“A year later I’m still with my good friend SuSE, being more productive than ever, while I still notice my neighbors are now living with the fact that their PCs are slower to use as a result of installing the new Microsoft software.” More here.
One Year With SuSE
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
He’s using 512mb of ram, that’s the reason why it’s “speedy”.
I have to work with 128mb of ram, and can’t upgrade it.
Maybe off-topic but maybe not.
Does the SuSE team uses a special Linux kernel for a desktop usage ?
I mean how can the same kernel be good for server and desktop apps ?
Some, Most I think as me ?, people don’t have multiprocessor systems.
That was just a big pile of bullshit Linux propaganda. Redicilous.
Ah, and why is it we always have to suffer anonymous rants and whines about how crappy linux is? Yeah, right, you don’t want to tell the world about how lame you are.. Buy the right hardware to begin with, and don’t expect a gratis Windows..
Yours truly, although also anonymous, has a perfectly working R40 running linux.
I run SUSE 9.3 on a laptop.. A dell Latitude C640. Runs great.. Wireless works with the add on card. Power management seems to work. No issues three months into it… 9.3 works great. give it a whirl.. you might be surprised.
I mean how can the same kernel be good for server and desktop apps ? Some, Most I think as me ?, people don’t have multiprocessor systems.
Easily. I’m using my machine for heavy desktop usage, devel, multimedia, capture, a vmware is almost constantly running on which my sister is doing her things by remote desktop from an otherwise weak laptop, server apps like apache, postgres, mysql, exim, samba and cups. All work quite fine, snappy and cool. It’s a debian sid on a 2800+ barton with a gig of ram.
While of course there can be quite a difference in focus for server and “desktop”/”workstation” kernels, you shouldn’t think in terms of Windows-inplanted terms. There’s no real reason for why a linux with “server settings” shouldn’t be fast and responsive for “desktop” usage.
I write those words in with ” since I’ve never felt the need of such separation for years now. The only separation I can think of is that I wouldn’t do video transcoding on a multihundred user mail&web&etc server :] but not because it couldn’t do it :]
as a novice user how will linux work for msn/yahoo webcam…
Does the SuSE team uses a special Linux kernel for a desktop usage ?
I mean how can the same kernel be good for server and desktop apps ?
There’s a number of kernels to choose from: default, smp, bigsmp, xen, um. (The last one is for user mode linux).
The article gives a good display of many potential advantages over windows.However i must say it’s more than desirable of having strict file/folder permissions on windows boxen.Besides XP has never meant to be an Server OS although some might say server 2003 is XP with additional programs and features.Linux on the hand has its roots as server and is steadily maturing in a desktop role.
Hi all
Can I obtain free ISO CD images of SuSe like Fedora? I’ve wanted to install SuSe 9.2 on my system for a while but it looks like that the only free option is to install it via ftp which is not possible for me. I prefer to download the images, burn’em into CDs and install SuSe from them.
– Behee
The main point of the article (in my opinion) is that you CAN run linux on the desktop quite successfully. Linux IS ready. Of course, people who hate/are afraid of computers won’t want to switch because they don’t want to have to learn something new. That’s always going to be the case. However if you want/need to, you can run Linux just fine.
I’ve been using Xandros for about 6 months now and it’s been great. There are trade-offs of course. Linux is better for interfacing with other Linux and Unix boxes (I do a lot of work with our Solaris servers) and Windows is better at running Windows only programs that don’t run under WINE/Crossover Office yet.
The bottom line is that if you want to try Linux, you should. Don’t let anybody tell you that it won’t work or it’s not ready for the desktop. Give it a whirl and decide for yourself.
There is a DVD for SUSE 9.2 release. You should be able to find them on a number of mirrors. I have SUSE 9.2 installed on one of the partition via DVD Download Edition.
