I have downloaded SUSE_9.3_PROF_i386_5CD_set and i can no transfer it to the 5 cd's. I have tried ....nero ...Easy Cd & DVD Creator v6.0. and the only one abble to open it is ultra iso.........but i am not abble to transfer it to the 5 cd..... i need help...pls


my ego is realy bad now ..haha

SUSE_9.3_PROF_i386_5CD_set is a directory. Can you see the 5 iso images inside of it? You want to burn iso images with each of the 5 CDs. I'm not familar with the programs that you mentioned but using K3B you would select Tools->CD->Burn CD Image in order to burn iso images

There are 3 ways you can obtain an official copy of Suse: you can either buy the boxed set, download the Live Eval version (for free), or perform an FTP installation (for free). You cannot however download the installation ISO's for free, and as described on Novell's website, it is Suse's policy not to make ISO's available. As a result, whatever you have downloaded would be unofficial and very easily could be corrupted by malicious software. I would not recommend that anyone use a distro of unknown origin.

Sorry, I don't mean to be a downer but the simple fact is that Suse (currently) does not release installation ISO's, so there really isn't any way you can trust the files you've downloaded. -- J.W.

Ok!

thanks now i know suse polici.

and thanks for all the answers.

just to be clear, suse's policy doesn't forbid others from making and distributing isos. it just says that they don't make them themselves. i've spoken on the phone to suse directly and have been told very specifically that it's not illegal for me to distribute suse iso's via bittorrent.

as for whether or not you can verify what you download, i'd dare say that there's enough people on this board, like me, who purchased the retail set and would be glad to post the content of their retail set MD5SUM files for you to compare to anything you've downloaded. this kind of community accountability makes it very easy for someone who does have the real thing to very quickly blow the whistle on me, or other iso providers, if we've deviously altered these files. i welcome any such comparison.

in suse 9.3 there's a new media-check option in yast that shows the md5sum of the complete file contents of the cd. note that the md5 shown in the yast media-check is different than the md5 of the "entire cd" because an "entire cd" md5 includes such things as track information and data padding that would affect the outcome. a file-by-file md5, like that in suse 9.3's yast, is not affected by these attributes which can be, harmlessly, structured differently depending on what software and settings were used to make the iso. again, i welcome any such comparison because i'm confident that what i'm distributing is legit. if it's not, i'm the first one who'll agree that it should be taken offline.

Suse has made it very clear that they do not support making the installation ISO's available online. If you are making the installation ISO's available online via a torrent (or alternative) then you a.) are hurting Suse and b.) intentionally violating their official policy. If you want to support Suse, then the ethical thing to do would be to take down your torrent.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be harsh, but if you want to support Suse, then you shouldn't intentionally ignore their policies. Suse could easily make their installation ISO's available online; the fact is that they don't. Full stop. -- J.W.

excerpt from SUSE's License, found in the root directory of the retail CDs and DVDs.
my bittorrent is in full compliance with suse's license.

this is a difference of opinion and philosophy, not fact. since people can download many other distributions for free it seems more likely that if suse was not also available for free that they would simply download a different distribution and forgo using suse altogether. thus suse is not harmed, and in fact benefits, because they haven't lost sales but their distribution becomes more widely distributed and popular. network admins, like me, are more likely to suggest that their organizations buy and use a distribution they are familar with. this is exactly what happened in my case and now the government organization for which i work is pursuing hundreds or even thousands of SLES or OES licenses... and it started with me first getting suse 9.0 for free. so, you see, my firsthand experience directly counters your assertion that suse is harmed in any way.

i'm not violating their policy. it simply states that they themselves do not currently provide isos.

the license agreement, which everyone who installs suse must accept, clearly states that what i'm doing is not unethical. in fact, what seems unethical is to deny people like me, who have bought the full retail set, the full use of their license. i'm a very ethical and legal fellow. i do not take these things lightly and would never knowingly violate a license or encourage anyone else to do so.

i think i already covered this above.

whether or not suse makes isos available themselves has nothing to do with the ethics or legality of anyone else doing so. their own license, and the gpl, clearly protect both the ethics and legality of end-users re-distributing suse via means different than suse's own.

knetknight - the license excerpt you quoted is the key to this discussion, and the critical issue (I think) is that the license lets the original buyer make and use unlimited copies, however, in the case of a torrent (for example) that person is not the one who's making the copies -- the person on the other end of the torrent is. In other words, if the original buyer personally wanted to burn a bunch of copies and then distribute them, that's fine, but that's a different situation than putting them online. Overall, you and I may prefer that Suse would decide to put its ISO's online, but at the moment they have chosen not to do that. Lastly, my apologies to you if my earlier post came across as too harsh; that was not my intent -- J.W.

it says i can "make and distribute unlimited copies". what's your basis for restricting the definition of "copy" to only mean physical media? i believe suse's license and the gpl use the term "copy" vaguely precisely so as to not limit the exact means of doing so. an iso is a copy, bittorrent is just the manner in which i distribute it.

as one evidence that the gpl does not limit the def. of "copy" to mean physical media i quote the following excerpt from the gpl, which is also published in the root directory of the suse retail media in the file "COPYING"
why would they need to make a specific statement about a fee being allowed for exchanging a physical copy if physical copy is all that was allowed in the first place?. i.e. if physical copy was the only meaning of "copy" then it would be consistent with the phrasing of the rest of the gpl to simply read "You may charge a fee for the act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee." The fact that they specifically reference physical copy here, to show that a fee is allowed in this case when it otherwise isn't, affirms to me that physical copy is not the only meaning they have in mind throughout the license.

no apology required j.w., i'm just seeking an honest and open resolution to this because there seems to be a great deal of mirk surrounding the re-distribution of suse and i honestly just want to get to the bottom of it and then do the right thing. i mentioned this before -- don't know if you didn't see it, don't believe me, or don't care -- but i've gone so far as to have a phone call with a suse program manager about this and was told that my torrent is fair play. thus, if suse tells me themselves that my bittorrent is allowed then i don't understand how anyone can continue to tell me or the rest of the community that it's not. i'm not trying to be disrespectful or argumentative, honest, it just seems that i get a great deal more resistance from suse users than i do from suse themselves and that truly vexes me. i've gone as far up the tree as i possibly could to verify that my torrent is within the rules and i've been assured by suse themselves that it is.

Thanks for your note knetknight. I respect and fully appreciate your position on this (believe it or not I'm likewise not trying to be a thorn in anyone's side or argumentative either) and what I think I'll try to do is Email Novell to ask if I can a.) get written clarification on their position regarding torrents of their ISO's and b.) permission to post it here at LQ. If so, I'll post back. Clearly we're both trying to do the right thing and follow the rules, and hopefully Novell can provide a definitive answer. -- J.W.

i appreciate that j.w., thanks.

This is actually a very interesting discussion, I've seen similar elsewhere (regarding Mandrake I think...). To me this is a question about whether (in this case) SuSE are willing to pay back to the open source community or not. Let's face it: If people wouldn't be giving away open source software for free SuSE wouldn't even exist. I'm looking forward to reading the answer from SuSE.

how'd that other discussion turn out, rokka?

It was a slashdot discussion. Someone posted torrents to some Mdk release and got a lot of reaction, and then some re-reaction. And then it just sort of died. As /. discussions tend to do

SuSE does indeed make iso files, and 9.2 was avalialbe in iso files.

It was a 3.3 gig DVD iso file, you can go to their ftp server or any of their mirrors and download it for free. I believe they will do the same with 9.3 eventually.

ftp://suse.inode.at/pub/i386/9.2/iso