RedHat and SuSe - not a flame bait

I'm not asking for a comparison of their merits.
I'm currently running RedHat-9.0 on one laptop,
and SuSe-8.0 on its twin.

I'm basically a RedHat guy,
and don't really know much (in fact anything) about SuSe.
I installed it on my Sony Picturebook (C1VFK)
because RedHat-9.0 would not install as is.

I actually installed RedHat-9.0 on an identical laptop
by transferring the ISO images to the hard disk --
although I have since learned the magic formula
that allows one to install from CD.

Anyway, that is just the background.
I could go over to RedHat-9.0 on both laptops
but would rather like to keep SuSe on one just for fun,
as long as it isn't too much hassle.

I should say that both RedHat and SuSe
are official versions, paid for
(very little in the case of SuSe,
presumably because it is not the latest version).

Now for my questions:

(1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
do I have to pay for the upgrade,
or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?

(2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
Is it there somewhere?
(Nb I wasn't watching during the installation,
so it is quite possible I was told.)

(3) Is there a central URL for SuSe RPMs?

(4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?

I should say that I find SuSe and RedHat
each have features I like --
I hope (and trust) that they check each other out
from time to time.

Eg I found the login screen in SuSe better thought-out
than the RedHat one, although not so pretty.

One fairly bad point with SuSe was that
it did not appear to have the Linux Wireless Extensions
on any of the CDs, although there were referred to
in the WiFi documentation,
and seemed to be required to setup WiF.

Actually the WiFi implementation seems somewhat faulty anyway,
as I get a bizarre error, repeated thousands of times,
if I take out my WiFi card,
and I am not able to shutdown, even if I replace the card,
as it says that the "eth0 count" is 2,
and it is evidently waiting for it to get to 0,
which it never does.

Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions gratefully received.




--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Timothy Murphy <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
....
> (1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
> do I have to pay for the upgrade,
> or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?

AFAIK you can't download the iso(s) for the latest version,
only a trial version and perhaps older ones.

> (2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
> like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
> Is it there somewhere?
> (Nb I wasn't watching during the installation,
> so it is quite possible I was told.)

Not a single CD like RH, but the full version contains
lots of docs and the online sdb is quite good.

> (3) Is there a central URL for SuSe RPMs?

ftp.suse.com

> (4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?

YOU == Yast online update
Or something like this, seldom used it, but works quite
nice.

Being used to both and working mostly plain from the
shell differences are really small. Both have it's
pros and cons.

Ie. RH network network init scripts to take care of bonding
auto-magically if configured , SuSE SLES (enterprise server)
doesn't.;(

SuSE comes with some nice scripts, if you have hot plug-able
SCSI devices (tapes/disk). RH doesn't, albeit the SuSE scripts
work fine on RH of course...
;)

Booting/installing RH completely head/disk-less is easier and
more straight forward then SuSE with this nasty XML config
files...

I could go on forever, but in the end both are great unix
systems, which can be easily customized to your needs.

--
Michael Heiming - RHCE

Remove +SIGNS and www. if you expect an answer, sorry for
inconvenience, but I get tons of SPAM

"Timothy Murphy" <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> schrieb
>
> (1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
> do I have to pay for the upgrade,
> or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?
>
You can do an ftp installation / upgrade (???, not sure about that).
Start with www.suse.com and look for download.
If you like SuSE, I'd suggest you buy a boxed version (professional
version ist best). Not only you support SuSE, but also the
development of open source in general, as SuSE in turn supports open
source projects. This comment is true for almost any distro.
Alternatively you can donate to some projects.
If you buy a SuSE box, there is the Update version and the normal
version. The Update version is exactly the same as regards the
contents of the CDs and DVDs, its just missing the printed versions
of the manuals.
And then there is the difference between Personal and Professional
Edition: The Personal Edition is geared toward the normal end user
just doing office work. If you plan to do any sw development or set
up a server, you'll be much better off buying the professional
edition.

