On Sunday 20 June 2004 21:27, Ben Francis wrote:
distrowatch.com is reporting (http://www.distrowatch.com/01692) that SUSE 9.1 Personal ISO is now Available for Free Download from SUSE's FTP server and mirrors. There's nothing official on this from SUSE as far as I can tell though, but it seems to be intentional!
Anyone heard any more on this? I may be giving SUSE a go for the first time if I can get it downloaded.
tola ^/.
P.S. it always makes me laugh when I see "SUSE LINUX (formerly SuSE Linux)"
The download is real, and it works. I have it on two computers now. For the first time, a distro that was able to configure my PCMCIA Prism WiFi card properly and without any more than simply clicking boxes. The difference between Personal and Professional is merely a marketing one; I now know you can get the whole lot by FTP from the mirror servers, by reconfiguring YAST to use them instead of or as well as the CD/DVD.
At the risk of whipping up a storm, having previously installed Debian Sarge on the same computer, with the same 2.6 kernel and KDE3.2, the difference is that SuSE 9.1 is a complete system, not just a set of parts. Perhaps Debian is more stable, but not having had a SuSE crash for a while I find that not a compelling argument. I have a new respect for the effort SuSE (and Mandrake, Syd) put into configuration tools, which make the difference between needing to be an expert and just using a computer without any fuss. Not being one who cares much what's going on under the hood if it gets me from A to B, I prefer the complete distro approach. While having the utmost respect for Debian lovers and their superior expertise (there, I had to say that).
-- GT