Customer Reviews

Linux Starter Kit

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This is an attractively packaged DVD distribution of Suse 10.1 which includes a 128 page "Quick Start Guide".

Obviously you could just download Suse 10.1 for free, but that does take a significant amount of time, and you'd miss the pretty packaging and the booklet.

This might make a nice gift for Uncle Fred and Aunt Suzy to introduce them to Linux (assuming they have a DVD, of course). It's a lot classier than handing them a home burned DVD or CD set labeled with a magic marker, isn't it?

But don't expect that you are going to walk away and they'll sail through this with perfect ease. I gave Suse a 8GB partition, which is pretty generous considering that the box says 500MB is minimum and 2.5GB is recommended. The default partitioning seemed reasonable, but even during the installation the system was issuing dire warnings about low disk space.

(The Quick Start Guide does say that 20GB is a more realistic choice.)

The Yast2 Online Update isn't something you want to shove in a noobies face, but that's just what Novell does with Suse. I doubt that Aunt Suzy would have a clue, so she'd probably just skip it. That's OK: there might not be enough space to run it anyway.

Suse 10.1 is a fine distro - I often use it for dedicated mail servers etc. But I'm not sure it's the appropriate choice for
new users, and new users seem to be the target audience for this book/dvd bundle.

SUSE, a fairly large and comprehensive distribution, originally came out of the venerable Slackware (though there is little if any similarity today). Novell acquired the company in 2003-2004 and have developed the distribution into a serious competitor to RedHat in the professional Linux market while making a more-than-token effort to retain an Open Source developmental model. Slackware is still very minimalist in terms of software management and updating and is more of a source-based model. RedHat and SUSE are two good examples of distributions which use binary packages to install and update software.

Along these lines, the DVD that comes with the "Linux Starter Kit" has about 3G of rpms in the ./suse directory. These will unpack to give you a full-blown enterprise desktop environment - all from the DVD. On a personal note, I am not as much a fan of the binary-based distributions of Linux/ UNIX. I like pkgsrc, portage and the like and thus tend to gravitate towards Gentoo or *BSD when choosing an OS. So I come at this with a slightly negative bias. There are benefits to both systems and one main benefit of installing binary packages is that they are much faster. So with the stated goal "to enable you to quickly get SUSE Linux installed and up and running in your environment", SUSE can do this about as quickly and painlessly as any Linux distro that I have seen.

The "Linux Starter Kit" that I am reviewing includes the SUSE Linux 10.1 which was released stable on May 11, 2006. Accompanying the DVD is a 125-page "Quick Start Guide". I took my Thinkpad T30 and decided to run through an installation. On first glance the "Quick Start Guide" looks thin but actually the guide is intelligently designed. It quickly points the user to the "SUSE Linux Reference Manual" a more comprehensive guide in pdf format on the DVD and - more importantly - has a succinct guide to "man" and "info".

The "Linux Starter Kit" gets you up and running reasonably well - with a few minor glitches. The install screens are familiar if you have run through a RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu, etc install. There is little that could go wrong if you read and consult documentation. Though in this install I found myself stumped when reaching a registration screen. The SAMS published guide does not explain the registration options and neither does the help function on the screen. At the end of the install, you are directed to look for a 14 digit installation code. The "Starter Kit" nowhere explains what to do if you are missing this code and what the consequences are if you don't enter one. There is additional confusion when you go to do an Online Update the first time - again you are asked for registration info and in this day and age of the "Windows Genuine Advantage" fiasco, you get that bad sinking feeling... But it turned out to be a non-issue. Just something that should have been laid out better in the book.

In a similar vein, The "Welcome to Linux and SUSE!" section does not do a good job explaining the differences between openSUSE; the SUSE version on the DVD - which they identify as "retail"; and the real retail version of the "SUSE Enterprise Desktop". The confusion lies in the fact that this retail version is not the same as buying a $50 a year subscription to the Enterprise Desktop directly from SUSE because the retail version of SUSE as packaged in the "Linux Starter Kit" does not enable one to receive any support from Novell. The "Starter Kit" is in no way deceptive but this is potentially confusing.


"The Quick Start Guide" has a good introduction to YaST - the administrative console to configure the entire system. YaST does a bit of everything from installing software to configuring hardware to setting up users to monitoring security... YaST is what makes SUSE different from other distributions and how you feel about YaST is how you feel about SUSE. It is a departure from the older UNIX-inspired SysAdmin philosophy of having many combinable individual tools which each do one thing and one thing well. YaST is a big GUI-driven tool which does many things while hiding the complexities from the user. Too "Redmondish" for some but a nice simple all-in-one-place solution for others. But even if (and I would include myself here) you prefer to have a more fine-grained control of configuration that comes from 'one tool that does one thing well', YaST does not prevent you from having access to the underlying tools in the way that a Windows or an OSX admin tool would.

