get all my hardware to work in any of them. I installed Suse 9.3 and ALL MY HARDWARE installed during Setup and with the exception of my modem it all worked on first boot. I still haven't figured out how to make the modem work, but I am sure that is more lack of experience on my part than it is Suse.

So in summation SUSE DOESN'T SUCK!

zeroth

09-24-2005, 06:04 PM

But why couldn't I learn the same things with SuSE or Redhat? Isn't a Linux system the same anyway? Aside from using the exact same kernel, aren't there always a set of standard libraries and executables (such as 'ls') on 99% of all Linux systems?

in a distro like RedHat or SuSE, you're not going to need to use a lot of the things (such as 'ls' ;) because SuSE and RedHat are made to be user friendly. in distributions like Debian (I assume), and especially Slackware, you don't have a lot of thoes "extras" to _help_ you get things done. I recall in RedHat 6.1 that there was a utility called "linuxconf" that would configure most system settings for you. if you learn to use that utility, it doesn't apply in Slackware, SuSE, or Debian. in Slackware, you have to edit configuration files, and a configuration file in slackware is just the same as a configuration file in any other distro.

Bottom line: RedHat and SuSE are made to be user friendly. Slackware and Debian are made to be powerful, stable, and eliminate unneccesary bloat.

justbill

09-24-2005, 09:30 PM

today. I tried to import photos from my CX4310 Kodak camera, and SuSe did NOT auto detect it, and any of the apps that are for photo viewing or importing, would not import. And they saw the camera.Hmmmmmm. Other distro's I've used (Fedora, Centos, Mandriva) just imported the pictures......no problem! I ended up using M$ xp to get the pictures off the camera, and stored them on a "Jump drive" , and then moved them to my SuSe partition. Considerably more aggrivation than I really care to go through when I am "importing" pictures from my camera!

Justbill

bazoukas

09-25-2005, 11:08 AM

Why do you guys cry about SUSE installing a lot of bloat? :confused:

I am using 9.3 pro and on the install setup you can easily select what you want to install. Infact, my initial install was at around 350MBs (no GUIs) and then slowly I started installing apps that I needed, in order to avoid an initial install with software that I dont need.
My wireless NIC, thumbdrives, printers, digi cam, Joystic were all detected by Suse right from the start. I have found it to be a true plug and play system.

Yast can run yast in the shell as well. You dont need a GUI to run it. su -> yast.

You can use apt-get with suse. Very easy to setup.
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/

I use a variety of Distros in order to avoid being used to one Distro.
On my main rig (XP2800) I use Suse simply because it has a very good default setup.

On my second rig (XP-1800) I use Debian. I LOVE ze debian penguin :)

On my laptop (IBM-Thinkpad) I use RH 7.3.
Hell, even my laptop was happy when I did a minimalistic install of Suse just to see how it will go.

In all rigs I update my kernel all the time to keep up with the times.

Of course everybody has different hardware and needs, so one distro can never be the perfect one. Thats the beauty of linux distros. So many to choose from. Then again some people find this detrimental and they stick to windows :rolleyes:
My 2 cents. :p

Parcival

09-25-2005, 03:03 PM

However, if you login to KDE or Gnome as root you can manually edit any system files with Kedit or most of the other editors like Xemacs (recommended because it automatically creates a backup of the original file) with no problems.

So are you saying SuSe is more willimg to accept manual changes when logging into a Desktop as root? If yes, what would be the extra benefit of your strategy compared to mine:

su
vim -w /boot/grub/grub.conf

I mean, I fail to see how a desktop environment is connected to editing grub when it's the admin priviledges that matter.

tlyons

09-25-2005, 03:25 PM

debian is actually a great distro, at least as I experienced it via Zen Linux (http://www.zenlinux.org/zenlinux). And after all, who needs updated software more than every 2-3 years anyway? :o

Phooey. :p Run Debian Testing ("etch") and you get software updates daily.

Actually, if Branden Robinson is to be believed, Debian Stable might actually get a normal release schedule (like once a year... WHOOPEE! :eek: )

I can't say I've given SuSE a fair shake. As far as great newbie distros go (that also double as Live CDs) I think SimplyMEPIS (Debian based) and PCLinuxOS (Mandriva based) are worth considering.

- T.

Lucas_Maximus

09-26-2005, 02:17 AM

I been wanting to try Zen Linux for a while. Looks good.

zeroth

09-26-2005, 09:05 AM

Why do you guys cry about SUSE installing a lot of bloat?

because it does? regardless of whether or not you want a lot of your bloat installed or not, it's still there. If I wanted support for my unbloated SUsE install, and someone mentioens to just "Bring up the something-or-another" and I say "well I didn't install it", well...thats all they know how to do. I'd have to go to a slackware thread, and I'm not even sure how compatible slackware is with SUsE, if at all.

