[NTLUG:Discuss] What is the deal with SuSE

[Chris Cox]

Leroy Tennison wrote:
> What implementation of 'man' are they using?  It doesn't support 'man -K
> ...' and seems limited (no entry for XF86Config !?)
> 
> Also, what hardware detection mechanism are they using?  I admittedly
> have an odd mouse (I *think* it is a beta wheel mouse I got from
> Microsoft years ago before they officially introduced it).  Fedora
> doesn't guess it right either but at least it's 'fixable' in the mouse
> selection part of installation.  Nothing helps with SuSE, I finally
> guessed my way through to the kernel parameter psmouse.proto=bare (from
> Googling) and then SuSE detected 'new hardware'.  This time the
> Intellimouse Explorer worked and wrote XF86Config with
> 
> "Device" "/dev/mouse"
> 
> Prior to this it wrote
> 
> "Device" /dev/mice"    (or something like that)
> 
> Any ideas, comments, flames, etc?

SUSE historically did much of its own hotplugging since most of
it was missing from Linux.  Now they have switched to trying
to use what Linux (proper) comes with... IMHO, it still needs
some maturing.  In some cases, I believe it's not "fixable",
that is to say, it tries to do the impossible.

SUSE's hardware detection is actually pretty good.  There are
places (very few) where it is deficient.  But it gives you about 60x the
ammount that say.. something like kudzu would give you.

For example, with SUSE's hardware detection, I can get the
serial number of my platfor, determine that it is in a
mid tower case, know how many slots I have, what are occupied,
the serial number of the DIMMs in my box (and what slots
they are in and what types they are)... and on... and on...

If you come to the meeting this Saturday, you'll see what
I'm talking about.  Or you can run hwinfo yourself.

It's actually very impressive.  It's so impressive that Debian
I believe now offers the hwinfo tool.

SUSE breaks their man pages down sometimes into smaller
packages.  You will need to install the X11 man pages
separately.  They don't get installed by default.  Whether
that is is good or bad is subjective.  The X11 man pages
are a large set... but at the same time, it's still just
text... so not that big of deal (IMHO).

My personal opinion is that while auto-detection is nice,
SUSE needs to make it easier to dumb-down their implementation.
But it's almost an all or nothing proposition.  Sigh.
Udev/hotplug and all is neat, but not quite ready for prime time.

This is not an easy thing to solve.  SUSE can turn it all off,
and leave configuration up to you... or leave it all on and
try to fix the HAL fdi stuff to where it works a bit better
(but as I said, it's an impossible task IMHO).

I installed SUSE 9.3 64-bit on my dual Opteron.  I have a mouse,
the wheel does nothing (doesn't generate events...nothing).
I haven't figured out a way to make my wheel work... I've
tried all the usual suspects.  Many on the web say I'm just
stuck... I don't have the hours to spend trouble shooting it
(I say hours, because I think I've spend at least 2 or 3 hours
on it already).  My dual opteron has a bizarro config though,
with a USB-PS2 converter going to a KVM.  If it matters, I was
able to get all of it working fine with SUSE 9.2 32-bit on
the same platform.