There ARE a vew issues with SUSE 9.1 -- as there are with every other distro -- but let's sort them out professionally instead of saying " This doesn't work" so the whole distro sucks.

Most things can be worked out with a little time and effort and shouting and yelling at each other won't solve problems any quicker.

KPP is a recognized problem which can be resolved by reading the various comments on either SUSE's board or on the various reviews freely available all over the Net -- a bit of Googling will do here. Also the problems with KPP tend to be more KDE related than a problem with SUSE per se. As I don't bother with a modem I can't help on this issue. I have a network of computers using a shared DSL connection to the internet and have been using SUSE 9.0 successfully for ages. There are minor problems in upgrading to 9.1 but all of them have a work around. With the pro version you get MySql which I use and has yet to crash -- unlike another product on another well known OS which I'm sure you could name.

I believe the KPP problem arises because of the problem with these horrible "Winmodems" that are often built in to laptops / desktops. This is proprietary code which if you get it working at all you are lucky. Use an external modem. Cheap enough now.


I've had problems with Mandrake -- where the install wouldn't even work so ALL distros usually have some snags.

People seem to have a lot of problems with DVD playing and getting sound out of a Hauppage WINTV card

These are solved quite simply by :

DVD playing is fine -- uninstall the XINE stuff log on to http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/

download and install in this order

LINDVDCSS
LIBXINE1
W32CODEC
XINE-UI

Enable DMA on your DVD device
Set the file search to /media/dvdrecorder or whatever it is on your machine. The default will give you an error.

TV playing is also OK -- If you have a Hauppage WINTV card check that the audio setup uses LINE as the input -- most people usually have a cable from the WINTV card to the LINE on their sound card



I will say however that there are 2 problems with 9.1 which were the same in 9.0 and haven't yet been fixed.

1) Wireless cards are still a dog to configure. -- The Linuxant drivers work fine so if you are using Linux seriously it's actually a good investment -- and if you change distros or update your license is still valid. There is a fix on the Linuxant board for Suse 9.1. just download the driver and install. -- Tip if you have both an ethernet LAN card
AND a wireless card set the wireless card to HOTPLUG and the ethernet card to start MANUAL and not ONBOOT. So if you are "Wired" just IFUP ETH0. To check the wireless card type IWCONFIG.

2) Konqueror is STILL not 100% ready for web. It's OK for browsing but if you post in any forums the Java script doesn't seem to work properly. The screen won't on some boards scroll when you are typing and have got to the end -- you have to scroll a bit further manually and smilies on these boards won't load properly (it does on this one however). That is livable with but what is not is the strange behaviour of the screen -- you can be typing something in and then the cursor will jump to some totally different position leaving you with half a sentence typed in.

Also it crashes when you try and use the Real Player plugin.

I've switched to Mozilla Firefox and Galeon instead now for web browsing -- if you've got the Personal edition of SUSE you'll have to download these separately.

So is 9.1 useable -- yes.

Does it need more work -- KDE probably, Wireless yes but otherwise it's fine.

(I'm a pro photographer by the way and don't have a HUGE amount of time to debug loads of computer problems -- and if I can get this stuff to work I'm sure most people out ther can as well).

I have more annoyances than problems with Suse 9.1
Mounting problems which I am not sure are related to the 2.6 kernel (perhaps my lack of understanding of it), or Suse default tools or configuration.
The worst is with USB drives. I have two that both work fine mounting them manually with Debian. I can only mount one of them with Suse. Checking them out with fdisk (any distro) show 4 bizarre partitions on one that must be mounted on /dev/sdx1; and 2 on the other that must be mounted on /dev/sdx. The one with the 4 bizarre partitions kicks up 4 failed ghost mounts when plugged into Suse but can then be mounted manually. The other with 2 partitions kicks up two failed ghost mounts but I fail to be able to mount it manually. A digital camera with USB mass storage mounts automatically.
I sometimes need to press eject twice to eject the CD, and sometimes it pulls the drawer back in before I remove the CD.
I have had one driver floppy keep being accessed over and over and over as I viewed it. Much more than normally.
I don't have the answers to these yet.
I used Mandrake (8.0) when it had supermount problems which were solved by disabling supermount.
I am not sure if disabling some automount feature or learning more about the new 2.6 kernel is what I need to follow up on.

