Suse 9: A first look from a long time RHL user [LWN.net]

Suse 9: A first look from a long time RHL user

Posted Nov 13, 2003 22:57 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216)
In reply to: Suse 9: A first look from a long time RHL user by einstein
Parent article: Review: SuSE Linux 9 (NewsForge)

Just a little favor to ask of einstein: could you post your hardware configuration (especially what motherboard, video card, and sound card you are using)? It would be nice to know as kind of a baseline for things that *do* work with a modern distribution.

thanks...

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Suse 9: A first look from a long time RHL user

Posted Nov 14, 2003 8:20 UTC (Fri) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Sure - the most recent system I SUSE-ized is my $229 Fry's computer. It's an amd duron 1100 that came with 128 MB RAM and an asian redhat knockoff called "thiz linux" - the computer is of chinese origin, from a company called GC (Great Computers) and all the motherboard functions are based on sis chipsets , including onboard video, sound, networking etc.

I installed Redhat 9 to verify everything, then made a few changes as follows:

upped RAM from 128 to 512 MB
installed nvidia geforce 2
installed tv capture card

It took quite a bit of googling and downloading to get the tv card working with redhat, but eventually I got it to a somewhat functional state. I also did the usual drill with the nvidia drivers: download, install, edit the XF86Config, test, lather, rinse, repeat. I installed fedora core test 1, and fc t 3 as well, to track it's progress.

When the suse 9 CDs arrived, I installed SUSE of course, and the install process found and set up all the hardware, and even put a tv icon on my desktop which launched a viewer program for the tv card. The first time I launched it, it brought up a wizard that set up all the channels for me. (No googling, no man pages needed)

Another pleasant surprise was when I went into yast and saw that I could install the nvidia drivers, so I clicked my way through that. quite painless - sheesh, I didn't need to touch the XF86Config file at all - it just worked, next time I restarted the X server.

Suse 9: A first look from a long time RHL user

Posted Nov 14, 2003 8:31 UTC (Fri) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]

SuSE's Hardware Database is quite usefull:

http://cdb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK

it is relatively well kept.

Einstein? How Rude!

Posted Nov 14, 2003 9:14 UTC (Fri) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]

Most common generic desktop configurations should work with any Linux distributions. This guy's comments had little (almost nothing) to do with the hardware configuration and everything to do with polished integration of the software that included with a distribution.

The Red Hat approach has always been haphazard. Get a bunch of stuff into RPM format; built them with spec files to figure out their dependencies, and ship it. Little attention has been paid to making these things work together, conform to a sensible and cohesive policy --- integrating them into a SYSTEM rather than a big software collection.

S.u.S.E. and Debian have done far more in these latter tasks.

Those who have only used Red Hat should try at least one of the other major distros --- to have a basis for comparison.

Einstein? How Rude!

Posted Nov 14, 2003 16:23 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

The Red Hat approach has always been haphazard. Get a bunch of stuff into RPM format; built them with spec files to figure out their dependencies, and ship it.

If you have any real evidence to support that statement, now would be a good time to present it.

I'm not overly fond of Red Hat's distribution, but I've always thought that they've done an above-average job of testing and integration. I've had more problems with other ditros, including one of two that you mention.

Einstein? How Rude!

Posted Nov 14, 2003 16:36 UTC (Fri) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

Err ... not to bash overly on RH (they have indeed done a mostly reasonable job AFAIK when it came to dependencies), but there was this gcc 2.96 issue, and wasn't there some subtly binary-incompatible glibc security update? (IIRC) ...

Einstein? How Rude!

Posted Nov 14, 2003 16:56 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

...but there was this gcc 2.96 issue...

Oh man, don't go there. That horse was beaten to death and burned at the stake, and we danced around the ashes. Either you agreed with what they did or you didn't, but it no longer matters, if it ever did.

the dead horse

Posted Nov 14, 2003 18:42 UTC (Fri) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

Err ... I know this horse is dead, nor did it matter to me anyway.

But, I believe that I yet answered your question. This kind of thing (as well as the glibc thing) would not have happened to SUSE, I honestly believe; there are enough glitches with SUSE, too - but they have been rather conservative when it came to basic things, in my experience.

the dead horse

Posted Nov 14, 2003 20:59 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

Well, yeah, Red Hat has always been aggressive with gcc and glibc, and sometimes the kernel, but that's really not what I was talking about.

I've occasionally run distros other than Red Hat and Debian, and I've always been disappointed with the number of "stupid" bugs that get through. Red Hat has fewer packages than some (some that I use), but at least they do some integration testing.

I hate to say it, but the only other distribution that (used) to compare with Red Hat in the area of integration testing was COL. I think some of the others just download the latest and greatest, make an RPM out of it, and do ten minutes of "it works for me" testing.

I can forgive Red Hat for pushing the bleeding edge in areas that benefit the entire community, but it's annoying to have to deal with bugs like some configuration utility core dumping on common hardware.

Einstein? How Rude!

Posted Nov 14, 2003 19:39 UTC (Fri) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

How was I rude?

(Ich mache nicht the bilde... ich sehe sie... und dan, sind sie einfach da)