Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition

by SuSE Inc.

Product Features

• Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition [CD-ROM] [CD-ROM]

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006JT8L
• Item model number: 2014-25INT
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 30, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,641 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #80 in Software > Operating Systems > Linux & Unix
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional contains all the substantial improvements and new features of the Personal edition, plus additional components for advanced users. These tools include an intelligent software installer; comprehensive hardware detection, including USB 2.0 and FireWire; integrated databases for intranet and business; a multitude of developer tools and programming language; and more.

Take advantage of OpenOffice.org included with version 8.1, which is fully compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. This package offers not only common office tools such as a word processing application, a spreadsheet calculation, and a presentation program, it also provides an HTML editor, a database, a scheduler, a drawing program, an image processing application, and several other practical utilities.

Use your choice of the graphical desktop interfaces KDE 3.0.3 or GNOME 2.0 for the exact look and feel you want. Linux 8.1 Professional also comes complete with an extensive collection of sound, multimedia, and educational applications, plus many educational and entertaining games. Installation is fast and easy, without disturbing your existing Windows operating system. And you get solid security and reliability with SuSE Firewall 2 and Crypto file system.

Product Description

Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition [CD-ROM] [CD-ROM]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Corrections to a December 26 review, January 20, 2003

By 

Pierre Clement "pierrecito" (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition (CD-ROM)

First, there are a couple of corrections I'd like to post regarding a review of Dec 26. The review has 2 major errors that I could not leave alone:

- Power Management has changed. APM is the former package that supported power management (i.e. laptops). It is still included in SuSE for older hardware support. ACPI is the new kid on the block, and is installed on newer hardware. It does have a bug that, fortunately, can be resolved easily...

- Star Office is no longer in SuSE. That is correct. The review fails to mention that Star Office is a Sun Microsystems' commercial product. It is based on an open source project named Open Office. The source code and functionalities are almost identical. Open Office 'IS' included in SuSE. So, in essence, all that changed from SuSE version 8.0 to 8.1 with that office application, is the name on the icon.

Now, for my own review: SuSE Linux 8.1 offered me what I wanted, as did prior versions. Since I've upgraded to 8.1, I replaced Quicken for Windows with GnuCash. I had, during my 8.0 upgrade, replaced Photoshop 5.0 with Gimp. As for administering the application, don't take the YaST application lightly - it rocks!!! I rarely update or customize my Linux without it. RedHat, on the other hand, offered (I stopped using it at around version 7.0) sereral little applications to customize the installed base. The problem was to remember which did what!

There are a couple of books bundled with SuSE 8.1. There were 3 in 8.0. In my opinion, they need to reduce it to one. There is some redundant content across the 2. They do work fine though. If you are neither willing to read some software literature and comfortable installing an operating system, then Linux is not for you just yet - if ever. There are a few decisions along the installation process that you must make. Windows, on the other hand, doesn't have as many because the options don't exist. i.e. type of system you want (server, half-server, client, password mgmt, disk layout, users, ...) Don't be scared, it only takes about 30 minutes on a computer that you wish to save nothing, or up to an hour or 2 if you wish to not remove your current Windows installation - mostly unattended installation procedures.

I recommend SuSE to anyone that has installed Windows a couple (few) times in the past, or feels comfortable differenciating beteen an Operating System and an Application. Linux is a bit more complex for the new user, and a whole lot more useable for the experienced. I'd never switch back.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best workstation linux, November 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition (CD-ROM)

The installer has changed significantly in the 8.x series. It feels wierd to me because it's trying to mimic a more www feel, it worked flawlessly though.

The package manager is significantly improved. It enables you to resolve package conflicts (it's like fixing DLL conflicts before they happen, for you Windows users) using a tree view depicting paths to resolve the conflict. It's confusing at first, but I'm getting used to it. The search option for packages works much faster and the interface for that part is greatly simplified.

I was shocked to find that the GNOME configuration in this release seemed far more stable than in Red Hat 8.0, since Red Hat are dedicated to GNOME and SuSE is dedicated more to KDE.

Unlike other reviewers, I find SuSE's frequent releases to be a blessing. If I buy every release, it's still cheaper than broadband (I hesitate to pay $50/month) and keeps my linux system very current.

My only complaint is that the Java Development Kit included is a bit old. It's version 1.3.1 when the current is 1.4.1. Oh well, still deserves 5 stars.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Polished and Complete desktop OS, November 29, 2002

By 

Manas Kamal Bhattacharya (Newark, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition (CD-ROM)

When it comes to reviewing an OS, I do not believe in writting a "first impression" review. I have now used SuSE 8.1 on two systems for 2 months and this review is based on my expreience.

I installed SuSE on a PC and a laptop. On both the systems I had SuSE 8.0 running prior to that.

Installation:
Its time people stop cribbing about linux installation. Yast2 installer makes life really easy. It tales care of HDD partioning, default selection of packages for installation, configures your hardware with very little user intervention. It does not need to restart the system N number of times during installation. If U R a power user the installer has enough juice for you to customize the installation to your hearts content. [ Full 5 starts for YaSt installer]

--User Experience ( PC, Athlon 1.1 20 GB + 60 Gb dual HDD, Promise ATA controller, SB Live 5.1, Geforce 3...)
First time after installation you will be greated with a new login window. Login to KDE and u get all the eye candy of Keramik ( Only Suse has back ported Keramik to KDE 3.0). All desktop icons and menus are well thought out, apps are easily located. SuSE includes a good choice of www apps, like Mozilla, Konqueror, GAIM, Evolution. All these apps are stable and one of the best in their breed.
For multimedia, XMMS shipped with SuSE comes with a full suite of sound enhancemnet plugins. Also included is MPlayer that can play most of the Video/Audio formats including wma files.
It also includes Open Office suite , this more or less takes care of documents and spreadsheet.
It includes a full suite of development tools, in fact i have been doing a lot of development on this system including running a cvs server.
Post install configuration is the easy with Yast2, in fact KDE control center also has Yast2 embedded to it.

I have this system running since since the day I installed SuSE 8.1, I havent had any instability and have seen no degradion in preformance.

--User Experience on Copmaq Preserio 702us laptop.
So far I had seen linux and laptops are dicy thing. But SuSE 8.1 is special. Eariler I had 2 major problem on this laptop
1. ACPI support, SuSE 8.1 is the only distro i have used that has ACPI support built into the default kernel. With other distros the laptop becomes too hot to be used for a longer time.
2. Sound Support: Earlier to make sound work on the system I need to rebuild the kernel with a patch for the ac97 codec. But with SuSE 8.1 sound works smoothly with the default kernel.
[BTW i have tried Mandrake 9.0 on this laptop also, sound works, but no acpi by default].

One thing I would like to see SuSE doing is replacing Blackbox with fluxbox desktop.

This is the first time I have given 5 STARS to any Linux distro, SuSE 8.1 deserves it.