| Review |
| Before we start, here is the
link: boot.iso.
Click on it, then save it to your hard disk. By the time you finish
reading this review the ISO image will have downloaded. It will only
take a couple of minutes to burn the 16MB image onto a bootable CD,
which upon boot, provides easy, logical and well-structured
instructions. Several hours later, you will be greeted with a
beautiful screen running on top of one of the most popular Linux
distributions - SuSE Linux 8.0. |
| Programmes and Sponsorship |
|
| |
| Quo vadis, SuSE? |
SuSE is an excellent Linux distribution
occasionally suffering from image problems and bad press. The
pendulum seems to swing rapidly - from major awards and recognition
to highly critical eyes of reviewers, from solid earnings to the
brink of financial collapses. Yet, SuSE is still around, enjoying
the good times and somehow overcoming the rough ones. It's a warrior
and survivor.
SuSE is sometimes criticised by the media and
the Linux community for four different reasons. The first one is a
thorny issue of not providing freely downloadable ISO images of
their products. The second is the marketing ploy of shipping two
editions of boxed sets, of which the cheaper Personal edition lacks
so many vital applications that it is impossible to recommend it --
unless you are buying it for the grandma. None of SuSE's main
competitors, such as Red Hat or Mandrake have ever resorted to such
lowly money-spinning tactics.
Unavailability of open beta
testing is another sore point and yet another area where SuSE
differs from the rest. Then there is that subtle arrogance of a
corporation's marketing department - quickly embracing any praise
that comes SuSE's way while flatly refusing to accept any criticism
as valid. This is a major difference between SuSE and Mandrake; try
to offer a critical look at an aspect of the Mandrake distribution
and they will react quickly, publish the story and open up for
suggestions and improvements by their users. Not so at
SuSE.
Amazingly though, SuSE still remains one of the top
Linux distributions. How did they achieve it? The obvious hard work
is no doubt behind the success. By implementing that legendary
German quality of being notoriously obsessed with precision, by
following clear and logical guidelines and by providing an efficient
and eye-pleasing environment to accomplish those daily tasks, SuSE
has definitely won the hearts of many. SuSE 8.0 is another great
milestone as you will shortly find out if you follow this story till
the end...
Screenshot 1: SuSE Linux Product
Page
|
| Making money from free software |
SuSE does not provide downloadable and
easy-to-install ISO images of their products as a matter of company
policy. The SuSE
Linux from Internet web page explains the reasons in some detail
and don't even think about asking about this subject on the SuSE
mailing lists -- unless you want to bring out the worst in some
members of the community. I am not getting into a discussion about
the moral issues of getting the free download without giving
anything back; I believe that it is up to each individual to face
the dilemma.
The fact is that SuSE 8.0 is now available for
free. With this release, SuSE has made extra effort to provide a
more user-friendly FTP installation routine -- with all the past
releases you had to download a set of floppy images, use an obscure
Windows or Linux utility to create the floppies, juggle them in and
out of your floppy drive when looking for the correct Kernel
modules... Things have become a lot easier, so go and get the new
SuSE now. You can always reward the SuSE developers once you find
out how much solid hard work they have been putting into making your
computing life that much easier... |
| Setting up the FTP installation process |
Some preparation is needed in those cases where you
won't have an access to another Internet-connected computer during
the installation. First get to the SuSE
mirrors page and choose one that is nearest you. Click on it to
make sure it's active and that it contains the SuSE 8.0 directory.
You will need to write down the exact path, for example:
ftp://ftp.suselinux.hu/pub/suse/i386/8.0/. You will also need to
find out the IP address of this mirror. This you can do from either
a Windows or a Linux machine by typing "ping ftp.suselinux.hu" on
the command line. The command will give you the IP information -- in
case of ftp.suselinux.hu, the IP address is 195.38.96.124. Write it
down.
