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View Poll Results: What have your experiences with the new SUSE 10.1 release been like?
Very strong release. Well worth the wait.
3
5.00%
Some issues present. Still worth the upgrade from 10.0.
25
41.67%
No better or worse than 10.0. No major noticable differences in any department.
7
11.67%
Worse than 10.0. I'm dissapointed and feel I wasted time waiting and installing.
22
36.67%
Very poor release. Problems so overwhelming I never should have upgraded from 10.0.
Perhaps "/dev/tty/USB1" was just a typo but your PDA should be found on /dev/ttyUSB1. Just a note but the cradle isn't recognized for mounting unless the PDA is in the cradle and trying to communicate with the PC.
That was my typo....I meant /dev/ttyUSB1 I did have the PDA in the cradle and pushed the sync button, when so asked by the wizard in Evolution. I even followed my notes from previous installations, but no luck. I can see the PDA when I look in YAST>Hardware and in usbview, as well. Sort of has me at a loss.
Personally I've always had the most consistent connection when running jpilot. The timing of establishing the connection is a bit touchy. I always press the cradle hotsync first, wait for the connecting message on the PDA and then initiate the sync on the desktop. Perhaps following that sequence of steps will help with evolution.
I tried to sync with KPilot and think I have found the answer. I did manage to get one sync, but there is a pop-up message there indicating that the supplied kernel has an issue with the Sony Clie PDA's and most likely will not work properly.
After installing and using SuSE 10.0 shortly after it came out I was SUPER impressed with its operation. In particular I was able to get it to work on my Dell Laptop booting from an external USB hard drive.
So, when SuSE 10.1 came out I felt I needed to pay my dues and send some money to Novell. The price of admission, a retail copy of SuSE 10.1 was under $65 including shipping and tax. I felt I just could not go wrong.
However, I have had nothing but one trouble after another with the product. Now that being said, I can also say that as far as I can tell, I am up and running with all known problems solved and doing so it full 64 bit operation. None the less, I felt obligated to list the issues I have run into since day one of installing my new shiny copy of SuSE 10.1.
1. SuSE 10.1 did install without a problem and it did find all of my hardware, but I had been running version 10.0 before and had done away with all things that did not work out of the box. Things like using a Sound Blaster Live! sound card instead of built-in sound, using a separate Network card over using a built-in one, removing modems and TV cards before I ever got started and using a nVidia display card.
2. I was unable to get the online registration to work with my local copy of SuSE. That is online worked, but my local copy of SuSE never saw it. The main thing that happens locally is your update installation source gets setup automatically, but that never happened. At least not until I got updated from the large patch selection Novell finally posted. Then I could only get the registration to work using the terminal based suse_registration to work. To quote a Novell tech, he said the GUI registration is a little "twitchy".
3. The first time SuSE fired up KDE, my video went south and I could not see a thing until I manage to switch to the Terminal mode and load the already downloaded nVidia display driver. After my attempts to update my first load of SuSE 10.1 installation blew the whole thing up, I had to do a second install. On the second install I found that I had to reduce the number of colors in order to see a picture, but I had no mouse cursor. Unless I loaded the nVidia Display driver, my display adapter monitor combination does not work. Only using an externally loaded nVidia driver does it work. This was not true using SuSE 10.0.
4. As everyone knows the online update function was a mess and it did not work for me either, I did get YOU to work somewhat, but I could not figure how to to add local Directories as update sources. Finally I ran across the program "createrepo" which would allow you to create a local YUM repository and thus use downloaded patch files. I still get a ZEN error when adding the local sources, but they work just fine in YOU. Now that I am registered and patched, the online update does work just fine also.
5. After getting my monitor/display to work, got registered, got online updates to work I was down to only one problem, No screen saver would work. Even though testing each one would work, I only got a blank screen when the screen saver actually started. A Novell tech support person told me that they "Don't warranty screen savers" and thus don't care if they work or not. Its too bad if you want to use that function. I did many things, but reloading The MESA OGL driver files seemed to finally get my screen savers working again.
