I recently reformatted my server at home and installed the very latest SuSE-9.2 (9.3 isn’t out yet- I keep waiting for SuSE X, but I’m not sure if that will happen. :)). SuSE still does not supply ISO images, but they do provide a download of a boot CD-ROM that you can then install over ftp. I wasn’t too keen on the idea but it went very smoothly.
First I tried downloading the ISO image of the “Mini-Installation”. It downloaded fine and I burned it to a CD-R. I then booted to it. I was confused by their site, thinking the CD would have nearly everything I needed. But I wasn’t able to install from the CD- I in fact just did an ftp install (unless it was so transparent it didn’t tell me- very possible). To do this, at the installation, I chose “Manual Installation” (I think) and in the boot options field below, I typed linux26 install=ftp://mirror_address/pub/suse/i386/9.2
The installer then launched and downloaded YAST which then configured and installed everything. Make sure you’re picky about mirrors. Check the mirror listing and try a couple. The first one I tried might still be going but I found a good one (for me) at usu.edu (Utah State).
Overall, it was really smooth. SuSE is my favorite version of Linux because of it’s great administration tools. I am Linux savvy enough to do things on the command line (you kind of have to be), but I prefer not to whenever possible.
SuSE’s great! It should be a few weeks till the 9.3 stuff is available online (they wait after a release for awhile before offering even the ftp install). In case you’re wondering, when I booted up it recognized that I had a SuSE 9.0 installation and by default would just upgrade that. I’m into clean installs myself, but I think next time I’ll just upgrade. It was a pain to reconfigure my DNS server for some reason.