I received an evaluation set of 4 CDs of the new SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and was wondering if this is equivalent to SuSE 9.1 Professional? What will SLES 9 install on a laptop (if at all)? a server or a workstation (with laptop specific components)?

Anyone have any experience with this yet? Understandably, SLES 9 is brand new. Any and all help would be greately appreciated.

-*-Bill

SuSE SLES 9 is not the same product as SuSE 9.1. My understanding is that the Enterprise Server package is really designed for enterprise-class operations and would be over-kill for installing on a laptop... But I may be mistaken. For a laptop 9.1 Pro is more than enough to allow it to do simple serving tasks. Stick with SuSE 9.1 Pro for the laptop...

JaseP,
Thanks so much for the response.

I was thinking that was the situation, but I was hoping... I work in a Netware shop and use GroupWise and many of the Novell tools that are available for Linux clients, so I was hoping some of those would be better integrated with the SLES. Maybe waiting for the SuSE Desktop that Novell is coming out with?

Any clue on what SuSE will do for upgrading my 8.2 Pro to 9.1 Pro? I think their online price was something like $59. or some such. Any better pricing out there?

I could go with the 9.1 Personal version, but I want to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL for web development and it was my understanding that those are not included in the Personal version, only on the Pro. Of course a download and compile from source would be the answer there, right?

Again, thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated!

-*-Bill

Don't mention it.

I can't see how that would make much difference. Novell hasn't really overtaken SuSE's work. Doesn't look like they are planning much in that regard either, at least that would effect the Linux distributions. My guess is that you could install their stand alone packages for Linux right over a SuSE 9.1 Pro installation without any problems, particularly since the recent merger.

Upgrading is a fairly easy process. I'd really recommend having a seperate /home partition and making sure it doesn't touch it. I've done it two ways on my two machines,... I did a fresh install on my Dell C640 laptop (making sure not to format the /home partition). That went fine. I also did an "upgrade" on my desktop machine. No surprises there, except my pleasant surprise that everything worked (which you can't say about Mandrake's upgrade process).

As for the price, get it as cheap as you can get it. $59, the disks only upgrade price, is a steal for what's included. Installing from a DVD is heavenly.

Stay away from the Personal version. It's very crippled in terms of included packages. My understanding is that you even have to download gcc for it... Pro's the way to go.

If you have a fast internet connection you could have the SuSE 9.1 iso from http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=2 for free then use yast and add this: ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.1/ as the new installation source and deactivate the cd as the installation source then get all the software you want for it apache php mysql and so on.