SUSE 9.0 mumblings

[Collins]

I finally got around to putting up a SUSE PC again.  This time I plunked down 
the bucks for a licensed copy (professional edition); first time since 
Caldera days that I paid out money for linux!

My intent is to evaluate the product from a generic use standpoint.  I'm not 
adding all the bells and whistles that I normally prefer to use (xfce, icewm, 
sylpheed, etc.) but using what is offered (kde, kmail, etc.) to get a feel 
for what a more normal user would experience.

All in all the product is excellent, and the published documentation is really 
superb.  They actually provide as much doco for gnome as kde, for example, 
and the brief but adequate excplanations of DNS, Apache, et., etc. are really 
outstanding.

The install process was practically flawless.  All my wierd peripherals 
(onboard SIS video, audio, and NIC) were detected and setup properly.  USB 
worked without a hitch (plugged in a kodak camera and downloaded thumbnails 
using gphoto2 without a burp).  The YaST printer dialogs setup my Z53 printer 
aok.  Alas, there's still the CUPS preference for a4 pagesize that you need 
to fix; I always forget that until I've wasted a few pages!

The only aspect of the install process that I didn't like was when I needed to 
reinstall; most users will never see this behavior.  This is a labrat machine 
that I reconstruct at will.  The first install used reiserfs which I haven't 
tried in a long time.  After 2 days, something "marvelous" happened.  I added 
a new partition or two and rebooted, only to discover that my reiserfs root 
partition came up read only.  All the data was readable, but no combination 
of reiser fsck, rebuild tree, etc., etc. would make the partition writable 
again.  Reiser seemed to think that my superblock had moved, even though no 
change to the partition origin took place, and of course it couldn't make 
proper use of the journal without being able to decode the superblock.  Oh 
well, note to never use that POS again, so I backed up my email, and started 
over with my old standby ext3.  When installing with an existing linux 
partition, SUSE always leaves the existing root intact and picks install to 
any empty partition if it exists.  The only way I could find to overwrite my 
existing root was to delete the empty partition.  There might be a way around 
this, but it certainly was not obvious.  System rebuilt ok, and no further 
problems using ext3, even though I've added/deleted partitions several times.

Although I have a long standing preference for setting up config files 
manually, there is much to be said for YaST as far as ease of use.  Once 
again, I've primarily used YaST to get the "user look and feel" of the 
product, and I've been quite happy with the results.  Reading the supplied 
documentation allows you to track most of the "magic" that is used after the 
fact.  I especially like the fact that SUSE has had the good sense to provide 
the dependancy checking that I've always missed in an RPM based system.  If 
you attempt to install a new package with YaST, YaST will prompt you and 
offer to install the missing prerequisites.  Kudos to SUSE.  Now if they 
would just provide the sort of generic repository of software that I have 
with gentoo instead of only the CD/DVD versions (mostly up to date but a 
few .points back level) plus critical patches.  Ah well: more steps forward 
than backward, at least.

The automatic setup for X produced a usable if not very readable startup for 
my old 15" monitor.  After adjusting it for 800x600 it's livable.  
Unfortunately some of the kde dialogs aren't setup for anything smaller than 
1000x768, so I have to mother them around with alt-drag.

I setup NFS between this box and my gentoo system quite easily with YaST and 
manual effort on the gentoo box.  More on this in a separate note.

SUSE 9.0 is an excellent product.

-- 
Collins