Three reviews of SUSE Linux 10.0 are available. Here, here and here. “In conclusion, SUSE Linux 10.0 has made it’s milestone debut release with style and perfection. This offering is polished, professional, complete, stable, and reliable.”
SuSE’s become significantly faster going from 9.2 to 9.3 and again now with 10.0. Do give it a try again (even if by mistake, although it’s unlikely you’re gonna confuse it with Gentoo.)
Gentoo better be faster than SUSE, after you spend hours or days building it specifically for your processor. If you built software that had to run flawlessly on any given Intel/AMD box, then you’d pass up all those processor-specific goodies, too.
Nevertheless SuSE got better with every release.SuSE 10 is stable,secure (AppArmor),fast enough,and good looking.But it allways depends on your hardware which is true with every distro,The best distro is the one that suports everything you use.I think this release is one of the best of breed if not the best.There´s no significant performance difference between AMD64´s on different Linux distros as there is between the x86´s.
The Novell team did a good job on this and in my opinion the open development process led to a lot more bugs being caught and much better hardware support.
As a Gnome user, it’s still lacking a bit of polish there. While Novell has been investing heavily in Gnome (Mono, Beagle, Banshee. . .), SuSE is still a bit KDE-centric. The menu in Gnome isn’t organized how a Gnome menu should be organized and stuff like that. Of course, SuSE 10 is the first version that asks you whether you want KDE or Gnome (rather than simply assuming you want KDE).
It seems a tad faster than Ubuntu, but it might just be my imagination (or the fact that I use an ext3 filesystem with Ubuntu), but in my opinion it isn’t as polished or stable.
NOTE: by stable, I don’t mean that it crashes or anything like that, but somethings just don’t work right. Take Banshee as an example, when an iPod is connected, it won’t launch. That’s a tad buggy and I haven’t experienced problems like that with Ubuntu.
am most likely going to send it back to suses online shop.
the strong points of this release have been mentioned elsewhere already, so i’ll just list my reasons why i am less than satisfied (or rather, why i think suse 10.0 sucks greeen chameleon cheese):
1. less content for the same money (5 CDS, 1 DVD with 32bit and 64bit binary rpms, NO dvd with source rpm packages as suse used to ship)
2. even less content for still the same money (only one little piece of printed documentation, and thats just a summary of whan we were used to get as the “suse user guide”, no printed admin handbook, no printed “new in this version” handbook)
2. too many changes that are IMO changes for the worse, for example SKIM instead of the usual kinput2 approach if you wanna go multilanguage (ok, the principle behind skim makes the choice obvious… if it would work. you’re supposed to choose a primary and any number of secondary languages during installation, and then you can change the input method according to all those languages… but no matter what i do, the skim context menu stays empty, where it should list all the available input methods.)
3. many packages that i upgraded myself by making my own rpm packages are still old versions on 10.0 but for unknown reasons they shuffled the package names around a lot, so i’d have to rebuild all those packages myself just for suse’s benefit… and with no source rpms for their stuff, this can be fishy in some cases.
4. they not only don’t include the sources anymore, they ask for 15€ for a sources DVD, or point to the mirrors of their ftp, which in the most cases haven’t synced all the sources yet (which stinks).
summary: i yet have to see something in suse 10.0 that is good and new enough for me to indulge myself in all the pain that it’ll take to bring a suse 10.0 installation to where i can be with a fresh 9.2 install by just adding a bunch of installation sources from my fileserver and click on “update system” in yast2. Besides, one of my main points in buying a packaged linux was always the good printed documentation that suse used to ship with its “professional” version. But IMO this 10.0 is not even a “personal” version; its more like a “don’t bother us, go away” version…
No offense but, you seem a tad advanced for the market Suse 10 “boxed” was intended for. I think you might want to stick with the Open version or go with something that caters to your evident advanced knowledge of Linux.
the open version suits me even less than the boxed 10.0… the fact that i could compile and build packages of everything i need myself doesnt necessarily mean that i WANT to, or in this case, would want to be FORCED to.
if that’d be the case, i’d be running gentoo, or a LFS.
I Stuck with suse for over 10 years because it came really close to the system i want to run. but by now, the gap becomes wider and wider but not because changes in my requirements but because of how suse linux has changed over the last few years.
All these Suse, Mandrake, Lindows, etc. distros are trying to make Linux into something it is not (a substitute for Windows). They fail at it miserably and it just pisses people off. Linux is just a Unix clone. That’s what Linus and the developers who wrote it intended for it to be. All these distros trying to fit the square Linux peg into the round desktop computing hole are only wasting everyone’s time.
You’re going to get modded down, but I *tend* to agree.
Of course there is no “Linux” operating system, it’s just a kernel, but in my humble opinion, it’s better for the UNIX way of doing things. Projects like ROX are the way to go for desktop Linux…traditional UNIX way of getting things done, as opposed to copying the Redmond or Apple way. I don’t want my whole system hidden behind wizards and menus and druids bloating my system.
The point of Linux is choice, so if people want what is currently being done with Linux, (which they obviously do) that’s great. But be content with 2nd best.
The thing is that the linux kernel could be the base of a decent desktop operating system, but just slapping KDE or Gnome on top of it is not it. Eventually someone will get it right, but not until a desktop environment is made for Linux and not some other Unix.
