Submitted by A new major release of Novell’s community-supported distro openSUSE 11 is now available and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?
OpenSUSE 11.0 Released
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Adam Scheinberg
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I tried the RCs using KDE 4, 3.5 and gnome
4 is nigh on unusable, so unstable it was silly. I submitted my bugs and moved to 3.5
3.5 is nice, does what it always has, as well as it always has. Trouble is, after seeing 4 it looks ba bit dated now! (I know, no pleaseing some people!)
Gnome was lovely and the desktop I settled on
Yeah yeah .. 4.0.x has its rough edges. But I enabled the factory KDE repository and upgraded to KDE 4.1beta and it is very usable .. although not totally stable yet. But as I said it is still beta.
I love folderview, twitter, notes and all the other plasma stuff. My desktop is really helpfull and informative now .. instead of being just an icon ghetto.
KDE4 in openSUSE isn’t stable maybe, but KDE4 in Fedora 9 is quite stable for me. Initial release was 4.0.3 but has since been upgraded to 4.0.5. Maybe what you are seeing is an issue with your distribution.
Can’t use BT at work, but using a mirror getting 1.1MB/second.
That is nice. My socks are blue.
I just took mines off, as I am back at home.
i have in the past griped about the release date of 11.0, being just before the arrival of KDE 4.1, X.org 7.4, Alsa 1.0.17, but long after the last release of KDE3 and older versions of X.org/Alsa.
however, the current plan for 11.1 of December will be able to include a mature 4.1 desktop and hopefully KDE4 versions of the big KDE apps like amarok, digikam etc.
Roll on 11.1
Please stay away from Suse as long as Novell has a patent protection deal with Microsoft. Please do not contribute in any way to a distro that promotes Microsoft’s interests in the Open Source world. Do not contribute by using this distro, by filling bug reports, by helping the community, by translating, by packaging, by submitting patches and so on.
Please stop supporting XEN, Gnome, KDE, package kit, network manager, linux kernel, banshee, tomboy, pulse audio, compiz, xgl, etc… As Novell contributes to all of these and many other projects.
Yes, Novell contributes to many projects, but RedHat contributes much more to many more projects than Novell and RedHat did not sign a patents deal with Microsoft. Novell’s contributions are not that important. The open source could do much better without Novell’s “contributions” like Mono (banshee, tomboy and other useless applications). Why do we need Mono and C# when we have C++ and Java?
Novell’s contributions aren’t limited to mono… They also contribute almost as much as redhat does to the linux kernel, not to much tons of other things, not sure how we can just simple do without Novell’s contributions.
As far as the patent deal, I’m not sure that it was entirely for open source stuff. They have tons of proprietary products still.
Mono can help people port over their .net apps they’re writing on Windows. A lot of what’s stopping some bussineses from crossing the OS-border is that they have software written in .NET.
Wine doesen’t help here. Mono does.
Futhermore: we need a usable, good, RAD-dev enviroment. Java doesen’t seem to quite provide that(although it is meant to). We are now seeing a lot of apps that we without Mono probably wouldn’t have. Also: it attracts .net devs from the Windows plattform. And not least: Mono/.NET is interesting in it’s own right. It’s made from the ground up to support several languages. (Java does support other languages, but it wasn’t designet for that to begin with.)
Now I think a lot of native GNOME-dev could be done better with Vala or Python rather than C#, but Mono seems to really help alot of devs chunk out cool apps. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Take F-Spot or Tomboy, I can’t think of really similar app for Linux.
The best thing to do if you’re not satisfied with the Mono-situation. Shut the f–k up and write a better alternative than F-Spot/Tomboy/Banshee/etc. If it is better people will use that instead and distros will ship that instead. That’s the great thing about OSS!
And as others have commented: Novell support more than just Mono! Evolution and Compiz for instance.
The sad thing is that just as the Mono team come up with a fairly usable implementation of Winforms, Microsoft deprecates it and starts pushing WPF. I’m not saying that the two are linked, but seeing as they are always going to be playing catch-up with the latest and greatest from Redmond, it is going to find very limited use.
