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How-Tos

SuSE Linux 7.2 Professional

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PCQ Bureau
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SuSE Linux is a popular Linux distribution, and we received the 7.2 Professional edition for review. It contained seven CDs, one DVD, five manuals, and two floppies–one bootable and the other containing driver modules. If you have a DVD drive, then you can use the single DVD ROM instead of the seven CDs. The distribution can be used by newbies, experienced home users, or even a system administrator.

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Easy installation

SuSE Linux has a very easy, feature-rich GUI wizard. A memory test option on the first screen of installation can detect bad memory (RAM) modules and thus prevent abnormal termination of the installation process midway. Besides conventional partitioning, there is LVM (Logical Volume Manager), which allows you to modify partitions on a running system. There is support for file system encryption (crypto file system) and ReiserFS file system. The manual partitioning option additionally allows partitioning on the basis of HDD cylinder numbers and shows a drop-down list of popular mount points used in Linux file system like /boot, /home, and

/usr.

Yast2 is a one stop installation and configuration tool for hardware, networking, system and user administration

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You also have ‘Windows Resizer’ to shrink an existing Windows partition. With this graphical tool, you can allocate space for SuSE Linux, by simply moving a graphical slider. A bare-bone installation (console Linux) takes about 184 MB, and an all package install takes 5.2 GB. The SuSE installer can pick up monitor information from a Windows driver diskette of the monitor. Subsequently with a graphical tool called Xfine you can position and adjust the monitor’s screen size. The installation window also shows useful help tips.

SNAPSHOT

  • Price: Rs 3,000
  • Meant for: Novices and veterans



    Features: 7 CDs and 1 DVD with over 2000 software packages, 5 comprehensive manuals, 90 days free installation support, Yast2 (a graphical installation and configuration tool)
  • Pros: Easy installation, impressive quick start manual, good application bundle, Braille support for visually impaired; RPM based distribution
  • Cons: None
  • Contact: GT Enterprises. Tel: 080-6606093, Fax: 6671407. 912, 14-Main, 4-Cross, Maruthi Circle,

    Hanumanthanagar, Bangalore 560019.
  • www.gtcdrom.com
  • E-mail: gtintblr@blr. vsnl.net.in

Tons of applications

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SuSE ships with a kernel 2.4.4, Xfree86 4.0.3, KDE 2.1.2, Gnome 1.4 and tons (about 2000 packages) of office, multimedia, graphics, networking and programming applications. This also includes commercial (demos or feature limited versions) software like JBuilder (Java IDE), IBM DB2 database, VMware (a virtual machine), AMaVIS (a mail virus scanner), Arkela (for backups). On the KDE desktop, a SuSE Work Menu applet is added, which gives one click access to application and configuration tools. CUPS (Common Unix Printing Platform), a printer configuration tool, based on Internet Printing Protocol has been included in the distribution. ‘SuSE YOU’, is an online update tool, to upgrade or patch existing SuSE installation against security breaches.

The 64 page, colorful, Quick Install Manual of SuSE Linux 7.2 stands by its title. There is also a 343 page reference manual and a manual each, for configuration, networking, and applications. Overall, it’s a decent distribution, given the price.

Shekhar Govindarajan

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