Apple has already built a decent desktop OS on a Unx kernel. We still aren’t even close after all this time. Why are we failing? Why are KDE and GNOME still so far behind, even with rapid open source development.
I am not trying to be provocative; this is a genuine question. Even if Apple haven’t achieved on all fronts, most would acknowledge they are doing better than us. Why not build an open-source clone of their interface to begin with and build on it from there? Surely, the technical challenges presented by replacing X-Windows would be the only real challenge.
“Why are KDE and GNOME still so far behind, even with rapid open source development.”
Behind what? I can’t afford a Mac with semi-decent specs, but KDE 3.4/3.5 or Gnome 2.10/2.12 are absolutely fine for me when compared to any version of Windows.
The issues I have with Linux are others, like hardware compatibility or apps (clearly some distros have plenty more than others)
Apple is doing one thing with OS X and that alone : a desktop OS that drives Apple hardware. A lot simpler to manage, especially when you are the one paying the staff.
So they make choices linux people can’t make : simple install method with exceptions where it makes sense, gadget applications everybody wants and being fashionably up-to-date with current peripherals. And it’s fast enough.
With Suse, mandrake et al, you don’t know whether you’ll be able to sync your phone, PDA, take part to a yahoo conference, whether you wifi card will be operated correctly, etc….
Apple has already built a decent desktop OS on a Unx kernel. We still aren’t even close after all this time. Why are we failing?
1. Because Apple had the manpower to do it.
Besides hundreds(?) of developers working many hours/day, the most important thing is that they have professionals working on the usability of the OS and that really shows. Not many OpenSource project can say that they have paid usability experts working on their project. Even if some OpenSource projects had, that still would not make a decent desktop. They might be very usable, but if all programs don’t share the same intuitive usability, the ‘ultimate desktop experience’ is not yet achieved.
Luckily we have things like HIG and freedesktop.org so the goal is somewhat clear, it just takes time to achieve it. And in the meantime, Apple still has those professionals 8 hours/day…
2. Apple controls the hardware where its software is running.
While Linux has always been the dominant product on the server end it’s struggled for dominance on the desktop. So it makes no sense to develope a distribution that is intended to compete with Microsoft for the desktop dominance if the GUI is not at least a little familiar. This is what attracted me to distributions such as RHEL, SUSE Linux and Mandriva Linux instead of OSX. Coming from years of using Windows it was easier to transition to a Linux distribution as already mentioned than OSX where it’s completely unfamiliar.
While Linux has always been the dominant product on the server end it’s struggled for dominance on the desktop. So it makes no sense to develope a distribution that is intended to compete with Microsoft for the desktop dominance if the GUI is not at least a little familiar. This is what attracted me to distributions such as RHEL, SUSE Linux and Mandriva Linux instead of OSX. Coming from years of using Windows it was easier to transition to a Linux distribution as already mentioned than OSX where it’s completely unfamiliar.
Windows has a higher market share on the server than Linux right now, just to let you know
linear thinking like “they’re trying to make ABC to XYZ” or “ABC is just ABC they should leave it the way it is” are along the lines of “the world is flat! Your going to fall off the edge!” Tell Sony that they made a mistake modifying Linux for use in their “Play Station” thingamabob and I’m sure Sony will recall all the millions of units sold. Or Better yet… (I think you’re on to something) If there is an already well establish product we should ONLY use that product and never heed the call of innovation.
Someone should tell Apple to stop what they’re doing. Window should and can only work on Intel based architecture.
Yes, but not significantly at least not on my pc (amd64 3000+).
I must say I really like their background image since it doesn’t remind me of winxp (9.2 did).
>YAsT still kinda sucks: You get all these great >features packed in this horrible GUI. Nothing has >changed here. Pretty icons, impossible navigation, >dead-slow scripts (they’ve even added a few). “Back”, >”Abort” and “Finish” buttons (but no “Apply” or >”Save”). You want to do package management 90% of the >time, but can’t find the icon to click.
Absolutely agreed! I’m really a noob but I think things like fdisk or ifconfig are several times faster than their graphical counterparts and not really hard to use. Another issue is that some rpms don’t install under yast but a simple “rpm -U xyz.rpm” works. I still wonder why this is the case…
I’d say if you have SUSE >=9.2 the upgrade isn’t worth it unless you really want to have the latest software.
How can there be any reviews of SUSE, I still have to wait another 4 days to finish downloading the official release from Thursday. So it looks like I’m gonna be able to install it a week after it’s been released, strictly due to download speeds from bittorrent. So how can people have reviews of it already?
I don’t really know where you live and how you’re connected to the internet but I finished downloading on Friday and installation took about one hour. Probably depends on where you live (I live in Germany – lucky me) and how fast your connection is (I downloaded at about 1MB/s). So absolutely no problem to finish a review by now (if I wanted to).
It doesn’t install them, but when you launch YOU (YaST Online Update), it will come up as an option. YOU will run automatically during the install if you test your internet connection and then you can install it there.
So, short answer: yes, it does have the NVidia drivers.
Why is the mouse cursor different when sitting over a firefox window as opposed to all the other windows? It doesn’t seem to follow the selected cursor theme.
Why is the mouse cursor different when sitting over a firefox window as opposed to all the other windows? It doesn’t seem to follow the selected cursor theme.
I got this horrible freeze of the whole OS ( SUSE 10.0 beta3,final; SUSE 10.1 Alpha) when I inserted a badly burned DVD with UDF. I have the same instability with Xandros 3.0.2 BE, Mandriva 2005 LE, Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 WS, Novell Linux Desktop 9.0.
