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"Basically, the solution is to build in an (optional) method to the mainstream Linux distributions so that users can purchase and install legitimate codecs, or get them with the distribution pre-installed."

openSuse are doing that with the 10.3 release. If I click on a file I don't have a codec for, it comes up with;

Search for suitable codec? The required software to play this file is not installed. You need to install suitable codecs to play media files. Do you want to search for a codec that supports the selected file?

If I then click on ok. It opens a browser at the relevant codec page.I don't know if you would get all the codecs with a bought version. I haven't bought a copy since 9.3.

You are aware that SCO was claiming that IBM stole code from UNIX and put it into Linux? That was the entire basis of their lawsuit.

However, Novell said "Hey, we own UNIX." (paraphrased) A judge agreed. SCO's lawsuit evaporates.

Furthermore, Novell has been fighting SCO on this since 2003.

Novell also purchased SUSE Linux in 2003 and turned it into OpenSUSE, which it also uses as the base for its commercial Linux products.

Novell has also made significant contributions to XGL, Compiz, and OpenOffice to name a few projects.

Despite the constant FUD since the Novell/Microsoft deal, Novell's business model now revolves around FOSS software, so any attempt to kill it would be cutting their own throat.

I hear ya! My distro of choice is Novell openSUSE 10.2, which is very easy to set up and use, though I had to remove zmd to get efficient updates with opensuse-updater (the upcoming 10.3 doesn't install zmd by default). IMHO, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is an order of magnitude easier to set up and use than Ubuntu, though the /. community in general has taken an anti-Novell stance due to its patent cross licensing agreement with Microsoft (which is funny, considering how /. loves Apple despite Apple's numerous patent and technology cross licensing agreements with Microsoft, but I digress).

I've been able to "convert" two people at work from Windows XP to openSUSE 10.2 based on its merits and ease of use. Ubuntu will hopefully get to a similar position from a technical perspective, but IMHO at this time, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is already there, and Novell has committed themselves to making SUSE Linux a world-class desktop operating system.

From your post, here is what openSUSE 10.2 and likely other distros can offer:

- Browser: Firefox, Konqueror, Mozilla Seamonkey, Opera, and IEs4Linux (I use IEs4Linux to access Outlook Web Access's calendar at work, since I use Thunderbird for my email. I'm looking forward to an Exchange plug-in for Mozilla Lighning)

- Email: Thunderbird (yay! I'm also writing a Salesforce.com extension for it called Thunderforce), Evolution (I actually despise it, though I also don't like Outlook's interface. To each, their own.. Don't bother with the Exchange connector; it's slow and crashes often), KMail, and others

- Quicken 2008 might be tricky. Quicken 2007 appears to work to an extent, but it might have issues, which is probably not good for an accounting package

- GnuCash is a possible replacement for Quicken, though it's more like QuickBooks than Quicken. For a personal finance look and feel, KMyMoney might be the better way to go, though some time might need to be invested in the conversion process. Converting from Quicken Mac 2004 to KMyMoney was not seamless for me, but I haven't gone back and fixed the errors in the import configuration that I used and tried again. If you do the GnuCash approach, then you can use my GnuCashToQIF program to export back to Quicken in case if you want to go back to it or if you need to export your data to an accountant, either as QIF or IIF. I have an old Mac at home that I'm moving away from, though I'm still using Quicken and iTunes on it

- Novell's version of OpenOffice includes extensive support for Excel macros, so it's worth trying out. It might address all of your Excel needs. As a nice bonus, OpenOffice uses a single-document interface (SDI) instead of a multiple-document interface (MDI), permitting you to have two or more separate top-level spreadsheet windows side-by-side or on different monitors. Excel is MDI, though it does create a top-level start menu button for each open document, essentially faking SDI, but it's really MDI. You could enlarge Excel to span multiple monitors and have your MDI windows not maximized, but that breaks down if you have one monitor portrait and the other one landscape. If you really, really need Excel, then it appears to be well supported by CrossOver Office

- Visual Studio 2005 is a tough one because MonoDevelop might not include all the features that you may be accustomed to. It does implement a lot, but it's probably not a drop-in replacement yet.

