This isn't a problem just a general comment ....

maybe an opener for a discussion

I see a lot of people (ok generally newbies) coming in with problems with Suse 9.x
I haven't done any analysis of the questions against the distro version but
do they all stem from the Personal edition?

I've preordered Suse 9.2 Professional and I hope I don't get half as much trouble with
that as seems to be reported here and on the newsgroups about probs with 9.1

So I am curious to know, does anyone out there have 9.1 Professional and are they able to
compare it to 8.2 or 7.3 Professional editions? (both of which I have)

Regards

Lesley B

I have Suse 9.1 professional.

It seems to work just fine.

actually, the only reason that you see a lot of error reports and questions, is that the millions of users that have no problems never get heard from. The main ones that post are the ones with a problem or question and the ones with the answers.

Jim

I'm currently running SuSE 9.1 pro and have used in the past 7.1, 7.3, 8.0 and 8.2 all Pro version. I have had very few problems with 9.1. I think that most of the problems you see are related to one of four things: Sound, Samba, Apache and Display drivers.

A lot of these problems seem to me to stem from the fact that the first three are all new packages in SuSE Linux. What I mean by that is Sound is now handled by the kernel and is no longer a seperate entity like it was with previous kernels. SuSE 9.1 ships with Samba 3 and not a 2.x version, the same applys to Apache, SuSE 9.1 uses Apache. now the differences in most of these things seem to be minor but when you as a user are not expecting a change it can be quite jarring.

Some of the problems are not just SuSE related, I'v seen many posts from people that use Mandrake, FC2 and other distros that have had issues related to the 2.6 kernel like the sound issues, and I think most of us know what fun it can be trying to get 3D graphics drivers installed and working properly, even with the nice YOU interface that SuSE uses.

I suspect that with SuSE 9.2 many of the issues found in 9.1 will be fixed as the programers and developers at SuSE will now have much more experience with the changes made in many of these large packages, and will have learned how to deal with them better.

In conclusion I doubt I will ever go back to using 8.2 now that I have 9.1, even though somethings do work a little smoother with 8.2, once you figure out the differences the new packages definetly proove to be a little better. Though at this point I wouldn't upgrade to 9.1 with the release of 9.2 so near, I would wait for SuSE to put out a live CD of 9.2 and give it a try.

As a new Linux user who has installed 8.2, 9.0, and 9.1 on his laptop since his first exposure to Linux earlier this year, I'd have to say that the majority of the questions are from people who haven't done their research. I've completely borked my system at least twice (due to n00b mistakes like trying to update KDE without dropping down to run level 3 and killing the KDM process) and have managed to bring it back from the dead by doing a bit of research.

9.2 is the first version I'm buying (already pre-ordered), as I've been super impressed by SuSE (not to mention the Linux community thats completely willing to help even the new folks).

i currently run 9.1 pro on 3 boxes(it was 4,but i'm tinkering w/slack 10 ) it runs so trouble free for me that it replaced SuSE 8.2 pro,Red Hat 9(boxed set),Fedora Core 1.
the biggest issue with SuSE,or ANY linux distro,seems to stem from hardware issues.doing the research first solves most problems.

Many thanks for your replies everyone

I agree re hardware issues - it's hard for the development stream to keep up with new hardware - even if some of them seem to be paid to do it. I suspect some hardware vendors have done exclusive business deals with MS. (Hopefully, it will turn out to be their loss one day)

FWIW I have had Apache 1.x series on both 7.3 and 8.2 with no problems. Am sure that Samba was available on both of those two versions as well but I never used it. I'd agree that sound shifting into the kernel is a 'new thing' and therefore probably buggy. Displays have always been an issue of one sort or another with Linux.

I once had a TFT (Iiyama I think) die and was never sure whether it was the card, the terminal, or dual boot RH and NT that was the problem.

and yes you have to do the research first... I'd agree with that.

My pet points of issue with SuSE are :

1. not providing gcc 2.95 This is the stable version of gcc used for kernel builds. 8.3 provided the world with a pre release of gcc v3.3 and I have yet to manage to install 2.95 safely i.e. being sure I wasn't about to wreck v3.3. Given that I bought the professional version and I think it's feasible that someone who buys the professional version would want a 'safe' 'industry-standard' 'standards compatible' compiler, I was a bit miffed that 2.95 wasn't available for install alongside 3.3

2. Twice I have had problems with code compile. Once was the winmodem code (no MOD_VERSIONS IIRC) and once was attempting to recompile my existing kernel using the source code provided on the distro. Having said that I took CVS out of rpm db and installed v 1.11.17 outside the rpm db structure (no rpm available) and I have recently compiled Apache 1.3.31 ok too. One thing that SuSE does tend to do is wander away from the 'structure of things' so there are some tweaks in the httpd.conf for v1.3.27 which are SuSE dept.

As far as wrecking a system goes, been there done that got the T-shirt

I was dual booting XP/7.3 and backed up to do a fresh install of 8.2. I completely missed the change in the 'how do you want to boot up' (GRUB v LILO, floopy v. hdd etc) and it's placement in the install procedure and managed to overwrite my MBR. That was the day I went totally Linux.

Regards

Lesley

forgive the hijack here a link about 9.1 and the partition table error fix
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html