The weird thing is that only UBUNTO 5.04, 5.10preview didn’t make this freeze form all linux distros I have tried; I also didn’t notice such horrible instability from all Unixes on x86 like PC-BSD 0.7,0.7.5,0.8.., Solaris 5.10 and 5.11 beta 22; OSX 10.4.1 on x86.
When I went to SUSE bug report site I have found some serious bugs that the team were trying to fix which belongs to the kernel, so I wondered about the unreported bugs that might render my workstation unusable if I adapt this OS for me or my friends and clients.
Remember: The kernel will be considered quite stable only if few bugs (arising from the kernel) are reported to the distro maker ,and when those bugs are benign.
Don’t forget that there are other serious bugs coming from the GUI and the Running applications, these could be quite tolerated, but kernel bugs, and severe ones! Give me a break. I will stick to Unix based OSs.
Sounds like a faulty driver, not the kernel. For better or for worse, linux currently has the widest range of drivers, which is probably why it’s so popular in comparison to the other free *nixes.
I ran 10.0 RC1 and was unable to get monodevelop to run on it. Any changes with the release?
In case bringing up mono on this thread doesn’t enrage someone, let me throw in that I erased 10.0 and threw gentoo on the machine (cuz my ls is now faster than yours) to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the BeBox while making a collage out of the new GPL … (that should do it).
The world’s a funny place, eh..? – Schwarzenegger is not German, but Austrian – just as was that other famous uber-German called Hitler (formerly known as Mr Schicklgruber)… You can avoid saying embarassing things like this by watching news once a week…
I disagree with both you and the parent post. What you are basically saying is that there’s no such thing as a ‘Unix desktop’. Also, rider to this corollary is that *any* OS based on unix (or unix-like principles) has no place on the desktop. Well, guess what? maybe not as strongly as Linux or *BSD, but every effort at alternate OS has unix-like roots. SkyOS, BeOS (?) etc are all based on underlying principles that are very much unix-like. For your further information, MacOSX is completely based on a unix-like system (I bet you know that!). Lastly, looking at the direction Windows Vista is taking, it seems to me *unix-like* is the only way to compute — all in all, its trolls like you that give Linux desktop a bad name.
OpenSUSE 10 installed here without a hitch. It seems an improvement on 9.2 (never tried 9.3) though will take more post-install configuration because I’d like to add non-free things like flash, dvd-support, mp3-support and so forth. Otherwise, my impression is that the new SUSE is excellent. Also, faster than 9.2.
SUSE has always been a top-notch distro, imho, and I’m sorry that rather a lot of the posts on here have been trolls or Ubuntu-fanciers. What you get is software put together by mature, sensible and highly experienced engineers, not kiddies or wannabes, who take pride in what they do. And you get a great deal of software with SUSE, plus very good configuration tools in YaST. It’s hard to see what more the majority of folks could want. For those for whom this is still not enough, there is always Debian.
The question over SUSE still remains: whether Novell will nurture this jewel or blow it just like all the other things Novell has tried and failed at.
I have been using SLICK since its first ISO’s became available.
It is faster than anything I have used, boot times are incredibly fast, applications load in a snap.
It even has things like Java and most codecs installed by default (although how long this will last is anyones guess)… Best of all, its a 1 CD install, rather than the 5 you must download usually.
It is my opinion that everyone that has ever complained that SUSE is slow should give SLICK a try, your opinions will change within a day, I assure you of that!!
I’ve been running SUSE 10 for a day now, and I for one have seen a noted improvement over 9.3 (which was a pretty slick release in itself). For me, the issue was some hardware compatibility issues with the machine I’m running it on (a Dell Latitude D610 hooked up to a monitor pretending to be an actual workstation).
Two problems that have been fixed in this release, one the issue of display resolution. No external hacks seem necessary to get full i915 support (DRI now works too). Also, I notice that the DVD drive works at full acceleration (i.e. I’m guessing they do an ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI in the kernel, bit of a hack, but saves me trouble). You still need to grab an external libdvdcss of course, but that’s a small and understandable matter.
Only thing I’ve left wondering is if AFS/kerberos support has improved. There was an issue with 9.3 in that regard. (mind you, SUSE is the _only_ distro I’ve seen so far with out of the box AFS support built in to the install, so I’ll give them some slack there 😉
Too many of you supposedly intelligent dorks make this mistake frequently. It makes you look idiotic. Figure out how to use the apostrophe correctly. It’s not that hard.
I was using SuSE 9.3 retail and the novell team did a really good job with it, now i go on and try Open SuSE 10.
Over all i see it as a great improvement over past versions, you won’t have close packages like flash and others but they are accesible. It boots faster and has Gnome 2.12
Still, there is one thing that pisses me off and madded me go away from Mandrake (yes I was a long time mandrake user), and that is the development packages, WTF!? is a 5 CD distro why the hell isn’t MySQL, and PostgreSQL servers on there, and the dev libs?, that’s one thing i hate about package management, those damm devel packages.
I think i may revert to SuSE 9.3 with Gnome/Kde updates, i found really silly that it lacks OpenSource software that was on previous versions and it is still a 5 CD distro.
The GNOME implimentation in SUSE is improving with each release – with under-the-skin improvements that most don’t see.
