Product Reviews

SuSE Professional 9.1 is the first product SuSE has released since it was acquired by Novell in January 2004, and it shows the future direction of the distribution. Novell's input will be invaluable to the Linux community, as it brings years of networking and operating system experience to the table. Because of the nature of the GPL licence, all changes and improvements must be submitted to the original author.

When you purchase SuSE you get five CD-ROMs, two double-sided DVDs, two manuals (the Administration Guide and the User Guide) and 90 days of installation support. The 64-bit version of the software is on a DVD, so make sure your machine has a DVD drive before you make your purchase.

The installation is straightforward. It uses the graphical YaST system, which will be familiar to SuSE users and shoud be amenable to newcomers. To get started simply boot your machine from the DVD and select your native language and the packages that you wish to install. It will partition the drive and you're off. You can also partition the drive manually. On our test machine the automatic partitioning shrunk the Windows partition that was already on the drive, and configured the bootloader to include the Windows installation flawlessly, which is a nice touch. We were then able to boot into Windows or Linux without any problems.

YaST then takes you through the essential configuration stages, which include setting the root password, configuring network interfaces and adding users. The process is simple and well laid out in a step-by-step fashion, although it may be a little confusing for new Linux users.

The hardware detection is excellent and the only problem we experienced was that we had to configure widescreen resolutions manually. As widescreen notebooks and LCD monitors are becoming more popular, it surely can't be long before this is supported by a configuration utility rather than forcing users to edit the X configuration files with a text editor. For now, though, that's what you have to do.

Once the system is up and running, it's impressively smooth. All the hardware on the machine was set up perfectly, and the hot-swap features are coming along nicely. When we plugged in a USB memory drive the device mounted and a file browser window opened automatically, making it as simple to use as it would be in Windows. USB-compatible

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cameras and devices such as Sony's Magic Gate drives should all work in exactly the same way.

SuSE prefers KDE as its Window Manager, and this has improved a great deal recently. Unfortunately, the distribution is rather lacking in support for GNOME, which many people use. GNOME fans may wish to steer clear of SuSE in favour of a distribution with better support and integration. Work has been done to make GNOME applications look exactly like KDE programs when using KDE. The style is selected independently of the GNOME configuration, so changing themes in the gnome-control-center application will not affect the way those applications appear under KDE.

There are loads of applications included in the package. The default installation tends to install one application per task, rather than the lot, and these selections are generally well chosen. You can, of course, install the applications of your choice on top of the default installations by using the package manager. This Professional edition also bundles some commercial applications, including SQL Anywhere Studio 9 (Developer Edition) from Sybase, which is a welcome addition for developers and small businesses that need to create database-driven applications.

Sadly, the multimedia aspect is still lacking. SuSE's distribution will not play encrypted DVDs, although other vendors such as TurboLinux are now including support for this task.

Documentation has always been one of SuSE's strong points. As stated earlier, two printed manuals are included in the package. These will be useful during installation, but you may find yourself turning to the online documentation once the system is installed and running. The online documentation is plentiful and of a fairly high standard, although it may be a little confusing for new users in places. What's more, the integrated help system on the GNOME system is missing, which is another serious flaw in the company's GNOME support.

SuSE's Windows integration is much improved, with the ability to authenticate users against a Windows Domain Controller, or even a Samba server (as discussed in Linux Expert, Shopper October 2004). This allows businesses to use one central authentication system for all desktops rather than having one on each computer; see Advanced Windows on page 289 for more information on domains. SMB network shares can also be browsed easily from the KDE desktop.

SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional Edition is a well-designed and well-constructed distribution. It is easy to install, use and integrate with existing systems. A lot of time has been spent on the user interface, with great results. All applications, bar Mozilla, look alike, and the help system within KDE is second to none. If you are after a Linux distribution for the desktop, whether for a 32-bit or 64-bit machine, SuSE is a good choice. For servers, a more specific distribution such as Red Hat Enterprise Edition is better suited.