I was really impressed by SuSE this week. The other day I went to upgrade the OS on a Linux server. Normally, this is a painstaking process. We wanted to upgrade the server from SuSE 9.2 to >= OpenSuSE 10.2. Normally it is hard enough just to upgrade one release of an OS, let alone a handful. I heard of other users / read posts on the forums just popping in a CD / DVD and upgrading, so I had to try it.
Getting to the point, I just popped in the first disc of the OpenSuSE 10.2 set in the CDROM drive and it after a couple language / keyboard questions it asked me if I would like to install or upgrade. I chose upgrade. The system smart enough to resolve all the package dependencies, add a few more, remove some stale / non-existent packages in the new version. An hour and a half later, I rebooted to find an OpenSuSE 10.2 system with the latest software, and all my user / configuration data in place. No skips, bumps, nothing, it just worked -- and properly at that. I had to re-compile one non-distributed Apache module and I was running again. Even with fully commercial versions of operating systems like Microsoft or Red Hat you just can't do that and have it work. What would have normally taken a full days work was done in an hour and a half, and I was back to doing other things. Until now I thought of SuSE like any other bloated mainstream distro. While it still is a bit bloated by default, that little bit of manageability really makes a difference to me. It turned what would normally be a day to half-day project into a one hour maintenance task. It's also a great step in the direction of making Linux systems easier to maintain in the long run. Good job SuSE. Ronnie -- Puryear Information Technology, LLC Baton Rouge, LA * 225-706-8414 http://www.puryear-it.com Visit http://www.puryear-it.com/publications.htm to download your free copies of: "Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers" "Spam Fighting and Email Security in the 21st Century"