I am working on some stuff at the moment which will improve the GNOME (working on Menus, removing kdebase3, Qt engines). If anyone is interested in testing out this new package/script, email me at spayne (at) evolutionconsultancy.com. I think it is also fair to mention the differences between the two different versions of SUSE 10:
SUSE 10 Boxed (also known as Eval): The full version which most people are used to. Includes Java, Flash Player, RealPlayer as standard. You can buy this for ~£70 or download it from http://ftp.suse.com for free. I think Eval is the wrong word for this IMHO. Available on 5CDs or 1 DVD. I recommend and use this one 🙂
SUSE 10 Open Source Software (OSS): This is the totally free and redistribubatle version that contains no non-free and no non-open source software. This can be downloaded from http://ftp.opensuse.org. Available on 5 CDs or NetInstall.
Sorry for my bad english, but I try to find AppArmor packages, menu entry in yast or gnome-menu or anything like this without any fortune.
Maybe I don’t understand correctly what is AppArmor… ¿?¿?
See AppArmor as a firewall for applications.The firewall (AppArmor) decides based on a set of rules,which applications may open what files and on what terms,(capabillities,read,write,link,execute,..etc).
That is something beneficial i would say.
Once you have finished your rule-set for let´s say mozilla-firefox,and you hit an malicious website that tries to read something that´s not within the bounds set by the AppArmor ruleset,than that´s blocked.
All can be steered via YAST and/or cmd prompt.
run ´genprof <full-path-to-app>´ and let the cmd open.
now start your application that you would like to profile.After you have used the app for a while just press S on the cmd prompt and you are being asked some questions.I write this on SuSE 10 eval (with AppArmor).
AppArmor,SELinux,Grsecurity.. have a lot in common.
For example they regulate CAP (capabillities)
You could install lcap and run it in order to see currently allowed capabillities.
Furthermore you could issue:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/cap-cound which removes all capabilities,while this is extreme secure it´s not quite a fine-grained solution (even root now can´t mount/umount anything for example).
BTW once you have though everything is normal again,the CAP setting is back to itś original setting.
Yesterday, I bought a brand new Sony Vaio laptop with Windows XP SP2 pre-installed.
Today, I grabed SuSE 10.0 iso images and put the first CD into my laptop.
Actually, I didn’t expect too much.
I thought the installation could be stalled at any given moment.
But that’s just my poor imagination.
The actual outcome was amazing.
The installation was quite smooth.
The installer automagically detected all my devices including on-board sound, LAN-Express WiFi card, and on-boad intel graphic chip, and it even managed to create new partition for linux by reducing the existing NTFS partition! Very cool!
Before the installation, there was a single 80GB HDD partitioned three parts; recovery image, C: and D: drive.
SuSE installer intelligently chose D: drive partition which had 60GB total with 98% available space to perform resizing.
The D: drive partition was reduced to 20GB and several new partions were created.
It only failed to detect proper display size which is 1280×800 WXGA.
But selecting the right size was a piece of cake.
All I had to do during the installation were to confirm what the installer was going to do, to select the default desktop and to change the CDs, and to wait.
After the installation was completed, it gave me perfect desktop environment with instant internet connection through my wireless lan.
Clearly, Ubuntu is better. I don’t have to go to foreign language repositories to try and find packages I have to trust in blind faith, I can just add extra sources (all of which point to *.ubuntu.com, official or not) and apt-get update and I’m fine.
Clearly, SUSE is better. I don’t have to rely on an overly hyped distro that is stripped down and really isn’t unique at all from any other Gnome based forked out Debian distro. Once I setup my trusted packman repository, along with the SUSE repository, I can install applications easily using Yast, not to mention the automatic updates that I can use with YOU, and I’m fine.
Submitted by 
i gave up on suse when 9.1 came out. it was just a little slow and didnt like any of my hardware.
i can honestly say that if i ever get a chance to try suse 10, it would be out of desperation or mistake.
what do you think?
what do you think?
I think you might be a troll, but what the heck.
SuSE’s become significantly faster going from 9.2 to 9.3 and again now with 10.0. Do give it a try again (even if by mistake, although it’s unlikely you’re gonna confuse it with Gentoo.)
Gentoo better be faster than SUSE, after you spend hours or days building it specifically for your processor. If you built software that had to run flawlessly on any given Intel/AMD box, then you’d pass up all those processor-specific goodies, too.
I i allmost did.
Nevertheless SuSE got better with every release.SuSE 10 is stable,secure (AppArmor),fast enough,and good looking.But it allways depends on your hardware which is true with every distro,The best distro is the one that suports everything you use.I think this release is one of the best of breed if not the best.There´s no significant performance difference between AMD64´s on different Linux distros as there is between the x86´s.
Sorry for my bad english, but I try to find AppArmor packages, menu entry in yast or gnome-menu or anything like this without any fortune.
Maybe I don’t understand correctly what is AppArmor… ¿?¿?
The Novell team did a good job on this and in my opinion the open development process led to a lot more bugs being caught and much better hardware support.
As a Gnome user, it’s still lacking a bit of polish there. While Novell has been investing heavily in Gnome (Mono, Beagle, Banshee. . .), SuSE is still a bit KDE-centric. The menu in Gnome isn’t organized how a Gnome menu should be organized and stuff like that. Of course, SuSE 10 is the first version that asks you whether you want KDE or Gnome (rather than simply assuming you want KDE).