I'm curious - does SUsE have BSD-Style init scripts?

soulestream

09-26-2005, 03:09 PM

psych-major

09-26-2005, 03:18 PM

Interesting new avatar, soule...

soulestream

09-26-2005, 03:34 PM

I like it.

Its a shirt from jynx if I remember right

soule

zeroth

09-26-2005, 03:48 PM

I used SuSE a couple of years ago and it seemed to be a good distro. Reading this thread it still seems to be a good distro. I find it funny reading people impressions of distros. I think the main thing to remember is that linux is linux. Some distros have differnet package management, some stay more up to date with new software( a good and bad thing).

Pick a distro and use it for awhile(more than one week or till something breaks). I prefer slackware over every other distro. Not because its better, but because I understand how it works (init system, updates, etc). Hardware is not distro specific, niether is sound, or "bloat". If you want something add it, if you dont turn it off, don't install it, or remove it. Odds are if you installed a distro cause something worked when you booted up, something else won't later.

Learn how a distro works and see if you like it.

soule

I Agree. however, I'd recommend that you read up on each distribution, compare the distributions description and idiosyncracies with your needs, and your level of knowledge about linux.

I might go as far as to say that there's a sort of user-level line that every distribution lies on. at the very top of the list is the most user-friendly and easy to install distro. at the bottom, the most bare-bones do-it-yourself-because-we-wont-do-it-for-you install-is-simple-and-to-the-point.

gentoo would be somewhere in the middle, debian and slackware would be at the very bottom, Red-Hat and SuSE would be at the very top. they might be somewhere else on the list, but that is how I view distributions. It may be a very "Black and White with no Gray" view of Distros, but I back that up by agreeing with you that "Hardware is not distro specific, niether is sound, or "bloat". If you want something add it, if you dont turn it off, don't install it, or remove it"

psych-major

09-26-2005, 04:00 PM

zeroth

09-26-2005, 04:24 PM

I actually tried Slackware as an almost total n00b and I had no issues with that first install after reading the online documentation for about 1/2 hour. I disagree that it belongs at the bottom of the difficulty scale.

I do agree that RH and SuSE are definitely positioned as n00b friendly distros.

I was also relatively noobish when I started with slackware, though I'd installed and used both Red Hat 6.1 and Mandrake 8.1 a few years before, but only for a month or so each, and I rarely used them.

What goes at the bottom then? Is there anything harder to learn than slackware?

davholla

09-26-2005, 05:32 PM

I loved Suse 8.2 but when I upgraded to 9.0 and 9.1 they were so slow !
Now I use knoppix much better.

Parcival

09-26-2005, 05:38 PM

What goes at the bottom then? Is there anything harder to learn than slackware?

Ask satimis. ;) :D

bazoukas

09-29-2005, 08:14 AM

because it does? regardless of whether or not you want a lot of your bloat installed or not, it's still there. If I wanted support for my unbloated SUsE install, and someone mentioens to just "Bring up the something-or-another" and I say "well I didn't install it", well...thats all they know how to do. I'd have to go to a slackware thread, and I'm not even sure how compatible slackware is with SUsE, if at all.

I'm curious - does SUsE have BSD-Style init scripts?
I am not sure if I can understand what you are saying, but again, I am using 9.3 pro and on the install setup you can easily select what you want to install. Infact, my initial install was at around 350MBs (no GUIs) and then slowly I started installing apps that I needed, in order to avoid an initial install with software that I dont need.

And yes, every distro is different but it is not like you said "if you know RH then you know RH only". If a user knows how to use Bash, then he will feel right at home, even with the small differences found from distro to distro.

zeroth

09-29-2005, 01:14 PM

I am not sure if I can understand what you are saying, but again, I am using 9.3 pro and on the install setup you can easily select what you want to install. Infact, my initial install was at around 350MBs (no GUIs) and then slowly I started installing apps that I needed, in order to avoid an initial install with software that I dont need.

And yes, every distro is different but it is not like you said "if you know RH then you know RH only". If a user knows how to use Bash, then he will feel right at home, even with the small differences found from distro to distro.

to an extent.

obviosly linux is linux, but everything that comes with Red Hat is what makes Red Hat, well, Red Hat. if you don't install any of the Red Hat-specific packages, and you only install the software neccessary to operate it, then it isnt really Red Hat at all... its just a bare bones linux system with no trace of anything that would give away what distribution it is. Which woudl essentiall make it, Just Linux. (no pun intended) which is exactly what slackware already is :-)

if you prefer Red Hat over Debian, and you switched to Debian and felt right at home, then you weren't really that in love with Red Hat, were you?

bazoukas

09-29-2005, 08:10 PM

to an extent.

obviosly linux is linux, but everything that comes with Red Hat is what makes Red Hat, well, Red Hat. if you don't install any of the Red Hat-specific packages, and you only install the software neccessary to operate it, then it isnt really Red Hat at all... its just a bare bones linux system with no trace of anything that would give away what distribution it is. Which woudl essentiall make it, Just Linux. (no pun intended) which is exactly what slackware already is :-)

if you prefer Red Hat over Debian, and you switched to Debian and felt right at home, then you weren't really that in love with Red Hat, were you?

