MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-10-30 |
| FROM | Michael Richardson
|
| SUBJECT | RE: [hangout] Review: SUSE 9 Professional October 2003
|
I going to e-bay and order a copy.
-----Original Message-----
From: Inker, Evan [mailto:EInker-at-gam.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 8:28 AM
To: hangout-at-nylxs.com
Subject: [hangout] Review: SUSE 9 Professional October 2003
Review: SUSE 9 Professional October 2003
by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier
http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=8925/ur0310l/
A few weeks ago, I received a pre-release copy of SUSE Professional 9 for
review. I've been using it off and on since then, and the release looks
pretty good overall. It's fairly obvious from the marketing materials and
from the product itself that, with this release, SUSE is aiming squarely at
the Windows audience. If you check out SUSE's 10 good reasons to switch
page, you'll see it's all aimed at converting Windows users to Linux.
Why is this important? As I'll discuss later, this release is really not a
major leap forward from 8.2 - so if you're already using a recent Linux
distribution, this isn't much different from what you have already. But SUSE
stands to gain a lot more by converting even a very modest share of the
Windows market to their distribution than they do in convincing current
Linux users to buy the latest release.
Before I get into the actual review, I'd like to thank the folks at SUSE for
changing from "SuSE" to "SUSE." It's a minor point, but it can be annoying
typing "SuSE" twenty times when writing a review. That little change won't
net them any bonus technical points review-wise, but it's a pleasant change
nonetheless. For the linguists out there, this is another example of words
evolving from an acronym - rather rapidly - over time. I remember when it
was officially "S.u.S.E.", which was an even bigger hassle.
Because I'm reviewing a pre-release version, I expect that some of the
issues I've encountered will be rectified by the time that the commercial
release is boxed up and hits the streets. That is to say, I experienced a
few glitches during installation and had one system crash while testing, but
the problems I experienced are unlikely to be in the final release. Also, I
should note that because this is a pre-release version, I don't have the
latest set of manuals and such in front of me, so I can only gauge the
distribution itself and not the documentation that comes with the boxed
product. As a rule, however, SUSE includes decent documentation with their
distribution, and I expect no less with the 9.0 release.
System requirements
The system requirements for SUSE 9 are much the same as for the last few
releases: Pentium or "better" CPU, at least 64 MB of RAM, at least 400 MB of
free disk space - and that's cutting it exceptionally close - and a
supported video card. If you want to run SUSE Linux on a machine, you'll
want something that's at least a faster Pentium II or AMD K6. If your system
is up to snuff for one of the 8.x releases, you should be fine with SUSE
9.0.
Installation
The YaST2 installation routine hasn't changed much since 8.2, though SUSE 9
can now handle resizing of NTFS partitions. Overall, it's a pleasant
experience and no more difficult than a Windows installation. Opinions will
vary, of course, but the SUSE installer is ready for prime time, assuming
that your hardware is supported.
Remember how I mentioned that SUSE is aiming at the Windows market with this
release? One of the changes in SUSE 9 is the addition of an automatic login
for single-user systems. This in itself is not a horrible thing, but I was
dismayed by the fact that it defaults to this option if you set up only one
user. It's a simple checkbox option that you might easily miss when running
through the install. Giving users the option of automatically logging in is
a good thing, but I'm not so sure it's a good idea to default to that
option. I'd rather type in a password every time I reboot than risk the
possibility that someone could access my data simply by rebooting and
allowing the system to automatically log in with my user account.
On the plus side, SUSE now features a remote administration feature using
VNC (Virtual Network Computing), which is off by default but can be turned
on during the install.
I found the boot loader menu a bit confusing. I installed SUSE 9.0 on an
empty partition on my main workstation, and it didn't offer to set up a GRUB
entry for the SUSE 8.2 install on a different partition, which was
disappointing. I added it manually without any problem, but this is one area
where a little more information would be useful. Newer users are likely to
feel intimidated by this configuration module, and won't be able to add a
boot entry if YaST2 doesn't pick it up automatically. I suspect that it's
mainly keyed towards finding Windows partitions and setting up a Windows
entry for users who want to dual boot between Linux and Windows.
For the first time in recent memory, SUSE's installer did not correctly
identify which video card I had installed. Instead of "seeing" my Matrox
G450, it assumed I had a Matrox G400 card. I fiddled around a bit and
finally figured out that I needed not only to specify the Matrox G450, but
also to change the BusID entry in the "Expert" configuration section. I'm
guessing, again, that this is a pre-release bug and won't be in the final
release. It's still puzzling, though, that YaST2 has handled this card
perfectly in the past, but is confused by it now.
Working with YaST2
YaST2 is SUSE's interface for administering your system. Almost anything you
need to do to administer your system can be done through YaST2 - and should
be in many cases, since it's possible that YaST2 will overwrite your
settings by accident. Whether or not you like YaST2 is very likely to
influence whether or not you prefer SUSE's distros in general. For the most
part, I'm in the pro-YaST2 camp. It has really evolved well over time, and
it's a solid administrative interface. There are still a number of tasks
that I prefer to do "by hand" rather than through a GUI, but I think YaST2
is good for general systems administration.
There is one bug in YaST2 that has been present at least since 8.2, and it
still exists in the 9.0 pre-release. Namely, when YaST2 is embedded in the
KDE Control Center, I'm unable to enter anything in the search field in the
"Install and Remove Software" module. It works fine when I run YaST2
separately, but won't accept text input when running as a module.