You’re underestimating how conservative businesses can be.
We’re I’m working they’re still using .NET 2.0 and probably will for a good while.
The only thing they’ve found interesting about WPF is Silverlight, which they decided to not delve into until a couple of years.
You’re partly right of course, but it’s better than nothing, eh?
Believe me, I’m familiar with how conservative businesses are. The company I work for still has me coding in C++ using ATL/WTL and Win32. It’s just slightly surprising for me to see that Winforms were deprecated before we even began to evaluate it seriously.
That of course makes us wonder how long WPF will be around for before it too gets deprecated.
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of Windows applications out there, both internal and shrink wrapped, are COM and Win32 based – despite Microsoft’s pleas for us all to rewrite perfectly working applications in .Net for zero return on investment, and to blow both our legs off by using a ton of pointless technologies pulled straight out of an MSDN magazine. Just because they’re so cool. Really, they are.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
Well, alot of internal stuff is actually written in Access(No joke!) many places. (Yes I know, it sounds crazy!)
Since Microsoft seems to be slowly killing Access(+ SQL Server) as a low-end dev plattform(not really sure you could even call it that, but it’s being used that way anyway…). Becase of this many are writing their clients in other stuff, and very often this is .NET
The standard response to that sort of thing is not to upgrade. That’s why you still see Office 97 kicking around in an awful lot of places.
No they’re not. Very, very, very, very few are rewriting anything in .Net because there is zero return on investment, as I’d pointed out. No one is going to rewrite anything that simply does exactly what the old system does, but with different code, running on the same operating system. If anything new gets written, it’s generally written with the old tools such is the inertia of old code.
LOL.
Yes mono apps are *sooo great*. I never heard of picasa or digikam. I never heard of tagore or basket notes. I never knew that the flagship mono application, beagle, got removed from gnome and replaced with tracker. Whats that you say? Banshee? Perhaps you might like to investigate rhythmbox, exaile or Amarok.
Isn’t Picasa a frontend for Google’s online service with some basic image manipulation thrown in? (Correct me if I’m wrong here.)
And digiKam doesen’t sport a time-based way of navigating your photos like F-Spot does. (iPhoto inspired if I’m not mistaken.)
I never said those apps where great. The only Mono-app I actually use is Gnome-do. Beagle? I didn’t mention it. Be carefull with your assumptions.
Even though I don’t like the mono apps personaly I’m able to see that they’re useful to a lot of people. That can’t be a bad thing?
Now, since Java is now OSS I guess it’s better to make stuff in Java if you’re actually creating a new app and want it to write it in managed language.
If I’m playing music locally(or want to put music on a iPod) I do actually use Rythmbox.
(But currently I’m more into using mpd/Sonata)
No. That would be “Picasa Web Albums”. Picasa is full featured photo management software. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa
http://picasa.google.com/features/index.html
No. DigiKam does support time based navigation. See here:
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/linux/digiKam-Review-24021.shtml
http://www.digikam.org/
Indeed – that was me being sarcastic.
I know. It was offered as a counter-point to your general “Mono lets you write unique and amazing applications” theme.
P.S. Sssshhh! don’t tell anyone but these internet sites are really cool:
http://www.google.com
http://www.wikipedia.com
Edited 2008-06-21 15:00 UTC
Well.. you post was meant to incite.. but I’ll focus on the end part. Why C# and Mono?
Did you know that Windows developers NOW have a completely free set of class libraries and infrastructure for which they can develope .Net applications? Not just .Net apps, but ones that can run both in Windows AND on Linux? Worthless? I don’t think you’re thinking very clearly. People are using the C# runtime and development environment AND class libraries from Mono to build applications on Windows platforms that Microsoft REFUSES to support. If you’re still not convinced, I think you’re living under a rock or something.
