Stephan Kulow has announced the availability of the first development release of openSUSE 11.0: “We’d like to kick start the development of openSUSE 11.0 with releasing the current state of Factory as Alpha0 release. Since the release of 10.3, we checked in 2,187 packages including such fundamental package updates as GCC 4.3.0, Linux kernel 2.6.24-rc4, X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8 and 4.0 RC1, CUPS 1.3.4, ALSA 1.0.15, GIMP 2.4 and YaST 2.16. The change between 10.3 and Alpha0 is big, but it still works pretty nicely.” More here.
Development Release: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0
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Eugenia Loli
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KDE 4.1 please.
It seems that the marketing geniuses at Novell are more concerned with fishy Microsoft-deals than with up-to-date software and community-building.
It’s really sad to Suse falling behind. But it was totally clear that this would happen when Novell acquired Suse.
??? Falling behind? In marketshare, perhaps (darn Ubuntu kiddies) but in terms of software, it’s as good as ever…
Also, to the dude who’s having problems below you: I’ve been using 10.3 since it first came out and haven’t had ANY of those issues. Maybe you should stop using GNOME. KDE is still OpenSUSE’s main DE (despite the fact that Novell seems to have decided that GNOME makes more sense for their business-oriented distros). You see, the OpenSUSE community is a much less Novell-controlled entity than you might think. In fact, it’s been the leading faction opposed to crap like ZMD and GNOME-orientatedness in the SUSE world.
“It seems that the marketing geniuses at Novell are more concerned with fishy Microsoft-deals than with up-to-date software and community-building.
It’s really sad to Suse falling behind. But it was totally clear that this would happen when Novell acquired Suse”.
This is just FUD. Only a restricted community is fed up with the Novell/MS deal. These are political topics that have nothing to do with the technology itself. openSUSE is a great distro, some people have jumped the boat, others have joined. Although some people predicted Novell and SUSE would run out of business in a few months, Novell is still alive, and openSUSE ranks #3 at Distrowatch. You may disagree with Novell’s policy but it has injected $$$ into SUSE’s development and it’s built a strong community on the Internet.
What the hell are you going on about – what is out of date with the distribution – I’ve had a look, and all the software is either leading edge or bleeding edge. This is an ALPHA, things can changed radically over the next few months.
Good lord, I don’t know where this mouth frothing anti-Microsoft zealotry is coming from because it has absolutely NO relevance to the article concerned.
A Suse/Novell thread isn’t officially sanctioned without bringing up the MS/Novell deal at least once. Didn’t you read the fine print?
It has no relevance to this article, OpenSuSE and its development. To raise Microsoft in this thread would be as pointless as me jumping up and randomly screaming “I like pink fluffy slippers!”
I’m tempted to mod you down for making the dubious claim that pink fluffy slippers are not always relevant regardless of the situation.
They should better focus on getting 10.3 to be less buggy. Last time I tried it, I got some dependecies problem trying to upgrade samba, got a XConsole window popping up everytime I log into GNOME and also the GNOME update applet keep telling me that I didn’t upgraded yet, though I did.
And I recall that I didn’t got those errors on the same system, days after the initial launch. It’s unbelievable how they manage to brake it in the meantime.
I wasn’t going to reply, but since people apparently think there’s some merit to your post…
How did you attempt to upgrade samba, and to what version? The build system has a very recent version, and even has samba4 packages, although I’d be wary of those.
From the sounds of it, your problems were self-inflicted, as I’ve never heard of anyone else with these issues.
I’m running 10.3 on three separate systems, and I have been since RC1, and all three have been solid.
I was using the online updater from the install, nothing fancy.
Funny, people from #suse seems to know about my issues, but can’t tell me how to fix them.
Don’t care about them now, I have OpenSUSE removed.
In fairness to the OP, there was a known issue with a GDM update that caused the xterm window, it wasn’t a high-profile one, I assume since the majority of users have KDE/KDM.
Not familiar with the others, though, though the gnome-updater app was new for 10.3, so there could be a glitch there.
> got a XConsole window popping up everytime I log into GNOME
open file /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup
Go to line 135, change “gnome2root=/opt/gnome/sbin” to “gnome2root=/usr/sbin”
On next login xconsole is gone 😉
“They should better focus on getting 10.3 to be less buggy. Last time I tried it, I got some dependecies problem trying to upgrade samba, got a XConsole window popping up everytime I log into GNOME and also the GNOME update applet keep telling me that I didn’t upgraded yet, though I did”.