The module you're most likely to interact with on a regular basis - the
software installation and removal module - is very nice. It does a fine job
of figuring out dependencies and resolving conflicts between packages. At
least, it does as long as you're using SUSE RPMs. An older SUSE install that
I have continues to remind me that it doesn't like the Yahoo Messenger
package that I installed eons ago, and I can't figure out how to tell it to
ignore that package for all time. They definitely need a "never bother me
again" button for non-SUSE packages. Other than that, though, I've come to
like YaST2 for installing and removing SUSE packages.
Like many other packages included with SUSE 9, YaST2 now seems markedly
faster than previous versions. In the past, my main complaint with YaST2 is
that it was sluggish. Not anymore. There have been some marked performance
improvements with this release.
Desktop and workstation use
Since SUSE Professional is suited to several different types of use, I will
discuss the desktop and server features separately. Let's start with desktop
features. I mostly work in KDE, which is the default with SUSE, so I didn't
spend much time examining GNOME or other desktop environments and window
managers.
KDE has changed little since the 8.2 release. There are a few fixes and new
features, but nothing like the old days when a major SUSE revision meant a
whole slew of changes in the desktop. I like Kopete, the KDE instant
messenger. It handles AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, SMS and even the
Windows Messenger service that seems to be so popular with spammers these
days. Despite recent changes to Yahoo's network that have plagued
third-party clients, I was able to use Kopete and connect using my Yahoo ID
with no problem. I don't have an MSN account, so I'll have to take it on
their say-so that it works. AIM worked as well, and there are a number of
other plugin add-ons that may be of interest to people who spend a lot of
time chatting.
I do wish that the KDE taskbar had better support for Xinerama. You have a
choice of configuring the taskbar to reside on screen 0 or screen 1 - you
cannot configure the taskbar to span multiple screens at this time. Needless
to say, this is a bit annoying, particularly since it used to work.
Naturally, the new release comes with OpenOffice.org 1.1. I've already been
using the 1.1 release for a few weeks, and I can say that it's a solid
release and a good replacement for Microsoft Office if you need a general
office suite with basic MS compatibility. I've been able to convert Office
templates to OpenOffice.org, use OpenOffice.org to author a document using
that template, convert the document back to MS Office format, send it to an
MS Office user, and then re-open and use the edited document with no
problem. I'm sure that there are some MS Office docs that OpenOffice.org
would have problems with, but they're fewer and farther between.
The 1.4 release of Evolution is also included in SUSE 9. There's not a lot
of difference between 1.4.x and 1.2.x, but this version seems quite a bit
zippier than the 1.2 releases.
SUSE's "New Features" page touts new games for this release as well. I tried
"Beneath a Steel Sky" for about five minutes, it's definitely not your
cutting-edge video game. And they're still not shipping PySOL with the
distribution, which is an affront to solitaire players everywhere.
This release also includes Scribus, which is rapidly becoming a really good
desktop publishing tool, and the Gimp 1.3 release for those who want to live
on the bleeding edge. Gimp 1.2 is included for those who prefer to stick
with more stable releases, but it's not installed by default. I'm not a
graphics guy by trade, so I'm not the most qualified person to judge the
Gimp's capabilities. Having said that, the 1.3 release seems a bit faster,
and the interface is somewhat improved from 1.2.
Server use
The SUSE Professional releases aren't SUSE's main offering for server use.
They have a different line entirely for production use on commercial
servers. Still, SUSE Professional is fine for setting up a Samba server,
mail server, Web server, and so forth for small organizations, home offices
and so on. This release also includes several new YaST2 modules for
administering popular services. Namely, it includes modules for configuring
and managing your system as a DHCP server, Samba server and client, DNS
server, NTP client, and modules for Apache and TFTP.
Even better, YaST2 will automatically install the necessary packages if you
ask it to set up Apache or Samba and the requisite packages are not
installed. It will even install Apache modules if you choose to enable
modules through YaST2 that are not yet installed. The configuration is
pretty basic, though. For example, you can't change Apache's root document
directory using YaST2 or configure multiple virtual hosts. I expect that the
configuration tools for the business products are a bit more advanced.
2.6 Test kernel
This release comes with a 2.6 test kernel from SUSE. SUSE strongly advises
against installing it for production systems, and you lose support if you
decide to run the 2.6 test kernel. I didn't bother to install the 2.6 test
kernel from SUSE, because it was already woefully behind the latest test
version.
Final thoughts
Because SUSE 9 is a major version jump (from 8.2 to 9.0), I expected the
release to be significantly different from its predecessor. It definitely
has some improvements, but it seems like more of a point release than a
major jump. SUSE 9.0 is a modest upgrade from SUSE 8.2. There are a number
of improvements, but it's not the major leap that many Linux users may be
used to. The additional YaST modules may be the best reason for upgrading,
There's nothing wrong with these modest improvements, of course, but this
isn't a "must have" release. If you're already running SUSE 8.2 and you're
happy with it, there's no reason to rush out and buy the new boxed set. You
may prefer to wait until the next release, which is sure to include a stable
(if early) 2.6 kernel and probably KDE 3.2 and other goodies.
On the other hand, if you're a Windows user looking to try Linux for the
first time, or if you're using a Linux distro that's more than a year old, I
highly recommend this release.
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____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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