Now you are ready to start the installation. Insert the
SuSE boot CD and reboot your computer. You will be presented with
what looks like a standard SuSE boot menu, except that there are
some extra options for more advanced installation settings. Simply
select the appropriate screen resolution by pressing one of the
corresponding F-keys, then press Enter to proceed. If you don't make
any decisions here, the installation process will begin
automatically in about 10 seconds with the default settings and the
screen resolution of 800x600. It is worth noting that a text mode
installation option is also provided.
Next you will have the
pleasure of meeting with a warning dialog box in strong red colour,
which is SuSE's way of saying that something has gone terribly
wrong. Don't panic -- everything is still exactly as it should be.
The reason for the red warning is that the system could not find the
full SuSE installation CD and, after dismissing the warning, the
installation will continue.
Now is the time to select your
installation language and keyboard (many European languages are
supported) before you will finally get to the "Main Menu". This is
about the only place where you need to do some extra work, notably
loading your network card modules. Select the "Kernel modules
(hardware drivers)" item from the menu, then "Load network card
modules" from the next menu. You will be very unlucky if yours is
not one of the many items listed. Once your network module is
loaded, press the back button to return to the main
menu.
You've probably learnt the SuSE menu drill by now, so
we can go a bit faster. Select "Start installation/update",
"Network" and "FTP". The next decision you need to make is the type
of network you are on - basically you can either be on a network
with a DHCP server (in which case you have a dynamically configured
IP address) or you are on a network with a manually assigned IP
address. Unfortunately, if you are using an ADSL service with a
PPPoE type of connection, you are out of luck here as the
installation does not provide for dialling your ISP. My solution to
the problem was to buy a broadband router with a built-in DHCP
server - this US$80 D-Link
router is a gem, even if you aren't on a network, because you'll
never need to dial your ADSL connection again!
But let's get
back to the installation. With the broadband router configured and
active, I went with the DHCP option. The next task is to provide the
IP address, followed by the correct directory, of the mirror site
which you will be using as the system installation source. If you
have been taking notes, you know what to type, but here is an
example anyway: based on my earlier selection, the IP would be
195.38.96.124 and the directory would be
/pub/suse/i386/8.0.
Was it tough? If so, now is the time to
take a break as no user interaction will be required for some time.
The system will connect to the specified mirror site and start
getting all the goodies... |
| Completing the installation |
After completing the above steps, the installation
will return to its normal setup routine. This is provided courtesy
of YaST, which SuSE has been perfecting for quite a few years and
which has an easy-to-follow and logical structure. It is worth
noting that, at this stage, the installation routine is equivalent
to installing the SuSE Professional edition, except for the length
of installation time. Depending on your Internet connection, the
upload speed of your chosen mirror, number of packages selected and,
to a certain degree, on the speed of your processor, the
installation is likely to last several hours. Since the package
installation stage is automated, the best way to go about this part
of the process is to leave it for the night.
Just a few more
steps before you retire. YaST2 starts with another language
selection screen which now includes Japanese and a few other
languages as well. A routine hardware detection and an
install-or-upgrade decision follows, after which you will see an
HTML-style layout of some of the most important settings (see the
screenshot below). Before clicking on the 'Accept' button, spend
some time configuring your boot loader, time zone and most
importantly, do the necessary partitioning. The partitioning tool is
impressive -- it allows for re-sizing of Windows (FAT) partitions
and provides comprehensive help in a sidebar. There are many
advanced options too (such as LVM and RAID) and you can even import
the partition table from an existing /etc/fstab file, which is
something I haven't seen before), but if you are at that stage of
your Linux learning curve, it is unlikely that you would need
further instructions.
Screenshot 2: SuSE Installation Settings
(screenshot by TuxReports)
And
this is it. As soon as you hit the "Accept" button, a bright green
warning screen will ask you to confirm that you do indeed want to
proceed with the installation. Say yes, wait a few minutes to make
sure that everything is exactly as it should be and simply forget
about it for a few hours. The installation will have completed by
the time you wake up in the morning.
When done, you will be
prompted to reboot. The boot process will include hardware detection
and some basic setup, if necessary, but in my case, SuSE's installer
detected and configured every single piece of hardware flawlessly.
