Well I tried just about all free major distro's that were free except SuSE. Today I did the Softwaree ftp download install. Let me say I am very impressed with this distro. To coin the american journalist term "shock and awe"

Things I liked alot:

Yast - top notch. May very well be better than Mandy's MCC. Very easy.
acpi - Worked right on first boot. No configuring needed.
Speed - This Distro is fast. I haven't seen this speed since my last bootstrap
Software - As long as you don't mind the download - alot is there


Some things that I need to learn or not so good

1. No MPlayer - or win32 codecs due to legal reasons. - I can see Fedora or Redhat not having it, but SuSE?

2. Yast is a good installer but like MDK I want to find and add "respositories". Frankly not sure if SuSe has a system like urpmi - apt-get - synaptic.

3. Applications - SuSe has alot of good stock apps that would come with a distro of the shelf. But so far I cant find the amount of .rpms that Mandy has. (PLF)

The speed is great. For example. With my MDK9.2 system with services shut off and the "nice" used. the sound would skip and sound bad when playing NWN. With SuSE I could hear everything clear, and it ran much faster. I even could boost the graphic level up for a better game.

Im going to give it a go for about a month for everyday use. Things that I need/miss:

No root password (Im lazy)
DVD-Rip
RipperX
A good SuSE forum - Ill stay here first cause something tells me others here use SuSE.

Question: I think that Novell is an American company. If they buy SuSE would that make SuSE an American distro?

Info apt-get for SUSE:

http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/home.html#filecontents

example sources.list:

http://ftp.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/pub...-i386/examples/

Browsing the sources on:

http://ftp.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/pub.../SuSE/9.0-i386/

Looks like all the nice apps are there.

Does it work? I am not a SUSE user.

yes, apt-get works on suse and mplayer is there.

OK got apt-get install ok. I does wonders for dependencies. Funny thing is SuSE installed OpenOfffice with some unmet dependencies on first install. I had to remove it. Oh well I use abiword anyway.

My new problem is this:

linux:/ # synaptic
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 key (failed key comparison)

(synaptic:16741): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Any one else have this?

Did a google search on it. the SuSE finds were mostly german.

I'm sorry, I must have tired cybrejackle always asking for links to all these distros he forces me to try

this is from a pm from cybrejackle

I got that once...I think because I didn't have apt or something else installed. Do you have apt?

I do have apt and its works great.

I think it has something to do with .Xauthority

synaptic works great if I log in as root

Frankly Im scarred to death of logging in as root. Ill keep on it. Thanks for the links.

Actually, in SuSE you when you move to "root" you need to use "sux" instead of "su"

#sux
#paswwd
#synaptic&

Or check your menu, the icon has probably been placed there for you too.

cyberjackle you are my hero

Worked like a charm. I learned something today
By the way this worked also:

kdesu synaptic

Thanks

**WARNING** = If you break, blowup or smoke your box for doing this, don't BLAME ME! ;-)

Here is another way to move to 2.6 kernel in SuSE.


http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e...3-Dec/2783.html


I have not tried that method, but for me of all the distro's I run SuSE was the HARDEST to get 2.6 up and running.

Thanks for the help.

Also:
Does anybody know if SuSE will become a American distro if the Novell buyout goes thru?

If I went to a SuSE ftp site and download all data to make a local mirror for multiple home network installs how much data would I have to download?

Fun thing is to find out the differences of each distro. For instance mozilla installed in MDK9.2 is usually found in /usr/lib directory. I found mozilla in the /opt directory in SuSE. I always add icons(gentoo) to the /usr/share/icons directory in MDK. In SuSE its found again somewhere in the /opt directory (IM at work now cant check where).

Some more things about SuSE:

It configured hdparm automatically
acpi just works on first boot.
It found my winmodem

Im very familiar with apt-get / synaptic from messing around with Fedora. It works good but I just think that urpmi / gurpmi is just the best installer for .rpm's.

I not at home so I cant tell you the exact files but this was weird:

The very first time I start YOU (YAST) it said the OpenOffice had unmet dependencies that could not be fixed. I choose to ignore them. It worked fine so far.
As some of you know apt-get does not like that. So after a apt-get -f install - OpenOffice was gone. If I goto YAST and reinstall it and try apt-get it will tell me about the unmet dependencies again.

