Distribution Watch: SuSE Linux 8.0 Beta

By: Kurt Wall
Thursday, April 18, 2002 10:26:40 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/4155/1/

Meet SuSE 8.0, The Beta

I'm a minimalist when it comes to my Linux boxes. They all run Slackware and XFCE, with nary a single bit of KDE or GNOME to be seen. Why? Because I want to save my RAM, CPU, and disk for real computing, not eye candy. So, as I began my review of SuSE 8.0, I was skeptical that it would have much that really wowed me. And, to be clear, I finished my review as firmly entrenched in my minimalism as when I started. Naytheless, SuSE impressed me, especially the painless, perfect installation -- an element difficult to get right during a beta. Those of you who prefer or rely on feature-rich, beautiful desktops won't be disappointed in SuSE 8.0.

The Hardware

I carved out an empty 7GB partition on my Toshiba Satellite 1805, Pentium III 850, 115Mb RAM, 14Gb Toshiba ATA hard disk, an ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive, Intel Pro/100 Fast Ethernet NIC on-board, IDE disk, a Trident CyberBlade Ai1d video adapter with 8Mb of SDRAM, a more or less generic Toshiba LCD screen capable of 1024x768 at 32bpp, and an on-board eraser mouse. Disliking eraser rodentia, however, I used a Logitech USB PS/2 optical wheel mouse, which YaST2 detected without incident. The on-board sound is some variety of AlI PCI sound chip which, again, YaST2 detected and configured automatically.

The Installation

After booting from the CD, I pondered the installation options:

  • Installation (linux)
  • Installation - Safe Settings (linux ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off)
  • Installation - APIC Enabled (apic)
  • Manual Installation (manual)
  • Rescue System (rescue)
  • Memory Test (memtest)
  • Boot Installed OS (harddisk)

Just for fun, I chose the "Memory Test" option first. I have no idea if the RAM tested clean, though, because after drawing text mode screen with the words "memtest-86 v2.8" on it, my crash test dummy froze. I decided my memory was fine, rebooted (having to power off because the Vulcan neck pinch didn't work), and resolved not to try that again. The complete list of installation options includes:

You can also press one of the function keys to select the video mode:

  • F2 for text mode
  • F3 640x480
  • F4 800x600 (the default)
  • F5 1024x768

I opted for the high resolution (F5) and the plain vanilla installation mode, then pressed Enter to get started. One of the first things I noticed was that the installed searched for a braille display, which I found a nice touch -- I hope that SuSE continues to pay attention to this.

When the graphical installer, YaST2, started, it popped up the typical warning about using a beta, to which I readily assented. In the background, the initial screen appeared in German (big surprise). The first thing I did was select "English (US)" for the installation language, clicked "Next" to apply the change, and was able to proceed with the installation process without being forced to dredge up 5 quarters of tourist German learnt in college.

Having installed OpenLinux (Caldera) and Red Hat Linux more times than I care to count, one of YaST2's features I most appreciated was the ability to move freely around the installation using the hyperlinked installation task list that dominates the installer window. I much prefer this approach to the more linear Back and Next buttons that Red Hat and Caldera use. I don't know about you, but I like (and sometimes need) to flip around to various phases of the installation in order to undo or change decisions I made earlier in the process. YaST2 makes this easier and far less tedious than Lizard or Anaconda. Although I didn't test this features extensively, I imagine that at some point (say, after starting to install the software) that you can no longer go back beyond a certain point.

Accepting the default partition suggestions, a 6.8Gb root partition using ReiserFS on /dev/hda2 and a 180 Mb swap partition on /dev/hda3, YaST2 presented a variety of software profiles. The options included:

  • Minimum system
  • Minimum graphical system (without KDE)
  • Default system
  • Default system with Office

You can also customize the installation by clicking the "Detailed selection..." button. Because I wanted to install all of the available software, I clicked this button and was presented with the following "Categories":

  • Advanced-Devel
  • Games
  • Gnome system
  • All of KDE
  • KDE Desktop Environment (def)
  • Simple Webserver
  • Linux Development Tools
  • Multimedia
  • Network/Server
  • Help Support Documentation (def)
  • Install available sources

To select a category, you place a checkmark beside the desired category. I opted to install everything, which a disk space tally status message told me came to 4.88 Gb.

You can also select the available "Commercial software..." by clicking a like-named button, which enables you to select individual packages using another button ("Select single packages..."). I left these alone, but some of the available commercial software included a rich selection of IBM's Java2 offerings, video editors, the SAP suite of enterprise management software, Borland's Kylix, Moneydance, several database packages, Star Office, and more.

With my software selected, I continued. After accepting my various installation choices, the installation began. The start time was 22:20 p.m. The finish time was XX:YY p.m. The installer summarized the expected installation time at 2 hours, initially, but, as the installation progressed, the number stabilized at just over an hour, then jumped to 1.5 hours. In the end, the final installation time was just over and hour and a quarter. I guess it does take time to install almost 5Gb of software. The installation figures were broken down by CD-ROM (all *7* of them, even though I only had disks 1-5.

While the 817 packages I selected installed, I was treated to a nice photo of the SuSE development team, followed by a continuing display of SuSE adware in the installer window, a "feature" of Linux GUI installs that we all have, unfortunately, come to expect.

All told, YaST2 is very impressive, as impressive as Caldera's Lizard was when it first appeared.

When SuSE 8.0 is released later this month (if released on schedule, at least), it will be the first new distribution out the door with KDE3. The packages installed by the beta were from KDE3's release candidate 2. SuSE also includes the latest GNOME (version 1.4 in the beta), and a large number of other window managers, including WindowMaker, Sawfish, Motif, and everyone's favorite, twm.

One aspect of the installation process intrigues me. After performing a "basic" installation, which I presume puts enough SuSE on the disk to have a functioning system, it installed LILO, and then soft-booted into the new system. Software from the other 4 CD-ROMs were installed after this initial system boot. So, in one sense, the installation only took about 30 minutes. I confess that I don't understand why the process would stop and restart this way. While I don't object, I don't really see the point.

I'll never get used to needing 7 disks to install any software, but I know that many people like to have all of the options available to them. One of the reasons I dislike having 17 email clients, 4 web browsers, 2 office suites, and all of the other trimmings installed is the length of time it takes to install all of that stuff. Of course, when 80Gb hard disks are cheap enough that my 13 year old daughter can buy one with her allowance, a mere 4Gb of unnecessary cruft is probably inconsequential. Different strokes...

After all of the software was installed, the configuration process resumed. I set the root password, selected the "Expert Options..." and enabled MD5 password encryption -- a good thing -- and then added a mortal user for normal usage.

The hardware probe of the LCD screen video card was very interesting. The probe resulted in YaST2 choosing a generic monitor, but it was easy enough to scroll up and select the "LCD" option and then to choose the 1024x768@70Hz resolution. I would have preferred 75Hz because it's easier on the eyes, but... I also opted for the graphical login, which uses KDE's display manager, KDM . I did not get to select the graphics chipset but this proved not be a problem. The LCD screen, though, did turn out to be a problem, although one easily remedied, as you'll see.

With the video configuration completed, the installer started saving all of the settings and configuration information and running various configuration scripts. It took about 5 minutes on my system.

Surprisingly, the hardware detection did find my sound card, which it properly identified as an ALi South Bridge M5451 PCI card, and it also found the on-board Intel Ethernet Pro 100 NIC (an 82559, to be precise). Not surprisingly, it didn't notice the modem, which is one of those damnable WinModems. In fact, I've never used it on this system. Failing to find the on-board un-modem is no loss as far as I'm concerned and doesn't constitute a strike against SuSE.

Network configuration came last. I opted for a static non-routable IP that would fit into my home network and specified a name server and gateway, but otherwise left the configuration simple, declining to add any static routes. After configuring the NIC, and saving sound card settings, the system soft-booted again to the newly installed system.

First Login

After the soft boot, I selected a KDE3 session and logged in. Annoying problems began at this point, which does not really surprise me in a beta. For example, after logging in as a mortal user, SuSE's hardware detector found "new" hardware. I found this odd because it had already identified all of my hardware. After enabling detection of new hardware detection going in the future, I clicked "Yes" to see what it had found. Behold, it had found a mouse. But, before I could proceed to configure the mouse, a separate probing dialog popped up, started probing my LCD display (again) and told me it had found a "Generic Monitor" (again). Curious how this all would end, I aborted the chance to reconfigure the LCD display that I had, I thought, configured during installation. My rationale was I would see if the same probe happened after another logout and reboot. Instead, I returned to configuring the mouse. Lo, it asked to configure my USB Wheelmouse again. I restarted the system again, this time using the KDM menu, wondering if about that monitor configuration I'd declined and whether or not KDM would start. After far too long a pause for the on-boot hardware scan, YaST2 again asked to reconfigure my USB wheel mouse (this time in an ncurses-based text mode window). Happily, once I had configured the mouse for the third time, KDM started. This time, I reconfigured the LCD screen when prompted, which caused SuSEconfig to run through its complete save/update process.