The last thing you will have to do is to set the root password and
add users. The login screen will come up, you will type in the user
name and password and after several seconds of breathless
anticipation, you will be greeted by a screen not very different
from this one:
Screenshot 3: Welcome to SuSE Linux
8.0
Congratulations! You have successfully installed SuSE 8.0
Download edition. |
| Pleasures and annoyances |
This story has concentrated on the installation
process of SuSE's download (or FTP) edition. But installation itself
is just a small part of the user experience, albeit an important
one. So how does SuSE fare in usability, features and other
departments? Is it possible for an average Windows user to abandon
their current OS and never look back again? First, let me point out
things I liked about this SuSE release.
Trouble-free
installation. My experience with the installation process was
very positive. In fact, I didn't encounter a single bottleneck or
any illogical place and the installation was as smooth and
trouble-free as it gets. This is one major advantage of going with a
highly experienced Linux distributor; YaST has been in development
for so long, it has been near-perfected.
Great looks.
As they say, you'll never get a second chance to make the first
impression. After booting your freshly installed SuSE 8.0 for the
first time, you will be greeted with a very pleasant desktop
environment, all beautifully designed and logically structured. Even
if you don't like green, you will have to admit that SuSE's graphics
designers have put a lot of effort into making that desktop look
stunning.
YaST. The YaST configuration tool has been
given harsh treatment in some circles, alleging that any manually
configured options will be overwritten next time you use YaST. This
is hardly a YaST-specific problem. Most graphical configuration
tools are designed this way and you will have to make up your mind
beforehand whether or not to use it. Personally, I've found YaST to
be a brilliant tool. Most common configuration tasks can be easily
set up in simple dialogs, which should make any new user feel right
at home. After all, it is in SuSE's interest to keep new users by
providing graphical tools, rather than asking them to navigate
thousands of UNIX-like config files in VIM, right?
Screenshot 4: The YaST Control
Center
Online updates. Most distributions nowadays
provide easy graphical tools for post-release software updates, so
SuSE's effort in this area is not unique. Nevertheless, I was
pleased to see that the update selection included KDE 3.0.1 as well
as the usual array of security patches.
SuSE Help
Center. What a great idea! SuSE has combined all the HOWTOs,
FAQs, INFOs, READMEs, man pages, RPM package information and even
some popular books such as Grokking the Gimp into a
centralised, browseable and searchable database. Definitely
something I would like to see adopted by other distributions if they
are serious about attracting new users.
Surely, nobody is
perfect, so is there anything that could have been done better? Yes,
of course there is.
No DVD player? Hard as I looked, I
couldn't find one. All the more surprising after seeing this
statement on the SuSE product page: "Sound, video, DVD, TV - SuSE
Linux 8.0 contains an extensive collection of powerful and
impressive sound and multimedia applications." Of course there are
legal reason of not shipping the libdvdcss DVD decoding library, but
that shouldn't prevent SuSE from including xine or MPlayer, which
are useful applications on their own. The user would have been left
with installing libdvdcss as opposed to installing a complete
multimedia player. And of course, SuSE shouldn't place lies on their
web site! (Update: I stand corrected - xine is included in
the SuSE Personal edition, but missing from the Professional and FTP
editions.)
Online updates. This has been mentioned in
the pros section, so why its appearance here? Well, once you browse
the software packages, you will notice that many of them are
slightly out of date. The new 1.0 releases of OpenOffice and Mozilla
have not been added so if you want the latest, you will have to
by-pass YaST and do a manual download/install. This is not a problem
for many users as the previous versions are very usable, but I
thought I should mentioned it for those of you who like to keep up
with the latest development.
Download in progress
pop-up. Small thing, but extremely annoying -- during the
download of packages and their dependencies, this little pop-up will
appear on the screen and steel focus with every new package. Why
can't this be done in the background!? Do I really need to be
informed that a new download has started? |
| Conclusion |
SuSE Linux 8.0 is an awesome distribution. The
installation, hardware detection and initial system configuration
was flawless. SuSE has been working hard on creating a visually
pleasing working environment, easy-to-follow and logical
configuration tools and a comprehensive help system. A few
annoyances I have encountered were minor and do not diminish the
very positive overall experience. I would not hesitate to recommend
SuSE 8.0 to Windows users as a complete and adequate, if not
superior operating system replacement for their
desktops.
