[HLUG] OpenSuse.org

[Benjamin Weber]

Just to clarify, contrary to certain misleading slashdot headlines SuSE has 
always been opensource, YaST, which in the past wasn't redistributable has 
been GPLed for over a year now. ISOs and netinstall have also been available, 
so SUSE has been free in both senses of the word.

The difference with openSUSE is that the development process will be open, the 
community can contribute, the bug database is fully open, the development 
snapshots are available for download so the community can test them. Novell 
will also be making available the tools which they use to put suse together, 
and providing servers for building packages. 

But yes, first beta for 10.0 has been released for testing, still a beta 
release (although suse's betas are of higher quality than many distros final 
releases) so check the critical bugs before you put it on a system you don't 
want to damage, and bear in mind that 3rd party packages won't be available 
and non-free things like java and openoffice which depends on java won't be 
included until the final release.

Unlike Red Hat's fedora project, Novell will still be selling boxed sets of 
suse linux, with manuals and support as before. Hopefully this will mean that 
they will continue to give it the same QA testing as suse has always had in 
the past and the release quality will not suffer in the same way as fedora, 
we will see.

Some things i've noticed in the beta while trying it out:

kernel 2.6.13-something, with gcc 4.0.2. 

There is no longer a default desktop environment, users have to choose between 
kde and gnome. (a fairly silly management decision imho, some users don't 
know what kde and gnome are) 

The boot time has been greatly reduced, boots to X in 18s on my machine, and 
KDE fully loaded nearly as soon as X is loaded , fully usable desktop 
environment in under 30s, which is nice since suse boot times have been 
described as glacial in the past.

YaST (both installation and admin side) has seen some UI improvements, certain 
modules which were bad such as the bootloader module have been much improved.

Screenshots: 
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=406&slide=28&title=opensuse+linux+10.0+oss+beta+1+screenshots

FAQ:
http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions

Benji

ps I will be away for a week or so , so won't be able to reply to any replies 
to this




On Thursday 11 August 2005 18:25, David Shorthouse wrote:
> For all you Suse fans if you didn't already know Suse has released the Suse
> code for version 10. have a look.. I was board at work today & had a quick
> look as you do.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Shorthouse [mailto:kungfu at globalnet.co.uk]
> Sent: 10 August 2005 6:50 PM
> To: herefordshire at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Subject: [HLUG] RE: [linux] Herefordshire Digest, Vol 250, Issue 1
>
>
>
> While looking on linux.com
>
> MEPIS Linux
> A newcomer that, like Knoppix, can be run from your CD drive without
> installation. Also like Knoppix, it is based on Debian. Where MEPIS shines
> is its easy, 100% "point and click" installation, and automatic detection
> of not only "normal" computer hardware but also popular webcams, the latest
> wireless network cards, "Winmodems" that usually work only with Windows,
> digital cameras, scanners, and other devices. Freely downloadable, paid
> registration or subscription updates available but optional.
>
> looks quite nice too..
>
> http://www.mepis.org/
>
> Dave
> David Shorthouse
> Email mailto:linux at kungfu.globalnet.co.uk
> Web  http://www.kungfu.dyndns.org/Linux/linux.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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