>>SuSE 8.0 arrived by UPS this afternoon.
>>
>>As a reminder, SuSE 7.3 came with 7 CDs and 1 DVD, 5 books and 3 floppy diskettes (boot and 2 module disks).
>>The 5 books showed their heritage by being very technical, even nerdish.
>>
>>SuSE 8.0 comes with 7 CDs and 1 DVD, but only three books and NO diskettes.
>>The three books are definately NOT nerdish, but explain in newbie terms how to install and run SuSE and its applications. SuSE is relying totally on the power of its latest version of YaST2 to autodetect and install any and all hardware.
>>The one caveat: since there is NO boot floppy, the target computer must have a bootable CDROM. A few pages are devoted to the common BIOS's in most computers, explaining how to configure the boot sequence to enable a bootable CDROM.
>>
>>SuSE 8.0 is targeted right at the masses of average, non-technical WinXX users. YaST2 now includes a very graphical HD partitioning program that specializes in automatically taking as much of a defragged WinXX partition as you want to spare, and converting it into a Linux partition. Fully weaned WinXX users will, of course, have no difficulty in giving their entire HD storage to Linux. With either ReiserFS or ext3 protecting the software against hardware and power failures, and a Personal Firewall protecting against cracker intrusions, SuSE has become the most reliable and secure Linux distro available. (I haven't used recent versions of Mandrake, but their 8.2 release may be equal to SuSE according to some users.)
>>
>>The installation process for SuSE 8.0 has been speeded up considerably, with some configurations taking as little as 15 minutes, according to the documentation. When I install my copy this Sunday I will choose the "almost everthing" option. and let you know how long it took. The main reason I purchased the 8.0 release was to get the 3.0 version of KDE, which includs data-aware widgets. SuSE 7.3 was a VERY good release and 8.0 will have to go some to improve the hardware detection and automagic installation features. I'll let you know if it made the leap.
>>JLK
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>When I did the upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3 the result was NOT usable.
>So I did a clean install and got the best SuSE installation yet.
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>Repeating the process for SuSE 8.0, I just completed upgrading everything from 7.3.
>1768 programs took 3 hours. After about 30 minutes of testing this is what I've noticed so far:
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>A few icons on the desktop and toolbar are without graphical icons, but they were easily replaced.
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>My Zip250 no longer mounts because /dev/sda4 is no longer valid. It was mounted via the parport and ppa modules, and while lsmod shows the parport and ppa modules as loaded, they don't work. Apparently the ide-scsi emulation setting didn't get configured in lilo.
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>My sound no longer works. But, in 7.3 I had to do that manually with " YaST2 sound oss" from a root term shell because YaST2 wouldn't configure it via the graphical install in SuSE 7.3. It's an older card.
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>My PostgreSQL access via pgaccess no longer functions. My test db isn't connecting.
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>Obviously, since you are getting this email, my Toshiba Cable Modem connection to RoadRunner is working nicely, as is my 3Com905 ethernet. card.
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>I just scanned a page with my Mustek Twinscan II SP flatbed scanner using Kooka.
>It is connected directly to an ncr53c800 scsi card, which was picked up and configured nicely.
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>My Lexmark z52 printer just spit out a beautifully printed page via their driver and CUPS.
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>I haven't tried accelerated video because I know that the 2.4-18GB kernel that 8.0 installs isn't specifically compiled for the ATI r128 AGP, and if I want to get 40-60 frames/second that's what I have to do.
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>KDE 3.0 is awesome!
>I found a VERY interesting program called KStars. A planetarium app that is very graphical and easy to use.
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>I just tried to copy a CD. My PleXWriter 8/4/32A, which was automatically configured by SuSE 7.3, did NOT survive the upgrade. Also due to the fact that the ide-scsi parameter in lilo is not set. This means I cannot read in any of my backed up apps and data until I either do a clean install of SuSE 8.0 or a manually putz with the scsi emulation.
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>So, to summarize: my Zip250 and PleXWriter 8/4/32A don't work for the same reason: ide-scsi emulation parameter missing in lilo.conf. The sound doesn't work because my SB512 is activated by the older oss driver, which is called via passing parameters to YaST2.
>And, my desktop connection via pgaccess to PostgreSQL doesn't work Other than these four things, my upgade to SuSE 8.0 went well. I am going to test the new pgms, reconfigure what didn't upgrade and bring this installation up to standard. But, regardless, I will probably do a clean install just to clear out months of beta tests, downloads, eliminate stale apps, etc.., as I always do.
>More later. All things considered, 8.0 is worth it.
>JLK

UPDATE!
I ran "YaST2 sound oss" from a root xterm and reconfigured my SB512 sound card. Then I checked lilo.conf for the "append enableapic vga 0x0317 hdd=ide-scsi" line and reran lilo. When I rebooted I got both my Zip250 and my PleXwriter 8/4/32A back, running perfectly.. The binary sigature of the new PostgreSQL didn't match the old one so the new one could load the old db. So, I'll putz with it and get it going again, which completes the upgrade to SuSE 8.0. Sometime next week, when I have more time, I am going to do a clean install of SuSE 8.0 and comapare it with 7.3's clean install.
JLK