openSUSE 11.0 is one of the most anticipated Linux distribution releases of recent times. The openSUSE team released version 11.0 yesterday, and it comes with the latest KDE4, GNOME, kernel, all the usual latest and greatest. In addition, it carries a few new Compiz Fusion plugins, improved package management (still a weak spot for openSUSE), and a brand new front-end to the installer. Reviews are starting to trickle in, and they are almost exclusively positive.
First we have The Register, who finds that openSUSE 11.0 has a ‘Mactastic’ shine.
Overall OpenSUSE 11 is a nice evolution in the SUSE line, building on the features in 10.3, but also making the distro more approachable for Linux newbies without withholding power user tools. The DVD distro in particular offers just about all the options one could ask for and manages to make the installation process every bit as simple and elegant as a closed source system like Mac OS X, which is no small feat.Provided the name Novell doesn’t send you running for the free software hills, OpenSUSE 11 is an easy-to-use distro and worth a closer look.
Linux.com’s Susan Linton also has nothing but praise for openSUSE 11.0. She concludes:
openSUSE 11.0 is a fabulous release. The pretty new graphics set the stage for significant improvements under the surface. All the time and energy put into the package management system has paid off. Including KDE 4 is not as big of a risk for openSUSE as it might be for other major distributions because of the conservative and intuitive way KDE 4 is set up. openSUSE has given me hope that I could actually like KDE 4.As many point-0 releases, 11.0 does have bugs and rough edges. I experienced a few, and others are likely to be reported in the upcoming weeks. For the most part, the ones I encountered were insignificant, not showstoppers.
Overall, 11.0 is a commendable release. The developers have done an admirable job walking that fine line between stable and bleeding edge. If you like the latest software or wish for a nice usable KDE 4, then openSUSE 11.0 is for you. If you’re completely happy with 10.3, well, perhaps you might want to wait for further reports.
Last but not least, Ars Technica took a quick look at openSUSE 11.0 and the KDE4 variant it comes with, and came to the conclusion that openSUSE 11.0 delivers the best implementation of KDE4 currently available.
This is a very strong OpenSUSE release with a lot of compelling improvements. OpenSUSE 11 offers the best KDE 4 experience out there and will continue to be our reference distribution for KDE testing. OpenSUSE 11 is also an increasingly solid choice for GNOME users – its unique GNOME customizations add a nice level of polish, and the inclusion of Banshee and Beagle ensure that it provides a better set of default applications out of the box than Ubuntu and Fedora. It’s no Ubuntu-killer, but we can definitely expect to see OpenSUSE gain a larger following in the coming months.
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
How does this compare on OpenSUSE? So now that RedHat also have moved to KVM based solution (from Xen) will OpenSUSE be next to dump Xen? Ubuntu will also use KVM.
Where does that put Xen? It runs on NetBSD but poorly. freeBSD does not have any virtualization solution. Will we see a Citrix based distro?
Xen is here to stay with the large industry support it has. KVM is too Linux specific to gain industry traction in my opinion. If it does gain traction, it will only be because of sheer mass.
<opinion>
I think Xen will die for most people. Red Hat and Ubuntu use KVM now .. the rest will follow.
Not being in Linus tree and that weird “kernel in a kernel” design will be the cause of its death.
Switching VMs isn’t that hard and new installs will definately use the more powerfull and better maintained solution.
</opinion>
Red Hat have added KVM. This is not the same thing as they will dump Xen.
KVM may be good for doing things like running Windows XP on your workstation, if you are lucky enough to have the required hardware support. Much of the hardware sold event today targeted at office use, lacks VT support.
Xen on the other hand can run paravituralized, with very good performance on common hardware, It also have the ability to do live migrations. This is very useful in high availability environments, where you in combination with a cluster file system like GFS would get something similar to RAID, but for entire systems, not just disks. Or you could move from your VM from one machine to another to allow for hardware maintainance with just a few milliseconds loss of service.
These kind of things is very important in data centers, that typically are the ones who pays for expensive Red Hat or Novell licenses, so I would not expect Xen to go away soon, at least not at Novell or Red Hat.
Why in the world the author of this review thinks that the patents deal between Novell and Microsoft is bad? Don’t you feel more secure knowing that Microsoft is your friend?
