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Suse Linux 9.1 Professional Edition

Suse Linux 9.1 Professional Edition

List Price: $89.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good distro, but one major concern...
Review: After using suse 9.1 for a while I have come to the conclusion that it is an excellent distro. But... beware the USB hotplugging functionality. It is virtually broken in 9.1. If you have or are using 9.0 where just about everything worked, and want to have easy USB key functionality, it is my recommendation that you don't even bother getting 9.1 and just wait until 9.2 or the Novell desktop hits the streets. I have tons of USB devices in the form of flash keys and a USB multi-media reader and I was appalled to find that they wouldn't work automatically. Suse appears to be ignoring the many unsatisfied users' cries for a resolution to this travesty as this kind of situation isn't covered in the 90-day or so installation support and they will just ignore your requests or just straight tell you "sorry, we can't help you." Frustrating, as everything (especially this) seemed to just work fine in SuSE 9.0. Countless forum trips and lengthy post after another from many knowledgeable fellow Suse users have not been able to cure it. The only way is to disable supermount and manually stick entries into the /etc/fstab file and hope your devices mount to the directories you specify. A big headache for those that want to just plug in their keys and go.

Consider this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I like to break MS Winblows
Review: Any operating system have had its infancy periods. Remember first versions of UNIX, DOS, Windows 3.11 and so on. Linux is no exclusion from this trend. However, it looks like finally for an
average MS brainwashed Joe there is an opportunity to break out of MS slavery and join Open Source revolution. With each and every release Linux becomes more and more robust and easier to use for new comers. And SuSE is a recognizable leader in this area. Linux is not just one of many operating systems it's a whole new philosophy of sharing knowledge, constant learning and interaction with other people.
My advise to all MS whiners who wrote negative reviews on SuSE: Ether you turn on your brains and finally start to think and learn something new or just butt off and stay where you are.
Braindead with MS svastica on your start up screen.
For all others - May the Source be with you...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best SuSE Yet!!!!
Review: As a 10 yr LinuX user (Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, RHEL, SuSE, etc...) I can definately say the latest version of SuSE roX!!! Don't let any of the negative reviews discourage you. You will get a ton of excellant software that will make you productive right away and not add to the overhead of your computing environment. If you consider the costs of putting together a WindoZe box ($250+ for WindoZe itself, $450+ for Office (to write letters, type email, maybe do a presentation), $80+ for Virus software so you can read your email, $100+ for firewall software to connect to the Internet to get your email)) it adds up to quite a bit, and that is not considering hardware. All of the above software is INCLUDED with SuSE (or any other freely downloadable version of LinuX). And, while true that there is a bit of a learning curve, it is not as difficult as you may think. As each new version of Linux is released it is getting easier to install and use. Why do you think Micro$oft is so scared, they know their time is about up. They are so afraid that they are cutting deals to 3rd world countries to sell their wares for 1/10th what we are still forced to pay. And with each version of WindoZe that comes out, you need to upgrade your hardware just to run it decently. And security is an after thought with them, that is until another worm hits the net and you hear Micro$oft blame everyone except themselves for their sub-standard code. LinuX will also have security issues, but not even to the extent that M$ will lead you to believe. Once a issue is discovered with LinuX, a patch is immediately available. With M$, they will deny issues for monthes before releasing any patch, then blame everyone for not installing that patch when a new vulnerability brings down corporate networks everywhere. So do yourself a favor and give SuSE a try.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantastic! No problems, everything just worked
Review: Did a "Standard Desktop Install", leaving all the defaults pretty much in place. Added a few applications. SuSE recognized and correctly configured all my hardware.

I installed on a box based on a shuttle small-form factor PC: P4 2.8, 512 ram, Nvidia 128 meg geforce video card, onboard realtek sound, 17 inch Hansol flat panel. The only changes I made after installing were to change the display resolution (using YaST) from the default 1024 X 768 16 bit to 1280 X 1024 24 bit. I also used YaST to install the 3D drivers from Nvidia. It was all very, very easy. 3D works great. Sound works great. Display is beautiful.
Comes with an amazing selection of applications: Open Office, The Gimp(photoshop type image editor), CD and DVD burners, A good firewall, all the programming tools you could ever want, full blown web server capapilities, various high quality databases - just to name a few -too many to list. You'd spend hundreds to get the equivalent apps in Windows.

Blindingly fast. Very professional looking. Stable. No virus worries. No severe license restrictions. Fantastic.

I'm completely satisfied. I highly recommend SuSE 9.1 professional.

Dave

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Does not install
Review: Do not be fooled, you cannot even get this to
work unless you want to spend hours on user
forums and paying for support.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Over priced and over rated
Review: For starters there is no way to get 3d hardware (videocards) to work under this linux or linux period. You might as well have no up to date hardware because there is no support for it. Second, all these applications are available 'freely' over the internet for download. Third, save yourself a lot of money and buy Windows XP Professional upgrade like I wound up doing. It works with hardware, plays games and best of all it has applications worth using that have standards. After all the linux bugs, hunting for answers on user forums, I said forget it.

Windows XP Professional is the best overall operating system made.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Those With Very New PC's Please Download the LiveCD First
Review: Head to suse's website suse dot com and goto downloads and get their 9.1 live cd. This will not install the software but at least verify (In most cases) that it will work for you. If you're using a USB keyboard turn off "Legacy USB Support" first or your keyboards will not work properly. For those saying they're getting kernel panic's and their windows partitions are wiped is probably becuase you tried to resize your windows partition which is alwasy dangerous. Use partition magic and not Suse's repartitioner. If you install to seperate HD then you'll be fine and suse will automatically detect the windows partition and put it in the boot loader so you can choose windows or linux at boot. AMD64 Version is about 30-50% faster. And screams on dual opteron machines!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It's okay
Review: Hey everyone. Been using linux for a while. I can say that this is a very nice distro. But...