It seems a tad faster than Ubuntu, but it might just be my imagination (or the fact that I use an ext3 filesystem with Ubuntu), but in my opinion it isn’t as polished or stable.
NOTE: by stable, I don’t mean that it crashes or anything like that, but somethings just don’t work right. Take Banshee as an example, when an iPod is connected, it won’t launch. That’s a tad buggy and I haven’t experienced problems like that with Ubuntu.
ext3 filesystem with Ubuntu………….
So what ? stick noatime on it and data=writeback and ext3 will fly
reiserfs is excellent on loads of small files, but not for the whole system.
Just a small correction but the choice between Gnome and KDE showed up in 9.3.
I also think that they work on KDE more because SuSE has a certain user base that is used to KDE and so they focus more time on the K side of things.
it looks good (clearlooks selected), it boot a litte faster, the fonts looks better but not perfect
Slackware + Dropline boot, runs like hot butter if I compare it against Suse
Even the fonts looks 1000 times better when I compile Bytecode too on Slackware (on Suse 10, Bytecode is avaible by default)
Sorry Suse, but it’s a nice try!
am most likely going to send it back to suses online shop.
the strong points of this release have been mentioned elsewhere already, so i’ll just list my reasons why i am less than satisfied (or rather, why i think suse 10.0 sucks greeen chameleon cheese):
1. less content for the same money (5 CDS, 1 DVD with 32bit and 64bit binary rpms, NO dvd with source rpm packages as suse used to ship)
2. even less content for still the same money (only one little piece of printed documentation, and thats just a summary of whan we were used to get as the “suse user guide”, no printed admin handbook, no printed “new in this version” handbook)
2. too many changes that are IMO changes for the worse, for example SKIM instead of the usual kinput2 approach if you wanna go multilanguage (ok, the principle behind skim makes the choice obvious… if it would work. you’re supposed to choose a primary and any number of secondary languages during installation, and then you can change the input method according to all those languages… but no matter what i do, the skim context menu stays empty, where it should list all the available input methods.)
3. many packages that i upgraded myself by making my own rpm packages are still old versions on 10.0 but for unknown reasons they shuffled the package names around a lot, so i’d have to rebuild all those packages myself just for suse’s benefit… and with no source rpms for their stuff, this can be fishy in some cases.
4. they not only don’t include the sources anymore, they ask for 15€ for a sources DVD, or point to the mirrors of their ftp, which in the most cases haven’t synced all the sources yet (which stinks).
summary: i yet have to see something in suse 10.0 that is good and new enough for me to indulge myself in all the pain that it’ll take to bring a suse 10.0 installation to where i can be with a fresh 9.2 install by just adding a bunch of installation sources from my fileserver and click on “update system” in yast2. Besides, one of my main points in buying a packaged linux was always the good printed documentation that suse used to ship with its “professional” version. But IMO this 10.0 is not even a “personal” version; its more like a “don’t bother us, go away” version…
No offense but, you seem a tad advanced for the market Suse 10 “boxed” was intended for. I think you might want to stick with the Open version or go with something that caters to your evident advanced knowledge of Linux.
the open version suits me even less than the boxed 10.0… the fact that i could compile and build packages of everything i need myself doesnt necessarily mean that i WANT to, or in this case, would want to be FORCED to.
if that’d be the case, i’d be running gentoo, or a LFS.
I Stuck with suse for over 10 years because it came really close to the system i want to run. but by now, the gap becomes wider and wider but not because changes in my requirements but because of how suse linux has changed over the last few years.
All these Suse, Mandrake, Lindows, etc. distros are trying to make Linux into something it is not (a substitute for Windows). They fail at it miserably and it just pisses people off. Linux is just a Unix clone. That’s what Linus and the developers who wrote it intended for it to be. All these distros trying to fit the square Linux peg into the round desktop computing hole are only wasting everyone’s time.
You’re going to get modded down, but I *tend* to agree.
Of course there is no “Linux” operating system, it’s just a kernel, but in my humble opinion, it’s better for the UNIX way of doing things. Projects like ROX are the way to go for desktop Linux…traditional UNIX way of getting things done, as opposed to copying the Redmond or Apple way. I don’t want my whole system hidden behind wizards and menus and druids bloating my system.
The point of Linux is choice, so if people want what is currently being done with Linux, (which they obviously do) that’s great. But be content with 2nd best.
The thing is that the linux kernel could be the base of a decent desktop operating system, but just slapping KDE or Gnome on top of it is not it. Eventually someone will get it right, but not until a desktop environment is made for Linux and not some other Unix.
Apple has already built a decent desktop OS on a Unx kernel. We still aren’t even close after all this time. Why are we failing? Why are KDE and GNOME still so far behind, even with rapid open source development.
I am not trying to be provocative; this is a genuine question. Even if Apple haven’t achieved on all fronts, most would acknowledge they are doing better than us. Why not build an open-source clone of their interface to begin with and build on it from there? Surely, the technical challenges presented by replacing X-Windows would be the only real challenge.
“Why are KDE and GNOME still so far behind, even with rapid open source development.”
Behind what? I can’t afford a Mac with semi-decent specs, but KDE 3.4/3.5 or Gnome 2.10/2.12 are absolutely fine for me when compared to any version of Windows.
