[ale] SuSE 81 review, kinda...

[Dow Hurst]

I've been working with the Professional set on an XP dual boot, my own Athlon pure linux box, my Dell laptop, and fiddling with getting USB and lm_sensors working.  So far I am impressed with what works right out of the box in the distro.  The CUPS uses Gimp-print and Foomatic (one of the CUPS solutions) to print fabulously on my HP OfficeJet d125 right out of the box at 1200dpi.  No config on my part necessary after the initial Yast2 based configuration of the printer.  I did have to know enough to pick the d125 OfficeJet driver out of the HP list.  The multihead support is excellent except don't enable hwscan in runlevel 5 if you have a monitor card combo that isn't known in the sax2 database.  You'll reconfigure on every boot!  Also, note that Mozilla is old, the pilot-link is old, and Yast2 is old.  You must update Yast2 Online Update, YOU, without being behind a firewall since the out of the box YOU won't do passive ftp.  After that initial update that is fixed.  Let's see, I had to download and compile the latest pilot-link to play nice with a USB cradle.  The kernel visor.o module recognizes the Palm USB cradle and M130 just fine once it is modprobed in.  The pilot-link just needed to be newer.  I had to rpm -e --nodeps the old pilot-link rpm before "make install'ing" the new package.  I've decided that SuSE's biggest weakness at this point is addition of software you compile yourself.  I tried to add all the configure flags that would put everything just like the original rpm did, but it is a real pain.  Now, how will I deal with any rpm based updates or package management?  Many software projects will have rpms available for RedHat due to it's popularity, but SuSE is not as likely to have such luck.  Just a caveat to make note of.
Dow

>>> esoteric at 3times25.net 01/23/03 10:50 AM >>>
I've got to say, I've been playing with SuSE 8.1 lately.  It is quite 
sweet.  I picked up the Personal version and installed it on 5 machines. 
  I've since picked up the Professional and am currently installing it 
on another.  So far it's been pretty flawless.  Two problems I have run 
into:

1. When installing on a box with an older trident card, I could never 
get X to work.  This happened with Mandrake 9.0 as well.  Doing a bit of 
research, I found a link off the XFree86 site referencing another driver 
and noting that xfree 4.2 has problems with some trident chipsets.  That 
driver works like a charm on two different trident cards I previously 
could not get working.

2.  When installing on a box with an S3 trio3d card, SuSE 8.1 Personal 
set the driver to "Vesa".  I don't know if that was intentional but 
again, reviewing the XFree docs, they say that chip requires the S3virge 
driver. Once I made this change, that box is working like a charm.

Waiting to see if my IEEE-1394 (firewire) card is recognized. ;)

-- 
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net

The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
Think about it...

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale