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If you're gonna compare with RHEL, you have to compare to SLES, not openSUSE. openSUSE is the Fedora equivalent. And SLES has a similar support lifecycle to RHEL.

As an aside the community is experimenting with a long-term support version of openSUSE as well - look for project Evergreen

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Re: Mono: I'm running 11.3 and there's no mono on either my laptop or my desktop. Just go to the package manager and remove the mono base library, and everything it depends on will also be removed :-)

Re: No kernel source on DVD: The DVD includes lots of desktops, lots of software, lots of tools, lots of applications, lots of servers, ... and lots of languages. The kernel source for 11.3 is 334.5 megs. Most people don't need to compile a kernel any more. Including everything that's available from the OpenSUSE repositories would make it a multi-dvd download; including the source as well would just make it even bigger.

One of my previous thoughts about how updates are performed apparently has been addressed in this release. Instead of downloading updates and additions sequentially, multiple updates will be grabbed simultaneously, which should make updating quicker.

Re: Boxed sets don't include a complete development environment, including kernel, etc.: You can always build a distro that contains exactly what you want: https://build.opensuse.org/ ...

There's an even better way than that - measuring the number of unique IPs which hit the update servers to download security and bug fix updates.

Opensuse has done this for years: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Statistics

That's pretty neat! Can we get the same figures from other distros.

What's openSUSE's future look like? Since Novell is slowly dying, are we going to see openSUSE fade from being the #2 / #3 distro?

First of all I don't know if Novell is dying. Novell is Acquired by Attachmate Corporation.

Secondly the openSuSE community is very big and is operating on more or less independently from Novell.

Even if Novell would dying I think other companies would by the SuSE part with SLES. As SLES quality is also due to the openSuSE quality I don't think a owner of SLES would not support openSuSE.

I as a openSuSE packages still foresee a bright future for openSUSE and SLES also because the community around openSuSE is growing. And there are great projects within openSuSE like the openSUSE Build Service (Multi distro packaging framework), SUSE Studio (Build a custom distro), etc

What's openSUSE's future look like? Since Novell is slowly dying, are we going to see openSUSE fade from being the #2 / #3 distro?

First of all I don't know if Novell is dying. Novell is Acquired by Attachmate Corporation.

Secondly the openSuSE community is very big and is operating on more or less independently from Novell.

Even if Novell would dying I think other companies would by the SuSE part with SLES. As SLES quality is also due to the openSuSE quality I don't think a owner of SLES would not support openSuSE.

I as a openSuSE packages still foresee a bright future for openSUSE and SLES also because the community around openSuSE is growing. And there are great projects within openSuSE like the openSUSE Build Service (Multi distro packaging framework), SUSE Studio (Build a custom distro), etc

There's an even better way than that - measuring the number of unique IPs which hit the update servers to download security and bug fix updates.

Opensuse has done this for years: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Statistics

As some PCs do not have a CD player, you could also make a (live) USB key: http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick

There are some statistics based on unique IPs asking for updates on en.opensuse.or/Statistics. Obviously YMMV with those numbers.

3. Here's a question: why is there no CentOS equivalent based on SuSE products? Think about it.

Um, wouldn't that be openSUSE?

You can always grab fedora.

Or you can grab debian (which ubuntu is based on), with almost 30,000 packages, and without the fugly Ubuntu wallpapers.

Build the hardware and sell it at cost or maybe less then create an app store to make more money.

Huh? So, only the "rich" poor people can afford the "cool" apps?

Besides, it already has a free "app store" (AKA activity repository).

openSUSE has packaged about 50 activities in total for Sugar, with more activities available for installation from the sugarlabs.org activities repository. Activities that haven't been packaged can be downloaded directly from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ and installed by the user through the browse interface (the repository is similar to firefox addons.)

After some searching, I found out how to switch my system from OpenJDK to Sun's JRE. java -version now shows "Java SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_22-b04)." Alas, I still get "Could not init GLX."

"real kick in the teeth"??

I'm a die hard KDE supporter but I totally oppose the concept of a default desktop. I wish all distributions would at least support GNOME and KDE SC fully and possibly even more.
Instead of defaults I think a clear selection screen like the one in openSUSE 11.1 is the best way: http://old-en.opensuse.org/File:11_1-install-006.png
That way users can make an informed choice about what DE suites them best.

all the distros ignored them and packaged it instead of KDE 3.x

That's simply untrue. Kubuntu offered an optional KDE4 version of 8.04 but the recommended one was still KDE 3.5-based.
openSUSE 11.0 also offered both, including a clear warning that 4.0 is less mature than 3.5: http://old-en.opensuse.org/File:OS11.0-inst-6.jpg
Mandriva stayed with KDE 3.5 exclusively for a while and Debian didn't even import any 4.x version to UNSTABLE before 4.2.

The ONLY mainstream distribution that went with 4.0 exclusively was Fedora.

And then there is https://build.opensuse.org/ so developers can build easily against those major distro's.

It's looks very promising and hopefully it'll get to the point where installing software on Linux will be as easy as on WIndows and OSX.

What now? Installing software is a two step issue.
1) Locate the software. The major distributions have a program and/or website that will be able to do just that and find the majority of software. e.g. http://software.opensuse.org/

2) Installing will be done with most likely the same program. Do you have openSUSE 11.3 and want to install e.g. lbreakout2 Just click here

Yeah, sometimes you will need to compile the software yourself. That is however not an OS problem, but a developer problem. They decided not to package. And packaging can be done for many distro's by using e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/ where you can build against openSUSE, SLE, Debian, Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Mandriva and Ubuntu (23 versions in total) all in one go.

The last time I needed to compile something is now about 3 years ago. I just look for something similar and use that instead.

It's looks very promising and hopefully it'll get to the point where installing software on Linux will be as easy as on WIndows and OSX.

What now? Installing software is a two step issue.
1) Locate the software. The major distributions have a program and/or website that will be able to do just that and find the majority of software. e.g. http://software.opensuse.org/

2) Installing will be done with most likely the same program. Do you have openSUSE 11.3 and want to install e.g. lbreakout2 Just click here

Yeah, sometimes you will need to compile the software yourself. That is however not an OS problem, but a developer problem. They decided not to package. And packaging can be done for many distro's by using e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/ where you can build against openSUSE, SLE, Debian, Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Mandriva and Ubuntu (23 versions in total) all in one go.

The last time I needed to compile something is now about 3 years ago. I just look for something similar and use that instead.

It's looks very promising and hopefully it'll get to the point where installing software on Linux will be as easy as on WIndows and OSX.

What now? Installing software is a two step issue.
1) Locate the software. The major distributions have a program and/or website that will be able to do just that and find the majority of software. e.g. http://software.opensuse.org/

2) Installing will be done with most likely the same program. Do you have openSUSE 11.3 and want to install e.g. lbreakout2 Just click here

Yeah, sometimes you will need to compile the software yourself. That is however not an OS problem, but a developer problem. They decided not to package. And packaging can be done for many distro's by using e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/ where you can build against openSUSE, SLE, Debian, Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Mandriva and Ubuntu (23 versions in total) all in one go.

The last time I needed to compile something is now about 3 years ago. I just look for something similar and use that instead.

But if I could buy him a mac, keep the administrator account for myself, and give him a user account that could only install and run app store apps

Hi, you appear to be looking for one of these:

http://www.ubuntu.org/
http://www.fedoraproject.org/
http://www.madrivalinux.com/
http://www.opensuse.org/

Seriously, we have been able to do that sort of thing for a really long time now with GNU/Linux. That is exactly what I do with my mother's desktop, and there has not been any problems yet.

After this little stunt, and if this trend continues in the future, I would be surprised if OO.o remained the office of choice in Ubuntu 11.04, or really any of the Linux distros who pride themselves on free software. Oracle is destroying its free-software products.

openSUSE and Ubuntu are switching to the LO codebase.

openSUSE is switching as well. Not surprising, as they were shipping go-oo before.

Have you seen the OpenSUSE Build Service? That can automatically build native packages for several distros (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu (if you don't depend on anything in Universe)), and already has plenty of games, and isn't too hard to set up when you can copy from existing examples. (I've been trying to use it for 0 A.D. and it seems okay so far.)

Have you seen the OpenSUSE Build Service? That can automatically build native packages for several distros (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu (if you don't depend on anything in Universe)), and already has plenty of games, and isn't too hard to set up when you can copy from existing examples. (I've been trying to use it for 0 A.D. and it seems okay so far.)

http://www.opensuse.com/ : redirects to http://en.opensuse.org/Main_Page : 1st sentence "Project: The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere

http://www.redat.com/ iGATE Powers Its Mission-Critical ManageMe Application on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (close call on that one ...)

http://www.mandriva.com/ 1st para : More than 3 million people in the world enjoy our Mandriva Linux platform on their computer.

http://http//fedoraproject.org/: Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software.

http:/// linuxmint.com/ : it's in their url, title, ect: Linux Mint 9 KDE Linux Mint 9 KDE is out!

http://www.debian.org/: Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

pclinuxos, puppy linux, etc ...

It's funny how Canonical wants to be seen as the "canonical linux distro", but it's all just marketing fluff and FUGLY color schemes.

The ISO file supposed to be over 4 GB but I got less than 200 MB !!

This is the link I got http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3/iso/openSUSE-11.3-DVD-x86_64.iso

An alternative link also got me an ISO that is less than 200 MB

http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/opensuse/distribution/11.3/iso/openSUSE-11.3-DVD-x86_64.iso

Can someone please tell me what I have done wrong??

Works on any of the live CD downloads. Needs to be done as root. usbdevice will typically be sd[a-z]. setting the block size to 8 MB just makes it go faster.

Detailed instructions here.

Yep; where I work (small university dep't) one of the faculty members has it on all his desktops.

My main grumble about OpenSuSE is that, at least until 11.2 -- I'm still fuzzy on the details -- you couldn't actually do an upgrade from SuSE itself using zypper; you had to boot from the DVD and upgrade. I'm used to CentOS and Debian where this sort of thing isn't a mix of hope and prayer or a feature request.

Yep; where I work (small university dep't) one of the faculty members has it on all his desktops.