Are you talking about portability of Red Hat apps on other distros? I never have tried installing specific RH apps to other distros. That would be an interesting expirement.
When you say Slack is just linux, do you mean that it consists of software that are not specific to one distro?
I think I understand what you are trying to say.

Actually my favorite distros are Debian and Suse (anything from 9.x and above). Yast is a very Suse specific distro app by the way so ok, I see your point.

cybertron

09-30-2005, 09:30 AM

Well, I'm going to split hairs here and point out that all Linux distros are just Linux. If they're using the Linux kernel, then they're Linux. The difference is the software they include (the GNU part of GNU/Linux, RMS would be proud:)), in which case no distro is really "just Linux" (heh;)). They all include distro-specific software, so there's not really one that's more Linux than any other. The possible exception would be LFS since you build it from scratch so it only uses basic software available for any distro (to the best of my knowledge anyway).

That said, I think the actual discussion going on here is exactly how much of that extra software distros include. Slackware doesn't have much, in fact not enough IMHO, while SuSE has a lot, too much for some uses.

andycrofts

09-30-2005, 10:13 AM

I've an acquaintance, a rather old Finnish lady who has a fairly innocuous machine at home she wants to use for Mail, WP, browsing, and a bit of photo editing. She (at about 70) knows the spec. of every machine she has (3) and asked me if Linux would work.
So, I'm gonna stuff SuSe 9.3 on her 'empty' machine (her other S/W is XP, but she knows about licences and DMCA, too...)
I reckon it'll do the trick. Doesn't matter really if it installs to 1G or 3G, she's got 60 Gig hard drive, what's the beef?
Only reservation I have is for photo. editing, it's the Gimp. Not exactly intuitive yet.
But, for all else, Evolution, Firefox, Open Office and a CD music player.

SuSE - I love it! But not on a server - I cut my teeth on Dead Rat, and I know where all the oddities are. SuSE is just a bit 'different' in where it puts/names its files.

My ha'porth worth...
-Cheers
-Andy

--Course, if you ARE concerned about bloat, what about http://www.opensuse.org/SLICK

zeroth

09-30-2005, 10:18 AM

blackbelt_jones

10-02-2005, 01:31 PM

You know, I've always complained about how my internet connection keeps going down whenever I run SuSE... regardless of version, machine, or if I'm using dial-up or DSL, but it suddenly hits me that this may be a security feature. Maybe the connection goes down automatically if you don't use it for a certain length of time. From a security perspective that would be a big advantage over simply being connected whenever the computer is on, and the connection comes back easy enough when you need it just by clicking on the little "plug" icon.

Can anyone tell me if I'm on the mark with this interpretation? It would make SuSE suck considerably less.

DarkDexter

10-02-2005, 05:40 PM

I personally have used SUSE 9.2 and didn't like it at all. I mostly use Linux on my low resourse systems and it is EXTREMELY resource hungry. The systems I tried it on was a Laptop 400mhz with 128MB's of RAM and a Desktop 750Mhz with 576MB's of RAM. SUSE took forever to boot or do much of anything. However, I did put up with it for a time and found Yast to be a pretty cool utility. However, it is extremely bloated and not really made for low resource systems. Personally, I love Debian. I can pretty much apt-get install anything I want and the few things that arent in the Debian repositories are hosted elsewhere in Debian packages. The rare program that only comes in rpm can easily be converted to DEB from and RPM with alien. I have tried Fedora Core 1-4 and thought they were ok at best. Yum and Up2date are ok, but they still dont beat Debian. One of the best features of Debian is that it is similar ot FreeBSD in the fact that it is built from the ground up, all packages are maintained by one entity which leads to less problems. Anyway, thats my two cents. I would be interersted to hear some people talk about FreeBSD a little more in this disscussion.

justbill

10-02-2005, 06:19 PM

blackbelt_jones

10-04-2005, 01:00 PM

I don't know anything about FreeBSD, I have just downloaded apt4suse though. I thought I would check that out after all the good things I have heard here about apt-get. Here (http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/) is a link to a "how to" on it.

Justbill

Thanks man! I just installed SuSE 9.3, and I was thinking: There must be a way to get apt for SuSE. That would be great...

Okay, even as I was typing at the beginning of this thread about how SuSE sucks sucks suckitty sucks, I had the feeling that I was going to prove myself to be wrong, and I was kind of looking forward to it.

