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SuSE Businesses Operating Systems Software Linux

SUSE 9.2 Released 352

Posted by timothy from the lizardly dept.
peterprior writes "Novell have issued a press release announcing SUSE Linux 9.2. The new version comes with kernel 2.6, KDE 3.3, Gnome 2.6 and features (amongst other things) enhanced wireless support as well as Evolution 2.0 with Groupwise / Exchange connectivity. The WYSIWYG web development tool Nvu is also included. The new release is expected to hit the retail shelves in early November."
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SUSE 9.2 Released More

SUSE 9.2 Released

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  • Wireless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:30AM (#10450225) Homepage
    But will it work natively (read: no ndiswrapper) with my Linksys WMPP54G wireless card (stinkin Broadcom chipset.)???

    • Re:Wireless (Score:2, Insightful)

      by epohs ( 775630 )
      I certainly hope they have figured out some way to enhance support for wireless network cards.

      I've got a WMP54GS card that i've been completely unable to get working with ndiswrapper.

      I absolutely love gentoo, but if SuSE can get this working I'll move back. (haven't used SuSE since 8.2)



      P.S. if anyone has info on getting a Linksys WMP54GS wireless network card working with gentoo, i'd really appreciate a nudge in the right direction.

  • Exchange ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:32AM (#10450240) Journal
    I guess this one very feature might begin to frighten Microsoft : it's remained their most private app for a long time...

    • Re:Exchange ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:39AM (#10450313) Journal
      Why? I'm sure they love OSS exchange clients. They don't have to support it, and the per-seat licensing revenue for Exchange server comes in either way. Businesses can superficially "switch" to linux on all the desktops, and they can still charge per-seat in the backend.

      Why is this so? Because "IT" dopes are ass backwards. They put linux on the desktop and MS in the server room.

      • Re:Exchange ? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        Give me a replacement for Exchange that has group calandering, shared folders, works seemlessly with Outlook as well as an open client and doesn't have an ugly front end like Groupwise or Notes and I'll be sure to check it out. The truth is there isn't one out there that doesn't cost at least as much as Exchange does. So there is little incentive to go through the expense, pain, and risk of migrating.
        • I worked for a while at a bank that used HP OpenMail as their back end, and that worked well. I believe the per-seat licensing is substantially lower than Exchange.

          • Re:Exchange ? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by afidel ( 530433 )
            Unfortunatly OpenMail went EOL at HP and the company that bought it doesn't have the resources to really support it. It's unfortunatly a legacy product at this point. You're right though if HP had held onto it I would be using it at quite a few places right now.
        • Take a look at this. Wanted to replace my company's Exchange box with this but Kerio doesn't support Blackberries.

        • Re:Exchange ? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @12:29PM (#10451620) Homepage
          Could someone make a decent argument why Exchange is so damned "important" in the private sector? I'm serious here. Managerial groupthink does not count.

          I was once an admin for a M$ shop, and ran the Exchange Server 5.5. The higher-ups would get so damned pissed at me 'cause I simply refused to use the entire calendar/planner/contact-list crap that was part of LookOut. I just couldn't (and still can't) stomach that stuff. Yet I somehow managed to get the important shit done.

          Please, will someone tell me what's so useful about the Exchange/Outlook combo (or either half, for that matter) that a business will spend the money on the MS Server, the Exchange Server, CALs, and the Windows/Outlook licesnes?

          In an age of such fierce competition and cost-cutting measurse to increase the bottom line, I fail to see how a business can justify canning decent employees and cutting benefits, yet they're still willing to pay the MS crack dealer the annual licensing fees. Providing pet features for management doesn't seem like a good reason to me.

          In all honesty, I continue to be stumped by this practice. The open source solutions we have available today are light years ahead of the commercial offerings we had ten years ago. Yet, we somehow managed with the tools back then. This isn't about not enjoying progress -- I'm no software Luddite -- it's about freedom (in the RMS sense). Isn't a little growing pain and inconvenience worth not having to worry about the BSA and the annual software audit?

          • Re:Exchange ? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @12:53PM (#10451910)
            Yet another "I don't have a use for it so nobody must have a use for it" post. When you work in a department with 160 people and you have schedule meetings for say 20 of those people it is extremely difficult without Outlook/Exchange. With a click of the button I can find the optimal time to have the meeting so that everybody can attend.