My main grumble about OpenSuSE is that, at least until 11.2 -- I'm still fuzzy on the details -- you couldn't actually do an upgrade from SuSE itself using zypper; you had to boot from the DVD and upgrade. I'm used to CentOS and Debian where this sort of thing isn't a mix of hope and prayer or a feature request.

A bit, imho, far more relevant ones, are described in Top Features. Support for Btrfs, and the visual interface of Meego for netbooks, sound to me a bit more interesting, apart of the usual incremental improvement over previous versions.

Then there's the ever present library hell. E.g., you can't just download and install Winamp like on Windows. Downloading and trying to compile, say, XMMS off Freshmeat quickly runs into the fact that the libraries aren't the versions it expects, and the ones it expects don't seem to compile on an x64 system without some editing. Sorry, but that's one aspect that Windows got a lot better.

You might think that if you didn't know about external repositories. Add a Packman repo in YaST, then install the xmms package. No compiling required. mplayer, vlc, and other interesting software are in Packman.

I haven't tried that, but apparently it is possible to use the print server under linux, e.g: http://forums.opensuse.org/get-help-here/hardware/397751-how-connect-usb-laser-printer-fritz-box.html

openSUSE has an RPM that pulls in Flash, because they're not allowed to redistribute it directly.

Are you sure? I see a 6 megabyte rpm there, quite large for a simple download wrapper:
http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/non-oss/suse/i586/

http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Package_Conventions/RPM_Style#1.8._Version_Tag
http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Package_Conventions/RPM_Style#1.9._Release_Tag

http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Package_Conventions/RPM_Style#1.8._Version_Tag
http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Package_Conventions/RPM_Style#1.9._Release_Tag

If crapware won't install on your computer, don't install the crapware. I'm sure there's plenty of other choices out there.

Another good option from OpenSUSE. I have had better results with their releases. They tend to do better more reliable hardware support.

There are lots of good documents here: http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories

There are lots of good documents here: http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories

Here's some people with the same window size problem, and some possible solutions:

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/430081-how-set-konsole-window-size.html

Nope - completely fucking useless.

The "workaround" is the same one I came up with, except it doesn't fucking work in 4.x. I tested it in 3.5, and it works, but I guess 4.x Konsole windows are "immune" from overriding size (how nice of them!).

Fuck KDE4 - it's just fucking useless.

Most Linux distros have community forums and IRC channels if you have questions as a new Linux user.

For most users, the first two steps you need to take after a new Linux install (openSUSE being no exception) is to install a video driver, and install codecs.

With openSUSE, there are two 1-click installers that handle these tasks.

http://en.opensuse.org/NVIDIA_drivers
http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/11.2

Running those two 1-click installers should get DVDs, Flash, your video driver, MP3 support, QuickTime support, etc. all working.

KDE 4.4 isn't night and day different from KDE 4.3. You can use a 1-click installer to add a newer version of KDE, or you can wait a few months for openSUSE 11.3 which will upgrade your entire system to the latest and greatest versions.

I think it's under the Settings menu, something about saving to default.

I'd be more specific but I don't have it in front of me here..

Here's some people with the same window size problem, and some possible solutions:

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/430081-how-set-konsole-window-size.html

openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1 includes KDE 4.4 RC2 (a build from two weeks ago)

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3-Milestone1/

OpenSUSE is free: http://www.opensuse.org/en/ - we run it here.

SUSE is not free. However, when your Oracle server has decided to keel over on the development server, and you've spent a couple of hours now trying to find out why, you really begin to wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to pay for the version with support and be able to call someone (OpenSUSE isn't an officially supported Oracle platform, so we couldn't even call them) and have them fix it.

Select this link: http://software.opensuse.org/112/en I just saved you anywhere from $0 for 0 servers to $INF for INF servers!

openSUSE has had a very similar program for some time.

http://en.opensuse.org/Members

Members get to vote on the board, and get a free boxed/retail copy of each openSUSE release.

Yes, I'm using binary blobs. I generally use the openSUSE provided NVIDIA repository with its nvidia driver RPMs unless I discover a bug that doesn't work for them.

http://en.opensuse.org/Nvidia contains a 1-click way to install the drivers.

If those fail me, I use the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com

If those fail me, I go to http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606
and download the latest beta driver.

He failed to mention that openSUSE only has KDE as the standard on the DVD. The DVD allows you to easily select GNOME and with one more click XFCE (and some more options). There are both a KDE and a GNOME Live CD available on http://software.opensuse.org/

Sure!

http://www.opensuse.org/
http://www.ubuntu.org/
http://www.winehq.org/
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

Absolutely no WGA getting in your way! ;)

openSUSE 11.2 ships with AppArmor and is stable today.

It is a very capable OS and extremely secure.

I'll even give you a free copy. Just don't tell anyone.

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/iso/

Well, not all:
http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090729
Debian is on a 2 year cycle
http://news.opensuse.org/2009/03/05/112-roadmap-and-fixed-release-cycle-for-opensuse/
Suse 8 months

I think Ubuntu and Fedora go for the 6 month, but I doubt 'most' go for 6 mos. I think the average is to attempt an annual release.