I still haven't fully plumbed SuSE, but there's a lot about it that's special, and cool. You've got to love the way that it automatically configures the dual boot with Windows, and it turns out that it's the only distro that I know of that lets you pick your desktop BEFORE you install. SO I'm still going to have a sizable debian partiton, but I think I'm going to spend some time with SuSE. Let this be a lesson to everyone: don't take my strongly held opinions seriously. Of course, many of my friends in Just Linux already knew that. :rolleyes:

psych-major

10-04-2005, 01:03 PM

it turns out that it's the only distro that I know of that lets you pick your desktop BEFORE you install.

Slackware has had this feature for a long time.

blackbelt_jones

10-04-2005, 04:45 PM

Slackware has had this feature for a long time.

Slackware doesn't even have Gnome!

psych-major

10-04-2005, 04:57 PM

Anymore. But it did until 10.2 and you were presented with a choice at the very beginning of the install. Then at the end of the install you have another choice where you can pick your default environment.
That choice still exists, just without gnome. (leaving of course, KDE, XFCE, blackbox, FVWM, fluxbox, MWM, TWM and WindowMaker)

blackbelt_jones

10-04-2005, 07:42 PM

Is this turning into an argument? I hope not, cause that would be a pretty stupid arguement.

That installation script for apt4suse script is really nice, especially because it spares you the task of hunting down repositories and editing your sources.list file. I'm upgrading now, and in a few minutes I'm gonna start installing... I'll get to see if everything I want is readily available.

Somebody once told me that apt4rpm was useless... that was a couple yars ago, and maybe it was true at the time, but it sure isn't true anymore. With CentOS (Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone), apt changed everything for me. I used to think that you were supposed to hunt down and install those rpms one by one. Is it any wonder I thought that RPM sucked? apt4rpm is still less cool than real Debian's apt, with its 16 thousand packages,in my semi-informed opinion, but if you've never used it, it works just like "real" apt, and it goes a long way toward making rpm bearable.

On the other hand: I forgot about SuSE's uptight permissions setup. Only root can mount a CD rom, which means I can't mount my game disks from Cedega. I can't open any text editors from the super user command line, so at the moment I don't know how I'm going to edit my grub menu so i can boot up debian. I'm sure there's a very simple solution that DOESN'T involve doing the nasty deed of opening up the XROOT, but it's 11:30 PM, and I still have to take the garbage out.

justbill

10-04-2005, 11:23 PM

blackbelt_jones

10-04-2005, 11:51 PM

Having never used Apt before, I have not yet tried to install anything, other than the initial install of apt (or get any updates, for that matter). I may give it a whirl tomorrow night, though I'm not yet sure of the command (s) I have to use, to use apt (newbie's ya can't live with em and ya can't shoot em :) ). But, gotta learn sometime!

Justbill

As a matter of fact, every now and then, a newbie is actually shot. I should know. They weren't able to get all of the buckshot out of my ***, and it causes me no end of problems when I try to pass throough metal detectors

My 1 minute apt tutorial:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install <package name>
or
apt-get install <package name> <package name> <package name> <package name>
apt-cache search <keyword>

and, of course:

man apt-get

always update before you upgrade, and make sure it hasn't been too long since you last upgraded before you install. The first time you upgrade, expect it to take awhile, but after that, it's usually pretty painless.

With a debian-based distro, you may be prompted to answer some questions during the upgrade or install, and if you have no idea what the answer is, there's always a default answer, and I've never once regretted choosing it.

That's not all there is to apt-get-- but it's all I know, and it's served me well so far.

I don't know what you're used to, but I can't imagine that you're not going to love apt.

Parcival

10-05-2005, 06:25 AM

I can't open any text editors from the super user command line, so at the moment I don't know how I'm going to edit my grub menu so i can boot up debian. I'm sure there's a very simple solution that DOESN'T involve doing the nasty deed of opening up the XROOT, but it's 11:30 PM, and I still have to take the garbage out.

Have YaST install vim or nano (more userfriendly) and do

su
vim config_file
nano -w config_file

Of course there is also an easy clickety-click SuSE way of doing. Have a closer look at the System's section in your program list (K-Menu), there you can start Konqueror in admin mode. SuSE will ask for your root password and after that you have admin priviledges inside that Konqueror window. Now if you click with the right mouse button onto a textfile and pick a texteditor to edit with, it will also start the text editor with admin- and therefore write-priviledges. Happy hacking. :)

Lucas_Maximus

10-05-2005, 09:37 AM

On the other hand: I forgot about SuSE's uptight permissions setup. Only root can mount a CD rom, which means I can't mount my game disks from Cedega. I can't open any text editors from the super user command line, so at the moment I don't know how I'm going to edit my grub menu so i can boot up debian. I'm sure there's a very simple solution that DOESN'T involve doing the nasty deed of opening up the XROOT, but it's 11:30 PM, and I still have to take the garbage out.

Just add your username to the cdrom group.