> (2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
> like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
> Is it there somewhere?
> (Nb I wasn't watching during the installation,
> so it is quite possible I was told.)
>
Start YaST and search for packages suselinux-adminguide_en,
suselinux-userguide_en. They should be available even on the 3 CD
Personal edition.

> (3) Is there a central URL for SuSe RPMs?
>
Perhaps www.suse.com ?

> (4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?
>
YOU - YaST on-line update.

> I should say that I find SuSe and RedHat
> each have features I like --
> I hope (and trust) that they check each other out
> from time to time.
>
I hope so, too. Friendly competition enhances both products.

HTH
Martin

Michael Heiming wrote:

> Booting/installing RH completely head/disk-less is easier and
> more straight forward then SuSE with this nasty XML config
> files...

Agree 100%. Yet RH wants to continue to support EXT3 out of the box,
which I simply can't stand. XFS and Reiser have never required the
attention EXT3 requires after nasty shutdowns (like during the power
outage). It would be nice if RH gave you the opportunity to use
something else during their installation.

Jeff Breitner <usenet@rudn.com> wrote:
> Michael Heiming wrote:

> > Booting/installing RH completely head/disk-less is easier and
> > more straight forward then SuSE with this nasty XML config
> > files...

> Agree 100%. Yet RH wants to continue to support EXT3 out of the box,
> which I simply can't stand. XFS and Reiser have never required the
> attention EXT3 requires after nasty shutdowns (like during the power
> outage). It would be nice if RH gave you the opportunity to use
> something else during their installation.

From a personal point of view, I prefer ext3 over reiserfs, even if
there is a resize prog for reiserfs, while ext3 tools are only beta
in this area. But without LVM2 it doesn't help much, since LVM1 has
some shortcomings.;(

I hope we will have Kernel 2.6 ready soon and new "enterprise" distro
running with 2.6 available shortly.
;)

--
Michael Heiming

Remove +SIGNS and www. if you expect an answer, sorry for
inconvenience, but I get tons of SPAM

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, Timothy Murphy <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
> I'm not asking for a comparison of their merits.
> I'm currently running RedHat-9.0 on one laptop,
> and SuSe-8.0 on its twin.
>
> I should say that both RedHat and SuSe
> are official versions, paid for
> (very little in the case of SuSe,
> presumably because it is not the latest version).
>
> Now for my questions:
>
> (1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
> do I have to pay for the upgrade,
> or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?

I have not tried a System (version) Update in place (minor
version changes sometimes go easier than major version changes). I
usually back up anything essential and then install the new version from
scratch. When I updated SuSE 7.3 to 8.0 on my laptop (to get added
wireless support), I ftp installed 8.0 from scratch. But many things in
directory structure and scripts had changed. If you want to try a System
Update, it would be a good idea to back up anything essential first.

I did eventually purchase SuSE 8.2 Pro when I replaced a dead PC with an
old 333 Celeron discarded from work, but I have not updated my laptop from
8.0 yet. I also still have a K6-2/400 running SuSE 7.3 Pro.

Your choices to install SuSE versions from scratch for free, are to either
ftp install, or download the whole version dir tree. The only iso
available is liveeval, which runs from cd, primarily to test if a system
is compatible.

> (2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
> like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
> Is it there somewhere?
> (Nb I wasn't watching during the installation,
> so it is quite possible I was told.)

It sounds like you have SuSE Personal. The Pro version has more CDs or
can be entirely installed from 1 dvdrom.

If you install SuSE help docs, thy are usually available from SuSE help in
X. Depending upon what other docs you installed, look around /usr/share.
Check with Yast2 what you installed if you want to install more docs or
help. The suse.com or suse.de websites also have docs and searchable
knowledge base.

> (3) Is there a central URL for SuSe RPMs?

RPMs are RPMs, so many 3rd party rpms that work for RedHat or Mandrake
will work for SuSE. For system packages, you might start at ftp.suse.de
or ftp.suse.com and look for alternate mirrors.

> (4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?

Online Update in YaST2 will update your existing packages. You should do
that regularly.

