Linked by Adam S on Thu 19th Jun 2008 14:47 UTC, submitted by M-Saunders
A new major release of Novell's community-supported distro openSUSE 11 is now available and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?
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Member since:
2006-12-05
openSUSE, Fedora, etc. can be thought of as more like repo-on-disc type distros. They ship with a large number of software on a CD, most of which don't even get installed. So large, chances are the next time you think "hey, I wanna install program X," you don't even have to go online (unless you want the latest version): it's probably on the disc. They also allow you to select during install which desktop environment to use (ie. KDE or Gnome) and *only* install that desktop. Distros that fit on one disc usually have one major DE per disc.
Basically, these extra-large ISOs just contain a lot more software and can allow greater flexibility with a single (though much larger) disc. I personally prefer distros that are on one to three CDs myself; those tend to get the useful software vs. wasted space ratio down nicely.
Also, there are installable live CD versions of openSUSE, which IMO have a much better-tweaked final install. Fedora also has a similar setup.