I am actually running nvidia under xen right NOW.

http://en.opensuse.org/Use_Nvidia_driver_with_Xen

a big shame its not the latest driver... but it works :D
no idea if it is easy to hack this fix into later versions of the nvidia driver though..

but i agree that official nvidia support would be a lot better...

... I don't understand why anyone would connect any machine directly to the Internet without some type of hardware firewall.

That is what the Internet is for. You're projecting Windows' problems onto real computers. There is no reason why a router or hardware firewall should be necessary to add security -- they're both computers with instructions and flaws. Increasing the number of hardware pieces increases the number of failure points at the cost of also increasing latency and reducing actual bandwidth.

There are only three reason why a computer needs to be isolated from the Internet:

• There are not enough addresses in the IPV4 space to expand forever. IPV6 fixes that.
• The network administrator's convenience.
• Experience has shown the software provider doesn't know how to write or fix network code. These links can help with that.

Why link to an Ubuntu page that mentions what a good idea it would be have a project that builds from AppArmor, when instead you could have linked to... AppArmor itself?

Please refrain from being so lame in future. AppArmor.

Is AppArmor similar to SELinux? I saw AppArmor installed by default on the latest "tribe" of Ubuntu's upcoming "gutsy" release.

http://en.opensuse.org/Novell_Supported_Projects

Shows a bit more then the few you stated.

Although SuSE (now openSUSE and SLES/SLED) was always available for free, Novell has taken it up a notch by making YaST GPL, opening the development and it goes beyond RedHat by giving you the tool to make your own openSUSE based distriobution with the tool Rembrand that removes branding.

So you could have your own SUSES-CentOS.

http://en.opensuse.org/Novell_Supported_Projects

Shows a bit more then the few you stated.

Although SuSE (now openSUSE and SLES/SLED) was always available for free, Novell has taken it up a notch by making YaST GPL, opening the development and it goes beyond RedHat by giving you the tool to make your own openSUSE based distriobution with the tool Rembrand that removes branding.

So you could have your own SUSES-CentOS.

Yeah, sure, SUSE is a pseudo open-source project which an incredibly significant percentage of the open-source community is working on. Like who? Developers of probably 70% of the applications (and a higher percentage of software) that you regularly use. Like what, you say? Heard of KDE? Heard of GNOME? Heard of OpenOffice.org, the Linux kernel, GCC, ALSA, Compiz? Yes, it's often hard to not use them. :-)

Sure, but regardless of how good the developers are, or how good it had done to the OSS community before, Novell has sold out. And this is a conclusion I take from actions rather than words.

Regarding the "majority" of the open source community is working on "open"SUSE it does not change the actions from Novell, I don't see that as my mistake but as a mistake from those developers, since they are so truly into open source, they should have forked SUSE already or at least leave it.

The tagline of the story is perfectly applicable here: money-where-mouth-is. You really don't want SUSE in the OSS community? Put your money where your mouth is: start ripping out all the contributions that they put in. :)

And if things continue like they are right now we are soon gonna have to do that... Or pay microsoft, all due to this "deal", regardless of the good intentions from the developers they are right now contributing to a project that is not good for us or them. And their work on things like openxml support or the MONOfication of gnome should seriously be pushed not to be done from SUSE.

Anyway, at least be sure that your hate is justified, which it most probably isn't.

Let's say, this is the place that pisses me off, you posted a link to http://opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS , so Why am I supposed to buy that? They say a lot of pretty stuff like "Novell has not sold out to Microsoft" or "The deal is not harmful to Linux in general" both assertions are false. And again I am coming to this conclusion from actions and not just "words", anyone can make that deal and then a page explaining how the deal is exactly the opposite to what it really is, but that would not change the real purpose of the deal.

In the very first "explanation" on the page they say something as false as : "nteroperability with regards to virtualization and documents " which is clearly NOT what Novell seems to be doing, Novell got no trouble helping MS get Linux virtualization while at the same time MS is not going to allow us at all to virtualize windows. And it is the same with ODF/"Open"XML , then again this first line of the document is totally false.