I also have these problems. I’ve had these problems for more than a month actually, and on the SUSE forum, several other people have reported the same issues.
SUSE falling behind………! what planet are you living on?
this laptop has been running 10.3 flawlessly for a month now.
How does it handle multi media out of the gate?
Things like flash on the web, and things like if I go to Fox News, or Yahoo news and want to see the video link.
Will it play it, or do I need to add plug ins and then find out that I need ed to install something else first and so on.
Or is Open SuSE set to grab the current stuff right away?
I have been using Ubuntu, but find it cannot play a lot of things, then when I follow the help suggested, all I get is added programs that still do not work.
If you use the DVD for install, or obtain the non-OSS CD for CD-based installs, then flash and java will be installed; 64-bit installs have FF and Konq both configured to use 32-bit plugins.
The multimedia codecs will need to be installed, but can literally be done with a single-click from the opensuse-community.org website. This will pull in the packages necessary for proprietary-codec support, and should be fairly seamless. There should be no tweaking required.
Sounds Awesome, especially since I have a 64 bit system.
Thanks
I actually bought 10.3 as I wanted to support the effort. It recognized my hardwdare perfectly, except of course my wireless and 3D which I have to hack, but that is fine until AMD/ATI and Broadcom get their heads out of their asses)and the bootup time is AWESOME!. My SCRIBUS program was nice and new and stable and after you patch up the codecs, multimedia is actually better than on my XP partition!
There are some items of note however…:
1. For updates, while they are easy as heck on 10.3, they are much slower than it was for 9.3, The repositories system is of average ease of use, but the time to check the repos is painful. Also, when installing new software, I shouldn’t have to put the DVDs in when they are required; just go to the damn repositories on line and use them! It is just an annoying thing to have to do. And before anyone tells me I didnt check this box et cetera, yes I did but I still had to put them in. Also, the actual dialogs and directions that pop up on the screen during the process don’t really walk you through as well as they could. Luckily, I am an experienced user, so it was a breeze for me, but as an educator of professionals, I feel their on screen messages as you go through the steps should be much more explicit in what you are actually doing. Especially in a boxed product. It was still easier in 9.3. They should go back to the way they did it then.
2. Written documentation is nowhere near as great as it was for 9.3 Pro boxed set. In 9.3 you got two big thick books: One for OS admin and one describing the apps. In the 10.3 boxed set, the equivalent material was on a DVD. The one book included in 10.3 is small, thin, and flimsy like the manual to a camcorder not an OS. Here is a thought: If I am willing to pay for the boxed set for something I could have downloaded for free, I want paper and documentation. Why are they putting it on a disk I could have downloaded for free as well. I want to look at a nice bound book not print one up myself and habve pages all over the place. If I wanted to look at things on the screen, I would have downloaded them to my hard drive or a disc. Kill the trees; I am paying for them. The older books were much more professional and fit in with my way of working: OLD SCHOOL RTFM baby!.
3. There is no cute little lizard bumpersticker or t-shirt :-). I hope they have one in 11.
4. As an experienced SUSE user, I have long come to accept Novell/SUSE whimpy stance on codecs and have learned what to do to run around them. A person buying the boxed set could do to have not only the included list of useful sites and repositories built in to the on screen documentation (e.g. Packman, The Gem Report Hacking OPenSuSE X, et cetera) but also a much more complete description what you can get at each site and why that site is useful rather than a blurb during the install process. Again, I am an experienced user and 10.3 was fine for me, but a nouveaux user might need a little more help in the written documentation in this regard.
I sound like I am whining and off topic, but here I come back around to the article. I like the quick release cycle and it is cool they are working on 11, it would be nice if they would bring the documentation back to the boxed set to where it was in 9.3, clean up the updates/installation and get it back to where it was, and give a few breadcrumbs to the users who are new to SUSE so they can get full functionality out of their systems.
Edited 2007-12-07 15:06
for part #1:
what I do is that I have the ISO mounted always or have the image on the system and mounted.
Also, switch off the force refresh and you will see it is blazing fast.
The manuals are as you say, on disk; the box is cheaper and without printed matter. I fail to see how it would help me anyways; given the fact that you announce yourself as experienced — why do you need the paper weights?
For part 1: That is what I ended up doing too. I just wish the whole thing were a bit faster…
The force refresh tip is good though..thanks…
As for the manuals, I just like them. I have a few friends that occasionally like to try Linux but inevitably go back to Windows because the need to surf the web and download things int ehieir words either “annoys them” or makes them “feel it is not a real system”; And yes I care about thier opinions, because I gave up zealotry and banner waving a lon gtime ago…I think they are just reflecting a general conception of what they think an operating system should be…
Having a manual is also just a nice thing to share with others. Like I said, I am paying to support something I could do and get for free to support OpenSuse; I would pay even more if the manuals were sexy… The nice thing about the box, is I can just give it to a friend, say play with this, and they cando just that.
