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Well, if youi are a developer, you could think about putting your stuff on https://build.opensuse.org/ where you can build not only for openSUSE and SUSE, but also for CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, RedHat, Debian and Ubuntu.

Because what I often see is packages build for one distribution, but often not for many.

http://software.opensuse.org/112/en which will point you to a mirror automatically, to bittorernt, metalink or a mirror you can select.

If you have a bit of experience, you can go with the Network version. Otherwise go with the GNOME or KDE version. Only if you will be installing on several machines should you download the DVD.

After installation there is no difference between the different versions, except for the obvious difference between KDE/GNOME. The CD versions are live versions can be run from USB stick as well.

More infor on the above URL

Only you can tell. If you are happy with what you have, stay where you are. (This also goes for Windows users.) If you are interested in trying out, download it and try it out. I use it as I like YaST and zypper. I also like to use it to combine it with the repositories I can make myself on https://build.opensuse.org/ and I like it because I can easily make my own distro based on it on http://susestudio.com/

And that would be almost-excusable, except for the brain-dead "open source is king" approach for updates: "The whole-thing's free anyway, why not just re-send the whole thing?" binary patches are pretty-much unheard of. Of course, sending the whole thing is really just a work-around because-

SuSE has been doing binary deltas since Hector was a pup. Haven't others too?

Package managers generally do NOT bother to detect when they are about to clobber or alter "the wrong file". When they do, they don't bother to keep a record of what they /would/ consider to be "the right file", making "merging" impossible and difference examination a guessing game. That doesn't even matter, because the first step in an "Upgrade" is usually to just completely remove the existing package, which means...

That's not true. Most dependencies are given for files and their specific versions. If the "to-be-installed" package offers a different version of the file/library that no longer satisfies the dependency, the package manager complains, and most of the time, tries to automatically find the best solution from available packages.

Multiple versions of a single package co-existing on the same base install is generally impossible. Which really makes you wonder what the hell a package manager /does/ manage.

It is possible and easily done. Package managers do not have any such restrictions and are able to happily manage multiple versions of the libraries quite well.

You want the bleeding-edge version of something? You just want to patch a broken package? That means you're not using the package manager, and that means you're on your own for everything. Either you build a /package/ for what you're doing on the side, or you don't get access to any of the supposed features. And anything that depends on what you're doing, you may as well just compile and track yourself- 'cause that's what you like doing, right?

Exactly right. Blame the packager, not the package manager. There's nothing in package managers that says you can't have KDE3 and KDE4 installed at the same time.

The short of it is: Package managers seem so fundamentally broken that giving them another task seems like a waste of time. They'll just be replaced by a better system eventually anyway, right? And then you'll need to do it all again.

The closest to "right" I've seen is GoboLinux.

I don't see how they are "broken" at all.

From what I've seen it's probably one of the best distros for KDE, better than Fedora and Kubuntu.

I agree that Mandriva is a great distro for users that prefer KDE, but some users are more comfortable with a "big name" distro like openSUSE (which should be mentioned with Fedora and Kubuntu).

KDE will now be the "default" desktop in openSUSE 11.2 (due in 7 days). That link also describes "KDE integration" for GNOME-based apps like Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

Anyhoo, I think it's worth trying both in "live distro" form.

If Asus had used a decent distro it would maybe have still been installed on some of those netbooks.

I bought two EEE 4Gs, 701, just to support them in this endeavour.
As someone who uses Linux exclusively (Gentoo/Arch/openSUSE) I have to say that Xandros is crap. I believe that the choice of Xandros for those netbooks did Linux in general no favours at all.

It's news to me that Linux requires admin privileges to install software.

"Once you've finished choosing, click the Apply button at the bottom of the window. Another window will pop up, showing all of the packages you've selected and asking if you'd like to apply the changes. To install the packages, click Apply. You'll then be asked to type in your super-user/administrator password. Once you've entered it, another window will appear informing you of the installation progress. Once this has finished, click Close. Your new programs are installed, ready to use!"

"Most software packages come with one or more preformatted man pages. As root".

Installing Software
"The process of installing software is very simple. Start YaST by selecting it from the menu under System, or by using the run command dialog (press Alt+F2) and typing yast. You will be required to enter your root password. Start the Software Management-module by selecting it from the Software tab in the YaST Control Center."