If Hitler, Stalin or Roosevelt was my friend I certainly wouldn’t feel more “secure”. If anything I’d start looking for options of escape when the “friendship” goes sore if you get my point.
Novell got a very bad press for getting into bed with Microsoft.
BUT what everyone one all sites have failed to notice, is that Novell got Microsoft to admit one thing… That Linux exists and is a viable competitior.
Until the deal, Microsoft was telling everyone Linux was a cancer and no-one uses it in seriousness, but in the talks with Novell, Microsoft admitted that Fortune500 companies that used Windows were also using Linux, but that Brad Smith (microsoft patent dude), had scared them all into either dumping Windows from the desktop, or paying lawyers a vast fee.
Microsoft decided to pull Brad Smith back a touch and get into talks with a Linux distributor.
THE CONCLUSION:
Microsoft retains the right to sue Linux distributors and Linux user who do not sign up as Novell did.
Microsoft and Novell has a no-sue agreement over each others patents, Novell gets $240m and Microsoft gets to include Novell’s NFS into Windows. As a plus, Microsoft can go back to the Fortun500 companies and give them vouchers for Novell Linux.
The shortsightedness of this deal however, is that in essence, Microsoft is now a distributor of Linux too.
The whole patents malarkey can safely be ignored, like a terrier with no teeth.
As a Side note.
I am writing this in Firefox 3 (final) on OpenSuse 11 and it is FU%£ING excellent !
Finally – someone else who figured out that Novell got the best of MS in that deal.
Thank you.
I figured it out some time ago, and was branded a “troll” and an “astroturfer” by the Groklaw crowd.
Groklaw used to do a great job against Sco, but now are a bit over the top, IMO.
Well, that seems strange.
I had the disagreement directly with PJ, and she only asked if I was serious.
Which of course, I was.
Never got any heat
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. That will be the *real* KDE desktop we are all after.
Roll on 11.1
would you bet your house + wife on KDE, Xorg and ALSA adhering to their release schedules?
There is always a new-“something” and there isn’t even a promise it will be great for public consumption, like KDE 4.0.0 (well, we knew that one in advance), etc…
I am not a Linux fan, but i like to try it to see what stage of development is in.
I have tried the latest Ubuntu(gnome version), Fresspire, and many versions of Suse.
Neither Ubuntu or Freespire was able to recognized all my hardware. Neither could get wireless working on a desktop with a wifi usb stick.
Suse 11 has done everything I need and is working fine without having to dig for answers in forums ( digging for answers is not what regular computer users expect to do with an OS).
When I added the wireless usb stick, Suse said that I needed to download the firmware from the manufacturers site. I diddn’t, but it installed flawlessly and it is working fine ever since.
So for me, a Vista regular user, this version of Suse is the best linux version out there today. Ubuntu for me is way overrated.
Forget about Novell people. Suse 11 is a very good OS. Religion, you go to church on Sunday, OS, it’s just software guys!
I concur. I recently tried installing Ubuntu 8.04 on my Vista/XP dual-boot box … and struggled mightily to get my 9600GT card working. Not to mention futzing around with all the codecs needed for DVD playback, and the screen font rendering STILL SUCKS.
Haven’t tried openSUSE in a while … maybe I’ll give it a whirl.
I currently use Ubuntu but I am always on the lookout for what the other major distros are doing. Opensuse does a number of things very well. It has a very unified and polished feel to it. I am particularly impressed with how vastly improved package management has become. Software is very easy to install and the repos have a huge selection of programs to install. My biggest problems so far during my casual use are 1)I have become fond of the Ubuntu restricted driver manager and how much it simplifies setup. I had to manually install the Nvidia driver because the one from the repos failed to load the kernel module. I looked on the Suse forums and there seems to be a bug in the Nvidia repo driver right now. Also I had to manually install wifi drivers on my laptop which is not that difficult for users with knowledge of linux, but is certainly something that would derail less experienced users. With all that being said, I am extremely impressed by this release and will be watching it very carefully in the future.
Well I installed the KDE4 option first but let me just say I was disappointed. KDE4 is fantastic in where it has come so far but IMO is not yet stable even in Opensuse 11.