EDIT: I almost forgot the worst problem.
I have enjoyed using cdrecord and mkisofs to burn CDs from the command line. CD record doesn't work for me out of the box and I have been forced to use the K3b GUI burning program which was configured and working correctly out of the box. Dang.

I've read something about supermount and 2.6 -- but haven't followed it. I get data from cameras by using card readers / pcmcia cards and haven't had any problems. IBM Microodrive in a PCMCIA slot was recognized automatically -- just type yes to "New Hardware found -- the first time you use this type of device. If you get prompted for formatting / partitions just cancel and mount manually if you have to.
For external drives ( I have 4 X 250 GB Maxtor USB / Firewire) disks -- I connect them via Firewire as i can daisy chain these together -- not a problem.

There are some quirks on SUSE 9.1 and kernel 2.6 -- but it all seems much snappier than with the previous kernel so I'm sticking with it. I've got it on 4 out of 6 machines and will update the others this weekend. The KDE web browser / screen problem seems to be the "nastiest" feature I've found so far. I don't like Gnome so hopefully the good people over at KDE will fix this.

Sorry Mate but Suse 9.1 doesn't have a few problems but from my recent experience, massive problems that no amount of googling will solve. To name a few:

-Yast2 fails to connect to any server
-Installing apt will download the updated files but doesn't let you install them because of no gpg key
-Yast2 does not configure the Xserver properly. Half the screen is off the desktop.
-Yast2 does not configure the printer properly and you can't access cups using localhost:631 even as root!!
-hp-officejet scanner is not recognized even after manually running ptal-init from command line.
-KDE and menu are hacked so bad they are barely recognizable
-many web sites are rendered incorrectly in the browser
-I could go on but you get the point.

After spending 5 days wrestling with the free 9.1 iso I have given up. At least it formated my drive properly so it make reinstalling a proper distro much quicker.

I have not seen this problem.

Quote:

-Installing apt will download the updated files but doesn't let you install them because of no gpg key

Since Yast2 works perfectly for me under 9.1, I haven't had to try the non-SUSE supported apt program.

Quote:

-Yast2 does not configure the Xserver properly. Half the screen is off the desktop.

I have not seen this problem per se... but have seen issues across ANY and ALL linux distributions with regards to card and monitor selections. And it's definitely fixable... though some are apparently google impaired.

Quote:

-Yast2 does not configure the printer properly and you can't access cups using localhost:631 even as root!!

Configured my printer just fine. The root access issue has to do with the new security model in CUPS... it is a documented issue and the resolution is clearly posted on SUSE's support site.

Quote:

-hp-officejet scanner is not recognized even after manually running ptal-init from command line.

I'd look and install different versions of the hpoj package and see if it fixes things. Obviously (unlike you) SUSE appears to not be able to test all 500,000 printer combinations. Tell HP you want better Linux support (though HP is trying harder than many vendors... but obviously not terribly hard).

Quote:

-KDE and menu are hacked so bad they are barely recognizable

Huh? I don't even want to touch that statement. Sounds like you will ONLY be happy with a roll your own distribution. You might want to consider Linux From Scratch (LFS).

Quote:

-many web sites are rendered incorrectly in the browser

I'm guessing you are talking about Konqueror. Certainly you can use Mozilla, which is much better at redendering the plethora of Microsoft specific web pages out there. Microsoft ruined this for EVERYONE. Placing the blame at SUSE for a global KDE issue that is in reality a failure to render out-of-spec web pages.. well that's just silly.

Quote:

-I could go on but you get the point. After spending 5 days wrestling with the free 9.1 iso I have given up. At least it formated my drive properly so it make reinstalling a proper distro much quicker.

Good for you... however, since many people are running SUSE 9.1 successfully, without several of the problems you mention here, you just sound stupid... like a troll. You didn't even have the decency to post what the "proper" (and of course, superior to SUSE in every way) distribution is. Troll... troll... troll...

cjcox - I am not a troll. Why don't you do some searching and see the other posts I have made on this forum before applying derogatory labels on people. I have tried to help many people on this, and other forums attempting to return a small fraction of the help I recieve by reading them. The starter of this thread was implying that while SuSE 9.1 has its problems, you could work around them and get a system that works most of the time by doing things like uninstalling official packages and installing 3rd party apps. My experience was the opposite.