That's just a quick look but all three say an admin, root, or superuser password is needed.

Falcon

You may find free and secure alternatives to Windows at http://ubuntu.com/ or http://opensuse.org/

I can't imagine rekonq will take over Firefox's market share. That's fine. I still recommend Firefox to people I meet who are Windows users. But Firefox is less than stellar on Linux. I also absolutely loathe GTK file dialogs.

Thankfully in openSUSE I have a found a repo where someone has a KDE 4-integrated build of Firefox.

http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/FirefoxIntegration

It's called apt. It's already widely deployed in Debian and Ubuntu, and has been for a long time. The problem is solved.

And for completness:

• on openSUSE it's "zypper".
• on some embed Linux distros it's "ipkg" and it's derivate (like opkg).

What proportion of third party vendors distribute their software using apt ?

There is :

• a great dealy of 3rd party opensource producers who provide repositories for their softwares. Not only binaries, not only packages, but full repositories which can be added to apt/zypper/whatever and get automatically updated
• there's also a great deal of additional external repositories - such as for example "PPA" for ubuntu, Debian multimedia, openSUSE's repositories, and Packman (which is multi-platform, but mostly concentrates on multimedia packages which can't be legally distributed with openSUSE)
• whenever possible people try to package 3rd party commercial application in these repositories - you can find closed source drivers, flash, acrobat, microsoft's font. The only limit is whether the author authorise re-packing and re-distribution. Even then, sometime packagers manage to go around such limitation by making packages which are actually updating scripts (ms fonts works that way)

So, in short, a great deal of software in addition to what came on you CD can already get updated today.

Not only that, but to make the whole experience more user friendly, some like openSUSE have developed method where a single link on a web page can be processed by the package manager and, once given the necessary privilege, with 1 webpage clic, you get automatically the correct repository added and the necessary packages selected.

Meanwhile, with microsoft you get 1 central system (windows updates) which is used for the OS and maybe for a couple of other microsoft products (MS-Office, Visual Studio) as long as the user selects the appropriate service (microsoft updates). Then you have a couple of other software which implements their own incompatible updates tracking (Firefox) of which some are really cumbersome (Acrobat). Virtually everything else is left to rot.

It's called apt. It's already widely deployed in Debian and Ubuntu, and has been for a long time. The problem is solved.

And for completness:

• on openSUSE it's "zypper".
• on some embed Linux distros it's "ipkg" and it's derivate (like opkg).

What proportion of third party vendors distribute their software using apt ?

There is :

• a great dealy of 3rd party opensource producers who provide repositories for their softwares. Not only binaries, not only packages, but full repositories which can be added to apt/zypper/whatever and get automatically updated
• there's also a great deal of additional external repositories - such as for example "PPA" for ubuntu, Debian multimedia, openSUSE's repositories, and Packman (which is multi-platform, but mostly concentrates on multimedia packages which can't be legally distributed with openSUSE)
• whenever possible people try to package 3rd party commercial application in these repositories - you can find closed source drivers, flash, acrobat, microsoft's font. The only limit is whether the author authorise re-packing and re-distribution. Even then, sometime packagers manage to go around such limitation by making packages which are actually updating scripts (ms fonts works that way)

So, in short, a great deal of software in addition to what came on you CD can already get updated today.

Not only that, but to make the whole experience more user friendly, some like openSUSE have developed method where a single link on a web page can be processed by the package manager and, once given the necessary privilege, with 1 webpage clic, you get automatically the correct repository added and the necessary packages selected.

Meanwhile, with microsoft you get 1 central system (windows updates) which is used for the OS and maybe for a couple of other microsoft products (MS-Office, Visual Studio) as long as the user selects the appropriate service (microsoft updates). Then you have a couple of other software which implements their own incompatible updates tracking (Firefox) of which some are really cumbersome (Acrobat). Virtually everything else is left to rot.

GIMP and Cinelerra under Linux are heaps more stable than Photoshop and Premiere under Windows

What!? Cinelerra is the least stable program I've ever used, it dies every couple of minutes.

It crashes so much that the tutorial starts off: "Cinelerra is not perfect. Before long you will be familiar with the tendency it has to crash. This usually takes the form of all the windows suddenly disappearing. Thankfully this is not often a big problem because Cinelerra can recover from a crash very well. Simply restart it and select Load Backup from the File menu."