* Covenant not to sue each others _customers_ over patents.

Another false point in the document, you see MS has just promised not to sue, as long as it is not about a "clone" product, and MS has the will to decide what a clone product is.

Novell's strategy and future is almost entirely based on Linux. They would not do anything that they thought would harm Linux in general, that would be suicidal.

This all sounds like a "we are not evil, we are stupid" statement, because the deal is indeed harmful to Linux, why? It gives Microsoft all the right to say that open source really infringes their patents since Novell was so willing to sign this deal, it also forks openSUSE since we are not sure if the patches submitted by them are not going to be considered infringing of MS IP since we did not sign any agreement.

Then they say "We are absolutely not pushing OOXML" but then you don't hear Novell saying anything about how openxml should not be an ISO "open" standard, in fact they are at least being totally negligent regarding this issue, in fact even implementing openxml right now seems like

Yeah, sure, SUSE is a pseudo open-source project which an incredibly significant percentage of the open-source community is working on. Like who? Developers of probably 70% of the applications (and a higher percentage of software) that you regularly use. Like what, you say? Heard of KDE? Heard of GNOME? Heard of OpenOffice.org, the Linux kernel, GCC, ALSA, Compiz? Yes, it's often hard to not use them. :-)

The tagline of the story is perfectly applicable here: money-where-mouth-is. You really don't want SUSE in the OSS community? Put your money where your mouth is: start ripping out all the contributions that they put in. :)

Anyway, at least be sure that your hate is justified, which it most probably isn't.

Yes, you are missing an awful lot . These type of statements where people say "yeah, but MS owns Novell", "Novell sold out to MS" or SUSE is "MS Linux" are plainly just childish (honestly now) and show a clear ignorance of the functioning of the business world. Novell made a business agreement with Microsoft, and it's turned out great for them. Not some general partnership, just an agreement. It would have turned out better (and, as a consequence, better for Linux in general) if a few people didn't spread emotive but baseless statements about it, all running from merely negative headlines, but hey.

What's nearly as astounding are those that are very annoyed by the thought of Microsoft selling Linux. That mindframe couldn't seem any crazier to me. Think about it. Microsoft having to get off their high-horse and finally submit to what many of their customers have been asking for: Linux. While you're out complaining, Novell is actively pursuing the Linux desktop in the enterprise, and they're doing pretty darn well. Anyway, also:

>AMD doesn't care who owns linux

The whole point of Linux and the free software methodology (i.e. the GPL) is that you cannot "own" Linux. No company can "drive it into the ground", so fears there are at least unwarranted.

"You may make and distribute unlimited copies of the Software outside Your organization provided that: 1) You receive no consideration; and, 2) you do not bundle or combine the Software with another offering""

"You may not: (1) reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software"

"The Software may contain an automatic disabling mechanism that prevents its use after a certain period of time"

"No title to or ownership of the Software is transferred to You .. You acquire only a license to use the Software"

"This Beta Agreement shall terminate upon the earlier of .. written notice of termination by either party, or (v) the date on which You breach any of the terms of this Beta Agreement"

"You may not .. publish or disclose .. the results of any benchmark test of the Software"

What's the whole point of openSUSE again. If the GPL is such an onerous license then why don't Novell strip all GPL licensed code from SUSE Linux, after all, what's only valuable is the kernel, right 'elsewhere' ...

How is this different than apt-get, or even just using Google to search for packages?

Apart from having a single repository for packages for many major distros, the BUILD SERVICE actually will BUILD the packages for you if you are a package maintainer. For multiple architectures. Hence it's name - the BUILD SERVICE.

Maybe something about the name wasn't clear? Perhaps you should read about the BUILD SERVICE then.

The obvious benefit for end users becomes that regardless of what you use for package management, if the package maintainer opts to use the openSUSE build service, you can point your package management software - ZDM, YaST, apt-get, synaptic, etc - at the repositories on the build service servers and not *have* to search for them.

The obvious benefit for a package maintainer is that they don't have to maintain a compile farm of different architectures to actually build the packages across multiple distributions. The build service has that and does the build for you.

Let's hope they can de-complexify SUSE's YAST. Few things could make Linux look more complex to fresh eyes.

