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First Looks at Suse 8.0 / KDE 3.0
The Register has a first look article on Suse 8.0 and KDE 3.0. Short story: they liked both, pretty much. I think the section on installation -- notably its length -- speaks volumes about the 'which is easier, Linux or MS' debate, too." There's also a review of the new SuSE up at Newsforge with some more details.
To me, all the popular linux distributions have been easier to install than windows, espesciallly Mandrake, but unfortunately they tend to be harder to configure afterwards, due to the shear volume of options and utilities available. Linux's biggest strength for power users, is also its biggest weakspot for normal folks
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
I'm a big SuSE fan. Loved 7.3 (and will be going back to it tonight) but I've had a serious problem with 8.0. I won't go into all the details, but I'd like to point out one major problem I've had.
:)
YaST2 has been hailed lately (and I have in the past liked it as well) as one of the easiest installation tools out there. I agree the installation options are very well laid out and easy to understand. My one problem though, has to do with the handling of package errors.
I installed 8.0 a few days ago on my laptop and had a problem-free install. However, the next time I installed it, I had several package problems. No big deal usually, just install them later. Problem is, I had errors on the YaST2 modules. Which are the last packages installed off the first disk. I had waited for 1.3 GB worth of packages for nothing. System won't boot. Nothing.
Question : Is it that hard to implement an "Abort, Retry, Fail?" option? I'd like to do my install in one sitting instead of having to repeatedly go back, look at the logs to see what failed, and install them again.
Just a thought. Sorry for the rant, but it kind of took away my evening last night.
My mother always used to tell me: If you can't find anything nice to say, say something bad about Windows.
Remember, that in most cases, those using *Windows* do not install it, as it comes preinstalled, complete with gobs of software from vendors...this is the ease of installation linux distribs should be thinking about.
"RPM-based (in fact, all binary-based) distros should go the way of the dodo bird."
It seems like more and more people are latching on to the source-based OS these days. It appears to have become the Slackware of the new millennium. That is to say, the Real Men use source-based distros, and anyone who uses a binary distro is a stupid uneducated newbie sod who couldn't figure out how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
Well, here in the real world, there are people who want to install software without waiting for everything to compile. In fact, the reason I stopped using Slackware was because it took too long to compile, install, and configure all the software it didn't come with.
While your systems is laboring to compile XFree86, I'll be using mine, with software from binary packages.
gtk-devel and config are there (at least in Pro they are). The problem is that unless you install them, along with make using the "Development tools" or whatever that option is called during installation. Otherwise make doesn't work, can't find gtk. I went through this yesterday. Installed just gtk, gtk-devel, make and gcc and skipped all the other tools. NO MATTER WHAT, I couldn't get Lame to configure properly. I had to do a reinstall to make this work.
While we're finding things to complain about, YaST is nice & all, but at least in 7.3 it's a hairball to try and figure out where the printer configs are, and God Help You if you want to do something different than they do by default (e.g. make the ASCII interface to my Samba based printer the default; yah, I figured out ways to do it, but not as a system wide default).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001