SuSE 8.1 illustrates MS' fear

mkjanes at sonic.net mkjanes at sonic.net
Wed Oct 30 09:48:25 PST 2002


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Robert Hayes wrote:
| Great article from The Register talking about the state of the latest
SUSE
| release.
|
| The author makes a point of the comparability of this release to Windows
| 98/ME for ease of use and installation for a non-technical end user. Then
| goes on to say that it's only a small distance to equalling XP for the
end
| user 'experience'.
|
| Interestingly in the last paragraph he comes to a full halt stopping
short of
| a complete and enthusiastic endorsement for Windows users to switch.
|
| The article is full of hardware compatability information of the kind
linux
| users adore having in advance.
|
| http://www.theregus.com/content/4/26747.html
|
| .
|

~  As someone who has recently purchased and installed SuSE 8.1 on my
home system, I thought I'd relate my experience with the personal
($39.95) version. First of all, the initial loader REALLY wants to do a
GUI install, and it defaults to a graphical login. It seemed to conflict
endlessly with my SuSE 7.3 installation, so I ended up doing a complete
'install new system' installation. There's no kernel source here, just
the default (presumably a Pentium-optimized) and an AMD Athlon-optimized
kernel to choose from.

~  Second of all, it sets SCSI emulation on all IDE CD-ROM drives by
default which isn't a problem for most applications, but it slows the
data from my DVD drive enough that DVD viewing became noticably choppier
than before, when I could run the drive in DMA mode. The GUI
configuration tools offer no help in resolving this issue. I'm reminded
of Mark Street's comments on GUI's- something along the lines of they're
gooey and messy.

~   But, KDE3 is nice as GUI's go with a lot of applications, and the
recent version of GNOME is nice too. The current version of CUPS (the
Common UNIX Printing System) has printer drivers capable of printing at
the maximum 1440x720 resolution that my printer,a Canon BJC-3000, is
capable of. It's not the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink SuSE offering
of the past but there's still many useful software packages here. It'd
be a good choice for someone who basically knows their way around a
computer and wants to leave the world of Microsoft behind. Personally, I
should either have ponied up the (30) extra dollars for the Professional
~ edition or maybe I need to look into another distribution.

Overall, it's still not an XP-killer, but the lizard, the penguin, and
the man in the red hat are closing in...

Mark Janes
- --
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