It crashes so much that the OpenSuse page on it has a section devoted to crashing, and running it within gdb as a matter of routine so it won't crash every time you close the "tip of the day" window.

It crashes on Ubuntu. It crashes on gentoo.

Its support for codecs (that actually work) is so sparse that simply finding a single path from source material to product is like crossing a minefield.

Cinelerra is the perfect example of a program that never really converged to a useful state, it just slogs on like a zombie year after year, half dead, because there is no workable free alternative. Can I blame any of this on the fact that it's free and open? Not exactly, but if it were proprietary, it would have disappeared completely years and years ago.

I can only talk about openSUSE as that is what I know best. I assume the same will be available in some sort on other distributions.

The big difference with Add/Remove and the way Linux works is that Linux distributions work with Repositories. e.g. if I want to install slrn, I go to http://software.opensuse.org/search and do the search there and click on "One-Click Install". That will add the needed repositories if they are not yet available.

If I want to remove a program, I go to the openSUSE version of Add/Remove, look up the program I want to remove and remove it.

I would tink that the majority of people won't use something else, even if there are advantages, because in the first place they won't be installing and de-installing programs as much, secondly they are not botherd if stuff stays behind after an uninstal and why would they? They install a program and that works. They remove it and very often that works as well from their point of view. The program is not there anymore.

A bit like files that are placed in e.g. ~/ on Linux after the first time a program ran. Most people will want to remove a program and not bring back the HD to the same state it was before. If that would be my goal, I would work with something like VMware.

Obviously some people will want it that way and apparently enough to make a program for it that you use.

They run openSUSE: sudo zypper in oz-flight-simulator. Or they used the build server and did something like click here (Yes, that actually works when you run 11.1)

They run openSUSE: sudo zypper in oz-flight-simulator. Or they used the build server and did something like click here (Yes, that actually works when you run 11.1)

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3740

It looks like there are several bugs filed for this. They thought they had a working implementation for this for 3.1, but there were still issues.

This feature should working correctly in 3.2, which ship at the end of November. However, you can likely find development builds before then built from the 3.2 trunk.

If you're a Linux user, you should find 3.2 SVN builds here starting mid to late August after 3.1.1 ships.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/UNSTABLE/openSUSE_11.1/

From the KDE 4.0 launch and on, Kubuntu/Ubuntu has been shipping some pretty broken packages. I don't want to hate on the Kubuntu developers/packages, but it is the simple truth. And it sure seems like everytime I hear a complaint about KDE 4.x, it is from someone who had a bad experience trying KDE 4.x in *buntu land.

If that is the case, might I suggest that you try a better KDE distro? openSUSE, Arch Linux and Sabayon would be recommendations, in that order.

Here is a weekly snapshot openSUSE/KDE 4 SVN live CD.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/KDE4-UNSTABLE-Live.i686-1.3.62-Build1.1.iso

http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Studio_API
http://susestudio.com/help/api/v1

You can do pretty much everything with curl.

Also, you can export to KIWI from Studio.

I think some of the questions about feature availability, costs, etc. have been answered by Nat & Team, and should be available in channel logs, along with a bunch of other good stuff.

http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Studio_API
http://susestudio.com/help/api/v1

You can do pretty much everything with curl.

Also, you can export to KIWI from Studio.

I think some of the questions about feature availability, costs, etc. have been answered by Nat & Team, and should be available in channel logs, along with a bunch of other good stuff.

1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds.
It is SLE and openSUSE based distro's so yes, you will be best to use RPM.

2) potential for HyperVM, Virtualbox, etc images? Would be nice to see them.
You can make USB, ISO, Xen and VMware Virsual Machine images.

3) kernels? what about kernels? Can you config your own? How about patches?
This builds the image, not the software. You can point it to any repository you desire, so if you make your own repository with the kernel in it with e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/, you can use it.

What it does is 'just' make an image.
Some screenshots I have made here: http://houghi.org/susestudio/

Updates and patches will be gotten from openSUSE or Novell or somewhere else if you point it somewhere else.

Just go to http://susestudio.com/ and click on the "Watch a screencast" or go to http://susestudio.com/screencast for two more movies that explain just what and how things work.