            Assistants can also maintain their boss's calendar, managers can assign tasks for their staff, storing everything on the server makes upgrading to new machines easy, and having everything together in one app just makes sense.

            Now the benefit for a 40 person small business is pretty much zero but for once you get over 100 people the per person cost really isn't that much considering the savings in time and aggravation. You can piss on a lot of things from Microsoft but Outlook/Exchange (especially Outlook 2003) and Excel are two areas I will defend to the death (ok maybe not literally).

            • Re:Exchange ? (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Deagol ( 323173 )
              Yet another "I don't have a use for it so nobody must have a use for it" post. When you work in a department with 160 people and you have schedule meetings for say 20 of those people it is extremely difficult without Outlook/Exchange.

              Oh, gimme a break. It's not just me -- thousands of people plan stuff w/o Exchange just fine. I submit the many cases where hundreds of people planned on USENET, IRC, IM, or email. Look at flash mobs -- you think they have an aan Exchange server managing this stuff?

              Damn,

              • Re:Exchange ? (Score:3, Interesting)

                by ckaminski ( 82854 )
                Or worse, take a perfectly working sendmail/Netscape based email system and a 3rd party calendaring system that was distributed throughout the world on 8 boxes, and replacing each site with a clustered exchange host, burning a million+ $$$$ in the process...

                Yeah, who's kid works at Microsoft and needed to make quota?

          • Re:Exchange ? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by cwiegand ( 200162 )
            Simple. Shared calendars.

            No open-source solution has shared calendars on the desktop. Oh, sure, if you want a separate web app, you can go to lots of apps. And email? IMAP allows sharing folders, no problem. LDAP takes care of contacts (so long as you're willing to hear your users complain that they can't update the LDAP directory themselves, or don't care to use umpteen billion tools which are badly UI designed in order to do so). But iCal/vCal, for whatever reason, just hasn't (yet) taken off as the prot

          • Why Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)

            by DragonHawk ( 21256 )
            "Managerial groupthink does not count."

            When it comes to people making purchase decisions, perception is reality. A lot of people are convinced they need the Outlook/Exchange combo. How good or bad of a decision that is does not matter -- they are convinced. If I (as a systems integrator) don't offer Exchange as an option, customers go somewhere else, I go out of business, and Microsoft gains more traction.

            Now, as far as pros and cons go, the Exchange/Outlook combo has a number of things in the "pro" ca
      • Try finding a free (and working) open source plugin to connect Outlook to an Open Source Exchange replacement. Give me the URL if you ever do.

      • Re:Exchange ? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MikeBabcock ( 65886 ) <mtb-slashdot@mikebabcock.ca> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:14AM (#10450692) Homepage Journal
        A lot of people give me a hard time because I sell people Dell servers with Red Hat Enterprise 3 on them as their back-end and Dell desktops running Windows as the clients.

        My clients love it -- they get a desktop they recognize and the stability of a Linux server while not paying licensing to Microsoft for anything beyond the Dell MS tax.

        For what its worth, yes, some of them even run Open Office on Windows.

      • Re:Exchange ? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by T-Ranger ( 10520 ) <jeffw@cheMENCKENbucto.ns.ca minus author> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:24AM (#10450819) Homepage

        While true, you miss the point.

        Outlook runs on Microsoft Windows. You have to pay Microsoft for Windows. Outlook is sold as both a standalone product, and as a component of Office. You have to pay Microsoft for both of those.

        If Linux - anything that is not Microsoft - replaces a Microsoft product, they loose twice. First, they loose money from not having the next upgrade, and far more importantly their strangle hold gaurenteeing lots of money from future upgrades is loosened. The later (long term revenue) is so important that they have often given away the former (quick money from a license today). Think IE. Think all the features of Windows, that they could have charged for, that they give away -- things that prevously could be had by 3rd party vendors.

        If any non-Microsoft product replaces a Microsoft product then the whole system starts to fall apart.

      • We put Linux and Macs everywhere we can. We run Windows only where we have no choice (as in interfacing with clients who use MS apps). So we have a handful of Windows systems (mostly laptops), one Windows server (required for Great Plains), and
        everything else, front and back, is Linux, Mac or Solaris.

        Frankly, I don't know any of the "dopes" you refer to. Most IT people who use Linux (BSD, whatever) have Linux on their own desktops if they can, but otherwise start in the server room.
    • If I remember correctly, the Exchange compatibility is only there if Outlook Web Access is turned on.