Seriously this guy makes me sick .. he sounds like there is no alternative to MS products. Well guess what you DONT have to use MS products.. now just stop bashing windows and get on with ur suse
buy it
or pay me and i will send you my copy
>Does the SuSE team uses a special Linux kernel for a desktop usage?
> I mean how can the same kernel be good for server and desktop apps?
There is a boot option you can pass to the kernel: “desktop”
With “desktop” the kernel is optimized for interactive use while without “desktop” the time slices of the scheduler are optimized for throughput.
They released a DVD with 9.2, not word on their plans for 9.3 as of yet. However is has been discussed many times and determined that it IS possible illegal to sell peopel copies of the SUSE cds, however it does not appear to violate any T&A to give someone a copy for free, especially after YAST was GPLd. I’m not sure what the current status of the legality of redistributing the cds, but last I read it was ok. You shoudl be able to pick up the cds of bittorrent fairly easy…and PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS!!! they are always good for a laugh though hehe
Easy: Compared to Windows, the Linux-Multitasking is much better. On a Machine that is 100% loaded, you cannot do ANYTHING in Windows until the load drops. Linux just gets slower, you will notice this, but it will not come to complete halt.
I am running a Dual-Processor PC with MS Windows XP and REDHAT Linux installed (dual-boot). If I start a calculation run (Finite Element calc.) with both processors crunching the numbers, Windows is unusable for other tasks. In Linux I still can do some stuff, although the response times are higher than usual.
Additionally, if you have a normal 100Mbit/s Network card, and even if you serve out data with the full 100 Mbit/s, this usually does not utilize your CPU 100%, so using a desktop PC as server is something you actually can do. (I once set up an anonymous FTP server to get a CD full of photographs copied over the Internet to an other location).
So usually you do utilize only a small percentage of your CPU time to actually serve out the data to the net. Where you might notice some slowdown might be disk access. If you for example have an internet outbound traffic of 5 MB/s and your Harddisk can shovel out 10 MB/s, the available disk speed for desktop work drops by 50%. This you will notice in Program startup times and when saving larger files. Because you usually do not start applications very often, you do not really loose much by this.
And don’t believe anyone who says Linux can’t do this, Linux can’t do that. He usually is wrong. I am using Linux at home since 1998, and back then it was not really usable as desktop, but since 2001 I exclusively used Linux on my home desktop and it works great. Here is a list of usual tasks I perform with my computer at home:
– Internet surfing
– E-mail recieving and sending
– Playing video DVD’s (where I am at home this is legal)
– Watching TV with a TV tuner card
– Playing music
– Making spreadsheets
– Writing some sheets
– Watching my digital photographs
– Enhancing my digital photographs
– Enhancing and cutting music I record at the chorus I sing with
– Typesetting notes for the chorus
– Making dechnical drawings with a 2D-CAD program.
– using the machine as anonymous ftp server
All the programs and drivers I need to perform the tasks come with the distribution (Mandriva) which is one DVD. There is no need to buy additional Software to be able to perform the tasks I described above.
So all the people shouting about Linux can’t …. are most likely people who bought some obscure hardware without looking for Linux-compatibility, who then installed Linux and – oh wonder – not everything worked.
That I believe the story, as I know Linux is capable of performing that the story claims. However, his bosses must be really cool (or not caring) to let him pull off this without a bigger plan. But maybe the company he is working at is rather small, so he is one of the “part time admins” such smaller companies have and the IT – infrastructure is not yet tightened down.
Good if you are a new user, but if you keep learning a time will come when you’ll want your freedom back.
One day I’ll write an article why I eventually gave SUSE the boot. However now, summarizing: too bloated, too slow, buggy and too many choices made on your behalf. Personally if YaST were detachable I’d like it better, but it is easier to get rid of IE in Windows than YaST in SUSE. Pity, because SUSE as also good features, like a nice Gnome in 9.3.
I am all Debian now (actually Kanotix), but also looking for a second distro.