Like I said no big deal I use Abiword And If I really need a M$ file to be opened I have Office2000 on wine. So far SuSE rocks. and with the sites provided above Ill be busy for a while.

Does 'suspend' and powersaving features work as well?
What exactly is fast? Whole system or just 3D acceleration or booting proces?

Could you give details about speed differences like where it's noticeable ie. is it faster than mdk 9.2 with 2.6 kernel?

I'm asking because I've never tried Suse distro - and man is alway curious about alternatives (but reinstalling whole system for no differences is not what I want:)

if what I heard is correct professional (version) stuff isn't available for an ftp install. If it is you're looking at 3.2GB.

yes, I was very impressed with suse and its install/configurations, except for dma and cdrom/dvd/cdrw being off. Do a search in YaST for acpi. There's 2 gui apps for monitoring acpi.

I have been downloading this suse version the dvd pro version for the last few days it should be done tomorrow.. Im excited to try suse as i brows there site and see alot of thing's.. did all of you guys buy your version..? i did download there trial one that runs on cd and thought it ran very fast for a os that was running on a cd.. im wondering how it wil run on a pc now...

ftp://mandrake-forum.org/pub/Misc/

acpi works for me but not suspend or powersaving stuff. For that matter it was REAL buggy in WinXP also. As for fast distro:

Boot time was comparable to MDK9.2

How fast files opened and general process. For instance my NWN game runs better in SuSE. That was with the default (99) kernel. When I up'd MDK to the 2.6 in ran real smooth (until some big time segmet errors every time I tried to "su"). My best guess is that SUSE by default has a lot less loaded than Mandrake (just a quess)

To be honest I prefer urpmi/gurpmi to apt-get / synaptic. (as put on a flame vest) When I upgraded SuSE via synaptic (apt4rpm) it made the system real unstable. Instead of trouble sorting it I just cleared my entire Laptop partition and started over.

Since Novell is buying SUSE does that mean it will be an american distro?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Question to Europeans,

What is the patent issue like? You see according to "packman" he can no longer carry the DVD drivers.

http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=122

Is the PLF next? We may want to get libdvdcss while we still can. I think Lindows has the drivers. I think due to the fact you pay for click-n-run the royalties are paid. Not sure though.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My problem with SUSE9.0 Pro.

The "Local Network" icon. or just entering "smb:/" in konqueror or nautilus. It gives me a big time error about libsmbclient. Cant find the fix yet.

Tried this:
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-...ary/077928.html
didn't work

I read a few other "googled" that have the same problem. Tried a SUSE forum I found. Here is my post:

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.ph...st=0&#entry1373

They only have 300 or so members there but it seems nice.

A note: it worked for me when I did the ftp install, until I updated via YOW. Then it just stopped working.

>>
In the end

, as stated somewhere on this board it was mostly just llike Mandrake with different tools.

OK Vir@s from the SUSE forum found this for me:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66381

Not sure if its a KDE bug or a simple master browser problem. I havent tried any of the fixes yet.

Vis the 'legal' situation .... DVD etc...

I think the legal situation is this....

In other words this is another unwanted export

So far as I know this only applies to Germany, not the rest of Europe hence the link to get it from France. All in all its a problem, as you point out you could expect this situation with RedHat but with Suse (although the buyout by Novel alters this) ....

I was thinking of trying Suse (64 bit) when I get my next PC... so its interesting to see your thread.

p.s. not trying to have a go with the DVD thing.... it seems you start off with the pretext that a European distro can include things legal in Europe and that seems very sensible to me. However, no need to be defensive when you find out this is a new law being coerced/forced on Germany in return for trade.

I must agree. By NO MEANS do I want to make this into a political talk but:

I spent 9 years in the US Army. Loved it and have many good memories. As an American I hate the US strong arm (police the world) policy. Ill just keep it at that OK

You may have misinterpreted me a little. I was just getting a bit "scared" that European countries are getting silly like the US when it comes to copywrite laws. One can love their country and still dislike their actions.

maybe the mods should ( or could?) put the libdvdcss rpm in the misc. downloads here, for those who still need it?