Other than the YaST section the "Quick Start" gives some good information on the boot process and configuration; file management; KDE and Gnome; and a nice Appendix with useful command-line tools. The best thing the "Quick Start Guide" does is that it gives a few useful pointers to more substantial documentation and gets out of the way. The reference guide on the DVD is much more in depth and addresses things not in the "Quick Start" (like wireless networking). This is a pretty good and fairly inexpensive kit to get going with Linux. However it would not seem such a great deal if I needed any support from Novell. To be fair - you could get most of the help and support you need from the Novell support news lists and your local LUG - but this may be a bit much to ask for a beginning user. And this is the target user as per the SAMS website: "The kit has everything a beginning Linux user needs to try out Linux and needed (sic) to allow you to quickly and effortlessly get up to speed with a new operating system."

I disagree with SAMS' characterization. I see some problems with how this set is packaged and presented.. The DVD that comes with this Kit is an install disk. This will partition disks and install the OS to your machine. That is more of a commitment than simply "trying it out". This kit occupies more of a middle ground. If you really
want to try out Linux, go online and burn a Knoppix* DVD (or buy one for less than $10 - shipping included). This will enable you to try out Linux without actually installing it. Then if you want to try SUSE Linux get the $50 subscription from Novell.

So who is this kit for? Well me, last week. I had bollocksed my NetBSD installation on my laptop beyond hope. This kit was useful for me in that I am too busy at the moment to pay attention and do a full Gentoo or Slackware or BSD install. I wanted a *NIX OS to use for work and school. This fit the bill admirably. When I have time I will go back and reinstall BSD. But for now this is good... very good actually.

* (Note: Knoppix is an example of a live CD (or DVD) distribution of Linux. It runs in memory and nothing is installed to your hard drive. When you reboot the computer and remove the disk there is no trace of the Live CD on your hard drive.)

I heard that SuSE Linux 10.1 is an incredibly solid and attractive looking operating system, but it has one major weakness - that is, "a severely broken package manager" as one veteran Linux user puts it.

Can anyone who has read this book please help us and comment on whether the SuSE Linux 10.1 DVD included in this book also contains this major weakness ... ?

"It's for geeks." "Impenetrable command-line!" "I haven't got the time to mess around with it." These are commonly voiced ripostes when the subject of Linux is raised. Fortunately, we think the 'Linux Starter Kit' goes some way towards answering these criticisms.

The kit, which claims to be "Everything you need to start using Linux today!" consists of a 124-page printed "Quick Start Guide" and a DVD, which includes the full SUSE Linux 10.1 distribution as well as a 650-page reference manual in PDF format. Contrary to expectations, the "Quick Start Guide" is quite comprehensive and in addition to "handholding" the user through the SUSE Linux installation process, serves as a pretty useful introductory reference to Linux distributions in general.

The first chapter details the installation procedure with helpful screenshots, which closely mirror the actual installation process. This means that even a Linux novice should find the whole process much more bearable with the "Quick Start Guide" at hand. A feature of the installation process worth pointing out are the "Expert" options along the way, which enable the more proficient user to customise the installation settings according to their preference instead of accepting the default recommendations. Thus disk partitioning strategies, window display managers and pre-installed software packages can be selected according to personal taste. Pre-existing Windows installations are also recognised and the relevant booting options are proffered accordingly. The chapter ends with a brief introduction to the YaST update tool, which incidentally worked beautifully.

The rest of the guide helps the user to customise the new installation whilst introducing concepts such as the Linux boot process, file system administration and user management. The YaST update tool is also covered in more detail in a dedicated chapter.

The full PDF reference manual is quite exhaustive with comprehensive coverage of the distribution and the key pre-installed client and server software packages. In addition, like the "Quick Start Guide", the documentation can be applied to most Linux distributions. It is divided into six main sections, namely:


1. Installation and Configuration
2. Using SUSE Linux
3. Using the Internet
4. Basic System Administration
5. Advanced System Administration
6. Programming

Overall, the 'Linux Starter Kit' should be appealing to both the Linux novice and expert alike, although for different reasons. The simple installation process, helpful documentation and the ease with which software packages can be added or updated will be attractive to the uninitiated, while the powerful customisation options and advanced technical documentation will interest the Linux guru.

SuSE Linux 10.1 did have some problems when first downloaded.

However, once the online updates were downloaded, these problems - including the package manager issues - disappeared.

Due to licensing restrictions, multimedia playback is hobbled due to a lack of codecs. Adding mplayer and the mplayer plugin for Firefox fixes this. To do this, you will want to add "packman" to your Yast repository list - google "suse packman yast" for opensuse's directions.

Once installed, my wife (who has never used anything but Windows) was able to browse the web, read her email, and edit MS Office documents using OpenOffice without any assistance from me.

This is the best end-user desktop version of Linux out there.