After numerous crashes and eventually being left with a completely black screen every login, I had to drop into a console and install KDE3 (thank goodness yast runs as a console app too!!).
BTW, anyone complaining about nvidia drivers – just go to en.opensuse.org/nvidia and use the 1-click option. It couldn’t get any easier. I’ve done this on 3 different PCs at home (one was a legacy nvidia card) and it worked 1st time. Its a pity opensuse didn’t make this clearer – I only knew because I’ve used opensuse for years and came across it before the 10.3 release.
and for codecs, DVD etc. head over to http://www.opensuse-community.org and click on “restricted formats”. Couldn’t be simpler.
in fact, google for “list of things to do after installing opensuse 11” and click on ben’s blog and follow the instructions that apply to you.
The KDE3 install is fantastic and I’d describe it as everything Opensuse 10.3 should have been!! The package management has been fixed 100% and is now VERY fast and very good at what it does.
The whole desktop seems to be tied together very well and I also now use Compiz Fusion with the emerald decoration, which has previously been frustrating for me to use due to lack of WM ability. However it seems to run fairly well now, after spending a lot of time in the configuration tools setting it up.
There’s still lots more work to do for Compiz Fusion IMO but at present its usable for me – its just not easy to set up just right yet. I was able to enable it fine using simple-ccsm but using this tool I could not disable it. Also, it defaulted to the kde decorator and I had to edit the compiz start scripts to force it to use emerald. It also seemed to continually forget my settings and there seems to be no easy way within ccsm to save a profile. It allows you to create a new profile and export/import settings to/from a file, but no button to save the current profile. I found this a bit strange because it never seemed to save my settings properly.
Anyway, aside from this, its a fantastic release. All my hardware worked great – even my wireless card had firmware automatically downloaded – I only had to type in my ESSID and password!!!
So all up a great release for KDE3 – IMO the best KDE3 distro ever! Hopefully 11.1 can deliver a solid KDE4.1 experience…but for now I’m happy with 11.0
Edited 2008-06-23 02:54 UTC
So all up a great release for KDE3 – IMO the best KDE3 distro ever! Hopefully 11.1 can deliver a solid KDE4.1 experience…but for now I’m happy with 11.0
Thanks, Pixel8r, that was a v. helpful round up. FWIW, I get emerald to start itself by dropping a symlink to it into my .kde/Autostart folder, but I’m not using SuSE.
What’s OpenSuSE 11.0 like for speed? This has always been a slight issue for me with SuSE distros. I’m on Debian Testing which is pretty darn nippy, and the last time I tried OpenSuSE it was a bit sluggish in comparison. Is YaST a bit quicker than it used to be? Also, any change in YaST used to fire off every single SuSEconfig script regardless of whether it was relevant which struck me as a real waste of time. Is this still the case?
Speed-wise, it’s fine. I’ve never really had any problems with (open)SuSE’s speed, even on some fairly slow and ram-constrained hardware though, so maybe I’m just not as picky.
Sadly, all of SuSEconfig still does run after some settings changes, but it doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to. I think the individual scripts have been tuned up quite a bit.
SuSEconfig is a safety-blanket for users to ensure that package and system config changes don’t impact existing configuration settings, etc.
Having said that, it can be easily disabled via Yast -> System -> /etc/sysconfig Editor. Select System/SuSEconfig/ENABLE_SUSECONFIG and set it to “no”.
Or, perhaps more easily, change it directly in /etc/sysconfig/suseconfig, and set ENABLE_SUSECOFNIG=”no”.
I have yet to run into a problem by disabling it.
openSuSE 11.0 works great !
Just a few issues (like font rendering). When used with the stable KDE 3.5.x it is as expected. KDE 4.0.x still has more issues, but please remember that KDE 4.X is still a work in progess, highly experimental & thus bleeding-edge.
So, wait till the end of the year for OS 11.1+KDE4.1 before expecting the same results as 10.3+KDE3.5.x
I liked 10.x but not sure I care for KDE4 in the new release. Couldn’t figure out how to load a custom PPD file for my printer either. For now I will stick with Mandriva 2008.1 which I feel is a superior product.