AC, are you finding SuSE to be a decent ( I like it anyways) distro with no or little community support (except here ) So far I have, but as you said their forum only has around 300 people. I guess we could direct those 300 or so over here for all their questions but that would be mean

So far I love the Distro. Lack of support does not help though. When I do a google search I always seem to get the german pages And it does not always have the trnslate option.

But to be honest I have always liked the way Mandrkae sets up their menu. For instance I found kget in the "System" menu, not the internet menu. I quess it takes some getting used to.

The great thing about having 2 Distros installed is when I break one I dont need my livecd to recover from or "chroot" from.

To be honest I was shocked that their was not a section for SUSE in Linuxquestions.org forums

ac_dispatcher
Yeah I agree, cos it scares me too.
Somewhere you 'hope' you will be able to get a distro with everything you need (to justify dumping windows) included and without the PLF type sideways support.....

Don't get me wrong I think the PLF (and texstar) are terrific but somehow the fact they have to package certain things becuase Mandrake doesn't wanna upset anyone isn't right.

As I said on this (your thread) its 'normal' you would think for a European distro to include this....
What worries me is that other nations are strong armed as you say into complying ....
The US has lots of great laws and freedoms but some of the laws suck!!! Mostly not becuase of intent but partly becuase they are so open...

Patents are just one example where for one reason or another Europe feels it must copy the American example of Software patentability ... something almost every opensource software user finds abherent ....

As we discussed before but i'll reword patentability is an infingement on an individuals intellectual property when misapplied. That is if you have a programme YOU wrote and you copyrighted under the GPL a company with more money than you can go and patent the idea of your programme, copy and reverse engineer the code you used ... and leave you the programmer and your intended audience (opensource people) unable to use the programme legally becuase they own the patent on your programme IDEA. Of course your copyright still stands.... but of what use is it if you can't even run the programme without paying a royalty or it being illegal.....

The move by Germany to make decryption illegal is something being pushed from America, as a combination of trade deals and/or self protection against a 'friendly trading partner' ....

Like I said on my thread, its difficult for the US to handle, I guess its like being a teacher and telling your kids bringing you an apple is wrong becuase it encourages favoritism.... If Germany (or china for that matter) want to 'suck up' then its difficult to tell the US not to accept the sucking up....
However, when it involves direct blackmail (as in China) I don't like it.
The UK did the same thing with Malaysia over a dam being built and some helicopters....

I dunno, its kinda like some neighbour competition that devleops and gets outa hand....
Neighbour 1 puts up picket fence to keep neighbour 2's dog outa hios garden - then neighbour 2 sticks in a privet hedge ... before you know where you are they both have walls .... and eventually the competion changes into trying to get your wall overlokking the neighbour.....

It just seems very silly like that....

When its two neighbours usually noone gets hurt and when its nations its the same, neither nation actually suffers too much but the people of the nation do. Like the residents of the houses above who once had a fine view now staring onto yards of brick.....

The reason I was bringing this up is I really wanna find a distro that is usable (especailly the MUST HAVE) from the CD's and also UPGRADABLE so I can get outa the complete reinstall every time I upgrade.
Its really annoying to try and use Linux 'seriously' when you loose settings for databases and stuff every time you upgrade!!!
Equally its frustrating to be trapped in older version because you don't have the time to redo mysql or whatever afterwards + your never sure if its going to work - well eventually but not always quickly.

I agree

Matter of fact we talked about this a while ago.
http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?sho...wtopic=8001&hl=

I stuck with mandrake. But with the SUSE I just installed we will see. We all know urpmi cant handle complete Distro upgrades very well. From what I have heard apt-get / synaptic does a better job.

I did a ftp install of SUSE at the beginning of this thread. All went well until I did a complete upgrade via apt-get. It would freeze hard all the time after that. Thing is I cant remember if I had the unstable stuff listed in sources.list

So I may try again now since I have the 5cds. I have learned from multiple installs to use the --noclean option or copy all files prior to apt-get clean. Then I can use my local mirror to upgrade/update the Distro.

I have tried / liked Gentoo. I just didn't like the looooong time it took to install a program. 10hrs for OpenOffice.org!! I know its real optimized. Frankly with my 2.4ghz laptop I don't care, every distro is fast for me But I really like the fact that it was one of the most updated distros. After the first install no never have to do it again.

I Just prefer .rpm Distro's. I must admit I have never tried a Debian type distro yet.