You’ll just have to trust me that attempting genocide on the Windows community is NOT the right approach. Mono’s approach is to provide a transition away from Microsoft’s proprietary IDE, compiler and tools and onto a flexible platform that works everywhere.
what has your comment to do with opensuse except for nothing ? It is about as useful as telling fat kids to stay away from Pepsi Light where you actually have Coke Classic in mind…
It us quite relevant that Novell are backing several OSS projects. I would even dare say it is *more* relevant than their deal. Important projects such as Evolution Mail Client are in some degree works of Novell/Ximian. They’re really doing an effort to help the community and make business at the same bit. (The latter is good, because stuff that’s able to make business are far more likely to gain traction than non-business friendly stuff.)
Regarding their deal with MS: I think Novell just is being pragmatic. They want to get Linux going, in the real world, and some business people have fears and they hope this will calm these fears. This is what *Novell* has decided to do, not necessarily all their employees agreed with(Miguel has criticized the deal despite being a high ranking Novell employee) and definitely not necessarily something their community agrees with.
Now, I don’t agree with the deal. I believe it is/was a bad thing, but I understand why they did it and I don’t let that deal blind me from seeing the good things Novell are doing! (Or stop me from supporting them in any way.)
Yeah. If you talk about J2EE vs .NET, I’d say .NET takes much less time to get familiar with and the time of development is quite a bit shorter (at least for me).
Many people and businesses would like to host their ASP.NET pages and services, etc. on Linux. Those are somewhat supported by Mono. However, ASP.NET and other technologices “built on” .NET Framework are not “free” like the .NET framework. Which means using Mono to operate your ASP.NET site (etc.) is arguably violating licenses of Mircoroft.
With Novel’s deal, people and business can really “feel safe” and use Linux as their web servers while still implementing systems with .NET Framework.
I don’t think Novel and businesses are really worry about Microsoft suing them for “patents” on Linux and those foundation open source projects. But definitely, patent and licenses of technologies built on .NET Framework is something to conisider about for businesses.
Edited 2008-06-19 17:22 UTC
Regarding their deal with MS: I think Novell just is being pragmatic.
Of course they are pragmatic, they are a private company. But there are many ways of doing business. There is the fair way and there is the Microsoft way. Novell saw that they had no chance against RedHat unless they allied themselves with Microsoft. So if they can’t offer a better product they can offer a patent protected one. That’s really low.
I’m sure the folks at Groklaw would be proud of your perceived public service.
The only problem is, that by focusing on an ambiguous claim that has been beaten to death more than any dead horse should ever have to suffer, you have overlooked many other factors.
You forgot to mention that people shouldn’t support openSUSE, because of Novell’s pesky interference with SCO’s lawsuit against IBM over linux infringing unix code.
You also failed to mention that people shouldn’t support openSUSE, because of Novell’s attempts to thwart the OSS community by making SuSE an open project, GPLing the formerly proprietary Yast, and making multi-million dollar acquisitions simply to GPL products like AppArmor.
Perhaps unsuprisingly, you also failed to mention that people shouldn’t support openSUSE because of Novell’s heinous actions in support the Open Invention Network, and contributing patents to the community. Their $15M acquisition of the infamous Commerce One patents on e-commerce should not go unpunished, even if it was simply to make them open and accessible to everyone and prevent other companies from acquiring and abusing them for profit.
Most insidiously, with Novell’s insistence on paying developers to contribute to core linux projects, such as the kernel, or Gnome, or KDE, or HAL, or openOffice, or whatnot, they are clearly trying to subvert every other linux project on the planet.
No doubt you’re going to have to post a plea to Ubuntu users to please not support that distro due to their adoption of AppArmor, a clearly tainted Novell project.
And now that zypper has been ported to Fedora and is being experimented with, you may have to beg people to boycott Fedora soon, too.
Oh, and I almost forgot about compiz. You must be thankful that all of the other distributions failed to see through that charade, and chose not to adopt it by way of showing their disdain for the evil empire.
Fight the power!