I did have other issues, but I can't blame them on Novell SuSE 10.1. And as I said up front, all known issues have been fixed and I have a very nice and very fast copy of 64 bit SuSE 10.1 working, ready to take on the world. If I was asked what to recommended.... Well I would get a copy of SuSE 10.0 and stay away from 10.1 unless you love pain and suffering. Perhaps 10.2 might do better.
If you're in the UK, check out this week's MicroMart review of Suse10.1. It's not good at all (similair to the guy from Austin above).
This sort of publicity is bad news for Linux in general but seriously bad for Suse, which is the 'easy to use' distribution.
I'm sticking to 10.0
Due to the bad reports I have for the 1st time refrained from buying it as a full package and just bought the download version.i.e: 1 DVD, 1 Add On CD
Until now I have been running SuSE 9.3 as both Server and Desktop OS and the earlier versions.
Heard bad things about SuSE 10.0 and waited for 10.1 to arrive as I expected it to be the bug fix.
Well, all reports here showed that it was worse then 10.0.
I ordered it at a low cost and installed it by throwing off my last Windows OS on this PC and installed it next to 9.3
The installation went completely smooth...love the new Desktop and default applets.
I heard all about zen and YOU etc. but gave it a shot anyway.
First went into the YAST control panel and registered with Novell, a few minutes later, it had installed a mirror for repositories.
Tried zen which actually did connect and turned orange showing me that patches existed for install, when tried told me that I didn't have sufficient permissions.
I used then You in the Yast Control panel and got 9 patches, which downloaded + installed.
It updated just fine for Yast, zen etc.
A message box came up to tell me that Yast needed to restart due to the upgrade. After clicking OK it then came up with another 92 patches. All were checked by me and were correct for my configuration.
After install, I rebooted the PC and it's happily up and running..no issues.
I am now on Firefox 1.5.0.4 and it never lost my Network settings either.
I have to disagree with most of you..maybe mine was the latest ISO download, but it's been very smooth sailing so far.
Even the Network Manager was working from the 1st start up.
I run my own Network with Server/Gateway..Switch..In a mixed Network of Linux/Windows and I am really happy with 10.1 so far.
All I did is set up my Network manually and it worked straight off.
I am sure that I will run into multiple issues yet..nut so far it's looking very good.
I just had to rebuilt my wife's PC after having to throw out Windows XP due to multiple issues.
It took me a 1 1/2 days to set up her PC to 90% functionality.
It took just 2 hours with SuSE 10.1 to reach the same level and I am now working on customizing it to my flavour.
So far my experience is the opposite of most other Users here.
Don't ask me why as I have just moderate Linux skills at best.
time passes. you got the repaired libzypp + yast updates on the first update. you should have tried it before the fix was available, it was breathtakingly bad.
If the current SuSE v10.1 DVD installs relatively cleanly, that's great news, and maybe I'll give it another shot in a month or two. As rshaw mentioned though, and at least based on my own horrible experience with the previous released version, what had been available in the past was (for all practical purposes) essentially unusable. I consider the SuSE team to be pretty responsive, so the fact that they're actively working on repairs is encouraging.
I am interested in checking out xgl, and maybe when I'm in the mood to experiment I give v10.1 a second chance. Thanks for posting
SUSE, please get the software installer working again, with the same speed, stability and command line programs (installation_sources) as in 10.0. And, please, get rid of mono as much as possible, I just do not like programs named wastemyressources.exe running on my box.
This update took longer than the four last updates together, and it's not yet finished, I just managed to get rid of zmd and to have a YOU repository added (registering just printed the URL, but it wasn't added, so I added it manually in "Installation Sources") and finally running. Still a long way to go, currently updating KDE and GNOME (mainly because of gimp-unstable). I hope it's worth the trouble.
I wouldn't say Xandros is much more user friendly than suse or PCLinuxOS.
I've been using ubuntu since warty and never found it to "just work", not everything anyway.
Suse is easily the fastest and best performing distro I've used on my current comp, running even faster than vector, kanotix and slackware (with kde).
