I'm not really sure if you would call this the first real SUSE Linux release from under Novell's rule, but I tend to think of it as such. Even though it's their official 9.2 release, I kinda feel like I'm looking at Novell SUSE 1.0 if you know what I mean (even though Novell recently released their own desktop this year). Almost like a rebirthing of sorts. SUSE has always been one of the best desktop distributions on the planet and I think Novell has enough knowledge under their belt to make this distro one of the most sought after enterprise-class desktops available today. Have they pulled it off with this release? Read on...
SUSE Linux Professional 9.2 features the following:
Linux Kernel 2.6.8
GCC 3.3.4
Glibc 2.3.3
LSB 2.0 certified
X.Org 6.8.1
KDE 3.3
Gnome 2.6
Novell Evolution 2.0
OpenOffice 1.1.3
MainActor 5 Demo
Tons of multimedia software including K3b, Amarok, Juk, XMMS, and more...
YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool, SUSE's installation and configuration tool) really hasn't changed much over the years... at least not in major overhauls. After all, YaST is actually a pretty slick tool, rivaled only by Mandrake's own Mandrake Control Center. What SUSE has done release after release is add more functionality to it, rather than redesign it over and over. There's no need to reinvent the wheel and SUSE knows it. This is especially true If you've actually invented it.
The installation was pretty uneventful, so I won't go into a huge amount of detail here. Like I said, it hasn't really changed at all from what I can tell, save a couple of cosmetic differences but nothing noteworthy at this point. The distro still resides on 5 discs and still takes quite a while to install. It's nowhere near as fast to install as distros such as Mandrake or Xandros Linux. As far as I know (or should I say 'have tested') Xandros and Linspire are the fastest full-desktop installs on the planet bar none. It took me approximately 30 minutes to install the full desktop onto an AMD 2400+/768MB DDR machine. Not too shabby considering I now have so many applications I don't know what to do with them.
Even if the install was a bit long, does it really matter? Taking a look over the fence and seeing those Windows installs makes me grimace in pain. Not only does it take a good 30-45 minutes to install the OS, but you have to remember that the only really applications Microsoft gives you out of the box is a browser, a text editor, and an IM client. Considering this, calculate all of the time necessary to either load from CD or download/install from the Internet all of the applications you need on your system and you might as well kiss the next several hours goodbye. They're gone for good and you're not getting them back.
The SUSE Linux 9.2 default desktop
The panel menus in SUSE 9.2 are cleanly organized
Using SUSE Linux
The last time I reviewed SUSE I focused on the KDE desktop environment rather than Gnome, and this was a decision I made based upon the fact that SUSE is primarily a KDE-centric distro. While I won't stray too far from the same formula this time, I'd also like to touch on the SUSE Gnome experience as well. Back in the 'old' days, Gnome on SUSE was actually a pretty decent desktop. It appeared to me that since KDE 3.0 was released, SUSE started to really focus on it. There's nothing wrong with that since KDE is a very capable desktop solution, and perhaps the closest thing to Windows that Linux has going today (before the flames start, let me remind you that I used the term 'capable'. There are other Windows-alike desktops out there but they are pale in comparison in this reviewers eyes. Commence flaming).
The desktop, in true SUSE fashion, is the best looking on the planet... with Mandrake's Galaxy coming in at a close second. SUSE Linux without a doubt is something to behold in respect to its desktop design. The colors, icon theme, fonts, and choice of backgrounds perfectly compliment each other and are easy on the eyes. Seriously, after being in front of the machine for hours on end staring at text, my eyes aren't strained and my head is free of migraines that often accompany long computing sessions.
The menu system in SUSE Linux has progressively gotten better over the years, even if it hasn't been in leaps and bounds. Everything is fairly simple to find, and either accessible from the main menu categories or at most one or two menus deep. Never any more than that. I'm sure that if you start adding additional programs you'd need a little cleaning and organizing, but out of the box this distro is tightly built.
Mozilla Firefox (version 1.0PR) is included for the first time in a SUSE distribution, and I for one was glad to see it included. Mozilla 1.7.2 is also present if you prefer to use it, as is Epiphany 1.2.5. This selection should whet most appetites out there. Konqueror is also present, though I find I don't use it as much for browsing the Internet. I do, on the other hand, find it extremely useful to upload/download files from the net using FTP. With Konqueror's built in ability to spit itself vertically and horizontally (a split-window FTP upload from the local drive is pictured here) into multiple sections it's an invaluable tool for this type of work.
There is a My Computer icon on the desktop, which houses quick links to everything attached to the PC including floppy drives, hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and cameras. You can also add whatever you like to the list to make this location as useful as possible. I tend to throw a couple of quick network storage links in there as well to keep everything in one place, whether they're mounted elsewhere or not. On the topic of mounting storage, YaST has always provided a simple yet effective interface for mounting network resources. This is something every other distro seems to lack. Sure, I can mount from the command line, but this is a desktop distro (read: GUI-based distro) and everything that is system control oriented should have a graphical utility that controls it. Mandrake is the only other distro that comes to mind that has the right idea when it comes to a good control center. SUSE trumps it with their networking facilities though, as Mandrake relies on auto discovery of resources... and many times it doesn't work well at all, leaving you at the console editing things by hand. SUSE combines auto discovery with manual addition of resources, and that's the way it should be.
Media playback support
There is no lack of applications available with this distribution. Everything from Internet tools such as browsers, newsreaders, email client, and chat applications to games, graphics, and development tools. The one thing that this distro lacks is a proper DVD player. This is nothing new actually, and is understandable, but I really don't see why they can't bundle the functionality in (like TurboLinux did with their latest release) and add the licensing cost into the total price. I'm sure that with the ability to play DVD media out of the box would come people happy to pay for that functionality. It's interesting to note that even though others have distributed DVD-capable Linux distros, SUSE is taking this approach. The best way to get around this is to completely avoid the SUSE-provided Xine packages (Kaffeine, UI, libs, devel, etc..) since they have been modified to disable playback of unsupported formats and roll your own from source. Xine libs can be found here and Kaffeine can be found here. A few other popular media codecs don't work out of the box either, but are quickly remedied by using Mplayer/KPlayer and downloading the codecs from their site. They've got tons of them. It's also interesting to note that Kplayer isn't included in this distro but runs well when compiled from source.