Have a lot of fun! |
| Copyright Notice |
Copyright (C) 2002 Ladislav Bodnar
Verbatim
copying and distribution of this article is permitted in any medium,
provided this copyright notice is preserved.
| |
| Test Configuration |
| Processor |
| Intel Pentium 4 1.4 GHz |
| Motherboard |
ASUS P4T mainboard
Intel 850 chipset |
| Video |
| Matrox Millennium G450 |
| Memory |
| 384 MB RDRAM |
| Hard Disk |
IBM 40 GB, 7200 RPM
IBM 60 GB, 7200 RPM |
| Other Storage |
RICOH CD-RW drive
Panasonic DVD
drive
Panasonic floppy drive |
| Network |
| Realtek 8139too (on board) |
| Monitor |
| ViewSonic VG150 |
| SuSE Specifications |
| Version |
| 8.0 |
| Release Date |
| 22 April 2002 |
| Kernel |
| 2.4.18 |
| GUI |
| XFree86 4.2.0 |
| File Systems |
ext2
ext3
JFS
ReiserFS
(default)
FAT
ISO9660 |
| Requirements |
i486+ processor
64MB RAM
2GB hard
drive
ATI, Matrox, nVidia graphics |
| Platforms |
Intel: 486DX to Pentium 4
AMD: Duron, Athlon,
Athlon XP
Cyrix
IBM |
| Features |
FTP install
YaST Configuration Tool
SuSE Help
Center |
| Bundled Software |
Apache 1.3.23
Galeon 1.0.3
GCC 2.95.3
Gimp
1.2.3
glibc 2.2.5
Gnome 1.4.0.6
Gnumeric 1.0.4
GTK+
1.2.10
KDE 3.0
KOffice 1.1.1
Mozilla 0.9.8
MySQL
3.23.48
Nautilus 1.0.6
OpenOffice 641c
Perl 5.6.1
PHP
4.1.0
Python 2.2
Samba 2.2.3a
Xmms 1.2.6 |
| Price |
Free
(Download Edition)
US$40
(Personal Edition)
US$80
(Professional Edition) |
| Support |
SuSE
Support Services
SuSE Knowledge Base
Mailing
lists |
| Terminology |
| SuSE |
"Software und System Entwicklung" or Software and
System Development.
About
SuSE... |
| YaST |
"Yet another Setup Tool", a system configuration
utility developed by SuSE
Whitepaper...
|
| LinuxCD.org |
|
| LWN.net Weekly Edition |
LWN Weekly
Edition
25 March
2003
- Front: The
Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers; The Debian Project
Leader election.
- Security:
Sterilizing disks; New vulnerabilities in ecartis and
apache.
- Kernel:
Reverse mapping anonymous memory; A new
file_operations method; IDE write barriers.
- Distributions:
Novell and SUSE Unveil New Linux Products; Conectiva Linux
10 Beta 2, Astaro Security Linux 5.0, Linux Netwosix 1.1; X
Windows On A Floppy
- Development: GNOME
Platform Stormclouds, new versions of FishSound, openMDX,
Net-SNMP, Zabbix, Plone, JGraph, Glade, GIMP, gThumb, Gfax,
galeon, AbiWord, FileZilla, GNU CLISP, Perl.
- Press:
Wal-Mart/Sun deal, Novell open-sources YAST, Lessig keynote,
CeBIT coverage, Dell and Oracle promote Linux in China,
CBTracker review, Switching from PHP to Zope/Python.
- Announcements:
Opera embeds voice recognition, Red Hat reports good
quarter, coverage of Novell BrainShare and Python Sprint,
ONJava Reader Survey, Japanese Mozilla Party.
- Letters:
Gettnig IBM to open STB docs; Release early and often;
XNotesPlus; Security.
| |
|