The issues I have with Linux are others, like hardware compatibility or apps (clearly some distros have plenty more than others)
Apple is doing one thing with OS X and that alone : a desktop OS that drives Apple hardware. A lot simpler to manage, especially when you are the one paying the staff.
So they make choices linux people can’t make : simple install method with exceptions where it makes sense, gadget applications everybody wants and being fashionably up-to-date with current peripherals. And it’s fast enough.
With Suse, mandrake et al, you don’t know whether you’ll be able to sync your phone, PDA, take part to a yahoo conference, whether you wifi card will be operated correctly, etc….
Apple has already built a decent desktop OS on a Unx kernel. We still aren’t even close after all this time. Why are we failing?
1. Because Apple had the manpower to do it.
Besides hundreds(?) of developers working many hours/day, the most important thing is that they have professionals working on the usability of the OS and that really shows. Not many OpenSource project can say that they have paid usability experts working on their project. Even if some OpenSource projects had, that still would not make a decent desktop. They might be very usable, but if all programs don’t share the same intuitive usability, the ‘ultimate desktop experience’ is not yet achieved.
Luckily we have things like HIG and freedesktop.org so the goal is somewhat clear, it just takes time to achieve it. And in the meantime, Apple still has those professionals 8 hours/day…
2. Apple controls the hardware where its software is running.
While Linux has always been the dominant product on the server end it’s struggled for dominance on the desktop. So it makes no sense to develope a distribution that is intended to compete with Microsoft for the desktop dominance if the GUI is not at least a little familiar. This is what attracted me to distributions such as RHEL, SUSE Linux and Mandriva Linux instead of OSX. Coming from years of using Windows it was easier to transition to a Linux distribution as already mentioned than OSX where it’s completely unfamiliar.
While Linux has always been the dominant product on the server end it’s struggled for dominance on the desktop. So it makes no sense to develope a distribution that is intended to compete with Microsoft for the desktop dominance if the GUI is not at least a little familiar. This is what attracted me to distributions such as RHEL, SUSE Linux and Mandriva Linux instead of OSX. Coming from years of using Windows it was easier to transition to a Linux distribution as already mentioned than OSX where it’s completely unfamiliar.
Windows has a higher market share on the server than Linux right now, just to let you know
linear thinking like “they’re trying to make ABC to XYZ” or “ABC is just ABC they should leave it the way it is” are along the lines of “the world is flat! Your going to fall off the edge!” Tell Sony that they made a mistake modifying Linux for use in their “Play Station” thingamabob and I’m sure Sony will recall all the millions of units sold. Or Better yet… (I think you’re on to something) If there is an already well establish product we should ONLY use that product and never heed the call of innovation.
Someone should tell Apple to stop what they’re doing. Window should and can only work on Intel based architecture.
Hey everybody! It’s now spelled “SUSE”, so you won’t have to mind the lowercase ‘u’ anymore =)
Yes, but not significantly at least not on my pc (amd64 3000+).
I must say I really like their background image since it doesn’t remind me of winxp (9.2 did).
>YAsT still kinda sucks: You get all these great >features packed in this horrible GUI. Nothing has >changed here. Pretty icons, impossible navigation, >dead-slow scripts (they’ve even added a few). “Back”, >”Abort” and “Finish” buttons (but no “Apply” or >”Save”). You want to do package management 90% of the >time, but can’t find the icon to click.
Absolutely agreed! I’m really a noob but I think things like fdisk or ifconfig are several times faster than their graphical counterparts and not really hard to use. Another issue is that some rpms don’t install under yast but a simple “rpm -U xyz.rpm” works. I still wonder why this is the case…
I’d say if you have SUSE >=9.2 the upgrade isn’t worth it unless you really want to have the latest software.
How can there be any reviews of SUSE, I still have to wait another 4 days to finish downloading the official release from Thursday. So it looks like I’m gonna be able to install it a week after it’s been released, strictly due to download speeds from bittorrent. So how can people have reviews of it already?
I don’t really know where you live and how you’re connected to the internet but I finished downloading on Friday and installation took about one hour. Probably depends on where you live (I live in Germany – lucky me) and how fast your connection is (I downloaded at about 1MB/s). So absolutely no problem to finish a review by now (if I wanted to).
does suse 10.0 EVAL contain the official nvidia drivers?
It doesn’t install them, but when you launch YOU (YaST Online Update), it will come up as an option. YOU will run automatically during the install if you test your internet connection and then you can install it there.
So, short answer: yes, it does have the NVidia drivers.
Why is the mouse cursor different when sitting over a firefox window as opposed to all the other windows? It doesn’t seem to follow the selected cursor theme.
Fonts in firefox are ugly too.
Why is the mouse cursor different when sitting over a firefox window as opposed to all the other windows? It doesn’t seem to follow the selected cursor theme.
I have the same problem.
this happens only in kde. do the following:
create /home/username/.icons
copy your mouse theme and the default directory there
edit the file index.theme (in default folder) and change the line Inherits=core to Inherits=NameOfYourPreferredTheme
log off, log in, done
I got this horrible freeze of the whole OS ( SUSE 10.0 beta3,final; SUSE 10.1 Alpha) when I inserted a badly burned DVD with UDF. I have the same instability with Xandros 3.0.2 BE, Mandriva 2005 LE, Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 WS, Novell Linux Desktop 9.0.