Good for you. I hope you never do because it is quite nasty.

I wasn't trying to use non-SuSE repositories. I was using the official SuSE mirrors listed in the scroll-down box. The error reply was "The directory contains no data" or something to that effect for more than half of the sites. The ones that did contain data would not install because of no gpg key. Manually installing the downloaded rpms using rpm -ivf worked fine.

Unlike yourself, I have not tested all all video card and monitor combinations on all linux distros. I have tested my video card and my monitor with RH (various versions), FC1&2, Mandrake as well as running XF86Config from the command line with Slackware, Debian Sid, Arch, Gentoo and many others and they all configure XF86conf just fine. If Yast2 does not know how to configure the monitor, it should just tell you and let you configure it manually. Instead it makes a half-assed guess at your monitor settings and writes them to the file. Of course I can and did fix the problem manually. Commenting out all the Model line entries and one other entry which I can't remember fixes the problem.

According to the SuSE hardware compability guide they did test my printer combination and my printer/scanner is 100% supported. The problem is not with cups. The problem is how SuSE implements cups. I use the latest cups version in 5 other distros and do not have this problem. I have the source code for hpoj and have had to compile and install it for some of the other distros I have used in the past. The problem is that SuSE has moved files around to different directories changed the names of some files. Going through this and manually creating symlinks is a PITA. I should not have to do it.

Your right, we do not want to go there. While SuSE has been a major supporter of KDE and believe their version is better than the standard version, I beg to differ.

I did install Mozilla-Firefox. Better, but still not right. espn.com is particulary bad. All the banner adds get stuck together vertically take up a whole page. None of the sidebars are rendered at all. Konq renders these pages just fine in other distros so it is not a KDE problem. I attribute the problem to SuSE's modifications to KDE. Could be wrong though but it is the only conclusion that can be drawn since it works prefectly in at least 3 other distros.

Sorry if I sounded stupid. Maybe they should change the name of this site to stupidlinuxquestions.org? There is no "proper" linux distro. I'm surprised you decided to pick on that. You should know better. That is why on my old hd there are 5 distros installed. None are perfect (i.e. my definition of perfect) but at least they all work. I bought a new 120gb hd and wanted to narrow the distros down to 3 and thought SuSE might be candidate for inclusion. It wasn't.

When attacking a distribution without any substantive information to back up AND then having the audacity to suggest there are more "proper distro"s (YOUR QUOTE) without suggesting what a better choice might be just leaves folks wondering about the true intent of the original post. I'm not trying to be mean here... you do sound sincere enough. But you certainly had me wondering.

1. I have installed SUSE 9.1 on over 5 different architectures... everything from i810 based chipsets to high end dual Xeon's with hw raid controllers... all of them can get updates using YaST without problem. I can only guess that you have a completely unsupported ethernet (unlikely) or that something is wrong with the way you installed/configured it (?).

2. SUSE's monitor detection is not as good as Red Hat's... never has been (well.. for past few Red Hat releases anyway). However, SUSE DOES allow you to change your monitor configuration at install time and post install time (how did you miss it?). You get the opportunity to test to see if X will work, and if not, it will allow you to change the config. Worst case, if you can't make it work, select that you want a non-graphical bootup. You can then use sax2 later to config (or bring it up via YaST).

3. Attempting to install from source outside of SUSE's supported offerings can lead to isntallation in /usr/local or the assumption that you are running a Red Hat like distribution (e.g. Red Hat, Fedora, Mandrake). You shouldn't have to add symlinks... but you might have to tweak a Makefile or config file before build. Personally, I'd either stick with what SUSE provides or go to a roll-your-own distribution.

4. I just visited espn.com with NO problems whatsoever inside of SUSE's supplied Mozilla. Not sure why your won't render correctly (could be related to your X11 configuration issue??).

