9.1 download evaluation version crippled?
 

I'm running the single CD version of SuSE 9.1 which came from an online download promotion in July 2004 from the SuSE website.

It seems reluctant to install Apache at all, and while I would like apache 1.3.xx in preference to apache 2, I'm suspecting that trying to install anything may have been crippled on this particular version.

This is through the YOU system which appears to have correctly updated all the other files it went looking for online as the final part of the installation.

Anyone knowledgeable on this query?

It works very well apart from this quirk, and I have it installed on two machines, both of which show the same problem.

Sorry, I didn't get the point. What is your problem?

Do you miss software on the downloaded CD? No problem. How much do you expect to fit on a single CD? Everything you may miss is available from the FTP server. You can add a FTP server to the installation sources in Yast and install the usual way. Additionally, there are apache rpm's of different versions available from the same webserver:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/apache/apache/9.1-i386

Or do you mean something different by 'crippled'? Non functional packages? Please provide some details about these 'crippled' packages and what you think they should be able to do if they were intact.

Maybe I wasn't specific enough, so I can understand your puzzlement :)

This problem is not in any way associated with what was on the CD, which I understand is obviously limited in what can be provided.

For example, when I installed 9.0, there were (from memory) three CDs of the base system and applications.

I understood then, and understand now, that with the version of 9.1 which I had acquired, a considerable amount of FTPing would be needed in order to install as much software.

I did try installing several packages by FTP but they all failed. One of these was apache 2. I tried on different occasions, on two different machines. I forget which they were now. But I was reminded that it happened a couple of days ago when I went to reinstall 9.1 off this same CD because the installation broke when I changed monitors on the machine.

My enquiry was simply as if the single CD had been provided for PR purposes through a technical magazine, if the ability to install additional rpms had been disabled because of the product being essentially an evaluation or demo version.

If that is the case, that's fine, because it was provided free of charge. I am quite prepared to accept that. If that is the case, it will save me time and download bandwidth if I didn't try again :D

By crippled I meant the function of downloading and installing from the FTP server had been inhibited at source because the purpose of the CD was to demonstrate the rather nice features of the OS, as an encouragement to purchase the "full" version.

It sounds as though maybe the answer is no lol!

No problem. No offence intended. Hope none was taken.

I wasn't offended at all, however I expected a 'suse-is-crap-no-matter-what-you-tell-me' type of post ;)
Thanks for the clarification!

The only thing I can tell is that 9.1 is (or better: should be) fully functional when it comes to software installation. There are some restrictions when you want to run gnome instead of KDE and when you would like to access the repair system.

I once wrote a little thread how to get access to all packages via Yast, maybe you are interested to have a look:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=266647

The evaluation of Suse 9.1 Pro from DVD is fully-functional. I think (I could be wrong) that the limitation is that you only get one year's access to security patches via YOU.

The DVD contains many more packages than the CDs, but most of the packages the CD version is missing may be downloaded via YaST (just not commercial programs like Textmaker, Planmaker, etc.) YaST is not crippled in any way and you have full access to Suse FTP servers, and any other YaST source anyone posts for that matter. You may have to manually add them but beyond that it's a piece of cake.

There are some things I do not like about Suse (e.g., in 9.1 I found that Apache has a minor security hole, Samba was broken, and a few other annoyances including the inability to view encrypted DVDs) but all in all what most people consider bloat, I consider to be convenience (e.g., I don't have to hunt down 58,000 packages, make, find out a dependency is broken, grab the version of the library header gcc is whining about -- or symlink to a newer one -- and repeat ad nauseum. Suse is just about PnP as *nix gets.) If you don't want the "bloat," just as with any other distro, you can simply elect to not install the packages you do not want.

I've been using 9.1 Pro Evaluation for several months now to see if migrating workstations from Windows to Linux is truly practical for us (it is for everyone except my full-time graphic designer, and everyone who needs Visual Studio or to support Windows customers or anyone who needs video capture capability will dual-boot) and I am going to be buying 9.3 Pro for all of my workstations as soon as it is released.

I just tried 9.2 and the problems that irked me in 9.1 are fixed for the most part (Admin gui elements aside - I've yet to see a *nix admin GUI that actually works as well as Windows' admin GUI, so I prefer the shell prompt in *nix) but with 9.3 with KDE 3.4 coming right around the corner, I'm waiting until next month.

Suse is definitely not crap. Which distribution you choose depends on what you want to do.

I've had my days of building Linux from scratch, starting with seven floppies (around 1991 or 1992 when the kernel was around 0.6.0), moved on to Slackware, then Caldera (*puke* SCO MUST DIEDIEDIE!!), then Redhat, and since I've had my days of tinkering, kernel hacking, and Xserver hacking (Had a Diamond Stealth 32 card and had to write a bit of assembly to probe the card and find the registers so I knew what to change in the XServer), now I just want to use Linux as a tool, just like Windows, to get my work done.

KimVette and abisko00, I really appreciate the trouble you both went to, to respond.

On looking back I can see how what I wrote might have been interpreted as the start of a flame... it is much harder to communicate via forum and IRC - and even IM - than "face to face" where one can see body language, shifty and glaring eyes, lol!!

I too am looking at the migration to Linux from MS Windows, although I don't "hate" MS products. Windows is safe if you don't add any third party products, don't connect it to *any* network (including the internet) and never put foreign floppies into it :D

Thankyou for that link. I too tried to download Gnome as an option, and it appears I need to closely read your page. Good stuff there.

I have two elderly HP Vectras which just keep on working, and working well. SuSE is the only Linux which will talk to the Aztech sound cards in that model, which is a major reason I went looking in depth at SuSE as I do sound editing in MS Windows with those cards and I have no intention of muddying that!.

I discovered this with SuSE 8 (of which I did an evaluation download a couple of years ago or more.

I find 9.0 is nicer (I have maybe a 5-CD set), but isn't as up to date as 9.1/9.2 etc, which I thought I would like to run.

9.2 live CDs won't run on either because they insist on 256Mb RAM and these two machines each have 192Mb. That suggests that 9.2 installed would require the same 256Mb, but maybe I'm wrong there. Any thoughts please?

I would just like to keep them going without tinkering any more, nor throwing money at them :)

I think 256MB RAM are required to run KDE fluently, but not obligatory. The problem with the LiveCD is that the whole structure has to be installed in the computers memory (since there is no access to HDD's required), which eats up a lot of memory. But an installation on HDD will require less memory.

You should consider the download of the 9.2-FTP-ISO, which is actually an extended version of a Personal-ISO: more software, but still not complete. The upgrade works the same way as with 9.1-Personal through a FTP server.

Have fun!