To all the Windows users considering the switch, I have some advice. Windows users are provided the comfort of reliable hardware support and everything "just working". This is so because almost all of the hardware vendors are providing full support for it. Many vendors have not jumped on the linux bandwagon and those that are doing so, are being very slow about it (prime example: ATI).

I have experimented with many distros and found SuSE 9.0 Pro to be one of the best ever, IMHO. It was fairly newbie friendly, good hardware detection, a little flexible, and pretty to boot. So I decided to give 9.1 a try...

...Well, I am typing this on my Windows box. I am having a bit of trouble installing 9.1 on my dual opteron box with my highpoint rocketraid 404 controller and 4 x 120GB Western Digital HDs. I have spent the last day and a half trying to get it installed the way I want it, with no success. I have identified what appears to be a bug with the HPT374 chipset as it cannot seem to read the early blocks of the hard drive on the first channel of the rocketraid controller. Consequently, that section of the hard drive cannot be assigned a mount point. I have not figured out exactly how much of the hard drive is unusable in this predicament.

Moments like this are not at all uncommon among the gazillion linux distros out there, including the other "commercial" distros. No matter how "user friendly" a distro may claim to be, you will most certainly have to use a bit of nerd elbow grease to get things going in some fashion or another.

I did install it to one of my hard drives just to lay my eyes on it. And let me say that it is FAST! Sexy looking too. Although, my Sound Blaster Audigy strangely was not configured correctly. I checked ALSA, and it was installed, but still no sound device. Strange. Will investigate more.

And, of course, no 3d acceleration yet, because I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and many problems have arisen surrounding SuSE 9.1 and ATI's drivers and UT2004 (which is all I care to play). I will have to wait until ATI finally produces some quality drivers (if ever), but I will keep the faith as I will never switch to nvidia. ATI just rules.

For the windows power users (which I still am one of), I have come to find that linux may not be your bag. Hardware IDE RAID is almost nonexistent in the 2.6.x kernel (if not completely unsupported), so software raid is usually your only option, which is completely unacceptable for most windows power users. I enjoyed my two hardware RAID arrays with windows XP, as I had some seriously fast transfer rates and low cpu utilization, I have yet to see performance like that with linux' softare RAID solution.

Also, ATI owners are going to have a tough time with linux, as per my driver comments above, just to get 3d acceleration going and playing your favorite UT or Counterstrike or Splinter Cell. You have to be a friggin' pseudo programmer to get the drivers working... and then you gotta cross your fingers in hopes that your game will even run with the winex or crossover office emulator included in many commercial distros. And like I have experienced, if it does run, spotty performance. I have had to hit the forums countless times to get my card going, and once that does get going, geting my games to run.

Now, most of this is not linux' fault. It is mostly the vendors at which to point the blame. But this does not matter to most of you windows users who are curious about linux and want to try it. Not when you've got several hard drives, a RAID controller to use them with, a $400 video card, a massive third party cooler for that video card to overclock it with, dual processors, and really fast CAS2 RAM. You don't want to hear that. You just want something to just work. You just want to fire up UT2004 knowing that it will run, you just want to render something in Photoshop with all the speed and glory that dual processors and two hardware RAID arrays can provide, and you know what, I don't blame you.

So, windows converts be prepared, as linux is no smooth ride in my book. I am still dedicated to learning more and using it. But I will always have my windows box to do all the gaming and more productive tasks, for now.

I guess the point I am trying to get across to the fellow windows users is: make sure you research SuSE 9.1's and linux's compatibility with your current hardware. This will require reading all the reviews available on it and a serious stretch on the forums pertaining to it. It will probably save you a lot of time and headache, and if bad enough, money.

So, to all those who are considering the switch, please take my words to heart. If you choose to make the move, just know what you are getting into. Good luck.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Suse Yet.
Review: I don't know why other's are having such a hard time with this. Perhaps they just need to learn a bit more about Linux :p The install itself was flawless and I had no problems whatsoever. After booting and logging in there where the normal problems with my sound blaster live card, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a little bit of work. This seems to be a constant problem and not related to Suse Linux in any way. I used to run Mandrake 10, and expected the speed and mouse click anticipation what everyone had been talking about. It wasn't there for me till I installed Suse. Overall any Linux ditro is not without it's problems. Yes, Yast takes a bit to load as has been mentioned, but that is no reason to complain. Overall I am 100% satisfied with my choice of Suse Linux. If you are thinking about Suse now is the time. It will only get better from here.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Suse Linux 9.1
Review: I downloaded the ISO for the Personal version and I must say that Suse did a very good job. The Personal version does not have the development tools to compile programs and drivers which are needed if you intend to install a Winmodem. You will have to have DSL to use this distribution. The Professional Edition will have everything. This system is very well put together and is more stable and robust than any other version of Linux I have tried.

Some people have notieced that if the system is installed more than once, each installation can be different. All versions of Linux does this because the hardware will cause some components to not display correctly. Even Windows XP will do this.

If you are feed up of virus alerts, attacks, and your anti-virus software keeps updateing itself multiple times a day which bugs the crap out of anybody, give this distribution a try.


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