Those aren't encoded tracks on the CD. They're konqueror offering to automatically rip and encode the tracks for you.

>> Item 8 states that the majority of the traffic on P2P is pirated material .... While no one is going to argue the amount of pirated content available on P2P networks, given (a) that many Linux releases use BT as a distribution medium (Fedora, Ubuntu, CentOS, OpenSUSE, etc.) with images up to a DVD-ROM's worth of data (4.5 Gb), (b) the amount of video-based material (movies and television) that is out there, whose files are no doubt larger than audio MP3 rips, is it fair to assume that the music industry's concerns are a relatively small portion of the overall P2P traffic? Going to a popular tracker site such as http://mininova.org/, the largest BT swarms are typically found for the prior night's TV shows. Item 9 (sales decline directly related to pirated content) has been contested for some time; the industry has reduced its number of releases, the majority sellers are now the big-box stores who carry little in the way of back-catalog material in favor of chart-topping new releases, and the rise of sales in DVDs (sell-through DVD prices comparable to new-release CDs appearing as a better value).

The you are the ideal person to ask for it and let others do the actual programming. If nobody asks for specific SMB stuff, then nobody will make it.

You can tell them WHAT those SMB's might want and need. The programmers will not have that information. Don't think that because you don't program you can't contribute. Feedback is contribution. Interacting by actively joining the mailinglist is even better.

Let them know. Tell them directly and they will listen.

Oh and just to show you that Novell is doing tjings for the community: http://idea.opensuse.org/ A week hundreds of programmers can use payed time to do what they like

Ask them, or even better, ask them to release the tools to make your own addons.
They already released the code to make your own distribution trademark free and information how to make your own openSUSE based ditribution.

Join their mailinglist, discuss and you might be amazed of what is possible. The educators part came there because of demand.

See this page for example, there's a brief explanation of how to enable them. It's not intuitively obvious, I'll grant you, but the capability is there...

Noooo!

Use kiwi to create VM images, ISO, live-CDs and etc.

http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/kiwi/

Except open source is not weaker; if you think it is because of the deal, I'd like to see some evidence. What are the facts?

* Novell and SUSE has been consistently one of the biggest contributors to free and open source software and still is. While probably your distro X is packaging Linux software (a truly wonderful thing), let's not forget that Novell are the ones ensuring that developers can work on this free software. Countless developers to work and improve KDE, GNOME, the Linux Kernel, OpenOffice, Alsa etc.
* Novell have more money to hire more people to work on Linux (they have more Linux engineers now than back then)
* Adoption of Linux has increased with more SLE coupons being sold out. All the studies I've seen suggest that all of this is still the case without a detriment to Red Hat et al.

Who is making the community weaker? The same old poisonous people who spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about deals such as these, constantly bickering without knowing the facts. Nonsense like "Novell are going away from ODF" (completely untrue), Novell admitted that Linux infringes any patents (which they've vehemently denied since the beginning of the deal, and before), or that Novell and Microsoft are real partners (while they're still fierce competitors, despite agreeing to work on some areas). Still, it surprises me.

There will never be a 100% protection. A good GUI with a wizard, like with SUSE's AppArmor, will help a lot of people from falling between the "naah, it broke something on my webserver, turning it off" and "I'll dedicate the two next months of my life to learn SELinux" chairs.

That's nice. I guess I'll try it out on a live DVD some time. I have been a Redhat/Fedora user for 9 years, but unfortunately FC6 was unable to load on my latest PC with an Intel 965 motherboard, so I had to switch to OpenSUSE 10.2.

OpenSUSE has taken some getting used to--YaST admin/update tool, Beagle instead of the locate tool, some interesting tweaks in the UI, European defaults for certain settings such as Ghostscript paper size that I had to track down and adjust. Furthermore, it seems to be a bit behind in its kernel versions. But it's worked great and the functionality is all there, especially after switching YaST's software manager to a set of European archives which include all the multimedia stuff like mp3, full xine codecs, and mplayer. It seems not to have as large a user base as Fedora, also.