I can't say what went wrong with your install of SUSE 9.1. It's 100% different from my experience. With that said, there are some real issues with 9.1, but mostly caused by the immaturity of the 2.6 kernel and drivers. Perhaps you would do better with SUSE 9.0? That's the only dist I'll put into production right now. With 9.1, there are certainly some things that you need to have updated via Online Update, but since you can't get to that.... it's pretty pointless. I'm not sure what to say about the use of submount either... there are too many packages that make too many assumptions with regards to device handling and mounting.

Good luck with whatever distribution you choose. Though SUSE has left a bad taste in your mouth... I do recommend that you look at 9.0. Get with your local LUG and see if someone will burn you a copy to try out. I know I'm waiting to see 9.2. It will be post SLES9 and SUSE dists really get stable after their SLES release.. but this is the new Novell SUSE... so we'll have to wait and see. I'm real worried about the Ximian boys... they can say whatever they want in the press... we all know they don't speak anything but Gnome.

I've tried all SuSE versions since 8.0. It is getting progressively worse, not better. At least 8.0 ran properly. My hardware has not changed. I have a P4, i845G mb w/video disabled in bios, a Nvidia card, a 3com 3c59x ehternet adapter and a soundblaster live! value. I does not get easier than this. All hardware is supported by linux, just not by SuSE which can't seem to configure it properly.

9.0 was plagued by many of the same problems, especially the printer. I could get it to work manually but at reboot, it would say it found a new printer and configured it automatically thus wiping out my old settings. Lot's of fun there, but I won't be doing that again soon.

I used only SuSE packages from official repositories. Upon first boot, it asked if I wanted to update the install and I said yes and about 30min later everything seemed to update properly. Unfortunately, I have been unable to update since. The repository that had updates was ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse. Downloading the updates went fine but none would install due to the gpg key issue. I couldn't figure out what the problem was but I noticed there was an rpm package called gpg of all things. I thought maybe reinstalling it may fix the problem so I downloaded it from the SuSE mirror....couldn't reinstall it because I did not have a gpg key.

I only used the official hpoj package from SuSE which interestingly enough, is not called hpoj. I was going to compile my own version but after looking at the work required, I gave up. Besides, the SuSE ptal-init tests all came back OK. Both the scanner test and printer command line tests passed. SuSE just was not communicating with the program properly.

Configuring the monitor is SuSE is a joke. A seriously bad joke at that. I select "1280x1024@75mhz" from the selection and upon restarting X, it says that it is running at 1280x1024@64mhz. Only manually editing out lines in the config file can fix this problem.

I am glad you like SuSE cjcox but for me, it has failed where other distros (over 15 now and counting) have had no problems.

just to comment on a few of the issues you are having, not that it will necessarily change your opinion of SuSE 9.1 but hopefully it will help others having similar problems.



Yast2 does not configure the X server properly. Half the screen is off the desktop.

when it comes to setting up the display in SuSE YaST is not the program you want though it will link to the proper program. the program you are looking for is "sax2" this will allow you to set your monitor, video card, mouse, keyboard as well as other peripherals. when you are done configuring things in sax2 it will ask if you want to test your configuration, in the test it will let you shift your screen as well as shrink and enlarge it. on my desktop I have similar issues and was able to center the desktop on my screen during the test. after you save your configuration log out, restart X (alt + E) and everything should look alright.




KDE and menu are hacked so bad they are barely recognizable

Most reviews and test Iv read seem to say that of the major Distributions that use KDE SuSE has done the least customizing to KDE, most of what they have done is visual, ie. icons and themes. Mind you this is only what Iv read and seen in screen shots Iv been using SuSE exclusively for the past 3 years and have not tried other distros outside of slax bootable CD in that time.

Wow, I really like this thread. . . . well what it was trying to do that is.

But we still have the odd person here that. .. . well I don't want to get this thread locked like the last one.

Let's just say I feel sorry for the people who are having problems and I wish them luck.



Anyway. . .

The ONLY problem I ever had with SuSE was that it was a bitch to get the ATI drivers working. . . but thanks to my Linux talents (given to me by using Slackware for the past few years, and I still use it.) I was able to get them running without a fuss. . .

Oh and it also did not detect my monitor but that's because I am using an old non-plug-n-play CRT. . . . But unlike the some people here. . . I will refrain from placing the blame on SuSE. . . because it is not the OS's fault.