Do you really feel better now? Because it’s really sad if you do.
This dead horse is never beaten enough. It should be beaten until the patents deal between Novell and Microsoft ceases to exist. The patents deal still exists. You may feel good knowing that you are patent protected but I refuse to be protected against Microsoft. All Linux users should refuse. When there are so many good (if not better) distributions out there, why would anybody want to use a tainted one?
*heavy sigh*
Ok, so what *exactly* is the harm to the community from the patent deal? You guys like to keep banging the alarm over it, but then melt into a puddle of vapid ambiguity when actually trying to rationalize it.
First off, there is no patent licensing. That would void the GPL. Novell issued a public statement that the agreement was irrespective of linux/GPL software, and that there was absolutely no acknowledgment or implication of patent infringement. Microsoft, on the other hand, played the Groklaw community to their advantage by having them stir the FUD pot about IP violations far more effectively than their own marketing department could ever have. Do you not realize that the vocal acrimony over the deal actually played to Microsoft’s benefit? That’s all they were looking for. You guys validated Microsoft’s patent assertions, not Novell.
Second, companies like Red Hat, IBM and HP all offer indemnity protection for their users of GPL-protected software. When Red Hat offers indemnity to one of their enterprise customers, but doesn’t in turn guarantee that same privilege to the community-at-large, how is that any different from Novell having a covenant with Microsoft not to sue each other’s customers over patents? Because it boils down to the same thing. Red Hat is telling their enterprise customers that they will cover the legal bills if Microsoft sues, whereas Novell cut-to-the-chase and arranged for Microsoft not to sue at all. The result, from a corporate compliance POV, is the same.
And the net result, to the community, is the same. The commercial companies deal with commercial realities that require them to make decisions and take actions that are sometimes inexplicable to the public-at-large. It doesn’t mean they’re out to eat the poor.
The Novell-MS deal was seized upon by the free-software community as a wedge to drive GPL v3 adoption, nothing more, nothing less. They FSF engaged in FUD just as much as Microsoft did, and both to meet their own end gains.
But yet, nothing has changed. The world hasn’t stopped moving. Linux continues to evolve, and with considerable contribution from Novell, even to this day.
The irony is that the free software community, in decrying the Novell deal, utterly diminished the true strength of free software. It cannot be owned or controlled by anyone. Yet by leveraging zealous antagonism against Microsoft to help escalate their own agenda, the FSF helped plant the seed of doubt that Microsoft continues to cultivate to this day.
Perhaps, more to the point, openSUSE isn’t even part of the patent deal to begin with. Implying that openSUSE is somehow tainted because of their relationship to Novell, means that virtually every other distribution is equally tainted because they are just as dependent upon Novell-produced code.
Let it go. Seriously. It’s time to move on. Even Chicken Little gave in, eventually.
The author goes over some of the details but it’s heavy on the anti-openSUSE rhetoric and heavy on the pro Ubuntu/Fedora rhetoric. I guess he’s entitled to his opinion but maybe he should have titled as an opinion piece.
I’m downloading now and using the 11.0 RC 1. It’s using kernel 2.6.25.5-1.1 so I think the kernel the author listed is outdated.
It was definitely an opinion piece. To sum it up:
–review–
The installer tripped me up, I hate the slab menu, yast is a bloated mess, openSuse’s only redeeming feature is its 2 year support span. Fedora and Ubuntu are much better because they are revamping some of their stuff.
–/review–
Personally, I like yast and I like the slab menu. I’ve found openSuse to be a stable, well crafted distro that works quite well for me and I’ve seen nothing from Fedora or Ubuntu that make me want to switch.
That’s the beauty of Linux, you can pick the distro that fits you best.
Would you say it is more stable than Ubuntu?
I’m loving Ubuntu, but it’s not quite as stable on my current machine as I wish it was.
(I know; I could get off my lazy ass and install Arch Linux, but I’m tired of editing config files. I like it when stuff auto configures and works. )
I’m not a SUSE user so please forgive my ignorance..