I wonder how F7 compares to recent versions of the popular distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. It seems to me they've fallen a little behind in the way they integrate the kernel and UI aspects of the Linux system, and Fedora has always required a fair amount of tweaking to get things like multimedia to work up to snuff. It's rather bloated actually. Anyway, will have to give it a spin before drawing conclusions. But I'm staying with OpenSUSE for the moment.

On the other hand, the third and latest draft does not prohibit Novell of any of its Linux offerings.

It's worth noting 3.4:

  3.4 No Acknowledgement of Infringement. Nothing in this Agreement shall imply, or be construed as an admission or acknowledgement by a Party, that any Patents of the other Party are infringed, valid or enforceable.

Which will hopefully finally put an end to all the nonsense conspiracy theories that "Novell admitted that Linux infringes patents" etc., even though Novell have constantly re-iterated that such a claim was ridiculous. As I've said several times before, blaming Novell for Microsoft's recent claims is just completely unfounded, and in fact there's nothing new or particularly recent about it; Microsoft have always been flooding the market with falsities about Linux's infringement on their patents.
 
Hopefully the published results will provide the community with a general better understanding of the deal, so that at least if they disagree/hate it, they do it for real reasons (which seems to be rare).

> The SLES vouchers are for Microsoft and Linux together. And every Linux you sell at novell, you pay Microsoft. Nevertheless, it's not even clear yet that they are; remember that the sum of payments is, overall, a few hundred million towards Novell.

You're annoyed that someone (Microsoft) is making money from selling Linux? Peculiar.

>your argument is that since Novell is making money, that validates the deal.

My argument has never been that. It's that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this deal, and there are considerable software (with regards to interopability) and financial benefits.

> We all know you got money for selling out. But that doesn't make it better to us. It shocks me that you can't see that.

Things like "selling out" and "Judas" are just remarks and phrases that are trying to trigger an emotive response when there isn't an argument. Believe it or not, making a deal to work together with Microsoft to help customers isn't a bad thing; it's good. Many people are put off Linux because of the poor interopability. If the transition to Linux is easier, then more people are going to be coming into Linux.

> Does Novell have no employees with a feel for community values?

Novell employees are part of the Linux community. The Linux engineers are the ones working on the software that you use (KDE, GNOME, the Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, etc). The problem here is that you're equating "the Linux community" with a few very vocal people, and a few others who are blindly following/supporting the opposition to this deal.

> No. Suse can't be a target for the simple reason that Novell and MS have both signed a mutual agreement no to sue (in addition to agree to collaborate for interoperation).

This is untrue; take a look at the openSUSE.org FAQ.

The patent coverage does not give Novell any immunity from being sued for patent violations. In summary:
* Novell has no licence for Microsoft patents.
* Novell can't use Microsoft patents (and vice versa)
* Novell can sue Microsoft for Novell patents in Microsoft products (and vice versa)

> But that was _one_ statement on _one_ day while they've been threatening world+dog that those who use Linux are infringing on Microsoft IP and "y'all better sign agreements with us like Novell if ya know what's good for ya"

It was also only one statement on one day when they said that Novell was acknowledging that Linux infringes on Microsoft's patents. This has never been a clear point in their righteous crusade against the free world.

> It doesn't matter what Microsoft said in an obscure press release that didn't get _any_ reprinting in any of the rags. What counts is what they've been shouting from the rooftops.

The comment hit a lot of news sites actually; many people in the Linux community however have conveniently forgotten it however (negative headlines stick so much better).

> Yeah, it's been so freakin' good that the GPL3 is going to stop stupid shenanigans like that. Thank God.

Quite nice how every point just bounces off you; still, despite what you like to think, the deal has been good for Novell (and hence Linux). Also, you clearly haven't read the FAQ if you're pulling the GPLv3 card.

That's nonsense. Novell have made it explicitly clear, and since they have, the only thing it possibly does is make Microsoft look silly (as they regularly do). Although you clearly don't want to admit it, this deal has been very beneficial for Novell (and, in turn, Linux), and it's hardly like Microsoft have used the deal to begin their campaign on Linux infringing on MS's patents -- that has always (ALWAYS) been around.