This can happen if you have a distribution based distribution where the original distribution is not happy to help. That can become a problem.

Making an openSUSE or SLE based distribution will be much easier to do. This with both the openSUSE Build Service and SUSE Studio

The most work will be in removing the trademarks for which they have developed rembrand

This can happen if you have a distribution based distribution where the original distribution is not happy to help. That can become a problem.

Making an openSUSE or SLE based distribution will be much easier to do. This with both the openSUSE Build Service and SUSE Studio

The most work will be in removing the trademarks for which they have developed rembrand

This can happen if you have a distribution based distribution where the original distribution is not happy to help. That can become a problem.

Making an openSUSE or SLE based distribution will be much easier to do. This with both the openSUSE Build Service and SUSE Studio

The most work will be in removing the trademarks for which they have developed rembrand

Tell that to Mac users back in the System 6 and 7 days, who had access to a free antivirus program which detected suspicious behavior.

This is different from an anti-virus scanner.

What do you mean? Link?

Are you incapable of using Google? Heck, many virus scans can be fooled simply by padding an executable so it doesn't match a hash.

Nah, nobody runs that shit.

AVG must be out of business if no one runs their commercial product.

Way to contradict your point #1.

I'm discussing two different types of apps. Please attempt to follow the discussion.

I have about reached my limit of frustration with Linux, because I use a laptop.

My wife uses Linux exclusively on her laptop. She has done so on her past couple of laptops over the years with ATI and Nvidia graphics.

I've never needed to reboot to activate a second display. I'm really not familiar with the problems you're describing.

Literally, I've found that tons of hardware "just works" better with Linux than Windows. I don't download or hunt down drivers. Most printers I plug in are just detected and work. Heck, in Vista you can't even get drivers for most older printers.

What distro were you running?

Try this LiveCD, and tell me if you run into any problems.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/KDE4-UNSTABLE-Live.x86_64-1.2.98-Build1.1.iso

Back when I was managing SuSE systems we had our own local mirror of the main updates repository, and another repository of custom packages rolled in-house. The documentation ( http://en.opensuse.org/Creating_YaST_Installation_Sources ) covers this pretty well.

Either way there's no excuse to be compiling packages on each server and managing the usual /usr/local & /opt mess, not to mention with autoyast iirc you can configure it to update packages at specific times of the day unless there's a reboot necessary (and even to reboot automagically for new kernels)

Kubuntu is just terrible. They routinely ship broken packages. And I have a laundry list of gripes with plain Ubuntu to boot. I really don't get why they get all the hype and attention. Give this a spin for a day or two.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/openSUSE-11.1-KDE4-Reloaded-LiveCD.i686-4.2.4-Build1.2.iso

Check out the new notification system and the new system tray. Notice how stable Plasma is, even in these "unstable" builds.

Have you tried a build of KDE 4.3 trunk?

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/KDE4-UNSTABLE-Live.i686-1.2.95-Build2.1.iso

Honestly, give it a spin for a day or two. I loathed KDE 4.0 and 4.1, and I'm starting to come around.

There is already this security mode, it's called running stuff as a different user. The browsers would be running as different (limited/restricted) users.

The operating system enforces the separation. If you find a problem with the separation, then that's a huge bug in the OS. Ever since the 1960/70s users in proper multi-user O/Ses cannot access each others files, data and processes, unless the permissions are explicitly granted.

The browser executables are only writable by the admin/system. So they won't be changed unless there is a "local/remote root" exploit.

The cookies, bookmarks etc are separate and different - since they are browsers on different accounts.

Try it. Create multiple _limited_ users (and reduce their access further if you want).

Give your main account access to the files of those limited users (otherwise you wouldn't be able to access the downloads etc with your main account, or copy in uploads).

Then in your main account create multiple shortcuts with:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /savecred /profile /user:core\_WWW_USER_X "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE"

Replace _WWW_USER_X with the different created users.

Give the shortcuts different icons.

Note that /savecred isn't a big security hole here since you are saving the credentials of limited users that have less access than your main account.

To test: from the browser "open file" or "save as" you'll find that you can't save stuff to your main user account folders or the other browser accounts. Another thing you might notice is that if the browser opens files (pdfs, wmvs, mp3s) the opening application will also be running as the browser user (which is a good thing in security terms).

