Suse Professional / Personal

[Jesse Torres]

Is Suse Professional also available somewhere as a free download as is Suse Personal? I am new to Linux and downloaded Suse 9.1 Personal and I love Linux.

Also, what are the differences between Suse Pro and Personal?

Thanks,
[ October 19, 2004: Message edited by: Jesse Torres ]

[Sanjaya Sugiarto]

Comparison between Pro and Personal:
http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/prof/pers_prof.html

If you want buy one, than you should wait, becuase SuSE 9.2 will be out very soon (Nov 04): http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/preview/index.html

For the free one, you can download from (FTP installation):
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/i586/

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Sanjaya Sugiarto:
Comparison between Pro and Personal:
http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/prof/pers_prof.html

If you want buy one, than you should wait, becuase SuSE 9.2 will be out very soon (Nov 04): http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/preview/index.html

For the free one, you can download from (FTP installation):
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/i586/

Thanks Sanjaya. However, is Suse Pro also free or is Suse Pre the only available free version?

Thanks,

[Chris Mathews]

SuSE Professional is not freely available but it is fairly inexpensive (about $90). As a general rule, any software with Professional tacked on to its name is not free.

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Chris Mathews:
SuSE Professional is not freely available but it is fairly inexpensive (about $90). As a general rule, any software with Professional tacked on to its name is not free.

Thanks for your input. I compared both versions and I am now debating on whether to purchase the pro version or stick with the free Suse Personal version? Can someone provide advice on this matter?

I installed 9.1 Suse Personal on my laptop and I am extremely happy. I want Suse to learn Linux, to browse the web, learn commands, word processing, spread sheets, presentations, and J2EE development. I am not looking to network my laptop since it is the only computer that I own. Having said that, should I stick to the personal free edition, or should I spend the money on the professional edition?

Also, is Suse going to also offer a 9.2 Personal version next month? I cannot find that information anywhere.

Thanks,

[Arnaud Burlet]

Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
Also, is Suse going to also offer a 9.2 Personal version next month? I cannot find that information anywhere.

No, the free version is always available 2 months after the non-free release, either you buy, or you stay with 9.1 some 2 more months...

About the rest I don't know, sorry !

Arnaud

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Arnaud Burlet:


No, the free version is always available 2 months after the non-free release, either you buy, or you stay with 9.1 some 2 more months...

About the rest I don't know, sorry !

Arnaud

Thanks. For my needs, is it necessary to buy Suse Pro or am I perfectly fine with Suse Personal?

Thanks,

[Lasse Koskela]

Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
Thanks. For my needs, is it necessary to buy Suse Pro or am I perfectly fine with Suse Personal?

I'm 99,9% sure you don't need SuSe Professional. If you need something that didn't come with SuSe Personal, you can almost always download it off the Internet. Then again, I'm not familiar with what the SuSe Pro package contains so there may be some software that you'll get dirt-cheap as part of the package compared to buying it off the shelf alone.

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:

I'm 99,9% sure you don't need SuSe Professional. If you need something that didn't come with SuSe Personal, you can almost always download it off the Internet. Then again, I'm not familiar with what the SuSe Pro package contains so there may be some software that you'll get dirt-cheap as part of the package compared to buying it off the shelf alone.

Thanks. I will wait for Suse Personal 9.2 to be available as a free download.

[Stefan Wagner]

I heard actual SuSe personal editions don't install bc, ps, gcc, make, diff, and all that useful stuff which makes GNU/ Linux GNU/ Linux and not Susows XP home click colored.
But perhaps it's only an installation option.

If money doesn't matter, buy what you like.
Else, it will dependend on your equipment, needs, experience and internet-contract, how much it costs, to get everything, included in the professional-edition.
I guess the most difference is the support you get for a professional edition (never had one), and perhaps the comfort of installation.

I would start with the personal, and when you realize that there is too much missing, which is included in the professional edition, you may still update.
If you don't plan to run samba (a windows file server), ftp-server, apache (webserver), a postgres database-server and all the other network-servers, I guess there will not be much difference between both distros for you.

But afaik most of the software coming with the prof. edition is free, as in free speech, and free as in beer - only not free as in beer from suse.

[Jesse Torres]

How often does Suse release a new version of its OS? For instance, Suse just released 9.2 Pro. I just found out that 9.1 was released in April.

Also, if I purchase the Pro version, can I upgrade for free to the new version, upon release?

Also, the SUSE LINUX Professional 9.2 Live-Eval version is available for download as 1.3GB ISO image file for a DVD ROM. If I download this .iso, will it also give me the option to install to my hard disk?I just found out that it doesn't have option to install to hard disk!

Also, what are the differences between KDE and GNOME? I am new to Linux so excuse my illiteracy.
[ October 28, 2004: Message edited by: Jesse Torres ]

[Jesse Torres]

Suse 9.2 Pro was released over a week ago. Does anyone know when Suse 9.2 Personal will be released?

[Stefan Wagner]

Doesn't SuSe have a forum, a mailinglist and a faq, to ask those questions?

[Jeroen Wenting]

wouldn't be surprised if those are only for paying customers.
There will of course be a contact option to get in contact with a salesperson but will those even bother to answer someone not looking to buy for a medium-large company?

[Barry Gaunt]

How often does Suse release a new version of its OS?

Well, it used to be four times a year! Then they slowed down to around 2 per year. Now Novell are in the driving seat I guess it will slowdown even more. 9.2 is not much more than a bugfix (with maybe a more stable kernel) to 9.1 I read somewhere.

[Jeroen Wenting]

and why should they?
One of the things that's seriously hampering the adoption of Linux in the corporate world is the insanely short release cycles.

Nice for hobbyists who always want the bleeding edge, professionals want stability most of all.
We wouldn't want to upgrade the servers of our 200 or so customers (plus our own serverfarm) every 2-3 months (if not more often) when SuSe (or RH or whoever) releases their latest product.
Once a year or so is bad enough...

And that's not counting the workstations.
I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the sysadmin who gets assigned to keep the Linux distros on all the 2500 workstations of the largest customer I worked with up to date at a release cycle of 2 times a year let alone 4 times or more.
For people like that making sure every machine gets the yearly (or bi-yearly) Windows service packs is bad enough...

I deliberately don't mention live update systems (like apt and Windows update) here as companies typically don't employ those. The network traffic generated by hundreds or thousands of machines all connecting to the internet to download the latest patches and stuff every monday morning (say) is simply too much.
Instead smaller updates are packaged centrally into installer packs and pushed to the workstations, something that is not an option with completely new OS versions.

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
wouldn't be surprised if those are only for paying customers.
There will of course be a contact option to get in contact with a salesperson but will those even bother to answer someone not looking to buy for a medium-large company?

You are absolutely correct, Suse discussion forums are only for paying customers. Instead, I will search the Web to find the answers to my questions.

An online KDE forum states that Suse will not release a 9.2 Personal Edition. I am going to stick to 9.1 Personal. It is free and will grant me an opportunity to learn Linux.