Can someone tell me why it’s 4.3GB in size? I know it includes Gnome, 2 versions of KDE and a fancy installer, but I don’t think those alone would make it 4 times bigger than most other popular distros. Does it include more genuinely useful applications compared to the competition, or is most of it just random bloatware?
Why do you say its 4x the size of other distros?
Fedora-9-x86_64-DVD.iso 4066110 KB or 4G
Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso 3496758 KB or 3.4G
ubuntu I don’t think has a dvd, so hard to compare. Though I think the opensuse live-cds are on part with all the rest. Not that they can get much bigger than about 700/750?
Sorry, I didn’t consider Fedora, probably because I haven’t used it either. I currently run Ubuntu and Vector Linux. I’ve also tried PCLinuxOS and the new PC/OS 2008. The biggest of these is around ~1GB.
I’m not bashing OpenSUSE, I just want to know what is contained within.
Edited 2008-06-19 16:41 UTC
The DVD versions contain add-on packages that you would have to download separately on Ubuntu or VectorLinux.
4gb is standard for a DVD install of either Opensuse, Fedora, Mandriva and yes, I have also seen a Ubuntu 6.10 DVD, but I think this was put together by Linux Format magazine.
The idea of a full DVD is that people with slow internet connections can install the system, then browse the packages that are not installed by default.
OpenSUSE is “old school” like Debian (4.0 comes on 3 DVDs) and Fedora (1 DVD), they strive to provide choice in a single, offline-capable package. The trend to provide only a small preselection of software on one CD and get the rest over the internet is rather new, maybe 5 years or so.
SuSE has always been the ‘kitchen sink’ distribution. As far back as I remember, SuSE was always sold with over 6cds with lots of applications. I guess it was one of those things they could leverage over other distributions.
Why do they continue it now there is a trend towards single strip down cd’s, and use of the internet? I assume that the dvd is still quite useful for those who wish to give out free dvd’s in countries where internet connectivity is unreliable.
As for why you were moderated down? there is alot of inter-distribution rivalries, so I guess your comment could have been viewed by some as being an attack on OpenSuSE – that, and the fact that if you wanted to see what was on the dvd – a list of the packages on the dvd is actually listed on their website.
For the record, I didn’t mark you down – I don’t do that sort of thing, no matter how irritating the post or the poster may be.
Thanx for the explanation.
I’m not too bothered about being marked up/down… at least I got an answer to my question.
Cheers.
Don’t forget that openSUSE is one of the few retail shrinkwrapped linux distros on the market. You can buy it in a box, with a manual and installation support. Might seem a bit archaic in this day and age, but some people still go for that…
A stripped down CD versus a full DVD wouldn’t play as well in that scenario.
Why do they continue it now there is a trend towards single strip down cd’s, and use of the internet? I assume that the dvd is still quite useful for those who wish to give out free dvd’s in countries where internet connectivity is unreliable.
DVD’s are extremely useful for that. One such country is the US actually where about 40% can still not get high speed internet and have dial-up as an only option. I am talking home users here of course and not business users.
There was an openSUSE survey sometime before regarding the preferences for DVD and CD. And majority (by a large margin) of the openSUSE users download DVDs over CDs.
All good, most it seems are going with the live cd. The dvd is nice if you have slow internet or none and a lot of the apps you might download are made available through the dvd. Stuff that isn’t critical and can’t fit on a cd.
openSUSE, Fedora, etc. can be thought of as more like repo-on-disc type distros. They ship with a large number of software on a CD, most of which don’t even get installed. So large, chances are the next time you think “hey, I wanna install program X,” you don’t even have to go online (unless you want the latest version): it’s probably on the disc. They also allow you to select during install which desktop environment to use (ie. KDE or Gnome) and *only* install that desktop. Distros that fit on one disc usually have one major DE per disc.