Usually SUSE on basic install with automatically include your user in sound,cdrom,floppy. However I haven't installed the lastest version of SUSE, I am still using 9.2, So it may be different.

blackbelt_jones

10-05-2005, 10:58 AM

There ya go. Problem solved. And solved again.

(later) However...
Determined to settle on a distro as my main distro for the next few months, and wanting to familiarize myself with something other than Debian (I feel almost dirty just for saying that) I wound up wiping SuSE and going back to CentOS. I was wrong about SuSE. It doesn't really suck that bad, it's really kind of ingenious, filled with great little extras, and definitely in a class by itself. I really wanted it to be SuSE...

BUT it kept crashing on me... with a frequency almost reminiscient of Windows! My hunch is that if I'd been willing to run SuSE with KDE, the way God intended, I might have told a far different story-- but alas, I do not kare for kde. I'm addicted to being able to open a terminal window by right clicking anywhere on the desktop, instead of having to search for a launcher.

Now that I think of it, I probably should have tried XFCE. Ah well... maybe next time.

justbill

10-05-2005, 06:57 PM

Hmmm, I'm using Gnome, with no problems...........yet! But I've learned in my short time as a linux user (about 10 mos. now), that it does sometime, take a little time, for an amature like myself to find all the little bugs. There are some things that FC4 did, that I liked better, but that doesn't mean SuSE can't, I just probably haven"t figured them out yet. All in all, I'm going to upgrade to version 10.0 after its final release, and give it some time, before I make my "final" decision.

Thanks! for the "1 minute tutorial" you gave Blackbelt Jones, it is greatly appreciated!

Justbill

blackbelt_jones

10-06-2005, 02:45 PM

After a long, painful week of indesision, personal struggle, and massive caffeine consumption, I have set up my /hda harddrive so that I can use CentOS as my main system, so I can have some permanancy and learn about Red Hat administration... while leaving a space on /hdb for me to explore any alernative distros that strike my fancy. For whatever strange reason, installing different distros appears to be my idea of fun.. No doubt I will further acquaint myself with SuSE from time to time.

CaptainPinko

10-06-2005, 05:41 PM

Is that you can't just smoothely "roll" with upgrades. When 9.4 comes out (or 10 or whatever else release++ evaluates to) it'll be a big production to upgrade from one to another.

With Gentoo, FreeBSD, Debian etc it more like a steady stream of gentle upgrades. That's the reason I switched. I didn't want to d/l a new ISO every $x months.

Other than that --or if I wasn't running Linux for anything other than personal use-- I'd say SuSE is the perfect distro.

Parcival

10-07-2005, 05:47 AM

Last night at our LUG meeting I talked to a Linux newbie (little knowledge so far, but very determined to learn it) and for him the worst aspect about SuSE is that they don't use the exactly same terms in their handbooks compared to what you get to read on the screen.

justbill

10-07-2005, 07:27 AM

Please excuse me from this thread for a little while......................, I'll be busy SLAPPING the crap out of myself, for not trying "apt-get" sooner.
apt4suse is GREAT!

Justbill

Bowtie

10-08-2005, 02:42 AM

I've used Suse since 7.1 and have loved it, for the most part. There are a few minor things that get on my nerves but I can work around them. I have tried about a dozen or so different distros and I always come back to Suse. However, I'm kinda partial to Slackware too. There is beauty in simplicity...LOL I'm running CentOS for my web/mail server just because CentOS and qmail work so well together. My desktops are Suse, and my laptops are Slackware.........nuff said.

Rinias

10-08-2005, 08:59 AM

I saw this post and have read about half of it (you guys really have too much to say!) and so I skipped to the end to finally post something (which I haven't done in a long while... hi all!)

So, I have just installed Super SUSE (the name is SUSE by the way, SuSE died when Novell took it over- just for information). The install was pretty painless except for the hour it took to pass all the bad sectors in my Win partition (where did they come from?) Partitioning, etc was all painless, I just had to add that I wanted /boot on a separate partition by force of habit. (Did I learn that from some other disrto? Who knows...)

It all looks good, though I have to get some sort of repo's cause the one CD install leaves you with next to nothing, though it does install a bunch of nice GUI tools. I've got cedega installed and the blizzard Downloader is downloading my patches for WoW (!!!! That's too cool!!!! I've been absent from the forums mostly caused I stayed in Win and thus avoided Linux-type questions just so I could play) Annoying: amaroK is not playing my music. I don't know why because sound is all working (even with cedega).

Important Points:
- YaST installed the Nvidia drivers AND had an option to configure my WXGA screen to the correct resolution (1280x800) Never before was this an option!
-It IS pretty, and because of KDE (usually I use GNOME), there are already some cool wallpapers (gears go really well when your a mechanical engineering student... :D)
-It does not appear to be terriblly bloated in terms of size, and in terms of procs, I've got 2GHz+ and enough RAM
-Though it shows Evolution and OOo (2.0!!!) in the slideshow when installing, they aren't there

I'm trying out SUSE once again (4th or 5th time) because I'm going to need this laptop everyday at school, and I need a distro that will be 1) solid, with no "breaking" because of updates 2) pretty so that I can try to convert others 3) easy, so that if I connect some random thing to it, it will just work.