      It's still an amazing feature, and could be an Outlook replacement - but it doesn't make use of the more closely guarded RPCs/caching/etc. that an Outlook/Exchange combo uses.

    • Re:Exchange ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:46AM (#10450371)
      It is indeed. I think many here overlook the influence exchange servers have had on the desktop. The Outlook - Exchange combo makes a formidable partnership. I know Outlook gets a lot of grief here but it is an excellent email client and PIM, and capable of almost infinite extension, its easy to start building workflow and management systems on top of them, a feature which proved extremely attractive to the enterprise.

    • Re:Exchange ? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 )
      This is an interesting point because while most people say the Office (word, excel, access, and so on) are M$'s cash cow, truth is the only real reason that Enterprise stays with M$ is Exchange.

  • Hold on, its not released yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by eGuy ( 545520 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:34AM (#10450263) Homepage
    Articles I've read say that it will be released in November. But it does sound nice :) Here are some of the articles: vnunet [vnunet.com] tectonic [tectonic.co.za] linuxelectrons [linuxelectrons.com]
    • That's what I was thinking. I just checked the suse ftp site, and it's not there. Usually, suse releases the boxed version first, and then releases it via ftp a few weeks later.
    • ... which everyone would know, if they only RTFA ...

      "Novell today announced the November availability of SUSE® LINUX Professional 9.2, providing Linux newcomers and enthusiasts with the latest advancements in open source technology.
    • Kinda odd, I agree. I was wondering how they managed to get so ahead of everyone else on the release schedule.

      Looks like a good release for the KDE fans, but I'll be waiting for Fedora Core 3 myself... gotta love Gnome 2.8.

      -Erwos

  • Gnome and KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:35AM (#10450270) Homepage
    I've never tried SuSE Linux after it was acquired by Novell (who also owns Ximian). A lot of people have said SuSE is KDE-centric, but now that Novell has put a KDE team and a GNOME team under one roof, is the Linux desktop experience more "unified"? When Redhat tried to unify the desktops, there was a backlash of sorts... but I haven't heard from SuSE. How does the SuSE desktop feel, in both KDE and GNOME modes?

    • How does the SuSE desktop feel, in both KDE and GNOME modes?

      From my experience with 9.1, the free downloadable ISO image only includes KDE. You have to install GNOME by ftp from their web site if you want it. Given that this would have been over a modem for me, I didn't bother...
      • The Pro version of 9.1 has Gnome 2.4 but I don't care for it (then again, I have always prefered KDE). I checked their website, and their Personal Edition of 9.1 doesn't have Gnome, so I think this would indicate that yes, they have a preference for KDE. This is one reason I have changed from RH to SuSE on my Linux desktops. RH's magically disappearing support options (even if you have PAID for support) being the other reason.
    • IMO SuSE has always favored KDE. I personally like Gnome better. For example, this latest version of SuSE/Novell has the latest version of KDE (3.3), while it has an older version of Gnome (2.6) instead of the newest 2.8. Maybe 2.8 wasn't ready in time for the release? Gnome 2.8 has some really nice new features, so I probably won't be trying this version of SuSE. I have been using Fedora Core since it first came out and have kept my eye on SuSE to try it out. However I don't think that day will come

      • Re:Gnome and KDE? (Score:3, Informative)

        by AvantLegion ( 595806 )
        >> Maybe 2.8 wasn't ready in time for the release?

        Probably. It hasn't even been moved into "unstable" in oh-so-bleeding-edge Gentoo. :)

        KDE 3.3's been out for an extra month, which I'm sure helped.

    • Re:Gnome and KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:54AM (#10450461) Homepage
      Well although you couldn't tell it here on slashdot
      1) The gnome and kde developers arn't arch enemies.
      2) Distros that want more users want both desktops.

      What does this mean? A lot of colaberation, quite a bit through freedeskop.org. Little things like all my gnome apps now show up in the kde start menu without any effort on my part are a big deal (and vice versa). Everyone understands that the better the two desktops behave together (not code wise, but behavior wise) the more the user wins.

      One neat project which I don't think (might be wrong) anyone is working on right now is a common icon set. When gnome or kde load up the icon "cut" it should be the same. Help create an icon set (without a slant to the current gnome or kde) and then get it in freedesktop.org and I bet you that distros would adopt it. If you are interested in helping with this or other colaberation projects head over to freedesktop.org.