The weird thing is that only UBUNTO 5.04, 5.10preview didn’t make this freeze form all linux distros I have tried; I also didn’t notice such horrible instability from all Unixes on x86 like PC-BSD 0.7,0.7.5,0.8.., Solaris 5.10 and 5.11 beta 22; OSX 10.4.1 on x86.
When I went to SUSE bug report site I have found some serious bugs that the team were trying to fix which belongs to the kernel, so I wondered about the unreported bugs that might render my workstation unusable if I adapt this OS for me or my friends and clients.
Remember: The kernel will be considered quite stable only if few bugs (arising from the kernel) are reported to the distro maker ,and when those bugs are benign.
Don’t forget that there are other serious bugs coming from the GUI and the Running applications, these could be quite tolerated, but kernel bugs, and severe ones! Give me a break. I will stick to Unix based OSs.
Sounds like a faulty driver, not the kernel. For better or for worse, linux currently has the widest range of drivers, which is probably why it’s so popular in comparison to the other free *nixes.
-bytecoder
I’ve been in YOU, and it does not give me any option to install nvidia drivers…
Where are they?
You can find them at http://www.nvidia.com …
I ran 10.0 RC1 and was unable to get monodevelop to run on it. Any changes with the release?
In case bringing up mono on this thread doesn’t enrage someone, let me throw in that I erased 10.0 and threw gentoo on the machine (cuz my ls is now faster than yours) to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the BeBox while making a collage out of the new GPL … (that should do it).
Congrats to another fine German Linux distro release. Or as the uber-German, Herrn Shwarzeneggre says: “Ihc haben Linux in der California!” 🙂
—
My dog has no nose – How does it smell? – awfull!
Hig hag shouldn’t dee dack, oink, zoing, kalendarblad ab, hong honk dou-ah shouldn’t dee do, oink, zoing shoulblade zoo…
The world’s a funny place, eh..? – Schwarzenegger is not German, but Austrian – just as was that other famous uber-German called Hitler (formerly known as Mr Schicklgruber)… You can avoid saying embarassing things like this by watching news once a week…
I disagree with both you and the parent post. What you are basically saying is that there’s no such thing as a ‘Unix desktop’. Also, rider to this corollary is that *any* OS based on unix (or unix-like principles) has no place on the desktop. Well, guess what? maybe not as strongly as Linux or *BSD, but every effort at alternate OS has unix-like roots. SkyOS, BeOS (?) etc are all based on underlying principles that are very much unix-like. For your further information, MacOSX is completely based on a unix-like system (I bet you know that!). Lastly, looking at the direction Windows Vista is taking, it seems to me *unix-like* is the only way to compute — all in all, its trolls like you that give Linux desktop a bad name.
Are you a unix administrator, by any chance?
OpenSUSE 10 installed here without a hitch. It seems an improvement on 9.2 (never tried 9.3) though will take more post-install configuration because I’d like to add non-free things like flash, dvd-support, mp3-support and so forth. Otherwise, my impression is that the new SUSE is excellent. Also, faster than 9.2.
SUSE has always been a top-notch distro, imho, and I’m sorry that rather a lot of the posts on here have been trolls or Ubuntu-fanciers. What you get is software put together by mature, sensible and highly experienced engineers, not kiddies or wannabes, who take pride in what they do. And you get a great deal of software with SUSE, plus very good configuration tools in YaST. It’s hard to see what more the majority of folks could want. For those for whom this is still not enough, there is always Debian.
The question over SUSE still remains: whether Novell will nurture this jewel or blow it just like all the other things Novell has tried and failed at.
I have been using SLICK since its first ISO’s became available.
It is faster than anything I have used, boot times are incredibly fast, applications load in a snap.
It even has things like Java and most codecs installed by default (although how long this will last is anyones guess)… Best of all, its a 1 CD install, rather than the 5 you must download usually.
It is my opinion that everyone that has ever complained that SUSE is slow should give SLICK a try, your opinions will change within a day, I assure you of that!!
I’ve been running SUSE 10 for a day now, and I for one have seen a noted improvement over 9.3 (which was a pretty slick release in itself). For me, the issue was some hardware compatibility issues with the machine I’m running it on (a Dell Latitude D610 hooked up to a monitor pretending to be an actual workstation).
Two problems that have been fixed in this release, one the issue of display resolution. No external hacks seem necessary to get full i915 support (DRI now works too). Also, I notice that the DVD drive works at full acceleration (i.e. I’m guessing they do an ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI in the kernel, bit of a hack, but saves me trouble). You still need to grab an external libdvdcss of course, but that’s a small and understandable matter.
Only thing I’ve left wondering is if AFS/kerberos support has improved. There was an issue with 9.3 in that regard. (mind you, SUSE is the _only_ distro I’ve seen so far with out of the box AFS support built in to the install, so I’ll give them some slack there 😉
Wrong: “it’s milestone”
Correct: “its milestone”
Too many of you supposedly intelligent dorks make this mistake frequently. It makes you look idiotic. Figure out how to use the apostrophe correctly. It’s not that hard.
I was using SuSE 9.3 retail and the novell team did a really good job with it, now i go on and try Open SuSE 10.
Over all i see it as a great improvement over past versions, you won’t have close packages like flash and others but they are accesible. It boots faster and has Gnome 2.12
Still, there is one thing that pisses me off and madded me go away from Mandrake (yes I was a long time mandrake user), and that is the development packages, WTF!? is a 5 CD distro why the hell isn’t MySQL, and PostgreSQL servers on there, and the dev libs?, that’s one thing i hate about package management, those damm devel packages.
