Windows 7 - Suse 12.1 Best yet -- here's a Virtual Appliance ready for using

Hi all
If you've never tried a Linux distro then try one using a Virtual Machine.

It's a is a good way to go. I recommend the latest SUSE 12.1 -- a really really slick offering far removed from "The bad old days".

Just download this "Virtual Appliance" -- it's ready to run straight out of the box on VMWARE (workstation or player).

Enjoy.

Open SuSE 12.1 (Vmware) | developervms.com

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45

Thanks for that. I've been meaning to try it for some time.

I wonder if you would be kind enough to take the time to explain to someone as stupid as myself, exactly what I need to do?

I assume I download Virtual Machine, run it and then install this copy of Suse inside it. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

Sorry for my stupidity, but I would like to learn.

Hi there

1) just download the virtual appliance
2) follow this link -- note since you've got the .zip file you don't need to download anything from the vmware site. Just read the tutorial on installing the Virtual appliance.

Note the vmware player is FREE software so you don't need to use vmware workstation unless you want to.

(Was in Swansea earlier this year for "Footie game" --love English Premier league).

Colleague of mine working on a contract at the DVLA so we went to the game together. Then afterwards --- went to Wind St in central Swansea.

Well after a trip to some very nice hostelries including Dylan Thomas's haunt "The No Sign Bar" I didn't of course make the last train --but great Evening out !!!!!.

Get Started with Virtual Appliances, Free Virtualization

Cheers
jimbo

Brilliant Jimbo45, thanks very much.

Glad you enjoyed the famous Welsh hospitality! I haven't been to Swansea for a few years. I used to work at RAF St Athan contracting for BAe Systems on Tornado and had a girlfriend in Swansea. I may well have been to Wind St, but don't have any recollection of it!!! Had some great nights out and found some excellent eateries in the city.

Nice to chat.

Take care.

I was about to download this a few days back, but the mix of user comments on the download page detered me. While some liked it, it appeared that half of them had serious problems with it.

^Going to find that with any Linux distro. As a far and daily user of Linux, SuSE for me is one of my least liked distros. I'm a RedHat kinda guy myself and mostly use RHEL or CentOS (which is based of RHEL).

I tried a number of different distros over time, and had trouble setting up a lot of them. Maybe if I had dwelt on the problems longer, I would have cleared them up, but I'm too impatient for that. Yes, I've had problems with SuSe, but less than with most other distros. When I first posted on this thread, I didn't notice that it was about VM, rather than a regular installation, so I'm a bit off-topic.

Hi there I too was weaned on Red Hat and liked it but when it went all corporate I needed something else.

I never liked Fedora which people say is based on Red Hat - just got used to SUSE way back when -- even before it joined the Nowell empire.

I think with Linux -- just choose what works best for you -- and what you need it for. I'm sure if you have to support servers at work etc then something like Red Hat will be liked by most professionals. However I really dont need an Enterprise quality product .

For a workstation I know I can get a "Self support" subscription for 179 USD --
https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/allProducts.html

but maybe I'm too used to anything dealing with Linux to be FREE. However I'm tempted to try Red Hat again just to see what's new in the years since I last used it.

The cheap Desktop license is actually too limited to be of much use for a private individual.


The idea of using a Virtual appliance however was basically to save all the trouble of installing the Guest OS - especially if you are new to Linux.

There are other distros also availabel as Virtual appliances -- just search for them. The methodology of installing is the same however.

Cheers
jimbo

Yeah, my training, all of my documentation, my books and my certifications are in RedHat Linux....hence my desire to stick with it. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with SuSE, I was just mentioning to Seeker that when dealing with Linux distros, you are always going to find good and bad. You cannot rule out a distro just because you read some bad things about it.

Yeah, it's the "free" version of RedHat more or less. It's bleeding edge, running the latest version of everything...even if not completely ready for prime time. Updates come fast and furious and can sometimes lead to fairly broken systems when complete. As a desktop, Fedora is far from my favorite, because I strongly prefer stable and proven over the absolute latest version.

Oh yeah, absolutely agree, all of these distros are geared towards specific tasks and some do better jobs than others. Since I run products on lots and lots of Linux servers, a long support life and safe/stable updates are priority number 1. The trade-off is that we usually aren't on the latest version of php or mysql server...but in the event those specific newer versions are needed, you can always download and install from source manually.


If that's what you want to do, you can get a "trial" of RHEL for free. But I'd highly suggest instead using CentOS linux. It's based directly on the SRPM's for RHEL, it's just recompiled and trademarked images and logos have been removed. For all intents and purposes, it's "free" Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS is what I use on all of my production Linux servers. Like you, we are looking for free, and don't need the phone support from RedHat to manage our own products. Thus, we went with a free enterprise class OS like CentOS and since it's pretty much "exactly" like Red Hat, everything I know, and all of my documentation work flawlessly.


Yeah, I always cringe when I read a post about somebody who wants to "dual boot with Linux" and isn't using a virtual machine or virtual appliance.