My big complaint with every distro is updating. I hate it. I'm scared of it. I have boken every distro I tried by updating using the updater normally associated with it. Ubuntu is a god-forsaken nightmare for me. I have broken the 32 and 64-bit versions everytime just trying to update/install a new program. I really like the distro, but i can't rely on it AT ALL. Debian is good, but again, weird things happen when I update. Slack is AWESOME- I have it running on an old box with 16MB RAM and a 200MHz proc so that I can fill up the 160GB HDD that I threw in there. It's nice to have something serving up files.

So far, so good, but I am always reluctant to save I love a distro before I "burn it in" a bit. Maybe I've just got a way with choosing what I update... But Super SUSE seems to be performing well!

I'm gonna go get some repo's and then try to play WoW (after it patches and works, I hope...)

And don't forget that there are so many distros cause just one would never please everybody! Thank god for Linux!

Rinias

10-09-2005, 08:37 AM

Yeah, so I'm back, and a little p.o'd

SUSE is running GREAT on my computer, or SUPER if you will seeing as I decided on the simple, 1-CD install. I think it was a mistake though...

There are no problems whatsoever with my system except for the fact that it installed 1GB of almost nothing... I've got KDE and the gimp, firefox, konqueror, amaroK, kontact, K3B, Kmail and a BUNCH of utilities. But no OOo, no evolution, no anything else. What I need is an easy way to install other packages, and I would really like to stay away from apt4rpm because I want my system to be SUSE. That's understandable, right? I mean, with apt4rpm you can also load up the Synaptic UI, and then jump right into your rpm-based Debian system! It would probably even be easier to just reinstall Debian...

I haven't searched tons, mostly because I was so excited to play World of Warcraft in Linux (works great!!), but what I want are packages repos- as Debian calls them- for SUSE. There must be something like that because YaST gives the option of adding online sources, it recognizes the address and loads up a package list. On the other hand, it seems to me that the package list must be empty because I am still stuck with no choice. amaroK is no good cause it can't play a single mp3 (or m4a) and I have no "automated" way of installing libmp3 or whatever. What I would really like is not to search for a file on the internet and then install it, because I find that that puts the system all out of whack. (Ok, I did this for cedega, but hey, it's only cedega and it will keep me out of Windows- well at least for playing games. Seems I will be forced to go process my documents in Windows. Thankg god for OOo!)

So while my laptop is currently humming away in perfect bliss, it also is just an internet and gaming station. Yippee! Really, it's kind of amazing how it just doesn't want to work...

Oh well, I'll take another shot at it, but Googling for SUSE packges is like pulling teeth...

Parcival

10-09-2005, 11:12 AM

Just go into your YaST and add the proper FTP mirror into your list of software repositories.

frimann

10-09-2005, 11:25 AM

I installed also super suse 10 (the 1 cd install on my laptop) and then to get access to the software that is on those 5 cds you have to add installation source to yast.

Just open "yast" "installation source" "add" "http" server name="suse.inode.at"
directory="opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS-RC1/inst-source"

Then you have axcess to all in yast.

Parcival

10-09-2005, 12:13 PM

server name="suse.inode.at"

Rinias, you may as well use the Switch mirror. ;)

ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/

Rinias

10-10-2005, 05:17 AM

Thanks a lot friman!! It worked!

I don't know what's wrong with the package repos, but it will recognize that they exist over at SWITCH but it seems that they are empty?

Thanks anyway Parcival!

Parcival

10-10-2005, 09:20 AM

Hmm, that's weird. Browsing through the structure it seems to me like they both offer the same software. However, SuSE's distribution policy looks rather weird: for years there were no ISO files on the mirror servers and now the ISO files are pretty much all one can get.

frimann

10-10-2005, 03:12 PM

"Rinias" glad to help.

I was my self using this mirror as the icelandic suse mirror is not a full mirror, it had none of the beta stuff and not installation source,
The swiss mirror is maybe not fully updated or not a full mirror?

After installing Suse i always add the packman and guru mirrors and do "yast"
"software management" "package groups" "zz All" "package" "all in this list"
"update if newer version available"

And that usually fixes broken multimedia support.

http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.0

http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/10.0

I added this as this thread is probably read by many interested in Suse

Rinias

10-10-2005, 04:28 PM

"Rinias" glad to help.

Weird question- why the quotes?

I'm gonna try this out in a sec, I'll give an update if I haven't broken my computer... :D

frimann

10-10-2005, 05:02 PM

Weird question- why the quotes?

