“Those of you who have read my posts at the DesktopLinux.com discussion forum may have noticed I’m a fan of SuSE’s distribution. You might even be shocked by the title of this article. But don’t get me wrong, I love SuSE Linux 8.0, even though I’ve been disappointed by some elements of it. But let’s start at the beginning…” Read the review of SuSE 8.0 at DesktopLinux. In other SuSE-related news, ZDNews had two articles “SuSE 8.0 arrives without StarOffice” and “SuSE looks to stabilize Linux“.
SuSE Linux 8.0: Good Software, Poor Distro
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This guy makes a pretty gigantic leap from “Needed to run YAST2 Online Update” to “Poor Distro”. Sure, it sucks that he needed to get a patch OOTB, but does that make it a poor distro?
I think a better choice of words is called for… Either that, or this guy is REALLY sensitive…
… He had to DL a patch and now his entire world fell apart. If there’s nothing else in a 8 CD distro to complain about…
“… He had to DL a patch and now his entire world fell apart. If there’s nothing else in a 8 CD distro to complain about…”
Hmm… I seem to remember a few years ago when Microsoft Windows wouldn’t boot out of the box on AMD processors running faster than 400MHz unless you first downloaded and installed a patch. Otherwise you kept getting a Windows Protection Error on each boot and it made you reboot instantly.
The moral of the story? Patches are a fact of life with any OS. Even Windows. And sometimes it is so serious that even Windows will not boot out of the box on certain hardware without getting the patch first.
their YOU is a great system. I think they need to integrate it into the installer so that it can snag any patches and updates that are available, as well as offering you the option to get the Nvidia driver during the install.
they also need to do a better job on how the symlinks are put together. I think they ared code the settings rather than have a dynamic set up in cased where a cd-recorder is present.
another question is does the wheel mouse work out of the box now? I had to edit my XF86config-4 file to get z-axis mapping to work.
there are just a few nice little toutch ups that Suse could do to have a well running system, why do these issues permiate version upon version?
I use Linux at work and have the choice between SuSE and RedHat (mostly because my company operates under the delusion that RedHat IS Linux in the US and SuSE IS Linux in Europe – since we support Japanese software as well, I would think Turbolinux would be on the “approved” list, but it’s not).
I choose to use SuSE (and Debian, but don’t tell) because RedHat has always been a disappointment to me and SuSE hasn’t.
Anyway, I think SuSE 8.0 is pretty solid. It is one of the few distros that run on my laptop, and the only distro that does it really well. It was worth the money.
I bought Suse 7.3 not long ago and I like it. I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade this version to 8.0 without having to buy the distro again (ie., over the net).
Does anybody know?
I bought Suse 7.3 not long ago and I like it. I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade this version to 8.0 without having to buy the distro again (ie., over the net).
Does anybody know?
Yes. I can only buy the upgrade from 7.3 to 8.0.
I think it depends wether you have the ‘personal’ or the ‘professional’ 7.3. The upgrade price is +/- half of the new (complete) 8.0.
I like it also ! (7.3) for the long pleaide (pletora?) of
Linux software.
Too bad it doesn’t have StarOffice, I guess Sun is to blame not SuSE !! (no OEM version of SuSE:).
“Too bad it doesn’t have StarOffice, I guess Sun is to blame not SuSE !! (no OEM version of SuSE:).”
Why didn’t they just bundle OpenOffice instead of StarOffice? After all, now that the StarOffice 6 beta program is discontinued, OpenOffice is a better product anyway (no integrated desktop and other ugly “features”). Sure OpenOffice is beta, but it seems to be reasonably stable in my experience… Probably more stable than StarOffice 5.1 was actually.
Besides, now that Sun will be charging for future versions of StarOffice, I don’t think we will be seeing any Linux distros bundling it in the future. They will probably bundle OpenOffice instead.
This builds are always for develloping tests.
You can't pass it to a (SuSE) customer that is going to install it to write enterprise reports with 10 pages and might lose a week thinking and typing task in … 20 seconds.
(You meant 5.2).
“You can't pass it to a (SuSE) customer that is going to install it to write enterprise reports with 10 pages and might lose a week thinking and typing task in … 20 seconds.”
I’m not sure I undertand what you mean by this, but that is why you save your work on a regular basis. And OpenOffice is actually pretty good about document recovery anyway (normally it catched a crash before it happens and automatically saves your work before it bails out.)
(You meant 5.2).
No. I actually meant 5.1. The stability problems that I experienced with 5.1 seemed to go away with 5.2. But 5.2 didn’t get rid of the ugly integrated desktop. We will have to wait for 6.0 for that.
Why not SOT Office a Linux and Window Office Suite based on OpenOffice put togather by SOT Linux
I couldn’t agree more with you.
Plus it is very hard and slugish (slow) to load.
That is a nice feature of OpenOffice and SOffice 6 (no integrated desktop). Guess we will have to buy Mandrake ‘PowerPack’ too to have SOffice 6.
well perhaps it is because they do not add one damn thing to it except a diffrent color installer.
OO has a very nice installer so I do not see what a person could add other than a DB and other proprietary tools. but SOT does neither realy.