As for the paperwieghts, I just think they look nice on my desk…and I am comfortable with paper…call me old fashioned or whatever…I just like it…it is an aesthetic thing…
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
Hell-OOOOOOOOOO????
Can one of the major distros just apply UPDATES to a base version of the OS to make it stable?
I like updated software just like anyone else, but wouldn’t an UPDATE be more in order here?
The versions are moving just WAY TOO FAST here, IMHO.
I mean…we just got 10.2, with 10.3 right behind it and already they’re thinking about 11???
Yeah, what happened with 10.4? This is ridiculous. They should fix the 10.3 bugs in the first place.
I totally agree… I would have saved an 11 version for the first inclusion of KDE 4.0…would have been kinda nice parallele to increase the 11.1 number with the KDE 4.1 upgrade…
It sounds like you should give Debian a try.
I couldn’t agree more! Some of these distros (openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora…to name the major ones) release twice a year. That’s too frequently in my opinion. It seems that I no sooner get my system tweaked to perfection then oops, I’m left with an obsolete system and everyone jumps to the latest release. It seems to me that packages could be backported to older releases more frequently and even new features. Why update the entire OS with such frequency?
There has been a pretty stupid showstopper in SuSE (or better in the setup) for years now. The Setup CD/DVD from all SuSE versions I tried (I started with 5.somewhat) fail to recognize my USB-Keyboard. And without keyboard: no setup. It still didnt work in 10.2. If I can not get past the Welcome screen of the Setup program I do not want that product on my PC. (The USB Keyboard works after installation if I plug in a PS/2 keyboard during installation though… but this is a stupid circumvention of the problem and nowadays I don’t have this kind of hardware anymore). This happens on all the PCs I had with all the various USB Keyboards I had and have….
Other Linux Distros don’t have that problem. So it’s bye bye SuSE for me.
I had the same issue on many such computers with only USB keyboard, mainly dell machines. I was forced to use other distros.
After spending a couple months dualbooting 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.10, I am definitely switching to Ubuntu as my main Linux workstation at work.
For me, it just doesn’t get in the way when it comes to daily tasks like SuSe does, plus, without being scientific, it feels faster than 10.3.
I continue to be hopeful for SuSe though; perhaps 11 will put it back in front for me.
opensuse is still a great distribution, if you like kde that is
They are also doing kde4rc1 live cds
“I would have saved an 11 version for the first inclusion of KDE 4.0…would have been kinda nice parallele to increase the 11.1 number with the KDE 4.1 upgrade…”
there is some hope that SUSE 11.0 due around July 08 will indeed ship with KDE 4.1.
4.1 is anticipated to ship shortly after 4.0 (i.e. around six months), so there is every chance and quite some hope that it will be in time for opensuse 11.0.
I tend not to agree. Firstly, openSUSE and Fedora have defined themselves as experimental distributions. So nothing wrong with such release cycle. It is strange tha it is adopted by Mandriva and Ubuntu as they present themselves in a bit different light. Secondly, any version of openSUSE is supported for 2 years. Moreover, you can get backported packages from SUSE repositories. There are still people who use SUSE 10, 10.1 and 10.2. Thirdly, if you want longer release cycles and more stability then you should use distributions that are made for such people – use Debian stable (Etch), CentOS or SLED. They are stable and reliable. Its all about choice. If you want new features then of course you get less stability and other way round.
So, nothing to complain to my mind. However, as I said, the strategy adopted by Ubuntu is really weird. No software can be stable if it is tested for very short time. No wonder that Ubuntu is so buggy.
For those who are unaware, you can get updates for things like KDE and GNOME in opensuse.
Just add the relevant repository and the latest packages from each will be available.
Unfortunately I dont think these are bugfix updates primarily, and although there will no doubt be some bugfixes, its basically just the latest (alpha/beta quality) software.
That said, I find it stable enough to use and one example is that KDE 3.5.8 was released for 10.3 and is just as stable as the 3.5.7 that 10.3 comes with.
These updates put opensuse ahead of ubuntu in my opinion, although you could have the same effect by using debian unstable. But then you wouldn’t get Yast, apparmor, one-click-install, and all the other opensuse goodies I’ve grown to depend on