SuSE is back in my favourites list

David — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:19:17 +0000

For a while there I did not use SuSE a lot as I preferred Red Hat/Fedora's purer file system approach and the Gnome desktop environment (KDE is the default on SuSE). Over the last few months though I am going back to SuSE more and more because of two things: Yast and the way they organise their file system (which is kind of ironic).

Yast is a bit clunky but its one of the best tools available for command line remote management of Linux systems. With Yast you can SSH into a server, change some things in the console and have them applied automatically. With other distributions there are some very powerful X-Window GUI tools and web management consoles but nothing for the console space (that I know of). The unique file system of SuSE has also gained my favor because many of your most used configuration settings are stored in one place /etc/system rather than being spread throughout the /etc directory in the traditional manner. Want to change a kernel module? /etc/system/kernel. Want to modify network settings? /etc/system/network. Easy(er).

If you are in New Zealand with a decent Internet connection (and a bit of Linux experience) I'd recommend going to linux.jetstreamgames.co.nz and downloading a SuSE network install ISO image (they keep a mirror of SuSE 9.0-9.3 on x86 and i386 & x86_x64.
For example, the SuSE 9.3 network ISO is for i386 can be downloaded here.

Once you've downloaded and burned the ISO boot off it on your install system, load your network card module) and then begin a network install using the following settings:
Source: http
IP Address: linux.jetstramgames.co.nz
Directory: /suse/i386/9.3/

Its much faster than downloading all the CD or DVD ISO's and a lot cheaper than buying SuSE through a retail outlet.

stressfree - yast

SuSE is back in my favourites list