[KLUG Advocacy] SuSE 9.1 - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Adam Tauno Williams advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Tue, 11 May 2004 14:52:50 -0400


> I just received my copy of SuSE 9.1 professional and did a fresh install
> on my laptop.  First impressions:  It looks a lot like 9.0 only cleaner.
> The good:   :-)
> It found my laptop's winmodem, configured it, and it actually works!
> I could never get it to work under SuSE 9.0.  Believe me, I tried ...

Awesome!

> The bad:   :-|
> It found my Centrino wireless card, configured it, but it doesn't work.
> I'm going to work on this more ...

Crappy proprietary hardware! :)

> The ugly:   :-(
> XFS is completely broken in the stock kernel.  Trying to install to a
> XFS partition causes a kernel oops.  I installed to Reiserfs instead. 
> Then I booted 9.1 and tried to mount a different/old/existing XFS
> partition, which caused a kernel oops.
> I ran the online update, which installed a new kernel, and all is now
> fixed in XFS land.  :-)   
> As long as you don't need XFS during the install.  :-(

Ahh!  That really really sucks.  ACL support in Reiserfs is a disaster.

> However, the new kernel did NOT fix the Centrino wireless.  :-(

Bummer for you.

Have you looked into the SLP packages that are supposed to come with
9.1?  
Does it add in any Novellish stuff?  
And work on if a decent version of GNOME will be available soon?