Truthfully, you out of luck when it comes to Yahoo/MSN webcamming. This is not implemented yet. There are programs in the works, none really work well yet, like Gaim A/V. Much of this isn’t the projects fault rather than the corporations fault.
Plus drivers for webcams aren’t all that complete there are sites out there that will tell you fully supported cams. Just do a Google search.
that is a good list you posted…
however, one thing you failed to mention…
the anonymous windows fanboys around here think ALL systems are crap if they do not play their games.
Simple as this, if the retards cannot play, they never move
over
http://www.interknet.net/bt/?torrent=suse93
yes, it’s legal
“because SUSE as also good features”=”because SUSE has also good features”
I think linux is about as ready as windows is, it just needs support from hardware developers.
The best thing about using linux on the desktop, IMHO, is that when weird, funky sh** starts to happen there is usually a sensible way of resolving it. On windows it feels far more random.
Linux will never be ready for the desktop simply because the unix heads that develop it just don’t understand usability, will never understand usabiltiy, and don’t want to ever understand usability. As Jakob Nielsen so eloquently sated:
My experience in trying to change the Unix community, so they would realized the value of a single, consistent human interface is that it is similar to trying to get a bunch of fish to realize the value of a good pair of running shoes. It is so far out of their range of experience as to be meaningless. Linux is the son of Unix, and it’s children are fish.
— http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-06ReaderMail.html#Linux
“Linux will never be ready for the desktop simply because the unix heads that develop it just don’t understand usability, will never understand usabiltiy, and don’t want to ever understand usability.”
First of all are you talking about usability or ease of use?
My 2 cents on the subject:
1)All it takes it is one or two distros which build a linux desktop with Aunt Tillie in mind: Linspire, Xandros and, to a certain extent, Mandriva are good examples.
2)If your theory were true, why is then that every time they put two groups of absolute noobs in front of computers, one group using Windows and the other using linux, the time they need to learn is absolutely the same?
And please don’t tell me that Windows is all that easy: editing the registry isn’t easier than editing a plain text configuration file. With the difference that in linux everything is open and you are encouraged to learn.
I agree that games on Linux is a barrier, and that it’s hard, or impossible to play modern games on Linux. However, there are a few signs that this is changing too. The graphics card companies are trying to improve their driver support for linux. As well, some developers (namely ID and the UT guys, Epic is it?) are trying to support it as a gaming platform. I have seen in person(on a friends comp) UT2004 play perfectly fine on his (I think gentoo) box. He also said installation was a no problem. If I am not mistaken UT actually has the tux icon on the box. So there is some signs of hope in this departmant. But yea besides gaming, and maybe some heavy multimedia type of stuff, Linux in is definitly ready for the desktop.
“I think linux is about as ready as windows is, it just needs support from hardware developers.”
Yep, that’s irony. The hardware people don’t want to port their drivers, and so people say Linux isn’t ready for the desktop as if the kernel team had something to do with that. Same goes for proprietary apps.
Once again, talking to Linux people about UI is like talking to a fish about running shoes.
1. It takes more than one or two distros aimed at Aunt Tillie. There’s always going to be some desperately needed software package that just will not work on that distro. You can’t just slap usability on as an afterthought. It must be designed from the start. And it needs the cooperation of every software developer on Linux. This will never happen.
2. Every UI study ever conducted shows that Windows beats every hodgepodge Unix/Linux/whatever GUI ever developed.
3. Users don’t edit registries, config files, dip-switches, or whatever you unix geeks substitute for a social life.
1. The thing about Linux is it’s all about freedom. If you want an advanced distro you can have it, just choose Gentoo, Arch, or any other similar distro. If you want a user-friendly one, choose one that is designed with usability in mind, such as Mandriva, Suse, Xandros, etc… And it’s not just slapped on as an afterthought. If I can get my father (who is in no way a computer person) to use a Mandriva box for everything he needs to do prefectly fine, without having to baby sit him, and worry about spyware, viruses, etc, then really I dont think usability is all that bad as you may think it is.
