Opensuse 10.3...

[Rayek]

I'm so frustrated right now because I have no internet connection, no access to my computer, and am looking at possibly the greatest version of SUSE to hit the net.

Anyone installed/updated to it and have insights? It hit yesterday, someone here must've tooled around with it already...

 

[Rayek]

(what follows is a response to a disappeared, snarky comment)

Riiiight.

Only if by 'decent', you mean 'Diet Linux: No root user here!'

I wasn't asking what distro to get. I've tried masses of them and settled on SUSE in 2005. It's the best for me, and the most well-integrated and complete distribution I've toyed with. I've already personally made the 'defining voyage into the Linux community' and chose a distro to follow, but thanks anyway. Your words, though few, have really made me reconsider my choice, and just blindly switch to a distribution that doesn't suit me, all because you said so.

I take it from your post that you definitely didn't read my question, nor install it, so why would you even bother to respond?

 

[Vimacs]

well, i deleted the post couse i saw that it was inappropriate after reading your post again, thats why

But to be honest, whats wrong with debian? imho it does nearly everything right, ok packages tend to be a bit old, but its rockstable and does everything i need.

And since when does one not have a root user in debian/ubuntu?!?!?????????????!?????
Diet linux??? debian? sorry, but did you ever try it? The most "diet linux" to me is a suse "lets try to be just like windows".

But of course, im not going to preach here, just use whichever fos you like the most.

 

[gp32rich]

Hmmm. Interesting comments over at El Reg™
QUOTE
I think Suse is pretty good.They really give an effort, you only have to look at their desktop environment.
While other distros just stick with what comes from Gnome - KDE, they dig in deep, and integrate stuff as much as possible. Everthing that's screaming bleeding edge is there. It's not enabled by default, but accessible.

However - nobody actually knows how many of this is developed in Redmont. I have friends at Microsoft Germany - and believe you me - they know Suse by heart. Other distros mess with Mono - .NET is almost ready for Suse.
I have seen Silverlight run on Suse like it was XP. Soon, very soon, Suse will be something like XP, only with a different file system/desktop. I admire Suse for their work, but I wouldn't want a Linux distro that is MS-influenced in any way.
Sadly, a Linux which is 'as MS compatible as possible' will soon find it's way to the hearts of IT execs, in any mixed-OSed company.

Some FSF worshippers invented the punchline: 'Not a single line of code for Novell/Suse', which, is of course, wishful thinking. You can't restrict access to 'true believers'.
Fsck GPL3, how can anyone prove GPLed code in binaries that come without source ?
IMHO any individual that cares about open source, should mark Suse as commercial and 'soon to be proprietary' , and stay away from it. If you really need an OS that can do what Windows does - then use Windows.

If you care about 'free as in beer' use true GNU/Linux or BSD. It's as simple as that. There's nothing in between.

... plus more FUD after that one <_<

 

[Rayek]

One issue with the Novell/Microsoft deal that I don't understand is why Novell had to do it in the first place... I think it's mainly because it's hard for a large corporation to convince itself thay wholly buying into the open-source model is a good idea. I think it was Novell's way to jump their product forward, to not wait for hackers to find workarounds. Wether or not the deal is against the GPL or against the OSD isn't for me to decide. I think Novell was wrong because this kind of stuff just illustrates how little faith they have in their own product.

Regardless, I feel that something will have to happen similar to KDE/Qt here for everyone to be happy again. In the meantime, I'm happy just using the community distribution and am enjoying a great Linux experience on it. I decided on SUSE months before this nasty deal was afoot, and SUSE hasn't let me down so far.

And another question would be that if you are really opposed to the deal, have you tooled around with SUSE enough to know exactly how pervasive its effects are?

 

[gp32rich]

...
And another question would be that if you are really opposed to the deal, have you tooled around with SUSE enough to know exactly how pervasive its effects are?

Y'asking me?

I tried Suse 10.1 live when I was looking at Linux distros when I was sick of w98
but decided to try RH5 coz knoppix was the best one I'd tried
That was a mistake coz theres loads built on top of RH to make Knoppix that I didn't realize then

I haven't been back there for a while because I haven't the time or patience to learn about the best apps right now, and I hated a couple of things about it too. (Trying to get flash into FireFox as I recall :rolleyes: )

I threw that comment in to highlight the problem that I have with 'Linux' - that there are incompatible distros out there that need special builds of applications. And as much infighting as there ever was between Mac vs Win, Amiga vs Atari, C64 vs Spectrum, etc

It's one of the standards that isn't and you still have to get dirty with building your own code.
And that's beyond most casual users who just want to install and go.