      Some other ones that would be nice to have:
      -A common bookmark and cookie storage standard (way to many browsers these days)
      -Along with a common icon set, a standard for the default toolbar format (size, and with or without text and text placement)

      Down the road expect distros to be less and less KDE or Gnome only.

      -Benjamin Meyer
    • Gnome is pretty much Gnome, KDE is pretty much KDE. I did end up with both a KDE and a GNOME "home" icon on my GNOME desktop, but I had some issues related to conversion from legacy SLackware and RedHat config file sin my home directory, plus I installed in a couple of stages, so it's hard to say whose fault that is.

      I prefered the version of GNOME that came in RH8, but the new one is plenty GNOMish under SuSe. I'm less familiar with KDE, but it certainly looks and feels like KDE to me.

      Since I'm running

  • SUSE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stateofmind ( 756903 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:35AM (#10450273)
    I love SUSE. :) But wow, I've never seen Nvu before, it looks like it could go head-to-head with Dreamweaver?

    Has anyone used Nvu in a production enviroment and/or used Dreamweaver as well? I'd like to know how your experience was, versus the two of them.

    I already have the majority of the programming team using SUSE for Java development. I'd like to move over our developers. (they build out HTML/JSP/PHP pages for us and the designers)

    The only thing stopping them is, is their love of Dreamweaver. (Which I've never liked, it's a resource hog)

    Josh
    • While good, Nvu does not have some of the advanced features of DW, such as templating with restricted areas. That being said, most of that advanced stuff probably shouldn't be used by most people since it makes for overly coded pages.
      • We've got a relatively disparate group of "web developers," who are, at least partially, retrained admin assistants. I know, I'm not happy about it either, but without the restricted areas, our web page would return to the mishmash of styles that these people think "look good."

        Seriously, one of my guys REALLY loves orange text. It's just not gonna happen.

        We'd love to move off of DW, as we're getting tired of some of its odd quirks. Anybody got any OSS recommendations? I'm all ears.

    • Re:SUSE (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd suggest you give quanta a try, it's much more mature than nvu. While nvu is pretty nice for building your personal web page if you don't know html or just want to get it done fast, imho the project is still to young to compete with dreamweaver. But it's certainly getting there.

      Btw., just thought I'd mention that Lindows is behind the development of nvu and that the chief developer for it is the guy who developed mozilla composer (on which nvu is based).
    • For non-flashy bread-and-butter web pages, assuming you control the server environment, you are better off with something like LAMP and Zope,CMF and Plone on top. Very easy to use, extensible, etc., and you can change content from any architecture machine or browser (pretty much) as a client.

      If you want lots of flashy graphics and flash animation, Zope is not the best route, though.

    • Here [codeweavers.com]

      Need I say more :) ?

    • Re:SUSE (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:37AM (#10450965)
      Nvu is essentially Mozilla Composer with a few improvements. I think, at least for the time being, Quanta is substantially more powerful, especially for server-side stuff. I'd say that would be a better plan. In the 3.3 release of KDE, it has a link checker, mass find and replace tool, and a ton of other things. Nvu seems to be just an HTML editor (like Composer before it), at least for the time being. Quanta is a full-featured XML (and derivatives, like XHTML) editor, and does PHP, as well. (also ColdFusion, I think...). It is a KDE app, so that should be factored in to any consideration, I suppose...

    • Nvu (Score:3, Informative)

      by musselm ( 209468 )
      I tried Nvu about a month ago but put it away because it lacks too many things I rely on in Dreamweaver.

      The biggest missing part at this point is the file-management Dreamweaver has tackled so well. In Dreamweaver you can define a local site as well as a remote site, work on local files and upload them easily, browse remote files, etc., etc.

      But Nvu so far lets you define one site, that site being your remote, live site. Too non-useful yet.

      That said, Nvu will get there eventually, and it should rival Dr

  • X.org (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:38AM (#10450297)
    "The X.Org Foundation's new X Window System X11R.6.8.1..."

    Will this include the new Composite and XDamage extensions?

    • Re:X.org (Score:3, Informative)

      by twener ( 603089 )
      XDamage is standard part of X.org 6.8.1, and the SUSE 9.1 binary packages of X.org 6.8.1 also contain the Composite extension but not enabled by dfeault.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:38AM (#10450300)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Personal Edition? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:41AM (#10450329)
    German news sites heise and pro-linux are claiming that Suse will not release a personal edition this time.

