Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st Jul 2008 15:03 UTC, submitted by sb56637
Most reviews - so far - of openSUSE 11.0 have been quite positive, but that doesn't automatically mean everybody is happy. TechReview offers some criticism of the latest offering from openSUSE. "openSUSE 11.0 is a difficult system to qualify. Highlights include good availability of current packages and YAST GUI configuration tools for some advanced features. However, these advantages are largely eclipsed by a chaotic, dysfunctional package management system and marginal performance. New Linux users with more complex network configurations or challenging hardware may be forced to use openSUSE due to its unique innovations in GUI system configuration. Yet, experienced and inexperienced users alike may find themselves increasingly frustrated by the grave lack of refinement in what is an otherwise capable Linux distribution."
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Member since:2005-07-06
"Say I change something trivial in xorg.conf because I just find it easier that way than doing it in a GUI tool. Then I happen to go into YaST and change something completely unrelated - a network setting. Result? xorg.conf gets rewritten without my manual change!"
I believe that has changed, because since 10.3 I have used a custom xorg.conf and it has never been overwritten by YaST.
Member since:2005-07-06
Well, xorg.conf was just an example - the first that came to me off the top of my head. I'm not actually sure it's affected by this issue, I think it's handled by something called SAX rather than YaST, isn't it? But still, it's possible they fixed it and I'm just misreading the reference in this review. I hope so 
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Posting completely personally, not professionally (as most people here know by now, I work for Mandriva).
My personal bugbear with SUSE has always been one that's alluded to in this review. Years ago, way before I joined MDV, I ran SUSE (7.3 or something) on my old laptop for a while, as Mandrake (as was) couldn't install to it for some hardware reason (odd CD drive). The thing that drove me up the wall was the way YaST handles configuration files. It seems like a large set of config files are basically 'owned' by YaST and the settings you set *in YaST*. Every time you change any tiny thing with YaST, every one of these config files is re-written (from scratch) using the values set in YaST.
So it's incredibly tough to edit these files manually, if you should want to. Say I change something trivial in xorg.conf because I just find it easier that way than doing it in a GUI tool. Then I happen to go into YaST and change something completely unrelated - a network setting. Result? xorg.conf gets rewritten without my manual change! Man, that just used to drive me round the bend.
Every so often I install SUSE in a VM just to keep up with developments. AFAICT, this behaviour is still the same. There may well be a way to avoid it that I don't know about, but it sure annoyed / annoys me.