Well my day djob is as a carpenter and i fear i do not know the proper use of "quotes" :o :p

blackbelt_jones

10-11-2005, 10:04 AM

Just installed it again.

I feel like I'm being seduced by SuSE. I used to think it was terrible, and sure, it's bloated all right, but I've got the hardware for it-- and when you've got the hardware, you can see just how ingenious it is. So far, it's been running better for me with KDE than it had been with gnome... and I've had a chance to discover features in KDE that make it a more tolerable for me. It's the opposite of everything that I thought was cool not long ago. Live and learn, I guess.

I think I'm backing away from my previous debian advocacy. My perspective on Linux broadened in a big way when I discovered apt4rpm. A long time ago, some debian partisan told me that apt4rpm was no good, and I took that advice way too much to heart. In fact, apt4rpm is pretty damned helpful. So is Yum, and urpmi. And I'm finding it easier to get certain packages for rpm-based distros than for debian (that damned mplayer plug-in, for example). Instead of being an advocate for debian, I've decided that I'm going to be an advocate for apt-get. They say that if you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for life, but if you give a newwbie the apt reps for his distro, you're essentially giving him a really great fishing pole.

When I say that I am backing away from my advocacy for debian, I'm not backing away from the opinion that Debian just may be the best Linux ever, not only for versatility and rock-solid performance, but for its contibution to open source development, and the proud lineage it has inspired. Knoppix, Mepis, and Ubuntu are all great ideas that might never have happened if the minds that spawned them had to reinvent the wheel. I just tried Debian Pure, and while my initial experience suggests that it may not be ready for prime time just yet, it's a great idea that just may turn Debian into a REAL universal operating system. And there will be more.

About ten days later...

I was wavering, looking for an PRM distro to make myself at home with for the foreseeable future. Came damn close to going with SuSE... it's prety seductive, all right, but in the end, I went with Red Hat Enterpise Linux, in the form of CentOS. I like the Red Hat Manuals I can get with Safari Books, and that's a big factor. The clincher was that, for whatever reason, I was having better luck compiling programs from source code with CentOS than with SuSE. I dropped the idea of having a guest partition where I can screw around with different distros... I decided that would be too much of a distraction-- so I won't be exploring SuSE any time soon, which makes me a little sad. I wish there was one of me for every distro that I like.

Tor

10-17-2005, 02:01 PM

I played with an older version of RH for awhile, but when I tried SuSE, I was amazed! The others here who say that SuSE is great for beginners are right, and I am a beginner, but I would not limit it to just beginners. And that is what makes Linux so great; it is the best of two worlds, a point and click GUI for we beginners, and all the commandline power and toys for programmers who want to *feel* the operating system.

As for SuSE sucking, I started with 9.3. I have a couple of AMD powered Shuttle computers and an Intel powered Acer laptop, and 9.3 recognized the graphics but didn't configure them correctly. I just received my copy of 10.0 from Novell, but it seems to find and correctly configure my graphics hardware on the Shuttle. I haven't had time to load it on my other machines. I also have some older versions of SuSE I got off eBay, and I am playing around with home networking with an old AMD K6 333 Asus box I built a few years ago. Playing overstates it, as I have not had much time to play. Grad studies and teaching are keeping me too busy at the moment.

Dr. Shim

10-17-2005, 04:43 PM

Hehe, this thread got huge.

SuSE didn't configure my graphics properly either (NVIDIA TNT 2 Pro), and it keeps screwing up the refresh rates for my monitor by setting them really low (yech!).

Personally I'm no "dig into Linux to see how it works" person, yet. Although I find SuSE to be the best of both worlds. It automagically works, and I can whip out my wrench at screw around. ;)

tody4me

10-18-2005, 11:52 AM

I have been looking for a good distro to keep on my work machine for testing purposes, and then once I have settled on one I'll install it at home. I have tried Debian, Gentoo, and now recently SuSE. I have to say that SuSE has got some decent GUI but really doesn't work well. I am trying to install some packages for C++ development, and it keeps on asking for each disk in the set (granted there are only 5 of them, thank god) and installing 1 - 2 packages from the disk and asking for another one. I would have figured they would have had that all sorted out by now, but I guess not. Debian had 14 diskettes, which is a pain to keep up with, and then when you wanted to install something, it would at least ask for the diskettes in order and only once.

nikodell

10-18-2005, 12:09 PM

Are you using Beta or RC as that is the olny version I have had that problem with the random disk swap since around 6.0 or 7.0

tody4me

10-18-2005, 04:49 PM

Using version 10.0. Just got it.

Parcival

10-19-2005, 04:38 AM

Well, just use the DVD and the problem's solved. ;) However, you're right, I used to have that problem, too. SuSE split up its software in terms of binary and source CD, so this saves some swapping. The way they have distributed the files within a category is beyond me, though.