    However, it doesn't seem to be clear yet, if Suse will just not release a boxed version of the personal edition, or if they even stop the distribution of the personal edition iso for free downloads.

    Any infos?
  • ... when they only mention the desktop features of a release and non of the server-side features. Like - what DBMS's are included and stuff. I guess that either Linux really done it on the desktop, or Win2k(3) completely filled up the server niche, or it's just slashdot.

  • WTF ? Released ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rainer_d ( 115765 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:43AM (#10450345) Homepage
    It's a paper lauch !
    Currently, it's as much "released" as Longhorn.

    The correct headline would have said "SuSE 9.2 announced", or sometime like that.

    Rainer

  • NOOO!!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dante Shamest ( 813622 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:44AM (#10450351)
    I just installed SUSE 9.1 !!!!!! =O

  • Announced, not released (Score:3, Informative)

    by fstrauss ( 78250 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:45AM (#10450365) Homepage
    The title should read
    SUSE 9.2 Announced

    It's due for release early November
  • Under Novell's leadership they released the first free version of SuSE on ISO that I can ever recall hearing about. Before that I didn't know anyone who gave SuSE the time of day because they were the only vendor that was remotely popular without free CD images. Now, SuSE has the chance to actually gain marketshare against RedHat and force them to work harder on Fedora.
    • Up until Version 7 they had ISO images available. They changed their policy because they wanted / needed the revenue, and in essence there is nothing wrong with it, now is there?

      I bought 9.1 and I might download the 9.2 iso and upgrade, we'll see when the time comes.
    • Well, even though they we're stingy on the ISO downloads for a while (I avoided them like the plague then), I've installed 9.1 and I've been really impressed so far.

      Failing that, wouldn't it have been possible to perform an FTP or HTTP install? I know many distributions let you do it now, but I'm not too sure about then.

    • Re:Novell buying SuSE could be the best thing for (Score:5, Interesting)

      by theendlessnow ( 516149 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:59AM (#10451261)
      Under Novell's leadership they released the first free version of SuSE on ISO that I can ever recall hearing about.

      Then you must only be a few years old. Come on! SUSE had free ISO downloads clear up to 7.3... while that may seem ancient, remember 8.0 came out in 2002! Support for 7.3 and the ability (apart from mirrors that still exist) to get ISOs ended December 2003.

      SUSE has provided a mechansim by which their software can be downloaded... perhaps not as convenient as ISOs for some, but you can always get ISOs from your local LUG... I'm sure that someone there will burn you a set for free.

      Now, SuSE has the chance to actually gain marketshare against RedHat and force them to work harder on Fedora.

      SUSE actually has more marketshare than you realize. Do you not know that over 90% of large scale enterprise deployments occur using SUSE?? Why? Because Red Hat was VERY, VERY late to the game when it came to supporting things like the mainframe.

      When IBM was looking for vendor distribution support for the mainframe, SUSE dropped them a release on their doorstep. Red Hat came armed with contracts and "deals" (before they would even consider supporting the platform).

      Which enterprise dist was first to provide logical volume support? Dynamically resizeable live file system support? A graphical and TEXT(!) based administration utility? Key integrated Unix features like NIS and NFS? Even LDAP?
      Then ask, what enterprise dist was first to provide an unreleased private fork of GCC and its libraries, graphical-only administration tools (e.g. just like Windows requires a graphical head...), numerous kernel hacks that were not well tested, an NIS subsystem and automounter that is not well behaved or integrated, ...

      SUSE's motto is "Have a lot of fun!". Now... we can all argue that having a lot of fun doesn't put bread on the table... but the guys sure are motivated when it comes to trying to their best to come out with solid technology that's easy to use.

      IMHO, Novell brings the typical American business angle to SUSE (now they can be just like Red Hat). While some might argue that Red Hat is the most pro open source company out there... remember they also have vigorously protected their trademark (there's a whole story on that... but too long to write about here) to prevent those "free" CD's from bearing Red Hat's name. In many ways, Red Hat has shown more old-style IP protectionism than people realize. They're just a whole lot slicker (stealthier) about how they do it.

      I liked SUSE better as a private company. However, IBM needs a real enterprise level player to help them provide enterprise level solutions... so you can kind of blame IBM for the whole Novell acquisition thing.. it brings a large scale support arm (that dwarfs Red Hat) and the flexibility of SUSE which has always had a better Unix integration philosophy (Red Hat is a GNU/Linux dist, SUSE is a GNU/Linux dist with the experience of former large scale enterprise Unix types).