The usability problem is distinguishing the browser instances from each other since they tend to look the same. But the Links bars and other toolbars will be different. Plus for me one IE instance makes the "click" sound when you click on links, another one doesn't, and then yet another browser instance is running firefox instead.

There are also little things like if you rename files/folders in a File Dialog, the notifications don't get to the browser so it still displays the out of date file list, you'd have to press F5 to explicitly update.

IE7/8 on Vista makes this sort of thing simpler and more accessible to users. That's why despite what the Linux fanatics say, Vista has actually better security than "Desktop Linux" from a technical perspective - no Linux popular distro is configured by default to sandbox browsers using SELinux or AppArmor[1].

Vista sucks in other ways though ;).

Keep in mind this is not bulletproof because there may be things like exploitable bugs in the graphics drivers, but the attackers know there are millions of easier users+systems to attack, so it's unlikely they'd bother using those for now.

[1] This is about as far as OpenSuse has got: http://en.opensuse.org/AppArmored_FireFox
Similar for ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.5/+bug/382917
Which is nothing in practice.

they offer 1-clicks for other distros too. check out check out the site, then click on the drop down and you'll see you can search for other distros too.

Yeah something like this might help:

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs/2007-09/msg02994.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

Not easy to implement.

Sounds like you might be interested in SuSE's patterns. Supposedly PackageKit will be doing this stuff in the near future too.

I think you might be able to solve that problem with YUM by defining your own groups in a comp file for your own repository (or spin of Fedora) (see this link and also search "man yum.conf" for group_package_types) and choosing to make your hypothetical standard library a "Default" package type.

Not quite as simple as .deb Suggests, Enhances and Recommends but still do-able and PackageKit "bundles" will supposedly be even simpler and address exactly your hypothetical example

So why not suggest openSuSE instead?

Ubuntu's not the only game in town, and not necessarily the best desktop OS for people who care about appearance and ease-of-use.

Still sounds like an excuse.

Facts are facts, it hot keys aren't working for me in KDE3 applications under a KDE4 desktop and that has prevented me from using KDE3 applications under a KDE4 desktop.

You haven't looked far and it obviously can't be that good given what you've described. OpenSuse is a far better KDE distro and I'd suggest you try something that has a chance of working first before pinning various things as KDE bugs.

OpenSuSE doesn't have a large repository selection like Kubuntu, despite the fact it does have KDE3.5.

For example, majority of amateur radio applications that are available on Kubuntu isn't on OpenSuSE, applications like virtualbox require me to go to the website and download it rather than doing "yast -i virtualbox" etc. There is no official Skype, Google, repositories. I have to wait days for OpenSuSE's wine repositories to update, while I don't have to for the ones provided for Ubuntu.

OpenSuSE lacks what I find great about Kubuntu (it has repositories for everything) and exchanging it for KDE3 is tempting, but having to deal with compiling certain applications, in particular, compiling amateur radio applications is too much of an annoyance. Nevermind recompiling the software each time there is an update, having to check for said updates etc.

It wasn't an excuse.

Excuse, to serve as a reason or cause or justification of.

Seems like an excuse to me.

openSuSE's disk I/O was slower because they enabled an option that the other didn't. Not enabling that option "runs the risk of severe filesystem corruption during a crash". Looks like they changed it to be like the other distros so they wouldn't look so bad during the benchmark.

That's nice. Compromise stability for performance. This is the type of stupid crap that makes people wonder... Gee, why is such and such so much faster?

It's not quite that simple.

See that openSUSE bug:

Since I wrote this, I came across comments by Andrew Morton, and a thread discussing barriers and why he refused a patch to make them a default. The sequential layout of journal, in general means the disk does the writes in right order, except when wrapping round (relatively rare); meaning in general running without barriers is a problem only for the unfortunate.

If I found myself making a different decision than Andrew Morton, I might revisit that choice as well.

The Phoronix benchmarking is intended to provide you the answers as to why. It is to highlight the stuff that has happened.

If performance management is going on within the kernel community, then this shouldn't come up as a shock. The whole purpose of independent testing is that you see something that looks out of place, investigate and resolve. A perfect example is http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_atom_four&num=1 phoronix article, that showed that SuSE was trailing. This causes this http://lizards.opensuse.org/2008/12/16/comments-on-phoronix-benchmarking-opensuse-111/ discussion.

