[NTLUG:Discuss] A Review of Suse 9.2

[Kevin Brannen]

I was in a writing mood, so here it is.  I really should do a Part 2 
later.  If anyone is interested, please let me know.

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A Review of SuSE 9.2


Intro

This is a review of Suse 9.2.  While I already have Suse 9.0 installed,
I did my best to make this a new install by carving out new partitions for
it to install in.  This was not only to see what a new install was like,
as opposed to an upgrade, but to allow me a way to gracefully back out
if desired.  The reason for my caution is this is the first 2.6 kernel
I've loaded, as I skipped Suse 9.1.  I also have a few apps which MUST run,
so if those don't work, I'll have to return to Suse 9.0.

While I'll try to tell what it would be like for the average person, I'll
be the first to admit that my setup is anything but average.  While I
have a DVD burner in the system, for data backups as well as to watch
the occasional movie, I've come to the conclusion that the current crop
of backup devices for the average home or SOHO user just doesn't cut it.
Therefore, I've used this install opportunity to move to a RAID setup (I'm
assuming the reader is familiar with the general concept, if not there
are a multitude of sites on the internee for self-education).  So where
I deviate from what the normal person would do, I'll try to indicate that.

Hardware

I should probably start with a description of my hardware.  I have an
AMD Athlon 2400+ based system with an Nvida GeForce4 MX 440 and AC97
sound chip and a VT6102 Rhine-II NIC on the motherboard, 1G of RAM, a
DVD/CD burner, 3 80G EIDE hard drives, a 19" Samsung 900P, and a Canon
i560 printer.  This is probably a slightly above average home system,
but I do development work here at home so the extra power is required,
at least IMO. :-)

Also, the machine is dual boot as there are a few MS-Windows programs
I have yet to replace that need native access to the hardware; these
programs are all multimedia based (sound/video editing and DVD creation).
More on this topic later.

Because of my desire to go with RAID, I installed a SIIG 0680 PCI IDE
card.  This allowed me to have 1 80G drive for the native MS-Windows and
/boot and / for the install, then RAID 1 (or mirroring) for everything
else; i.e. all the data I wish to preserve and would backup if I only had
a way.  One of the RAID drives will be driven off the MB, while the other
will be run off the extra IDE card.  I am trying to eliminate single
points of failure.

General Install

With the hardware all in place, I inserted the Suse 9.2 DVD and booted.
If you've ever booted any other Suse 9.x system, the intro screen is
similar, but now the Novell name is present.

 From there, you select your language, then you're asked if this is a new
install, an upgrade, or a repair.  We obviously want a new installation.
The next screen you come to is the main install screen that's divided
into about 8 areas.  For a new user, you can take the defaults on about
everything except the timezone, where you can also set the date and time.
For a new disk, it would allocate the entire disk to Suse, in 3 partitions
of swap, /boot, and / (I think but I didn't do this as I had special
partitioning needs).  For software, it has a default set with KDE as
the normal desktop, though default plus Gnome was also a possibility.
For the more advanced user, you can click on the "Detailed Selection"
and pick individual packages.

If you're happy with all that, click on the install and 20-40 minutes
later it's finished and asking you the usual post-install questions: root
password, add a user, etc.  At the end of that, it lets you upgrade to
the latest patches with YOU, I did which gave me the MS True Type fonts
and the newest drivers from Nvidia.  Finally, it goes through a series
of hardware checks, and with the exception of my printer, it picked and
setup everything correctly.  Having recently had to do an MS-Windows
2000Pro install, I can say this was much easier, I didn't have go find
any drivers for the machine.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I've only had this install running for a few hours, so all I can comment
on at this time is the installation and my general first impression.

You definitely get value with this distro, but if you've used Suse before,
you already know that.  You get a DVD with both 32bit and 64bit software
(for AMD64 presumably), a DVD with all the source, and 5 CDs of code.
Upgrade price for those who have it previously is $60, for new users
it's $90.  I got the upgrade version, so I got the CDs & DVDs plus the
Admin Guide only.  New users also get a User Guide and few other smaller
books IIRC from my first time, but I can't really comment on 9.2 in
that fashion.

Yet even with all that goodness, they don't install ksh, locate, xosview,
or postgres by default...sigh.  Maybe it's just me, but I can't live
without those utilities.  Fortunately, installing them is easy with Yast.

The hardware detection was perfect, except for my printer.  I knew from
Suse 9.0 that my printer was not there.  I was hoping that a year later,
there would be a driver for it.  Alas, I'm still disappointed.  But wait!
A quick search  on Google shows there may be an answer if you're willing
to install 2 RPMs from Canon's Japanese ftp server (apparently they
support it over there but not in North America.  At work where we have
HP Laserjet 5MX printers that do postscript, it's all a breeze.