      Anyone who has been in the industry can tell you that Red Hat tends to have a "if it's not Linux, then it sucks" attitude. SUSE tends to have a "hey if we change this a bit, we'll integrate better with existing Unix systems" attitude. Now, which style is more enterprise focused??

      With that said, Red Hat was the first publically traded American based Linux dist. Being publically traded goes a LONG way with American businesses (you protect my tail, I'll protect yours). It's easier to make "deals" when you are dealing with a public company. It's a "safer" business situation for large enterprises (sort of a good ole boy system). Anyone who has help take a company from private to public can fill in the details about what I mean there.

      Well.. now there's Novell/SUSE. But the problem is that large enterprises got somewhat burnt by Novell in the past (doesn't matter if it's just perception... perception is all that matters). So, now businesses will choos

  • SuSE was better some time ago... (Score:3, Informative)

    by fionbio ( 799217 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:50AM (#10450420)
    I've started using SuSE in 2000 when I was in Germany. My previous distro was RH, which deeply offended me by shipping broken gcc 2.96 (and refusing to adopt KDE for a while before that). I was impressed by SuSE's stability/quality, a nice feature of being able to save a list of selected packages in the middle of installation (IIRC), and also the fact that my old scanning prog kscan was included in Alpha section (I was far from being a good C++ programmer when I wrote it...)

    Now I see an unpleasant tendency of including prerelease software in SuSE. As far as I remember, they were shipping a prerelease gcc 3.3, which caused problems with my (in-house) project and some prerelease of X11. Overall quality of the distro degraded. Also, I just don't get why they have Qt compiled with -DQT_NO_STL. As result, C++ programs that use STL have problems with system's Qt/KDE. This doesn't save memory/improve performance/etc., gcc shipped with SuSE has no problems with STL - so why?

    I don't know whether SuSE is improving or getting worse now, as I'm currently deeply buried in .NET brain damage stuff. But next time when I'll be able to work under Linux most of time, I think I'll switch to something like Gentoo.

    • Now I see an unpleasant tendency of including prerelease software in SuSE. As far as I remember, they were shipping a prerelease gcc 3.3, which caused problems with my (in-house) project and some prerelease of X11.

      I didn't experience this, cause I upgraded straight from 7.x to 9.1, which has a fairly standard gcc 3.3.3.

  • Suse is nice (Score:5, Informative)

    by BelugaParty ( 684507 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:53AM (#10450449)
    I found Suse to be a very good mix of windows (profesional grades) and linux. Having tried linux sporadically since '95, it is definitely one of the most polished distributions I have ever seen.
    Looks aside, I think YaST is one of the most useful configurator/installers/admin panels I have ever used.
    The downsides of 9.1 are its wireless tools (I have a broadcom chip, so I had to use ndiswrapper... switching between networks required admin commandline work.) The other problem, which is a problem with many linux distro's but still hasn't been addressed for my situation, is ACPI. Yes I use a laptop. No, Suse did not pander to me with easy to install packages... meanwhile, it did install at least 4 different packages for bluetooth, which is one thing I don't use.

    In general, though, I would tell anyone to give it a try.

    • Re:Suse is nice (Score:2, Interesting)

      by M1FCJ ( 586251 )
      I'm not a big fan or SuSE, I used to use RedHat all around the place... But FC1 and 2 were nothing but dissapointments for me. After screwing my Debian installation and waiting for too long for Gentoo to finish compilation, I switched all of my boxes, including an obsolete Sunsparc box to SuSE. I still hate Yast's limitations but I find its packages at least usable.

      Strange though... Two years ago I could reccommend at least five distros to people. These days it is either FC or SuSE. I won't reccommend Gento

    • I have to agree with you about Suse. My first kernel was ~.97pl? and in all that time, Suse 9.1 is definitely the best 'out of the box' experience I've had. Just switched from Fedora due to the FC2 install CD not even wanting to boot the kernel and FC3 being a tad flakey still. As long-time Debian fan, Fedora was a nice change in the 'easy-to-use' direction, and Suse is even yet another step along.

  • Latest? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by balster neb ( 645686 )
    Press release says "SUSE LINUX Professional 9.2 comes with latest open source functionality". But it only comes with GNOME 2.6. GNOME 2.8 was out about 3 weeks ago [slashdot.org]

    Anyway, lets hope this release has more than half-hearted GNOME support. The previous version included GNOME, but barely. It's going to be interesting to see how Novell balances KDE and GNOME in the future, given their conflict.
    • Oh, wow, 3 weeks.