Basically, these extra-large ISOs just contain a lot more software and can allow greater flexibility with a single (though much larger) disc. I personally prefer distros that are on one to three CDs myself; those tend to get the useful software vs. wasted space ratio down nicely.
Also, there are installable live CD versions of openSUSE, which IMO have a much better-tweaked final install. Fedora also has a similar setup.
yawnnnnn. OK, If your beloved Ubuntu comes as DVD and CD, that is OK and not bloated at all. If Suse comes on a DVD and CD version it is bloat, because, after all, you know, there is only one Linux that gets repackaged over and over by the different distributions, so anything that qualifies as 4.3 GB of bloat on Suse inevitably is just as bloated on Ubuntu – can you solve that mystery for me? OK, I know you can’t, I just felt like smart assing…
Bloatware for some, is useful for others. For me latex is a must, which is included on the OpenSUSE DVD. It takes I guess around 500MB or more. And with it, I can write my journal papers without worrying about what to install.
openSUSE actually has a number of ISO images available for various purposes. There are KDE and GNOME Live CD ISO images, which are about 1 CD in size, and they are available for multiple hardware platforms, then they have the big DVD. But they also have a nice 70 MB network installable ISO image, which I am using right now to upgrade an old openSUSE 10.2 image. The upgrade results in about 2 GB of changes since my previous installation was around that size.
What I am eager to find out is how much the system is improved in package management and overall responsiveness. openSUSE 10.2 was a nice desktop system, but it really croaked on my old Dell Dimension 4100 desktop system. I want to see how much better the new version can do. If it does well, I also intend to install it on a much newer and faster Lenovo 3000 model Y410 laptop with 2 GB of memory and Duo Core processors. While I know the newer laptop will run better, I have other systems that run great on that laptop. Based on how well openSUSE 11.0 does on the Dell, I may give it more “air time” elsewhere and see what it can do. I am guardedly optimistic about the possibilities.
Has anyone actually tried it yet ?
I am using Opensuse 10.3 and think it is really slow. My perception on opening Firefox, Openoffice etc….
Is there any improvement with 11 ?
Yes, I have and I quite like it sofar. I choose SUSE cause they offer really good KDE packages for 4.1devel ( KDE4live is also build on the same base ).
I _love_ the installer, it is beautiful and very straight forward. I like the no root (sudo) and autologin option and the integrated selection for community and extra repositories.
Like I said above I enabled KDE factory and updated to 4.1beta right away. And so far I haven’t had a problem. *knocks on wood* .. but it is still beta .. so beware.
This is good news. I am installing openSUSE 11.0 right now on an aging, but reliable old Dell Dimension 4100. I have a way to go in the installation because I downloaded the 70 MB network installation kit rather than the DVD or one of the Live CDs. I am also doing an upgrade rather than a new installation, so that affects how long it takes to install. I have three computers running right now, so I can do other things, so the timing is not all that critical. What will matter to me is how well post installation upgrades will go and how well the system will operate in routine desktop usage. If it does much better than openSUSE 10.2, which has been really slow on the old Dell, then I will be most pleased with this.
By miles
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
I find it funny that no one just told the poster that they could use the KDE & Gnome LiveCD versions. openSUSE in available is a fairly large number of formats.
– 1xCD LiveCD installers (like beloved Ubuntu) for KDE3, KDE4,GNOME in both x86 and x86_64
– 1xCD Network installer
– Delta cds & dvds that upgrade diffs from RC1
You only need to download one of the LiveCDs if you want a single-cd desktop install.
Author says it’s bad to have all configuration easily accessible. Believe that disjoint applications working differently is actually better?? What?!!
Yast is still a huge feature of openSUSE… may it never go away.
Also, author implies that Yast is monolithic, it’s actually a modular architecture, you can call the modules individually. The Yast tools merely presents a single entry point by default so you don’t have to remember all of the module names.
Yast works graphically in Gnome and KDE BUT, unlike the author’s favorites tools (a discord mess of unlike utilities that force the user of an X server), Yast also works from a terminal… can also work across VNC… Yast is made for enterprises, not just mom & pop desktops.