I can't vouch for the package management system since I have been using smart since the initial yast problems and never had a problem with smart.
I've used a lot of distros over the past couple of years and suse has been the most reliable, best performing and stable of the lot.
Location: Los Angeles (the Great Cultural Wasteland)
Distribution: SuSe 10.2
Posts: 151
Rep:
I pretty much skipped 10, (well i tried to load it on a brand new laptop. Didn't go so well.) So, 10.1. bits of it were a little sticky at first- yes the whole YasT thing some network probs. etc. BUT, after i got Gurus' Smart package manager and @ a week later with updates...I love it.
I think I Suse waited another week or 2 to release, i bet half of those above that had problems and left, wouldn't be here complaining and would still be w/ 10.1 .
-of course my other laptop still has 9.3. no need to change it. it an old IBM a21m.
I used too love yast. I dont know what went wrong, but now i'll only use Smart. don't know if i could've got my sys working right without it.
Pengu ...get a life. this is a Suse forum, talking @ comparing old and new release. Not Ubuntu, slack and your 9 year old sister.
Once I get my 250GB HD I will probably install 10.1 and be frustrated with the rest of you. Although my system (besides the SB Live soundcard and TV2000Xp tv card) is relatively simple. At leats since I left SUSE 10 I have become familiar with SMART so if YaST is rubbish I will easily adapt. Have to say that since I have ventured to FC5 I have found updating form the console very comforting.
Suse: I have installed OpenSuse 10.1 4 times this week! This statement alone is perhaps enough to point out that something is seriously wrong with Novell's Suse (or me, of course...take your pick). 1st time actually was ok but it was kind of a test run and I wa still learning and thought I would be able to learn and then reproduce the OS later. Big mistake. My 1st install went well, actually automatically configued my network adapter and connected to the update servers during the install process and downloaded all needed patches (I have some unusual hardware and some of the patches are vital. The fact that Suse gives them official support was a factor in my choice of distro), application upgrades etc. Very impressive. Except I ran out of disk space. Suse allocated itself a very small root partition and a very large home partition; after updating /root was full. OK, time to use a partition utility and move/resize. I tried the utilities avaialable on Suse and also Gparted live CD. They could resize the partition from the end (where there was no available free space!) but not from the beginning...also none of them could actually move it! So, I decided there was no choice but to re-install...ok, it's inconvenient and time consuming but it worked so nicely before that I can live with it....bad bad mistake. In between me installing and making this decision (and unknown and unknowable to me) Suse's update servers went down. That was almost a week ago and they didn't reappear yet. I spent a lot of time assuming I did something extremely dumb before I did the obvious and pasted Novell's Suse server addresses into a browser and found the update servers are all broken. That is what I call a shitty shitty 5th class service. Yes I can install Suse, but no I can't update it with security patches and I can't get the patches I need to run my particular hardware. I thought maybe I can get what I need from mirrors/alternative sources but it hasn't been possible. Many of the alternative sources are not digitally signed which means they are potentially 100% insecure... Incredible that a person might be forced to use unsigned updates to the kernel, doesn't bear thinking about. Well I tried and tried and tried but until Novell fix their Yast update system their free open Suse is nothing but an insecure and semi-functional excuse. I could just about understand these kind of problems from a small community distro but from a huge entity like Novell it is actually a disgrace. Why should anybody trust them any more than MS? Personally I trust them even less because if I chose to use MS at least it is possible upgrade the kernel (i.e. go from 2000->XP->SP1>SP2) from a digitally signed source.
Other issues with the Suse installer: you can just let it go with default at every stage and it will do something different every time! Very entertaining but does not inspire confidence. If you manage all the packages yourself you can get a reasonably small install that might use only 130MB of RAM at idle. If you let it default and just do its stuff you mightn't get a any change out of 8 Gigabytes of HDD space and 512MB of RAM. So on the one hand it can be a nice small installation with moderate demands on your hardware or on the other it might just pick you up by your ankles, shake you down and take everything you have. Good luck and try another distro cos otherwise you might as well give Mr Gates his $80.
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