[H-GEN] Running SuSE 8.1- NOT!

[David Seikel]

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After reading everybody elses replies, it's time for some comments from a
SuSE user.  At meetings, I am usually pointed to as the expert on SuSE.  I
am almost always at meetings from start to finish, so feel free to bother
me.  I have just got a copy of SuSE 8.2 Pro boxed set, and I am very
impressed with it's ease of installation, about half the things I had to do
manually with 8.0 are done automatically.

I have been using SuSE for a long time.  Previously I had used Red Hat and
Debian.  I use Red Hat in the office (not for much longer though).  I am
moving away from Red Hat, mostly due to the problems involved in getting
free updates out of their servers.  I still recomend Debian for servers on
big pipes that require very stable, non bleeding edge, software.  There are
many special purpose tiny distros that fit onto floppy disks and such, and
I mirror a lot of them on my server.  They are great for those special
purposes.  For everything else I recomend SuSE.

 --- Alex Delaforce <alextdel at bigpond.net.au> wrote: 
> knowledge of Linux using SuSE 8.1 Pro, which I purchased in full so that
> I had all the up to date documentation. 

The documentation you get in printed form in the boxed set is also
available on the CD's / DVD's / download.  As far as I know, they are
identical.

> up a testing server using Apache and PHP and MySQL, and then to start
> learning PHP based dynamic web site design.

If you do a standard server install, that is what you will get by default.

> I have attempted to install Samba from source files downloaded from

Others have pointed out that Samba should be installed from a SuSE supplied
package.  This is something that I haven't done from SuSE yet, as I don't
usually use Samba.  I will be installing 8.2 in the office soon though, and
we use Smaba here, so I will let you know how a client install goes.
 
> Even installing SuSE proves problematic. Each install that I do to clean
> up from my attempts to install Samba brings a new set of observations
> despite the hardware and partitioning  being identical. On one install
> the system will detect three CD devices despite there being only two,
> the next install will detect only two, the next will decide to redetect
> the mouse on every reboot, the next will drop the volume of the sound
> card to 0 the next will not detect the video card or be able to drive
> the monitor correctly, the next gives the full range of video modes with
> no intervention from me. As you can see I have reinstalled the SuSE
> system several times.

This I am very surprised at, although it may be a problem specific to 8.1. 
I don't know much about that particular version, as I have just gone
straight from 8.0 to 8.2.  8.2 recognised and worked with all of my
hardware  from first install.  It recognised my dual head card and setup
dual monitors automatically, and even offered to setup booting from my SD
card reader!  My strange mouse with all those buttons and wheels worked
during the install.  My ATA133 HD was correctly configured to run in ATA133
mode.  I did a new install rather than an upgrade, for reasons that you
don't need to know about B-).
 
> Is SuSE a bodgy distribution? 

No, however SuSE 8.1 may be, see my next answer.

> Why are the files not where the documentation (even that from SuSE) say 
> they should be. 

With SuSE's United Linux efforts to combine their resources with other
Linux companies to produce a standardized base distro suitable for
enterprise, SuSE made a big reorganization between 8.0 and 8.2.  8.1 is
smack bang in the middle of that reorganisation, thus I suspect that the
documentation is not up to date.  Linux distro's still have different ideas
about where to put things, although the major ones are slowly changing over
to the FHS standard, even though that is a moving target.  This is actually
one of the main reasons for the United Linux effort, to provide a
standardized base distro with all the files in the places you expect them
to be.  Any book written about Linux is out of date by the time you buy it,
as the printing process is a lot slower than the Internet time that Linux
evolves at.

On the other hand, SuSE has a reputation for writing good documentation,
and I will be reviewing the 8.2 docs as soon as I have the time to see if
they still cut the mustard.

> Is Linux really this hard to use? 

I have a feeling that I should ask my sister to try an installation of SuSE
8.2 just to see if it is as ready for the desktop as I suspect.  She lives
on the other side of the country and is an average computer user.  There
will be no hand holding from me, my arms are not that long.  I suspect that
she will not need any.  On the other hand, she won't need a web server,
file server, database, or progamming language.

For servers, it is just as hard as any other Unix variant.  I won't comment
on how it compares to Microsoft products as I try really hard to forget
everything I ever learned about them B-).
 
> Any suggestions before I give up. 

Come and talk to me at the next meeting.  I will be tweaking my new install
of SuSE 8.2 on my server and doing weather simulations on the (Debian)
cluster in the back corner of the room.  Bring your computer along and I
will be happy to install SuSE 8.2 with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Samba on to
it.


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