      I'd rather hope they spend at least that long testing the entire platform they've put together for stability before releasing it.

      OTOH, SuSE has been a very KDE-centric distribution for a long time. I don't suspect it'll have changed much with this release.
      • But Suse 9.2 isn't due out for another month, so that's almost two months to test the final release. And they could have been working with development snapshots in the buildup, too.
    • Three weeks isn't long to test a new release of Gnome enough to be able to offer it in something that may be installed by corporate users.
    • I'd pick more on this, actually:
      GCC 3.3.4 and glibc 2.3.3 provide best performance for a Linux distribution to date.


      Huh? the latest gcc is 3.4.2 (a month old), but the 3.4 series have been out for a while now (since April) - and with improvements on ... uh, say C++ side, as it would pertain to KDE. Andit's in use, too - MDK10.1 uses 3.4.1. So how is 3.3.4 going to give "best performance" in November???

  • suse reflections (Score:2, Insightful)

    by uberjoe ( 726765 )
    I used suse for two releases (9 and 9.1) and I really liked it. For the most part it just worked, I think even my mom could have used it just fine. But I rarely learn anything about my system by having it work all the time. I've learned more about linux by using slackware, which has very few gui tools, and a lot of cli tools. In suse my wheel mouse was setup automatically, in slackware it worked perfectly AFTER I researched the problem with google and found the lines to add to my xorg.conf file. I guess
    • Not to criticize uberjoe but SuSE can't win here - and neither can anyone else.
      Some people (like uberjoe) think SuSE is too easy to use and on the other hand there are always people hammering on about "when will linux be ready for the desktop?".
      What's a distro to do?

      I use SuSE on my workstation, as I want an OS that *works* - and I like KDE.
      I'm starting to set up a server box for the fun/learning factor and I'll probably go for gentoo.
      I might even try debian or BSD, even if it is dying...

      BTW In older ver

  • Outlook server? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:04AM (#10450570) Homepage Journal
    Novell offers the Open-Xchange [open-xchange.com] server for SuSE (and other Linux) as their groupware replacement for MS Exchange. But to connect to it with Outlook, you have to install their MAPI store, iSLOX [www.suse.de], on the client machine. Yesterday, PalmOne announced they've licensed the Exchange server sync protocol [treocentral.com], so they can offer Outlook-type clients, that connect to actual Exchange servers, without the (usually clueless) client user having to add any software at all. Sure, it's criminal for Microsoft to lock down their protocols, locking competitors out of the market they dominate. But at least they're licensing it to competitors now. Novell's got a lot of money; why don't they license it to include an "Exchange stub" in their O-X server?

    • Re:Outlook server? (Score:3, Informative)

      by julesh ( 229690 )
      Because the license will almost certainly include an NDA, and ISTR they've released openexchange under an open source license now (is that right, or was I imagining it?), so they can't.
      • O-X is GPL. Novell sells SLOX and GroupWare as proprietary, or at least commercially licensed, compatible upgrades. If they licensed the sync protocol, and sold a servlet binary, we could all plug it in and use it. Or maybe just bundle it with the commercial SLOX, and thereby encourage more sales. Marketing by technical feature upgrade - rather than merely submitting PR to Slashdot, for cranks like me to critique.

  • What's advanced here? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:05AM (#10450586) Homepage Journal
    I paid for 9.1 Professional, Gaim was broke and you couldnt get a new 64bit compile from suse of the fixed version to save your life. They just farmed me out to ask the community for a fixed version. With no true workstation install you have to get all the compilers and such installed. And even then the 64bit version was missing packages that the 32bit version was not. So you couldnt compile a 64bit version if you wanted.

    I had high hopes of Novell buying SuSe only to see not much being done with it. Patches to broken applications if made available need to be recompiled in a timely manner and be available to the users. Telling a customer to find it on the web is the wrong answer.

  • So close! When will we get the perfect SME-server? (Score:3, Informative)

    by zuse ( 457033 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:08AM (#10450610)
    While this discussion is mostly about the fantastic new features of some new desktop package, what I'm wondering about is if SuSE has managed to improve SuSEs server setuptools.

    I'd been running samba/samba-tng network for the last 4/5 years on different distros but I have yet to see a distro that makes it easy to set up a basic serversetup for a small business network (dhcp,bind,samba and nfs) without having to use the commandline +++.