> if they knew how the deal would likely be perceived in practice, such a statement is likely to be meaningless or just legal ass-covering.

The only people who perceive it that way are some Microsoft speakers and a few clueless people in the Linux community. I haven't seen any indication anywhere else to suggest otherwise.

The reason 99% of the people (and, I know this from direct experience) in the Linux community are annoyed about this is because there's some (as usual) very vocal poisonous people in the community who spute out countless of erroneous negative headlines without even knowing what's going on. Others in the community see these headlines, think the headlines alone are evidence, and don't even consider the matter. I mean, the amount of people I've seen who think that Novell have some immunity from Microsoft (completely false), or the amount of people I've seen who think that countless of people have left Novell because of this (when only two have permanently left), or the amount of people who think that Novell is losing money from this (when they're getting a few hundred million), or the amount of people who have no clue about Novell's hundreds of Linux engineers in the open source community (KDE, GNOME, Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, etc), is always astounding.

It's an unfortunate simple fact: people like fighting for a cause when the ideal (freedom) is good, even when there's no threat to it or they're ignorant of who the enemy is.

This headline is nothing new from Novell (I mean, they're an OIN founding member), but people will still interpret it in a silly way.

How curious it is that so few people on Slashdot can read any FAQs.

There's a live DVD here: http://en.opensuse.org/Download

However, I don't think you need to go that far.

From what I've read, the Rage II drivers are in Xorg, and are part of the atimisc X server. They will be automagically loaded if you specify the Xorg module "ati".

If you've got a working Linux install, I'd try that.

Here's an xorg.conf that was automatically generated by the Debian X config utility. http://brenta.free.fr/IMG/txt/xorg.txt

I have no knowledge of Debian at all, but it seems to be a valid result from a google search.

As you can see:
Section "Device"
        Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. 3D Rage IIC 215IIC (Mach64 GT IIC)"
        Driver "ati"
        BusID "PCI:0:18:0"
        Option "UseFBDev" "true"

Uses the Driver "ati" . I believe you should have no problems with your card, and shouldn't have to download anything to get it working. Has it given you trouble before?

I've had an ATI card refuse to boot with a given motherboard once, which was weird, but wasn't anything I could fix from Linux. Other than that, I've never really had a problem with older ATI cards, just newer ones which aren't supported by the built-in Xorg drivers.

With the use of a single database (MySQL) and interface language (PHP) these pieces can all be put together and eliminate the need for SIF all together. There is a project at http://en.opensuse.org/Education that intends to help this idea along by constructing from the different pieces, in a COTS (common of the shelf) approach, an ERP for education.

I can't read TFA - probably Slashdotted.

Did they mention JackLab - http://en.opensuse.org/JackLab ?

From their page: "JackLab would like to stimulate an entrance CD ISO with the help of openSUSE community that contains a complete music production environment."

Maybe of interest to musicians.

I think most people do that. At least with smaller programs and scripts. The fact that you end up spending way much more time then you could actualy win the first time is irrelevant.

e.g. I made a script makeSUSEdvd so I did not need to do the process manually each month. The time I gained by doing it with a script is completely and utterly lost by the time I spend making and perfecting the script.

The up side is that several thousand of people have enjoyed it and it is the basis for making your own SUSE based distribution. Another plus thing is that I have learned many things doing this, which will help me in the future.

The downside of automating things is that when you need to do it again, you sometimes have to look it up again.

I think most people do that. At least with smaller programs and scripts. The fact that you end up spending way much more time then you could actualy win the first time is irrelevant.

e.g. I made a script makeSUSEdvd so I did not need to do the process manually each month. The time I gained by doing it with a script is completely and utterly lost by the time I spend making and perfecting the script.

The up side is that several thousand of people have enjoyed it and it is the basis for making your own SUSE based distribution. Another plus thing is that I have learned many things doing this, which will help me in the future.

The downside of automating things is that when you need to do it again, you sometimes have to look it up again.