OK, checking out http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/221135,
got the 2 RPMs; I need libpng.so.2, grabbing it from my Suse 9.0 install,
and forcing the install with "--nodeps".  Yippee!  The test page works, plus
I can print from Mozilla, life has never been this good. :-)  Of course,
this was not something a Linux newbie would be expected to do, so we
have a ways to go still to make this easier.  Nevertheless, if you have
a Canon printer not supported out of the box, go check out the site
mentioned in the 2nd post mentioned in the URL above.  There are other
Canon printer drivers there.

I also have a USB scanner, I'll have to try that later, it's supposedly
supported.  But it isn't that important to me, I have an old  MS-Win98
machine who's only purpose is to drive the scanner, though it would be
nice to retire that machine as I only use it about 30 minutes a month.

My video looks exquisite.  The 19" multi-sync monitor will do 1600x1200
and my video card will drive it at 24 bit depth, all at 75hz.  This is X
Window from X-Org, v6.8.1, so no more XFree -- you can decide if that's
good or bad, I'm not sure I have an opinion at this time.  There are
2 things I quickly notice.  The first is that with Suse 9.0, if I
had screens with a light colored background, I could see the refresh
lines, even if I was driving it at 85Hz (e.g. at 1280x1024).  To say
that was annoying would be an understatement; but with the present
driver, that is gone.  Yahoo!  The second thing I noticed was that if I
run the X server, then go back to text mode (as I start in runlevel 3 and
do "startx"), the text screen is totally freaked out and Ctl-Alt-Del
is the only way to fix it.  Even the old trick of changing to another
virtual terminal and back does not help.  I see nothing in
/var/log/Xorg.0.log or /var/log/messages to indicate what the problem is,
more investigation will be required.  So in the meantime, it looks like
I'll have to start up in runlevel 5.  Of course, that driver from Nvidia
was marked experimental; still, this does not thrill me!

BTW, the video problem mentioned above bit me in the last phase of the
install as I did test it.  I managed to save that mode, but then had to
Ctl-Alt-Del out, which caused me to miss the last few hardware checks.
That meant I had to go into Yast to setup sound, which took all of about
2 clicks.  I'll have to experiment with different bit depths and
resolutions to see if that helps the video problem.

Speaking of Yast, it still looks good and is easy to use.  This must be
Suse's best selling point, it is an admin's dream.  OK, it still needs
a few more controls, but all the normal tasks are doable from it.

I've also yet to check out the CD/DVD burning software -- Real Soon
Now(tm).  But the Release Notes promised a new DVD burning too (other
than k3b).

KDE 3.3 looks nice.  I really like the new default of the apps at the
bottom being stacked 3 high instead of only 2.  That lets me see more of
my app buttons before they get very short.  I'll have to create another
user and do a Gnome desktop to compare.  I try to do that from time to
time just to check it out; but as I generally have to work with people
(at work) who are used to a MS-Windows machine, I tend to steer them
toward KDE, and so I use KDE to stay familiar with it.

One other surprise is that the default UID for users is now 1000 instead
of 500.  So my old /home is not me, ugh!  I had to do a "chown -R"
as root after I copied it over -- not hard, just unfortunate.

I mentioned that my machine was dual boot.  I'm doing my best to move away
from MS-Windows totally, but there are a few apps I either can't leave
behind or, if I must admit it, don't want to leave behind.  I mostly
solve that problem with VMware for the apps for which there is no Linux
equivalent.  Of course, the big question here is, will VMware work with
the new 2.6 kernel?  The VMware website says it supports 2.6.4-52 in Suse
9.1; I have 2.6.8-24.  After installation and configuration, it gives me
a warning that I'm beyond what it supports, but allows me to continue.
More importantly, it boots MS-Windows 2000, runs Quickbooks, and after
removing the kernel module visor.ko I can even HotSync my Sony Clie.
Life is looking good.

I think I'll be taking Suse 9.2 to work where we have Crossover Office
and test with that.  Crossover Office is a nice solution for those who
need the MS-Office tools, but don't need the whole MS OS available.

Conclusion

It's easy to grouse on all the bad things, and there are a few.  Even this
new version of Linux is still not totally ready for the "Average Joe",
but that's OK with me (which might be a fun discussion sometime).
Is Suse 9.2 ready for the above average user?  So far, I'd have to
say YES!  There is that video problem, but other than that, I'd classify
everything else I've run into as fairly minor.

I'm sure now that I've said that, I'm setting myself up for failure,
but that's life on the cutting edge.

Also, from the Release Notes (be sure to read them, they're short but
interesting), it does look like this should be a good release for laptops.

I'm slightly anxious to go crank up Postgres, then start one of my apps
to hit that while I'm using VMware and see how good that marvelous 2.6
scheduling in the kernel really is.  I also need to disconnect one of
my RAID drives to get a feel for how that works before I get any new
important data on it.

There's lots of good stuff here in 9.2; including Suse's motto which
Novell wisely kept:  Have a lot of fun!

Kevin Brannen
Copyright 2004
Freely redistrubtable as long as it's not for profit. :-)