I agree about YaST. I was thoroughly confused about the comments in the article on it. While I’m not such a big fan of SLAB, be it in Gnome or in KDE as KickOff, dismissing YaST with superfluous and opinionated arguments turned me off the article completely.
For starters, Red Hat and Ubuntu simply don’t have a unified set of configuration tools for administering your computer, and there are some large gaping holes in functionality on that front. What’s more, you can use YaST from a console as well, and it’s very useful. No other distribution has anything like that.
Ubuntu still has DVD isos.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/dvd/current/.
openSUSE 11.0 – great release, like many have said KDE 4.1 is more usable than 4.0 but remember it is still in beta.
Thanks for the Ubuntu advertisement. No. Really.
While most of the post are about KDE4, another nice window manager made to the DVDs: XFCE. It does not need a super computer to run, just an old PC, or a new “green” computer will do.
I use it on the EFIKA, which uses just a few watts and is now fully supported by openSUSE 11.0. For details see http://en.opensuse.org/Efika OpenSUSE 11.0 has also all the software to make such small machine to fly (xfce/abiword/gnumeric/opera).
This is nice to know. I use XFCE quite often, except when I plan to use integrated KDE or GNOME tools – in those cases, I sometimes use KDE, and less frequently GNOME. I do, however, use lightweight window managers from time to time. I have used FVWM with SUSE in the past – the original window manager used over ten years ago in SUSE. But with the ready availability of XFCE I may use it more instead.
Has anyone installed this on a notebook? Every distro I have tried has had issues on my Thinkpad x61, most of which can be resolved after quite a bit of googling and tweaking. I’m hoping OpenSUSE 11 will deal better with mainstream notebook hardware.
I have noticed some 64bit distro versions (Fedora & Ubuntu) are more stable on the x61 than the corresponding 32bit builds, and don’t have issues with, for example, lockups on boot with ACPI. The only exception was VectorLinux 32bit which ran fine. I’ll give the 64bit OpenSUSE build a go first.
Well, that was a complete failure and waste of 2 hours of my life. By far the worst Linux distro install experience I have ever had. The initial openSUSE screen with the thin white progress line crawled along a millimeter at a time, so slow in fact that I had to put a bit of paper on the screen and come back several minutes later to see if it really was making progress. A little more feedback on what it was doing would have been a huge help. An hour or so later, after it had stuck on timezone detection for 15 minutes, I gave up. Of all the distros I have tried on the x61, this is the first that has failed so miserably.
You can press Esc to drop from the splash screen and see the kernel output as it’s running.
At any rate, I’ve got a Dell Vostro which also qualifies as mainstream laptop hardware, and everything works out of the box, except of course the nvidia driver, which requires a click to install. Webcam, sound, suspend, wifi, etc. so clearly they’re doing something right.
Since you mentioned that you’ve had issues with many distros, I’d hardly throw the ball in the openSUSE court for that. Besides, I know people had 10.3 running on the X61, so I’m not sure what could have changed drastically.
I see you have a Thinkpad x61 – have updated your BIOS? alot of ACPI related issues can be resolved by updating the BIOS given that these bugs are fixed on a regular basis.
With that being said, its surprising you’re having problems given that Solaris, Ubuntu and Fedora had no problems with my Thinkpad t61p.
Ubunto and Fedora 64bit had no install issues for me on the x61. Issues are usually with the 32bit versions, or with things like Bluetooth.
I’ll try again with openSUSE after a BIOS upgrade, but without Windows or an Ultrabase, its a real PITA to upgrade with the .iso supplied by IBM as it does not support USB CD/DVD drives and you have to jump through hoops to make a bootable USB stick.
Nice to see OpenSuse looks at security features other distros have implemented.
Amongst the 200 new features these are the one i really care about:
Randomize Application and Library Adresses (Feature No: 120276)
Implement PIE support in the kernel (Feature No: 300592)
-fstack-protector for all packages (Feature No: 301940)
I fortunately got an e-mail that my retail box is waiting to be send to me yesterday, kewl..