Maybe I'll try again when I get a distro on a coverdisk (I got Knoppix 5.1.1 DVD six months back to give it a shot) I won't care who makes it as long as it does what I want without too much pigging about with builds or setups or hunting for info about what to twiddle.

 

[nickspoon]

Haven't tried the latest OpenSuSE, but the last one I tried was kind of OK. I still prefer Ubuntu (deb deb deb), but SuSE beats Red Hat and Fedora Core.

And "No root user here!" is in no way a good argument. You can become root quite easily (sudo, sudo -s, sudo su) and the fact that you can't actually log in as root is in fact, useful - if you're root a lot of the time, you're a danger to your computer. Far better to let everything run as you unless you really need it, in which case you use sudo.

 

[Rayek]

Awwww, come on. sudo is so lame. It's like the developers of ubuntu are constantly driven by 'the Linux noob experience', and keeping any sort of power away from them in fear that if they accidentally break their software or OS they won't be 'turned off' to Linux. I mainly have beef with it because it gets annoying after a while if you're doing a project or some experimenting. Another thing about sudo is that it's easier for a user who shouldn't be tooling around to get root-like permissions, just find the password of one person who has administrative commands, and pow. A root user, on the other hand, has one password, which can be witheld from a 'dangerous noob' on your machine or network.

Currently I'm having to tool around with ubuntu more than I'd like because the box I have right now doesn't have an internet connection, nor a DVD drive to accomodate the other distros I've burned, and it's become abundantly clear that ubuntu just isn't the one for me. The lack of an internet connection makes me appreciate the size of SUSE, because ubuntu installs the bare minimum amount of software packages during install; no apt get for me. And when flipping through Linux In A Nutshell to learn more, only a few commands work because of the limited amount of software installed.

SUSE is funded by Novell, so SUSE has programmers constantly working on and developing new open-source technologies. Many SUSE developers are also KDE developers, and it seems like KDE isn't just draped over SUSE, like certain other distros, it's well and thoughtfully integrated. Gnome is too, but to a lesser extent.

So me being cranky about ubuntu is just stuff that's bothered me over the past month.

 

[rokdcasbah]

all you have to do to enable root in ubuntu type 'sudo passwd' in a terminal. not that i am into ubuntu, really. i commend them (and rh) for having an installer that actually leaves you with a working system...but where's the fun in that?

sudo is nice because, among other things, it lets you give someone root powers without giving away the root password. you can keep logs, and if they do damage, easily disable the account. of course, someone marginally crafty could find a way to use those privileges to become actual root. but the admin needs to be craftier.

 

[nickspoon]

Ubuntu is intended to be simple. So yes, maybe the "Linux noob experience" is what the Ubuntu developers are driving at. And as for commands being missing - apt-get is not difficult to use! And now, with command-not-found, when you type a missing command you will automatically be told the package which contains that command so you can install it. It really doesn't get more intuitive, not without overflowing on to another CD, which is something Ubuntu won't do, and I like that.

sudo simply allows more than one person to optionally be root and not do any unintentional damage. You can still keep just one person as root, or even activate the root user as rokdcasbah says. It only gets irritating if you're doing a lot of administrative stuff, in which case you can simply bring up a root terminal.

 

[rokdcasbah]

sudo simply allows more than one person to optionally be root

well, there are different ways to set it up, and you can use sudo to mostly become root.

but technically sudo is used to run a particular program or script with elevated privileges. instead of becoming root, you remain "yourself", but with access to a program or files that you normally don't have. or you use it in a script, so that it doesn't matter who runs the script. on the other hand, if you want to "be" root, you can use su.

normally it doesn't matter, but let's say you go to put something in your home dir...now it matters because root's home dir is probably /root while everyone else's is /home/bob. should have sudo'd, bob! or is it sudone?

i know what you mean though, and for many things, the result is the same. the differences and how important they are to you will depend on how many users are on your system. if i'm a sysadmin, and i want to know what you're doing, i'll have you sudo. you always remain the same user, and i can control in advance where you can sudo and where you can't. i only want you demi-root, at best

for a single-user system, it's not as important, but still matters. it can get frustrating when script XYZ fails silently. linux and unix are designed to be multi-user, so knowledge of how that works is required even on a single-user system. it's something you have to deal with. but in many cases, it's a nice advantage.

 

[Nova]

Just installed it. If you have questions, fire away.