Available window managers included KDE, Window Maker, Sawfish, GNOME, Motif (mwm), twm, and failsafe. Motif is unconfigured save for the root menu; Sawfish was completely unconfigured, requiring me to kill the X server to get back the KDM login screen; KDE and GNOME had suitable initial configurations, which I'll briefly describe below. Presumably, Motif and Sawfish will gain functioning configurations in the gold release.

Looking at KDE3 and GNOME

The default desktop included the trash can, icons for the CD-ROM drive and, oddly, a second CD-ROM. As near as I could tell, the KDE configuration genie treats my combined CD/DVD-ROM as two drives. There were also icons to start Mozilla, Konqueror, and StarOffice, as well as a link to the SuSE support operation. The panel across the bottom included SuSE-customized versions of the standard KDE panel items.

Opening a terminal window so I could start writing this review, I got the Tip of the Day. In fact, each time I opened a Konsole session, I got the Tip of the Day. This quickly grew tiresome, but I chalked it up to the warts associated with a beta. The menus were pleasantly complete and offered a wide selection of applications for graphics, multimedia, development, system configuration, games, and so forth. A few GNOME-specific applets were scattered through the menu, too.

My chief complaint with KDE3 was how slowly it started up, taking almost 30 seconds from login to a fully-rendered desktop. This compared to about 15 seconds (still much too long, IMHO) for GNOME. Sawfish and MWM, by contrast, started almost immediately, but, of course, they were hardly usable without menus.

GNOME's eye candy continues to get prettier and prettier. The default desktop for mere users includes icons for SuSE tools, the floppy drive, Nautilus, The Gimp, a trash can, and the Galeon web browser. The ubiquitous panel was centered at the bottom of the screen. I noticed that many of the applications I tried to start didn't -- likely an artifact of the beta. More confusing was that the GNOME menus were a hodgepodge of KDE and GNOME applications -- one usually encounters KDE applets and applications buried deeply within GNOME menus and vice versa. The mixing and matching might appeal to you, but it confused me. GNOME seemed responsive and snappy compared to KDE3, but my laptop is fast enough that even Windows98 seems quick.

Wrapping Up

All told, SuSE have created another excellent rendition of their popular Linux distribution. The installation, even (or, rather, especially) on a laptop, was smooth and worked without a hitch -- no small feat for installing Linux on a nearly new laptop, an undertaking often more likely to end in aggravation than success. While I personally don't care for a 4.4Gb installation and don't see the need for that much redundancy in applications, I have to concede that one of the chief attractions of Linux is not being locked into one company's notion of what you should have on your computer, and SuSE make sure of that.

KDE seems to be the most completely configured desktop available, which isn't surprising when you consider that SuSE are one of the KDE project's primary supporters. The good news is that SuSE's commitment to giving you lots of choices means that you can also choose to use GNOME, if you're a fan of "desktop environments," or a "mere" window manager if, like me, you prefer something more lightweight. SuSE has not yet put a great deal of effort into polishing the KDE alternatives, but I imagine they will have fixed this oversight by the time SuSE 8.0 goes gold later this month.

With the support for hot pluggable devices, XFree86 4.2, kernel 2.4.18, KDE3, and GNOME 1.4, SuSE gets the prize for having the most cutting-edge Linux distribution out there. If you like having an embarrassment of riches, SuSE 8.0 is for you.

Kurt Wall first touched a computer in 1980 when he learned FORTRAN on an IBM mainframe of forgotten vintage; things have only gotten better since then. He has written all or parts of seven books about Linux and UNIX programming and system administration, is working on his eighth, and is the technical editor for over a dozen other Linux- and UNIX-related titles. Currently, Kurt works for TimeSys Corporation in Pittsburgh and lives in South Park, Pennsylvania.

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