…it is a rant.
Compare it with what Ladislav of DistroWatch said:
I don’t know who this Andrew Hudson is, but certainly Ladislav knows one thing or two about Linux distributions.
Now this is simply preposterous. Does this man know that SUSE existed long before being bought by Novell and it was a much loved desktop distro? “OpenSUSE is still struggling to find a definite identity away from its Novell roots”? Does this man know what the heck he is talking about? Novell roots? Very little changed in the identity of this old Linux distribution after being bought by Novell, except that now it is also freely available, and before Novell acquisition SUSE was maybe slightly more stable (but innovation was much slower).
I won’t even mention that a comparison with Fedora doesn’t stand: openSUSE is a proper, complete desktop distro, Fedora is not, it misses too many features to be one. And in any case Red Hat doesn’t believe in Desktop Linux.
Edited 2008-06-20 05:57 UTC
I want to add something.
I don’t know how this man can complain about YaST.
I have been saying for years now that YaST is the best “control panel” of any OS, bar none (so forget about configuration tools of other Linux distros). There is virtually nothing you can’t do within a nice GUI.
But on the other hand you can work from the CLI if you prefer.
I was an OpenSuse user once (before they became the Judas of Linux community) and I found Yast the slowest tool I ever used. It took hours to update 1 or 2 packages. The CPU was 100% the whole time. Horrible tool.
I never had that kind of experience. Maybe you were on dial-up.
However, before 11.0 I’ll easily admit that package management wasn’t the best YaST module, therefore I was an apt4rpm specialist, which I had to abandon in favour of Smart when they moved to repomd.
In openSUSE 11.0 package management has been greatly improved, especially CLI Zypper:
http://news.opensuse.org/2008/06/06/sneak-peeks-at-opensuse-110-pac…
It was a 1Mb/s connection through a cable/internet provider. There was not much network activity, but the CPU was 100% during the update.
Edited 2008-06-21 02:04 UTC
I can’t believe it was the package manager to do that.
It must have been another process.
I have just installed the OpenSuSE 11 GM KDE CD.
They have undoubtedly eliminated a lot of minor quirks.
Installing packages is due to a faster libzyp stack painless and you don’t have wait too long on the dependancy checker.
OpenSuse 11 installed and behaved similar on my HP laptop. Kewl, suzie has a ATI drivers community repo 🙂
I can’t wait for my retail box to arrive.
Don’t forget to add “NoPowerConnectCheck” “on” to /etc/X11/xorg.conf if your graphics card doesn’t have an external power connector:-)
“Please stay away from Suse as long as Novell has a patent protection deal with Microsoft. Please do not contribute in any way to a distro that promotes Microsoft’s interests in the Open Source world. Do not contribute by using this distro, by filling bug reports, by helping the community, by translating, by packaging, by submitting patches and so on.”
Blah blah blah blah blah.
I am having a hard time restraining the desire to shoot people in the face for endlessly flogging their pet hate which is the Novel/MS deal. shut it!
I also have a great teal of admiration for Elsewhere given his tireless patience in rebutting these cretinous arguments.
We recently purchased some Dell Vostro 1200’s where I work. That model is discontinued, and has no webcam. openSuSE 10.3 and 11.0 install flawlessly on the machines, detecting all the hardware with no issues. Fedora 9 however does not install, or rather it does with an interesting twist. Fedora 9 goes through the process, formats the disk, shows you the pretty installation screen where it is installing all the software to the disk, etc. The problem is the install ends every time with “No kernel was installed as none can be found to match your hardware.”. I will recommend openSuSE everytime over Fedora. RedHat went to crap after RedHat 9, and I was sad actually as it was a great distro, and the one I swore by from RedHat 5.0.
Please find yourself a 12 step program. I am sure you can join the same one Stallman is in.
Mod me down..I couldn’t help it..really.