The question and answer don't need to be provided by the same voice. It is when you have someone questioning, and then someone answering, then you have a discussion, then finally you have progress.

To make it worse, there is virtually no reason that any number of the organizations supporting the leading developers can't invest a small amount of infrastructure and run the tests themselves. Phoronix Test Suite is absolutely trivial to use. The amount of "software development in autopilot" is frightening, this applies equally to Open Source as it does to Proprietary.

They say that one of the benefits, if not an outright goal, of some Linux distributions is to be a great platform to develop software on.

At one time Linux looked downright competitive as a platform (if certainly not market,) so what happended since 2002?

I do think one thing that would help is for OSS games to have much better tools. Make it easy for people to add assets, build levels and so on. Maybe more people would be willing to do so.

Well, games are not just software. The software is simply there to make the game go.

Perhaps the reason that there are so few (or in some opinions no) good games on Linux is that for developing games, Linux sucks?

Perhaps it is time to admit that OpenGL is a not the only kid on the block and start providing another popular API that other developers want to use?

Perhaps it is time to stop throwing away all that boatload of artwork with each release and start saving anything under a usable license to an appropriate gathering spot?

Perhaps it is time to put down that cumulative-xml2pd-custom-package-colored-pretty-printer patch and answer some basic questions in such a way that new people don't hate us?

What happened to those Open Source game engines that were going to let you MOD your way for WoW 2.0? Perhaps they are still there, waiting for content.

Perhaps what Linux Gaming needs is a little less CompSci and a little more Bachelors of Arts?

it's not like you have an unique idea ;)
opensuse projct has been working on single click install - basically, there's a single file you click. then, under the hood, it makes all the required magic for your package manager - that might involve adding new repositories, installing required dependencies...
http://en.opensuse.org/One_Click_Install
i tried this on latest opensuse version, and it really works :)
it did ask for confirmation on most steps, asked whether i want to keep the repository configured after the package is installed - but that's about it.

That's what Linux distros, particularly Debian-based ones, do best!

openSUSE users who want to install Firefox, just click here I would say that it can't be any easier then that.
Need the NVidea drivers? How hard is that? Obviously there still is the software YaST, where you can (among other things) search and install software. Also there is the CLI version zypper for the more advanced user.

I believe ALL larger distributions are easier. Not just the Debian based ones.

That's what Linux distros, particularly Debian-based ones, do best!

openSUSE users who want to install Firefox, just click here I would say that it can't be any easier then that.
Need the NVidea drivers? How hard is that? Obviously there still is the software YaST, where you can (among other things) search and install software. Also there is the CLI version zypper for the more advanced user.

I believe ALL larger distributions are easier. Not just the Debian based ones.

Instead the impression a first-time visitor will get is that Linux is arcane, old-fashioned, and disorganized.

I know this will sound like a troll post... but, Linux IS disorganized. Arcane and old-fashioned, no, but disorganized, yes. There are tons of distros. Those distros have very different organizational structures even (deb vs. rpm, to name one). Even something as simple as dvd playback and sound is sometimes hard. Last evening, in fact, I spent an hour trying to get Amarok 2, kscd, and Kaffeine to work.

• Amarok 2 was fine, but kscd and Kaffeine wouldn't work. If I had used Amarok 2 that session, Kaffeine had no sound.
• kscd wouldn't open, period. Turns out kscd was already open, somewhere in the background, due to KDE 4.2 session management
• gstreamer was the culprit, I guess, for the Amarok-2-stealing-my-sound, since I was able (with some amount of difficulty) to switch to a xine backend for phonon.
• DVD playback worked after I installed Packman's libxine codecs, except that it could not decrypt the DVD (which, incidentally, was a Hogan's Heroes collection from the library).

Where to begin. Let's see. Disorganized was my critical remark - there we, I think, too many options for the sound backend which is why it didn't work. Xine didn't work right off the bat with Amarok 2. Gstreamer was fine, except that it didn't work well with multiple applications, for whatever reason. Now, my question is - how in the world would a normal user know how to fix this? He should not even have to know that such things as "phonon" and "xine" and "gstreamer" exist. Sound should be taken care of in the background; at worst, installing a DRIVER for the soundcard, but having to work with backends (xine, gstreamer, etc.) to a backend (phonon) for applications is a bit much.