I think i may revert to SuSE 9.3 with Gnome/Kde updates, i found really silly that it lacks OpenSource software that was on previous versions and it is still a 5 CD distro.
The GNOME implimentation in SUSE is improving with each release – with under-the-skin improvements that most don’t see.
I am working on some stuff at the moment which will improve the GNOME (working on Menus, removing kdebase3, Qt engines). If anyone is interested in testing out this new package/script, email me at spayne (at) evolutionconsultancy.com. I think it is also fair to mention the differences between the two different versions of SUSE 10:
SUSE 10 Boxed (also known as Eval): The full version which most people are used to. Includes Java, Flash Player, RealPlayer as standard. You can buy this for ~£70 or download it from http://ftp.suse.com for free. I think Eval is the wrong word for this IMHO. Available on 5CDs or 1 DVD. I recommend and use this one 🙂
SUSE 10 Open Source Software (OSS): This is the totally free and redistribubatle version that contains no non-free and no non-open source software. This can be downloaded from http://ftp.opensuse.org. Available on 5 CDs or NetInstall.
Sorry for my bad english, but I try to find AppArmor packages, menu entry in yast or gnome-menu or anything like this without any fortune.
Maybe I don’t understand correctly what is AppArmor… ¿?¿?
See AppArmor as a firewall for applications.The firewall (AppArmor) decides based on a set of rules,which applications may open what files and on what terms,(capabillities,read,write,link,execute,..etc).
That is something beneficial i would say.
Once you have finished your rule-set for let´s say mozilla-firefox,and you hit an malicious website that tries to read something that´s not within the bounds set by the AppArmor ruleset,than that´s blocked.
All can be steered via YAST and/or cmd prompt.
run ´genprof <full-path-to-app>´ and let the cmd open.
now start your application that you would like to profile.After you have used the app for a while just press S on the cmd prompt and you are being asked some questions.I write this on SuSE 10 eval (with AppArmor).
Have a look:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16095.html
http://www.novell.com/products/apparmor/
http://www.novell.com/collateral/4821055/4821055.pdf
If u want to boot faster go with InitNG is just “fast as light”.
http://initng.thinktux.net/index.php/Main_Page
And yes. Is pretty stable already xDD
at least for me….
the retail version is now only £35.99, so the parent was talking rubbish.
the iso has taken 3 days to download on a 2MB UK dsl connection.
SUSE has always been good (circa 9.1), it is now getting very good.
I like the fact it has a similar feel to windows, it makes the transition easier.
I’m buying 10.0, i reckon Novel deserves the money.
AppArmor,SELinux,Grsecurity.. have a lot in common.
For example they regulate CAP (capabillities)
You could install lcap and run it in order to see currently allowed capabillities.
Furthermore you could issue:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/cap-cound which removes all capabilities,while this is extreme secure it´s not quite a fine-grained solution (even root now can´t mount/umount anything for example).
BTW once you have though everything is normal again,the CAP setting is back to itś original setting.
after reboot the CAP settings are normal again.
issuing: echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/cap-cound is valid untill the next reboot.
anyone notice lately when clicking the comment link that it takes half a minute to load?
anyone notice lately when clicking the comment link that it takes half a minute to load?
Yes the MySQL data-base is heavily screwaed.
So it’s not just my slow computer?!
)
Yes I’m having a hissy fit now….
FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX
Change to PostGrl or another DB if you have to but i need my OSNEWS at warp speed!..
FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX
Yesterday, I bought a brand new Sony Vaio laptop with Windows XP SP2 pre-installed.
Today, I grabed SuSE 10.0 iso images and put the first CD into my laptop.
Actually, I didn’t expect too much.
I thought the installation could be stalled at any given moment.
But that’s just my poor imagination.
The actual outcome was amazing.
The installation was quite smooth.
The installer automagically detected all my devices including on-board sound, LAN-Express WiFi card, and on-boad intel graphic chip, and it even managed to create new partition for linux by reducing the existing NTFS partition! Very cool!
Before the installation, there was a single 80GB HDD partitioned three parts; recovery image, C: and D: drive.
SuSE installer intelligently chose D: drive partition which had 60GB total with 98% available space to perform resizing.
The D: drive partition was reduced to 20GB and several new partions were created.
It only failed to detect proper display size which is 1280×800 WXGA.
But selecting the right size was a piece of cake.
All I had to do during the installation were to confirm what the installer was going to do, to select the default desktop and to change the CDs, and to wait.
After the installation was completed, it gave me perfect desktop environment with instant internet connection through my wireless lan.
It’s amazing.
Great job SuSE!
Clearly, Ubuntu is better. I don’t have to go to foreign language repositories to try and find packages I have to trust in blind faith, I can just add extra sources (all of which point to *.ubuntu.com, official or not) and apt-get update and I’m fine.
Plus rpms just suck
.deb + Synaptic in Ubuntu rules
Clearly, SUSE is better. I don’t have to rely on an overly hyped distro that is stripped down and really isn’t unique at all from any other Gnome based forked out Debian distro. Once I setup my trusted packman repository, along with the SUSE repository, I can install applications easily using Yast, not to mention the automatic updates that I can use with YOU, and I’m fine.
Plus .deb and Synaptic just suck
Yast in SUSE rules
See, two can play that game.