Other then that SuSE runs like a dream. . . easy to manage, admin, and update. . . It is by far the best RPM based distro I have ever used.

I have to do everything from windows right now because I bought 9.1 pro for my fresh built amd64fx machine anly to find that no matter what I cant get my internet working... just wont activate my ethernet card... I am using the built in controller on the mobo for windows as I have the drivers, but I have tried installing a new eth card to use suse, and still nothing... maybe there is something simple I am missing, I have found no help in the help pages. It says my card is configured and recognised, but in the loading I can see that it isnt finding an ip addy... and I get some messages about it not being activated (yet) overall it has been a buggy install from the getgo with alot of overall strangeness. Some of wich has been alieviated simply by increasing the voltage to my memory as well as changing the timings. I have only been a linux user since November and Im mostly experienced with mandrake But I have learned alot in that time.... this has got me frustrated because it wasnt such an issue on my old hardware with 9.0
thanx for any input!
-C

" but thanks to my Linux talents (given to me by using Slackware for the past few years"

(Yawn.....)

I was referring to my 'talents' as in, the limited talent as a linux hobbyist. I was not labeling myself as a guru, or talented expert. Point being, that basic Linux knowhow solved my problem. . .

And as for your post. . . common man, why did you not let this die in that other thread that YOU got locked.

Let it go man, it's over.

I don't want to see yet another thread go down over your induced squabblings.

In spite of various ramblings on this thread Here's ONE VERY HAPPY CUSTOMER with SUSE 9.1

I really haven't had as many problems installing this as I have had with Windows --if I'm really honest -- let's face it I'm sure LOADS of you have installed and re-installed Windows dozens and dozens of times.

Different problems true -- but none of them "Show stopping"'.

I run an internal local area network of 6 computers that are used daily for Productive work. These are connected to a Windows server and have a shared wireless internet connection via a DSL modem and router. Not corporate stuff but still large enough to save a whole slew of money compared to using Windows and Microsoft Office on all these machines.
The Windows server will also be replaced -- but there are some issues of file security (internal business stuff -- not technical, hardware or operating system related) that need to be addressed before I can replace that box.

For Office use this distro certainly is stable enough and the latest Open Office really is perfectly OK for office use even if you are a die hard Microsoft Office user.


An unsung feature but absolutly brilliant for a network using Windows shares is the new integrated LAN Browser which gives ordinary users the ability to browse the LAN, and access allowable Windows Shares without using ANY SMBMOUNT COMMANDS. configuration or FSTAB entries so that ordinary users can access these files / disks.

This is ESSENTIAL for an office using shared drives and a windows server. Users have to be able to get at the shared drives without issuing any mounts etc .

Remember I'm talking about typical office users not technical people.

For typical office work this distro is the EASIEST I've EVER used and is probably the ist one that can realistically replace a Windows desktop without Windows users having to do anything too much different from what they were used to.

In fact none of my users have complained at all -- and now that SUSE has got the KDE desktop fonts sorted out the users are much happier and can customize their desktops to a much better readability than they could with Windows.

Weird Hardware, "Pirated sources compiled from dubious sites", and too much concentration on multi-media and playing obscure music formats probably accounts for around 80% of stuff not working.

If a typical Windows machine got fiddled around with even 1% of what some Linux users do on their own boxes the system would NEVER work.

If you start with a CLEAN installation and get the BASE system working first a lot of the problems will go away. Take backups before and after adding dubious software so you can always go back to a known working point and above all don't try and change more than one thing at a time otherwise you'll never find out what caused the problem.

So I'm sticking with my comment -- a slick professionally crafted Distro which Really can replace Windows on the desktop for most office applications.

chin808 what MOBO are you using?

I know that ASUS flat out refuses to suport Linux, and if you get Linux working on a ASUS board you are darn lucky. I have SuSE 9.1 running on a new ASUS board and one of the built in NIC's works fine, the second one only seems to work if the other is plugged in first, and a third PCI NIC I have refuses to work. The best Iv come up with is that these problems are ASUS related and that I'm luck that Linux runs at all on that machine, I think the reason is that my MOBO uses Nforce chipset and nvidia had done a good job with Linux support.