“SuSE is billed as a complete easy-to use Linux package providing users with a large set of programs. SuSE 7.3 is available in two editions: a Personal Edition and a Professional Edition. The Personal edition is primarily for Linux beginners and has a ‘relatively’ small set of applications included in the package. This review will focus solely on the Professional Edition.” Read the rest of the review over at the FirstLinux web site. Update: Another review of SuSE 7.3 can be found at LinuxPlanet. This particular author found the SuSE upgrade problematic.
SuSE Linux Professional 7.3 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s too bad that a full week after its “release”, SuSE 7.3 is not up on any FTPs.
SUSE has not offered ISOs of its distro for about 1 1/2 years, since the release of 7.0. they do offer a live evaluation ISO that runs off the CD if that is what you are talking about. I do not know if it is up though.
You can’t blame them for that, they’re trying to make a living from it.
I think Suse is one of the best Linux Distros out there, always feels quality
“You can’t blame them for that, they’re trying to make a living from it.”
Oh well, so much for Linux being free, eh?
$80 for 7 CDs with 2300 applications .. how many said applications are things such as emacs clones or apps that you can download off the Internet for free? And more importantly, can any of these apps match the functionality of their windows counterparts, such as MS Office? (And to even suggest that either StarOffice or KOffice can compare is simply laughable.)
Honestly, a 7 CD distro isn’t much better than my friend’s new HP computer (WinXP) that came pre-installed with 11GB of crap that she’ll never use.
Not free as in FREE BEER.
Doh
I don’t know how to reconcile the GNU public license with the fact that people need to make a living. I agree there are some worrying Linux developments out there, eg. Nvidia employing the guys at VALinux/Precision Insight to write closed-source driver code (?!?), which we are prevented (by law !) from reverse engineering. Some folks don’t realize this, but you cannot even copy and distribute SuSE under a GPL, because SuSE’s own tools (eg. YaST) are not GPL. On the other hand, there’s Windows XP as an alternative…
OK WorknMan laugh at me, but I think Star Office is now every bit as functional as Office XP. I can also freely generate PS/PDF documents from it – on Windows I’m forced to go and buy Acrobat distiller as well. True, StarOffice doesn’t have the voice recognition software that automatically types a random string of garbled, unrelated nonsense, no matter how clearly you speak into it, but I can live without that feature.
Unfortunately for Linux, installation is still an issue. I think SuSE have kept up the tradition of the Linux kernel numbering system, where the even-numbered releases are good and stable (eg. SuSE 7.0, 7.2), but the odd numbers are experimental releases, full of disastrous bugs and problems (SuSE 7.1, 7.3). The 7.3 kernel has some nasty power management bugs which can fail to power off your machine, or (much worse) power it off randomly whenever it feels like it. If SuSE had properly fixed these bugs and made installation a tiny bit easier, this would have been a serious contender for replacing Windows XP. Windows XP is not the answer. It does nothing you couldn’t already have done in Windows Me and there’s no big increase in stability. Who really believes that any piece of software on one single CD-ROM, vastly mass-produced, which can only be installed on ONE SINGLE machine, represents any kind of value to the customer at $200 a shot ? I know that MS have to make a living too, but XP is an insult to anybody with a brain.
I’m looking forward to SuSE 7.4
A.F.
Okay. Show me a MS site where I can go and download the ISO images of Windows XP or any earlier version, along with all the source code, and then I can use it to my hearts content without paying a dime. You won’t find one. As far as MS products being better…please…I’m sorry I had to get up off the floor…I was having a laughing attack. The only thing that MS is better at is marketing and capturing the hearts and minds of those who couldn’t use a computer if MS went out of business. If your computing skills don’t go beyond MS Office, then I think I would think twice before I started posting comments about other OSs that I probably hadn’t even tried. Let’s see…I have one system running Windows XP and I’ve ran into crashes at least twice a day over the last month. I have SuSE 7.3 on another system and I haven’t even experience one problem during the same time period.
ABS