2. Really? can you point to these studies? if you are gonna make a claim like this, please have something to back it up. Microsoft definitly doesn’t have the usability game down. KDE is just as usable as Windows. Usability is a big issue, and many people are working very hard at it.
3. Unfortunately, I have had found myself so many times having to edit ppl’s registry in Windows to remove remains of spyware, virueses, etc.. Can a normal person do this? no.
You can get Linux where you’ll never need to edit a text file to do configuration. period. See point #1.
I am not going to claim here that Linux is perfect, because it’s not. But most of the problems do not come from the Linux camp. It’s as ie.exe mentioned, due to the lack of proper support by the hardware and software manufacturors.
“Recently my SuSE PC has been promoted to offer two services, a file sharing service with Windows PCs via SAMBA and a web service for our Internet website via Apache, so not only am I productively using my computer, now nobody is allowed to switch it off because of it’s extra server roles.”
That is some kind of dumb. And what company allows variation in operating systems? We are required to run WindowsXP and nothing else. It is taking a year of working with our systems admin and development managers just to convince them that we (developers) SHOULD be running Redhat, at least on another partition, so that we can properly muck with OAS as it exists on our dev., test and production servers.
I dunno… seems a little odd. Altho’ I have to admit I have done SOMETHING like that in the past (with a program, I wrote in an unapproved language) and didn’t get in trouble for it… just a little glare from my manager.
1. No disro could ever make up for Linux’s broken design (or lack of design). The only thing a disto author could ever do is create some cheap stop-gap patches that break the minute that it is put in font of actual users with actual work to do (i.e. not your uncle, cousin, mother, whoever screwing around with it for a couple of minutes).
2. Use Google.
3. There is no such thing as a Linux distro where you don’t have to edit a text file. It is impossible to make one. Linux’s lack of design and software configuration standards forces you to edit text files.
En ik ben de kerstman
But sometimes, you simply have to have Windows, for example to play Worms Armageddon, or Jazz Jackrabbit, or Transport Tycoon.
Yes, you can run them from an emulator, but on a <500 Mhz PC that just doesn’t work right.
I work at an non-profit that rebuilds old computers an give them to families that cannot afford one. Windows of any type made the project impossible so we went with SuSE for these machines – It made the project easy – very easy.
What I have found is that Linux is very easy to use on the desk top. Just before we started using it in our project I switch over to see if it could be done. Today I much perfer it to Windows – the computes we give away are all SuSE based – and follow up shows that most are still working and nearly all are still running SuSE.
So the short answer is yes – SuSE is read for the desk top.
The long answer is – Yes there are places that it does not work as XP – but everyone of those there is at least two other places that it out performs XP if you give it a chance.
Bojan,
Ignore this troll, if anyone had to use his comments as toilet paper, they’d wipe more on that they wiped off.
1. No disro could ever make up for Linux’s broken design (or lack of design). – proves he has no knowledge
2. use google – i.e. he cant produce the facts
3. See point one.
It is clear you are just spewing personal claims and opinions without a shred of evidence and with nothing to back them up. Comments like “use google” to a request for you to point out those “numerous usability studies” is childlish at best.
With comments like those I am gonna end this conversation now, because you are here obviously just to troll and have a flame war, and not to have a meaningful debate or discussion.
It’s because of pople like you that the following saying exists:
“Arguing over internet is like special olympics, no matter who wins, you are both still retarded.”
[quote]If you were not such a clueless fucking idiot, you’d add some basic security measures to these boxes to stop it happening.
Stop them running as ‘Administrator’ would be step one.[/quote]
yes I am an idot ok thx gw. you just proved my point the my previous post.
I have zero choice on how my co-workers, friends, gf, or other people I know use their computers, as administrators or not. All I know is that when they get their Windows box messed up, they come to me to help them clean it up. I can help them and teach them, install AdAware, Virus scan, and STILL that is not enough. Finally, I can get them to use Linux.
