[Sussex] Suse 9.3 Pro for free?

[Paul Tansom]

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 13:17 +0100, Paul Graydon wrote:
> This popped into my mail box at work (we use Novell, so I'm subscribed
> to countless of their mailing lists.  Gives me something to do first
> thing in the morning that doesn't tax my brain too much!)
> Usually get some good stuff coming up that's liable to be of some use in
> our context at work, but I was a little surprised to see a link to the
> following, which suggests Suse 9.3 Pro is now free?  I always thought
> you could only get the standard version free on an FTP install.
> I'll probably give this a try later tonight and see what happens.
> 
> http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/15405.html

Interesting that the details on the web page appear to be largely
inaccurate! I thought I'd head of and have a look (still trying to
decide on a recommended end user desktop distribution, although
evaluation time and a pressing need to supply something are both sadly
lacking).

The web page refers to two downloads:

1) the DVD install, filename SUSE-Linux-9.3-FTP-DVD.iso in
the /i386/9.3/iso directory. This is quoted to be around 3.3G in size.
Taking a look on several mirrors, many have no DVD iso file (even those
classed as 'complete' and the ones that do have SUSE-9.3-Eval-DVD.iso,
which is a mere 184.43MB.

2) the FTP installation, filename SUSE-Linux-9.3-mini-installation.iso
in either /i386/9.3/iso or i386/9.3/boot. Well in the latter I've not
found any .iso files, and in the former the closest is
9.3-x86-64-Network-Installation.iso. This seems to indicate being for
64bit, but I could be wrong (it is, after all, in the i386 section).

The README_eval.txt file refers to either 3.3GB of CD iso files or a
single (missing) 4.5G DVD iso. The CD iso files look to be there, so I
may just try them. It is time I did the rounds again, although the
likelihood of me moving from Debian is pretty low I think (except
perhaps for a spare box). The last time I tried SUSE was around 6.0 and
it was, for me, a bit on the dire side - failing to detect big name
cards that had been on the market for a while, and throwing KDE at me -
euch ;)

Long live XFCE - if you haven't taken a look, do so :)

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/