> I should say that I find SuSe and RedHat
> each have features I like --
> I hope (and trust) that they check each other out
> from time to time.
>
> Eg I found the login screen in SuSe better thought-out
> than the RedHat one, although not so pretty.
>
> One fairly bad point with SuSe was that
> it did not appear to have the Linux Wireless Extensions
> on any of the CDs, although there were referred to
> in the WiFi documentation,
> and seemed to be required to setup WiF.

Not sure what you are referring to, but I specifically switched to
PCMCIA_SYSTEM="external" instead of "kernel" in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia to
use my wireless, because I am totally unfamiliar with kernel pcmcia. I
also wanted to use wlan-ng (because wvlan or orinico did not support my
WEP) and YaST2 knew nothing about wlan interface, so I had to write my own
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan-pcmcia-0 based on ifcfg.template.

The first new major version of any distro may have some unforseen bugs to
work out of them, which is why there are subsequent minor versions. But I
have not ugraded SuSE 8.0 to 8.2 on my laptop yet, so I do not know if
wireless configuration is more support by YaST2 (or if related pcmcia
scripts and options still need to be configured with a text editor).

--
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http://www.autox.chicago.il.us/ http://www.berniesfloral.net/
http://cgi-help.virtualave.net/ http://hammer.prohosting.com/~cgi-wiz/

Timothy Murphy <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
> (1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
> do I have to pay for the upgrade,
> or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?

Not in ISO format, no. but you can install over the internet from suse's
servers.

> (2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
> like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
> Is it there somewhere?
> (Nb I wasn't watching during the installation,
> so it is quite possible I was told.)

Yes. In the documentation, there're 3 pdf's (and the latex source)
to 3 suse books, the quickstart, admin and apps guides.
(Or, as you only have personal edition, maybe they weren't included, but
they are freely downloadable from suse)

It's probably on the CDs though. Start yast2 and have a look in the docs
section.

> (3) Is there a central URL for SuSe RPMs?

It's heavily mirrored, but the main one is at ftp.suse.com.
Can't remember the exact directory, but it's easy to find.

> (4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?

Yast Online Update.
(Again, start yast2->software->online update)

> I should say that I find SuSe and RedHat
> each have features I like --
> I hope (and trust) that they check each other out
> from time to time.

> Eg I found the login screen in SuSe better thought-out
> than the RedHat one, although not so pretty.

> One fairly bad point with SuSe was that
> it did not appear to have the Linux Wireless Extensions
> on any of the CDs, although there were referred to
> in the WiFi documentation,
> and seemed to be required to setup WiF.

Prolly cos of it being personal edition. There's been a lot cut from that
that's included in pro.

In <rz%8b.31676$pK2.53153@news.indigo.ie>, on 09/14/2003
at 04:12 PM, Timothy Murphy <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> said:

>(1) If I want to upgrade to SuSe-8.2
>do I have to pay for the upgrade,
>or is there somewhere I can (legally) download it?

It's legal for an owner to copy the CD-ROMs and give them to you. It's
a license violation to charge for the copies.

>(2) I didn't find any documentation on the 3 SuSe CDs
>like the RedHat Users Guide, etc.
>Is it there somewhere?

I don't know; SUSE 8.2 Pro includes the documentation.

>(4) Is there a SuSe equivalent to RedHat's up2date?

YAST online update (YOU).

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

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In <slrnbm9gdq.6j1.efflandt@typhoon.xnet.com>, on 09/14/2003
at 07:30 PM, efflandt@xnet.com (David Efflandt) said:

>It sounds like you have SuSE Personal. The Pro version has more CDs
>or can be entirely installed from 1 dvdrom.

There is a second DVD. I suspect that he won't use it.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

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In <3f64b000$0$3655$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch>, on 09/14/2003
at 08:12 PM, "Martin Blume" <mblume@socha.net> said:

>The Update version is exactly the same as regards the
>contents of the CDs and DVDs, its just missing the printed versions
>of the manuals.

My SUSE Linux 8.2 Pro update came with the Administration manual.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

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the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

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