SUSE LINUX 9.2 on AMD64

SUSE has been making a 64-bit edition of SUSE LINUX since version 8.2, released in April 2003. Originally, only the product's main components, such as the kernel and essential libraries were 64-bit enabled, but as the developers gained experience in porting applications to AMD64, the distribution became much more complete in terms of 64-bit support. Up until version 9.1 the 64-bit edition of SUSE LINUX was sold separately (at a slight premium), but starting with 9.2, the commercially distributed Professional edition now includes both i586 and x86_64 variants of SUSE LINUX. Last week, two months after the official release, a 3.1GB DVD image with SUSE LINUX 9.2 Professional was made available for free download and we took the opportunity to give the 64-bit edition of SUSE's flagship product a closer look.

We installed SUSE LINUX 9.2 on a system with the following specifications: AMD64 3500+ processor (2.2GHz), K8N Neo2 (Socket939) mainboard from Micro-Star International, 2 GB of DDR SDRAM, 2 x 120 GB Maxtor hard disks, Plextor PX-712A DVD/CD rewritable drive, and NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics card. The monitor was a standard 19 inch LCD from Mozo International.

We downloaded the DVD image from one of SUSE's FTP/HTTP mirrors. Although the main 'suse' directory is split into separate i386 and x86_64 subdirectories, the 9.2 directory under x86_64 is just a symbolic link to the same directory under i386, which is then further subdivided into i586, i686 (only a handful of libraries are optimized for i686), noarch and x86_64 directories. Similarly, the DVD image includes separate directories containing 32-bit and 64-bit applications. Compared to the boxed edition of SUSE LINUX Professional, the freely downloadable DVD only contains a subset of the available RPM files, but these are complete enough for most users. If missing applications are desired, it is easy to configure YaST's package installation module to point to one of the mirrors and download and install missing applications and their dependencies directly from an FTP or HTTP server. For those who don't own a DVD writer, SUSE also provides a traditional network installation ISO image, which can be used to initiate a SUSE installation from any of the available mirrors.

There is not much to say about the installation process other than it was smooth and fast. Some users claim that YaST is confusing in some places, but since we have previously completed many SUSE installations, we found our way around the maze of options easily. More importantly, YaST correctly detected and configured all our hardware, without exception. As for package installation, we selected a complete graphical workstation with KDE and GNOME, but despite the large number of packages that had to be copied from the DVD to hard disk, the installation was over in about 15 minutes. The only nitpick we had with the installer was the fact that it did not give us a choice between a 32-bit or a 64-bit system - the installer simply assumed that since the processor was of a AMD64 variety, we would automatically want a 64-bit operating system.

One interesting observation: unlike in SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9, Novell's name and logos are not particularly obvious in SUSE LINUX 9.2. The installation screen claimed that this release was designed for "technically skilled home users and Linux enthusiasts" (a term popularized by Red Hat when it was trying to convince corporations using its free distribution to migrate to Red Hat's subscription service), which perhaps indicates that we are beginning to see a more clear product separation between Novell Linux and SUSE LINUX (in a fashion resembling the split of Red Hat Linux into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core). Although it seems unlikely that Novell will move towards a completely open, Fedora-style development model in the foreseeable future, the fact that the networking giant is now providing the popular SUSE distribution in the form of a freely downloadable ISO image and that it has GPL-ed the YaST configuration utility, is an indication that Novell is finding Red Hat's business and development model attractive enough to borrow ideas from.

As was the case with Fedora, Mandrakelinux, and other 64-bit distributions we reviewed earlier, SUSE also provides several 32-bit applications and corresponding libraries and their dependencies. Besides the usual culprits, such as OpenOffice.org (rumor has it that the upcoming version 2.0 will have its code cleaned up and it will be possible to compile OpenOffice.org 2.0 for 64-bit architectures), other applications that were 32-bit only were the demo editions of some of the commercial programs supplied by SUSE, including MainActor (video editing software), Moneyplex (home banking software), Textmaker and Planmaker, but also RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader, Eclipse (a Java-based IDE) and FlashPlayer. Interestingly, after installing FlashPlayer (the plugin was found in /usr/lib/browser-plugins), Flash animations were displayed correctly in Konqueror, but not in Firefox.

SUSE LINUX 9.2 for x86_64 turned out to be an enjoyable distribution. It was much less buggy than Mandrakelinux 10.1, and as solid as Fedora Core 3, with an additional advantage of having included several multimedia and useful non-free applications (or scripts for easy installation of non-free applications, such as the NVIDIA driver or MS TrueType fonts) that are not distributed with Fedora Core. On checking out third-party repositories for SUSE LINUX, we were surprised to find that APT for SUSE now distributes an amazing range of RPM packages for x86_64, including multimedia stuff, as well as the latest KDE and Mozilla builds, all available through APT and Synaptic, and signed by their respective package maintainers. In fact, the number of available 64-bit third-party RPMs for SUSE was higher than that for Fedora Core or Mandrakelinux! And although the development of SUSE LINUX is still done mostly behind closed doors, it is amazing to see that the 64-bit edition of SUSE LINUX is now available for free download, while the 64-bit edition of Mandrakelinux is not. Quite a turnaround of events, compared to a few years ago.

---

(Log in to post comments)