Best audio distros IMHO
Jacklab - Suse based, jack all set up and running, best jack-based distro
dynebolic - Great live video tools and dj mixing tools
64studio - Debian based, fairly current

Ubuntustudio - vaporware

Older or less popular distros
deMuDi
Studio to Go!
Musix
Mediainlinux64


For those that mention VST try jacklab. Excerpts from homepage...
...The VST wrapper FST now coming with support for the proAudio total recall system LASH.
and
...VST on openSUSE JAD with DSSI-VST | XFST | Ardour2 | LMMS | energyXT2 | Recommended plugins/links

Cheap hardware ... http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Sound_Cards/

Uh. The reason it is default is because they want to take as many steps away as possible for the SLES and SLED version.

It is only default. If you wish, you can still install KDE, XFCE, Windowmaker or whatever you like. You can even make your own SUSE based distribution for your company, including your own logo's and software (Eat that RedHat and CentOSS)

Also openSUSE still leaves you the choice as what you want to install.

So So saying that Novell is pushing GNOME is mere FUD. I would say they worked hard to bring GNOME on the same level as their KDE.

1. I would recomend getting OpenSuse. It detects my 21" LCD with no problem frankly I think the hardware detection is much better than Ubuntu.
2. Us the 32 bit version.
3. After you do the install go here http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Rep ositories
Add Packman , Mozilla, OpenOffice, and anything else that interests you. Then you can install just about anything you want. BTW none of this requires the command line.

I just installed 10.2 and I am really impressed. I selected Gnome to compare it to Ubuntu. I think it looks a lot better than Ubuntu but everyone has their own opinion.

Ubuntu is nice because it fits on one CD and is super simple to install.
If you want to install the ATI or Nvidia drivers it is a little easer in Ubuntu using the "restricted Driver manager" In OpenSuse you need to add nVidia's repository. While not hard you do need to look it up on the Opensuse website.
OpenSuse seems to have better hardware detection. And I think the Gnome interface is better looking that Ubuntu's but that is a matter of taste.
It does take longer to download the DVD iso for OpenSuse than the CD ISO for Ubuntu and you do have more choices then with Ubuntu.

I say try OpenSuse 10.2

No, that's the Enterprise version. The free version is called opensuse.

So Geeko was banished to OpenSuSE.org, to make way for the new Mono-ized Clippy from their new pals in Redmond. Netcraft confirms it.

Well, make one. It is not that hard to make a SUSE based distribution

        * Download the ISOs you desire
        * If you need extra RPM's, download them.
        * Run makeSUSEdvd -i [any other parameter]
        * Run rembrand -b "#FF00FF" -R /tmp/pink_rpms *.rpm
        * Browse through Branding Overview and check for any left-overs.
        * Edit, remove and change anything you desire.
        * Run makeSUSEdvd -C

You can configure your YaST any way you like. Remove Mone (and GNOME) and have it work still as a normal SUSE installation with choices you desire. Add MPlayer and codecs to your DVD. Add all those programs that you would want and are not available by standard.

You do know that ClearType and sub-pixel rendering aren't the same thing, right? Sub-pixel rendering is a general concept, ClearType is the specific name of Microsoft's implementation.

So cleartype is sub-pixel rendering and sub-pixel rendering is not sub-pixel rendering? The Comment was made in the context of the discussion about FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING as per the linked bug report. Specifically the only thing we are interested in about cleartype is Microsoft RGB sub-pixel rendering (as covered by the cleartype patent). When he says cleartype, I read sub-pixel rendering because that's what this discussion is about.

I strongly suspect you as your "First AC".

Except 100 MB isn't normal for most browsers. I've had a Konqueror session open for around 17 days now (visiting lots of web pages in that time), and lets see the memory usage... 65,120 RSS! Thats Konqueror from KDE 3.5.6 on SuSE 10.1. 2 tabs are open right this second in that instance (neither very complex sites right now since I'm reading about printing to the computer's screen by using the VGA controller).

For comparison I just opened Firefox (2.0 or something, listed in about as "Gecko/20061023 SUSE/2.0-30 Firefox/2.0") and it opened to http://www.opensuse.org/ (default home page, I haven't customized or tweaked FF at all). The memory usage after letting it settle? RSS is 47,420! Lets just hope it doesn't rise too much (for comparison a newly started instance of Konqueror uses 28,888 RSS).

