Novell releases desktop ready SuSE Linux 10.1

[Nomad559]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31646

Novell said it has released version 10.1 of SuSE Linux and it's either free or you can buy it in a package.

The firm said it includes over 1,500 software packages including openoffice.org, Firefox, GAIM messaging, multimedia tools and graphics software.


Download Page
http://www.opensuse.org

DVD (not yet available)

[RoyGBiv]

1. I wish I weren't so impatient ...

The torrents for new SuSE releases suck for weeks after the initial release. I'm getting about 30 KB/s average at the moment download from 7 seeders, but the good news is I have 200 or so "leechers" feeding off the parts I can now serve, so I'm uploading at around 200 KB/s.

Feh.

Not that the FTP sites are any better.

Oh well. I can't really mess with it until the weekend anyway, so *maybe* by then it'll be done.

[Nomad559]

2. I got all five

ISO Images In about an hour.

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/iso

I will Install It tonight.

:)

[hobbit709]

3. I just downloaded the DVD iso

took less than 3 hours. The first 2 mirror sites only gave me 60kb/sec, then I connected to the TAMU site and got it at 360Kb/sec. It installed fine but didn't have the driver for my Samsung color laser.
did some reading and Samsung's driver for Linux sucks but evidently the Xerox 6100 is the same printer and it's driver works much better. If I have time later today I'll try to set it up. Still have to install the scanner-Oh Joy!

[RoyGBiv]

4. Speaking of 10.1 ...

I am very disappointed.

First, I don't know what logic moves a development team to change an integral part an OS, i.e. the updater, in a non-milestone release, but SuSE's did it. And what they changed it to is fundamentally broken.

Without going into a detailed critique, I'll simply offer that pretty much every bit of tweaking I had to do for 10.0 had to be done in 10.1, only new solutions had to be found. That is, the tweaks for my ATI card, my surround sound, my mouse, and various types of video don't work with in 10.1, at all. I have found workarounds for most of the issues, but not all, particularly graphics. My 3d accelleration is working, but the frame rate is about 1000 fps slower in glxgears than it was in 10.0. I have been told this is a problem with the new version of Xorg, which may have a kernel of truth. However, LiveCD distros using Xorg 6.9/7.0 I have tried to play with XGL do not have this problem at all. I can only conclude the problem lies somewhere in the way SuSE is implementing Xorg in this release.

Basically, I'm too frustrated with it at the moment to go much further. Every time I think it's working, something else breaks. That'd be fine if I were installing something like Gentoo or Slackware and making a project out of it, but in this case, I took a working OS, "upgraded" it, and broke everything. It fairly well pisses me off actually.

So, I'm back to 10.0, which is working great, and I imagine I'll stay with it and upgrade my own packages as I see fit for the time being.

[Deja Q]

5. If you use ATi video cards, stick with 10.0...

Of course, NVIDIA knows how to make video drivers - for either platform. Stay with them.

(ATi has a GUI-based installer, but there are HUGE problems... even after it's set up in 10.0. The 3D performance still isn't there.)

[RoyGBiv]

6. I got it to work ...

I had to use an old ATI driver I happened to have archived on my hard drive, though. Can't remember the version. I think it was the first one that used aticonfig rather than fglxconfig.

But, I went back to 10.0 anyway. 10.1 just has too much wrong with it to be called stable. I read that now patches are available that fix most of it, but I'm not personally in the mood to deal with it. I concentrate on my Slack box and use SuSE 10.0 otherwise.