82John

10-19-2005, 07:01 AM

I've run suse 9.0 for several years now and will shortly be upgrading to 9.3 and will wait a while before going to 10. I love rpm's and actually buy distro's. I like an easy life.
The distro's come on 2 dvd's nearly everything one may need is on them. Updating packages with rpm's is fine - the dependencies are very useful if you want your machine to carry on working after the upgrade. Google or packman, rpmsearch etc especially packman soon finds any libs that aren't on the distro disks.
The suse online update is very good and also very bad at times. The good part is that it's easy and mostly looks after itself. Bad points are:
1)My distro pack would read and write to to ntfs and fat windoze partitions. An update replaced the kernel and disabled this facility. The config file was changed so it was easy to get rd/wr fat back and rd ntfs but the kernel has to be recompiled to get ntfs wr back. I don't believe suse's reason for doing this. Me thinks it was fear of microshaft. As to my feelings on that and related subject. It's my machine, I even paid for the windoze system on it. Data files are mine. I should be able to do what ever I want to it.
2)DivX playback went and I could only get it back by installing Kaffeine etc from packman. A good point for suse here - there was a complete set of libs with it for suse 9.0 - there usually is. It's unusual not to be able to find a suse rpm. Note as above - I paid for the right to use the codecs.
3) My ability to write cd's and dvd's went following another suse update. I think this is unforgivable as they are supposed to support k3b too. Updates fixed this eventually though.
Yast used to offer me "remove unsupported packages" during updates. I haven't of course. I can well understand why they offered this. They can't support everything. People should realise that the very act of updating may stop such packages from working properly. Maybe Yast could be improved by checking the dependencies of user installed rpms. These could just be all placed in a common directory.
As to rpm haters. Well one can use the other methods if you want. Adding "update whatever" wouldn't really be an improvement. There will still be dependencey issues. Get the rpm and launch it in kde and yast will do this in any case.
John

mmills

10-20-2005, 12:06 PM

I use to like suse, I think it was 9.0 or 9.1 pro that I had, the only thing I could not get past with suse was my screen resolution, it was always off, the other fact that really gets me is they are kinda like redhat in my opinion, you know you have the free version, then you have the pro version, or the paid desktop version, I got away from MS becuse I had to pay for a desktop, not becuse of all the other virul/adaware reasons. So to me they are to commercial, now if I downloaded there newest and didnt have to pay for it, I might be interested in what the newest suse is like. but they still charge.............kinda like MS does....
just my brain waves folks, dont kick me around for it please...... :D

missmoondog

10-23-2005, 11:15 PM

i'm on my second week of using suse 9.1. iove the way it runs and handles the internet and e-mail and other basic things.

i tried suse 8.2 back when it was new and couldn't keep it on my computer for more than a few days. thought it was the most rediculous thing ever!

now, if only i could figure out this command line stuff and get some of the simplest things to work like opening password protected zip/tar/rar files, figuring out my demux plugin error in kaffeine, get cd burner to actually burn a cd-r, i might keep suse on the computer. yes, i have been searching all over the net for answers to these things and registered at 2 other suse forums. this is my third one. first post here too.

to sum it up, suse doesn't suck, but it's far from everyday user desktop friendly.

Dr. Shim

10-24-2005, 05:06 AM

So to me they are to commercial, now if I downloaded there newest and didnt have to pay for it, I might be interested in what the newest suse is like.

Have you heard of OpenSuSe.org? That's where I got my version from!

but they still charge.............kinda like MS does....
just my brain waves folks, dont kick me around for it please...... :D

*kicks mmills around a little for the fun of it.* ;)

SnICKetero

10-28-2005, 02:21 AM

Dr. Shim

10-28-2005, 04:34 AM

That was a bit hard to understand. So you're using SuSE Linux? I'm sure somebody can give you some links to get you started. One thing you have to remember is that you're running a completly new operating system.

Sounds like you're trying to run a program intended to run in Windows. You could try installing WINE (http://www.winehq.com/) , then running the program using that.

I recommend you start a new thread.

mmills

10-28-2005, 02:15 PM

Sup guyzzz? chillin? good.... as you can see I'm the NOOBIEST Person here. I just switched from windows, so LINUX seems F**kin complicated to me, what I mean is that we dont have all this s**t in windows, so I have to ask you a favor.... explayin to me how this goddamn program works. It seems like I have a lil problem with opening ".exe" files and so on..... Plz HELP me or at least guide me so I can understand this program. SUSE LINUX PROFESSIONAL 9.3
SnICK 10/27/05

Ps: your help will be greatly appreciated

1st thing, start a thread asking how to do what it is you are trying to do.
2nd, well all get ticked but kinda watch you @#$*%& mouth...lol
3rd Please enclose the application and type of application you are trying to run, incase you cannot run it through a 3rd party application, you may find something more linux compatible.

mmills