Now lets visit a few sites: Just /.'s front page and we're at 50,460, thats reasonable since /.'s page is much more complex than the opensuse gateway page. Open 4 articles and set it to show all comments (note, I'm not logged in so its not the javascripty version, just the pretty much static HTML) and we're at 62,516 RSS. Lets close all those new tabs and move the original to about:blank... Memory usage is now 61,852 RSS. It went down some, but didn't give back all the memory.

Now lets try the same thing with digg (without restarting Firefox): Just the main page on digg and we're to 62,296 RSS. Lets open the current top 4 articles in new tabs and see what we go to... and now we're to 69,452 RSS, lets close those tabs and move the original to about:blank again... 69,412 RSS.

Lets go back to /. and pretty much repeat the same thing and see how the memory usage goes... Just the main page and we're to 71,096 RSS. Lets open those same 4 articles and set them to -1 comments and see what we end up at... RSS is now up to 71,384, not as big of a rise as the previous time, but it did still go up (looks like maybe it replaced the old pages in cache, which would be a good thing and the slight increase could be explained by new comments).

Now lets go to about:blank then try something a bit different... RSS dropped down to 71,004 which is good. Now the different part, lets load lwn.net in the first tab, and in new tabs linux.com, sourceforge.net, planetkde.org, planet.gnome.org, and planet.mozilla.org. RSS is now to 79,432. Lets close all but the original tab and send that to about:blank. RSS is now to 77,088, it went down again which is good.

Lets try the same thing but another set of sites: original tab is amazon.com, new ones are ebay.com, bbc's site, cnn.com, google news, weather.com and wired news. The results of this one is a bit different than previous times, RSS has risen back to 77,148. Maybe we've hit a limit of how much Firefox is using? Lets close all but the original and go to about:blank again... RSS is now 75,692, dropped even more this time.

Lets go back to digg.com and see what it does... RSS is 75,962, exactly the same. Looks like its recycling some of its own memory (or loading the page entirely from cache). Now to open 4 articles. RSS has risen to 80,540. Lets close those and go to about:blank yet again. RSS is 80,308. Dropped some, but only a tiny amount. Lets go back to Amazon.com and search for 'operating systems design and implementation'. RSS is now 80,480, a slight rise. Now lets open Mr. Tanenbaum's books in a new tab (the 3 top results). RSS is now 80,552. Another tiny rise. Close those tabs and go to about:blank. RSS is now 80,488, a slight drop.

Its nice to see that in my little test the RSS didn't just skyrocket, but Firefox is still using more memory than the instance of Konqueror that has been open for 17 days (and has opened many more websites including lots of slashdot articles using the ajaxy version of the site). In case anyone is wondering: my machine has 1.25 GB of ram, and the total memory usage never passed 50% on my sy

I would recommend trying Kubuntu, OpenSUSE (or SUSE even, although that would involve supporting that damn Microsoft-Novell patent deal), Mandriva, or Linspire/Freespire. These distributions use KDE (K Desktop Environment), which in my opinion (and even Linus himself along with many, many others) is far more usable, customisable, and useful than GNOME, the default desktop environment for many other distributions such as Ubuntu. Although GNOME tends to look cleaner than KDE, its usability is quite, well, limited. I don't understand the circle jerk going on between most distributions and their need to use GNOME by default, but I do know that a lot of people's complaints in regards to the GUI on Linux are GNOME-specific and are not a problem with KDE.

The openSUSE Build Service: http://opensuse.org/Build_Service (supporting Mandriva, Debian, openSUSE, SLED, SLES, Ubuntu, Fedora...).

As for KDE, meh, if you mean Kubuntu, say that.. if you don't WTF are you doing running KDE?

I don't really go for Kubuntu, but I have run KDE under SuSE since 6.1, so I am very comfortable with YaST & KDE.

As for KDE, meh, if you mean Kubuntu, say that.. if you don't WTF are you doing running KDE?

I don't really go for Kubuntu, but I have run KDE under SuSE since 6.1, so I am very comfortable with YaST & KDE.