And the DVD playback thing, I still don't know how to correct that. At least I'm able to get it to see that it is a DVD - before this, DVD playback was simply disabled (see opensuse.org page).

Old fashioned, arcane? No. Disorganized? Yes.

Documentation of a LOT of different problems (has to be distro-specific though, as they are so different and *ahem* organized differently...) would help a LOT of users, I think.

A linux without apt-get? No way! Not once again!

zypper is a quite good alternative to apt-get for openSUSE users.

I hope not. I'm have used kubuntu since 0606 and been happy about it and recommended it to everybody. But I stayed on 0804 with still has kde 3.5, and now I'm looking for an alternative distro.

Ubuntu / Kbuntu are bastardized distros. Ubuntu has to learn that there's a difference between trying to create a more user-friendly distro and "more Windows-like experience". And Xubuntu is a mess.

Try openSUSE (and use this link to get all the media codecs with one click). Try Fedora. Try Mandriva Heck, try Slackware.

It was already possible for a while to make your own openSUSE based distribution with e.g. makeSUSEdvd. The main issue was there that you still had all the branding of openSUSE/Novell on your system potentially violating their trademark.

When asked if it was possible to do something about it, the legal department of Novell told me that they must enforce their trademark or loose it. They were not happy about that.
So what Novell did was make a tool to remove the trademarks: http://en.opensuse.org/Rembrand

They always have been helpful in finding a way to make your own openSUSE (and even SUSE Enterprise) based distribution.

You may want to upgrade that box if you have services touching the internet:
See the SUSE Linux Lifetime page.
Unless you meant openSUSE 11.1 then you can safely ignore this for a while.

KDE 4 is unfinished. It says everywhere in the official sources. Since KDE 2 the .5 releases basically where the stable targets. It's only with 4 that with the .0 release they didn't care about finish at all, and thus provides Über-suckage. 4.5 will be the stable finished 4 release. No news here. What's the big fat hairy deal?

How about the fact that distributions all ship KDE 4 by default? If it's not done, don't release it.

Fedora 10: KDE 4.1.2
OpenSUSE 11.1: 4.1
Kubuntu 8.10: 4.1

(The only exception is Debian, shipping 3.something. Of course, that matches the Debian reputation of shipping everything slow.)

In fact suse changed their defaults from reiser to ext3 long time ago. The main reasons were: scalability on SMP, xattrs performance, lack of mainteinance, lack of a upgrade path...

http://en.opensuse.org/Standards/One_Click_Install
i've seen this on opensuse pages, but haven't used myself - but some howtos refer to this method, so i guess it's working :)

People usually don't sign up for Open Source or Free Software. They just do stuff, put it out there and let other people use it. To quote one Mr. Torvalds, real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it.

I have customer service skills godddammnit! Anyway, I'd hope to be able to help. Like I said, where do I sign up? Is it with Canonical, or is there a generic "Linux" marketing effort someplace?

Have you thought about starting a blog?

How about taking an active part in one or more major distribution's forum?

• http://fedoraforum.org/
• http://forums.opensuse.org/
• http://ubuntuforums.org/
• http://forums.gentoo.org/

Just publishing (in a reusable format under a nice CC License)

• market research
• technical business direction
• explainations of what is possible to the business types
• what you (as a marketing professional) learn from techies

If your work is of high quality, it would make an impact.

That's not true. I know at least Opensuse was affected.

It's absolutely true that Linux has a terrible time suspending to RAM (or coming back from suspend) on certain hardware. It has DEFINITELY been improving over the past two years though (one of my systems was fixed around 9 months ago).

First up make sure you are using the latest kernel you can (new fixes for suspend issues seem to have gone into each of the past few kernel releases including the very latest one). If you have the time you might be able to use the OpenSUSE instructions on debugging suspend to RAM to isolate where the fault lies.

Assuming the problem is more than monitor being off (i.e. the system is completely hanging without any binary only drivers being loaded) if you know how to run the very latest kernels (a prerelease 2.6.29) could you file a bug report over on Kernel Bugzilla after you've checked out the Linux kernel suspend debugging howto?