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SuSE 9.1 Professional is by far one of the slickest Linux distributions I’ve seen. YaST is an amazing tool that allows you to configure everything about your computer, much like Control Panel in Windows, but significantly more powerful (and user friendly). I’m also vastly impressed by the availability of RPM’s for SuSE - I was able to find Firefox 1.0PR, Thunderbird 0.8, and gaim 1.0.0 - all the latest releases - in RPM on SuSE’s FTP server. Try that with Fedora or Red Hat!

I’ve been a long time user of Red Hat products, but SuSE has really caught my eye. I’m not quite ready to dump Fedora on my desktop, but if my laptop continues to impress me with SuSE, I may have to. I’ll post a more detailed review as time goes on, but I wanted to let everyone know about my initial thoughts.

-Jeff

As I stated in a previous post, Fedora Core 2 comes with a crippled/incomplete hotplug installation. Unfortunately, for anyone using things like a USB Wireless card, this can cause problems. Some things I learned about hotplug:

First, see if it is installed and running:

/sbin/chkconfig –list hotplug

If off, you can switch it on with:

/sbin/chkconfig hotplug on
/etc/init.d/hotplug start

This should work on any SuSE 9.1 Professional system. Other distributions may vary. There are development packages for Fedora Core 2 that should enable a full working installation, but I was unsuccessful in getting them to work. YMMV, but I would highly recommend backing up before installing any kind of development/testing packages. It killed my installation.

-Jeff

Here’s what Bowman has to say about Vidalinux Beta 2.

Just thought I’d report some preliminary details about an installation of the latest Beta install of Vidalinux on a custom built IBM T42. Install goes pretty rough initially due to a lack of updated drivers on the Beta install. Naturally, this will be fixed on the final release. Beta is about a month behind, which was a crucial month in updates for the ‘ati-drivers’ package. Using the vesa driver at a setting of 1024 (opposed to the ATI 9000 at 2450), I was able to get my machine up and running without any sudden freezes.

I have a few immediate recommendations:

1. Update your kernel source using either the Vidalinux recommended kernel sources or the Gentoo sources. I personally recommend using the Gentoo kernel sources if you have any idea of what’s going on… but for most entry level, I would recommend using the Vidalinux custom sources.

2. Recompile and install the kernel. This isn’t totally necessary, but if you had to leave out a couple things during installation, you’re going to have to reinstall the kernel to get those things running on your machine!

3. emerge ’sync’ (Duh)

4. MAKE NEW USERS!!! - One thing I noticed during the whole installation - there is never a segment where you can add a user. So, adduser, passwd. Or, you can do the graphical thing and lose about 3 minutes.

5. emerge anything else you’ll need. Off hand, I noticed I had to emerge tbp (which lead to another kernel compilation), I had to emerge wireless drivers (which lead to another kernel compilation), and a few other ‘non default’ programs (tex, vim, etc).

Overall, the installation is significantly easier than the typical Stage 3 Gentoo installation, both with good and bad sides. It’s nice that someone else out there thought that having a GUI would knock out a few hours of the Gentoo installation process (especially the first hour, which is now done in about 3 minutes).

So far, I’d say if you’re wanting to install a very basic installation of Gentoo without all of the hassle, Vidalinux is for you. In addition, if you’re willing to spend more time tweaking than installing, go Vidalinux.

But, as with any installation, I’d recommend keeping a very good live CD around for any boot time issues that arise - like my issues with the video driver. My personal recommendation is the SystemRescueCd.

Thanks to Bowman for contributing this post.

I thought I’d post a quick note saying I got SuSE 9.1 Professional installed on my laptop this evening, but still have not successfully installed the drivers for my W200 Multiport 802.11b card. Everything else works, and I’ve downloaded and installed Firefox 1.0 Preview Release and gaim 1.0.0. I’ve got some more work to get the laptop ready to go, including either figuring out the wireless card or tossing it out the nearest window. I must study now - two tests tomorrow. Be well all, and have a good night.

I saw an interesting article on Barron’s Online about Sun Microsystems and their efforts to regain lost market share to successful Linux companies like Red Hat (who interestingly enough now boasts themselves as “The Open Source Leader”). Sun has recently started marketing workstations and servers based on processors from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. Sun’s lost market share can be attributed to their long-time proprietary hardware, most of which was overpriced and underpowered. It’s rare that I see a well-written article commenting on things related to Linux/Unix, so I definitely recommend checking it out.