    The shocker is how close SuSE is to achieving this in 9.1 - but that they didn't bother to go the last mile.

    This would make it a kickass product for many SMEs.

    As of 9.1 the following things are missing:
    • Autogeneration of the initial LDAP-database. I know some think ldap sucks but actually most of the other parts of ldapsupport is allready there.
    • A yast interface for simple Certificate Authorty handling.
    • Simple configuration of dynamic dhcp/dns updates. I tried to use yast in 9.1 but it just plainly didn't work and was buggy.
    • A suggested roadmap for how you should use a SuSE server to integrate your Windows, Linux and Mac-boxes. This should include suggested loginscripts, ways to use the same mozilla profile accross OS'es and a simple way to set NFS shares to the same shares as samba uses.

    The press release says that they have adressed these issues (aehm, it says a redesigned user interface to permit easier setup of SAMBA, DNS and DHCP servers whatever that means), let's hope they have.

  • Notice They're Using Bleeding-Edge X.Org (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:12AM (#10450664) Journal
    The X.Org Foundation's new X Window System X11R.6.8.1 also contributes to overall better hardware support.

    So does this mean SuSE is going to be one of the first "user-friendly" distros to offer OSX-esque eye-candy like drop-shadows and transparency?

  • Kontact's Connectivity (Score:3, Informative)

    by twener ( 603089 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:21AM (#10450778)
    The poster seems to prefer Evolution, so please note that SUSE's Kontact has also Groupwise and Exchange connectivity besides SLOX, eGroupware and Kolab.
  • SUSE 9.2 is all well and good, as another Linux distro.

    But how well does it integrate with Novell's own products?

    For example, can SUSE 9.2 network mount a Netware volume? Or do we have to use Novell's 'native file access' and export it using SMB (ugh)?

    Also, if we can mount Netware volumes, can we do anything significant with them? E.g., can we set rights?

    Is ConsoleOne actually working (with all the plug-ins we have under Windows) with SUSE 9.2?

    I'd be pleased to hear that all these things were possibl

  • I, for one, (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:25AM (#10450826)
    welcome our new green chameleon overlords.
  • And I just got the Linux Technical Resource kit [novell.com], based on SuSE 9.1 :P

    Although I havent had a chance to really play with it and they aren't accepting orders anymore, it's really an interesting display of what Novell has to bring to the table as far as SuSE and their other products are concerned :)

    Well, there's always this weekend if I don't suddenly get a life ;)

  • now I can wait on my failed 9.0 = 9.1 upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

    by e40 ( 448424 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:36AM (#10450948) Journal
    Perhaps 9.0 => 9.2 will work.

    Basically, the upgrade failed (and left my system in a partially upgraded state, requiring me to restore from backup tapes) due to some internal error. Yes, I have an older system (dual Celeron 500's). Red Hast was happy on it before the upgrade to SuSE 9.0, though.

    Since I purchased the professional, I figured I'd get support. Not so. I was told, because of the error I got, I had to do a "manual upgrade", but that's not covered by professional support. And, I had to wait weeks to be told this. Perhaps it was the language barrier.

    Since the system involved is fairly critical, I deicded to leave it at 9.0. I'm a little wary now of SuSE.

  • I knew this was coming! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:41AM (#10451016) Homepage Journal
    This announcement was inevitable. Because I just got around to installing 9.1 on test hardware from the kit Novell just sent me a few weeks ago.

    From what I've seen of 9.1, though, it's maturing rapidly - and that's got to be good. Personally, I use it mainly on a VM under Virtual PC on my PowerBook. Performance is surprisingly good, and much better than XP under the same environment (with all the XP eye candy turned off). I also run it on a PC VMware VM, where it behaves well, and so on.

    I do think the two releases per year target is kind of arbitrary and silly for the most part, though. Novell/SuSE should be concentrating on supporting and updating the existing release over a year or so, and then release a new version when enough spiffy new stuff is out there to justify it. Other than Bluetooth support, improved wireless, and some new apps I don't see a lot of real justification for this version.

  • Nvu? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @12:04PM (#10451334) Homepage Journal
    Has anyone tried Nvu? I never heard about it until today. If it works, it seems like a great program, as I currently don't use FP (because it sucks) and Dreamweaver because it is expensive. I think I'll give it a try on my OS X box when I get home tonight.

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