This guy looks like one of the new breed of MS (pobably paid for by MS) trollers and astroturfers. He is on the one hand trying to wind people up in order to make Linux users appear zealots. And on the other hand he is trying to spread the the FUD that a modern linux desktop orientated distribution is as hard to use as an old fashioned Unix system.
Of course a modern Linux desktop is not only easier to use and superior to that of an old Unix workstation but also better than Windows. I know I use both on a daily basis and I remember the old Unix workstations from when I was a grad student.
And one more thing:
“Users don’t edit registries, config files, dip-switches, or whatever you unix geeks substitute for a social life. ”
The need to edit registries in Windows and edit config files in Linux is about the same depends what you want to do and you can run a system without doing it.
However dip-switches control hardware and Windows users that want to put a new hard drive in their system have to set the dipswitch just the same as Linux users have to – simple innit eh?
You can tell I’m a Cockney Canadian
Agreed. It’s like those folks who insist on using M$ as if it were clever, yet do nothing but make advocates of non-Microsoft software look bad. I can’t imagine that they are serious and are likely either dumb or working for Microsoft in some capacity (either for money or as a sign of misguided loyalty).
I have yet to hear a single valid reason for doing this kind of thing. Anyone who hasn’t figured out that Microsoft has indeed done questionable things won’t be convinced of that fact by some loon swapping out the S for a $. They will just judge the person as they should; unreliable and spastic. A perfect caricature for someone who wants to spread discent.
3. Unfortunately, I have had found myself so many times having to edit ppl’s registry in Windows to remove remains of spyware, virueses, etc.. Can a normal person do this? no.
If you were not such a clueless fucking idiot, you’d add some basic security measures to these boxes to stop it happening.
Stop them running as ‘Administrator’ would be step one.
First line – normal installed Windows this happens –
Second line – clueless Windows user does not know how to do this even if he wanted – clueless Linux user has is already done for him or in some ways has no need to have it done at all.
Third line – stop running in administrator mode and many of the niffty Windows features and programs stop working properly. At which point SuSE becomes a lot more fun to use than XP.
Also – I know people that use SuSE that have no idea what a command prompt is – how to get to it – or what to do when they get there – and have no problem using their Linux machine. Yast will do just about everything they need and if Suse needs more help than that, then the clueless Linux user will do the same thing the clueless Windows user does – get help! I have noticed that I get far fewer calls from clueless Linux friends than from clueless Windows friends.
It seems that if a Clueless Linux User needs to call for help with something that needs the command line to fix – thats proof that Linux is not ready for the desk top. Even if the fix once done is good forever. However, if a clueless Windows user calls for help because they did something that fu**up their system because Windows let them do it (usually not permitted under Linux) – thats OK, Window is just what is need on the desk top anyway. Even if there is nothing to stop him from doing it again and again and again. We spend a great deal of time trying to teach people how not to mess up their Windows Computers – yet spending a few minutes teaching people the basics of the command line is considered outrageous.
Look at whole systems when comparing – not just a given feature here or there.
“Stop them running as ‘Administrator’ would be step one.”
yea but too many things requires administrator in the windows world… and a virus/exploit is usually system wide no matter how many users you have created… all users use the same winnt/system32 folder…. now if it wasnt QUITE so easy to infect a windows computer…
of course to be fair, xp is not that “hardware” hungry, just every windows program thinks it needs to be in the system tray and ready to go at a moments notice… THAT is what drags windows machines, all the stuff running at startup! heck, i run XP on a 300mhz 128mb pentium2 laptop and it is fine and my wifes machine is a 450mhz with 192mb and it does fine….
“Users don’t edit registries, config files, dip-switches, or whatever you unix geeks substitute for a social life.”
Really? Was it because of geekness that the registry had to be edited when Outlook Distress refused to remember passwords?
Too many people complaining about not being able to run software as no admins in XP.
From my experience (currently supporting 600 machines with most users not administrators).
1: People think they need to be administrator because they don’t know how to do it properly. There is too many “I need to do X so I need to be an admin”. When I say no and look at it closer I see that they need access to a folder or lower access than admin to do what they need.
2: Most apps do run fine in Windows as a non admin user. We’re a bank. We’ve got a listing of 75 apps that we allow to be installed on users machines. None of them need the users to be admins of their PCs. For me I have an admin account and a normal account. The RunAs works for me to do my admin tasks.
3: Developers are lazy. Just because a company releases a piece of software that needs you to be an admin it’s not Microsofts fault. It is just the easy way out. Microsoft should clamp down on this, the developers should clamp down on this and we shouldn’t accept it. We don’t accept it in our company and we won’t allow software that needs admin access. We’re pretty big so we have had software “updated” for us to work for non admin users. Why couldn’t they just do that from the start.
I think that the main point he’s making is that SUSE, or any other linux variant, will run on relatively low-end hardware and that given a bit of perserverence (or training) is more than useable in a work environment.
With every new windows release, HDD, RAM & CPU Power requirements have increased – the Longhorn requirements are absolutely ridiculous. Maybe MS should take a leaf out of Apples book and actually increase performance with each OS revision.
“With every new windows release, HDD, RAM & CPU Power requirements have increased – the Longhorn requirements are absolutely ridiculous. Maybe MS should take a leaf out of Apples book and actually increase performance with each OS revision.”
funny, KDE and gnome have gotten slower with every release and require more hardware than XP to run smoothly. Microsoft are capitalists, which means they want to sell stuff. The companies they work with are the same, like AMD and NVidia, and I for one am glad to have a spiffy new machine with lots of RAM and HD Space.
I’d be interested to know at which point in history you’d have frozen hardware? pentium with MMX? why not 386? and how much RAM should we have stopped at, 1Mb? 16Mb? Colossus and the Bombe ran most programs just tickety-boo so perhaps minimum spec for BSD or linux should be mercury tube based memory still?
it’s called progress, get used to it, get a job and you can have the new machine and the up to date windows OS which offers management functions such as group policy and good integrated directory services. I have a Linux server on our network running the intranet and it doesn’t play well at all with others!
” I have a Linux server on our network running the intranet and it doesn’t play well at all with others!”
Don’t blame Linux just because you don’t know how to use it correctly.
Good point.
I would add.
Don’t blame Windows just because you don’t know how to use it correctly.
Funny you said that, dave.
KDE and GNOME definitely DO NOT require more hardware than Windows XP. I will give some weight to your observation that these two desktop environments/window managers have been getting slower every release, but that is old news. The last couple of releases have gotten faster every iteration. On my machine (a Pentium III 850 MHz with 512MB RAM), the recently released Fedora Core 4 loads faster than Windows XP! That’s not just for the OS kernel, i.e. getting from the POST to the login screen of either OS, but from the login to the usable desktop as well!
I’ve heard that KDE4, which will be based on the yet to be released QT4, will post a 30% speed boost over the current version (KDE3.4). Can’t wait for that to happen!
By the way, although the hardware requirements of KDE and GNOME have increased slightly over the past couple of releases, you really don’t have to use them if you can’t or don’t want to. You may use a lightweight desktop environment/window manager like FluxBox or XFCE. Try doing that with Windows XP!
You’ve used it for a year and you don’t even know it’s called SUSE Linux not SuSE?
SuSE/NOVELL writes the(ir) name allso as “SuSE” in the logo with the cameleon.
And all over the website it’s called SUSE, they changed their name from SusE to SUSE years ago!
On the current C’t magazin (Heise.de) 2005-13 there is a DVD with Suse 9.3 personal. The magazine costs less than 4 EUR across Europe.