Slashdot Mirror
Review of SuSE 8.1 Professional
Gentu writes "SuSE 8.1 is out and it seems to be the main competitor of Red Hat 8. OSNews has the review of its Professional version. The new SuSE 8.1 seems to be sleekier and more powerful than ever." Eugenia, as usual, isn't shy about saying what she doesn't like. There's a review on Linuxlookup.com as well.
I've used several versions of both including RH 8 and my opinnion is that while RedHat makes a great server build SuSE has always had the edge in developing the workstation distro.
When I used SuSE, I thought that it was a great workstation, but I still prefer Redhat for a server OS. Too bad all of the different distributions (Redhat, Suse, Debian, etc) can't work together and make one useful and simple OS.
Not as long as they have that stupid lizard!
Image is everything
Here leezard, leezard, leezard
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
"However, if SuSE fix some of the issues they have, get rid or redesign that package manager, license the Web Fonts, add some more GUI settings panels for wireless support, FTP & HTTP servers, better integration with Windows, fix some of their untested or buggy applications they include in their CDs, modify Star Office and GTK+ application to look more as their primary Qt platform and other such details, I believe that Red Hat's 'empire' in the Linux world will be in jeopardy."
Does that mean she likes it, or not?
YaST2 and SaX2 can be better, but even as they are today blow most of Red Hat's preference panels away. On the other hand Red Hat's XFT font properties are no match to any other Linux distribution so far, while Red Hat has good integration for Qt and GTK+ toolkits, something that SuSE doesn't.
This is very important! People keep bitching about Anti-Aliased Font support, well why is RedHat the only including an advanced utility? Fonts are 99% of your visual aspect of your desktop, good looking fonts make a BIG difference. (side note, Mosfet Liquid engine/theme is a must..)
I'm a SuSE (sparc64), Mandrake (x86) user. Mostly because Mandrake had the better font support. I've switched over to RedHat 8.0 due to the XFT font support.
BTW, I shouldnt have to recompile the desktop to have decent font support. So dont keep saying "Compile yourself". If I wanted a source based, compile everything yourself distribution, I would use Gentoo. (Gentoo doesnt include all the custom applications for preferences.)
I have to agree with the reviewer's sentiment that they should have included Gnome in SuSE. While KDE is pretty good for newbies from the Windows and Mac world, it's still missing the eye-candy that even basic Gnome 2.x has. Of course this is all my opinion, and highly subjective. But, I will say that if you happen to be a fan of the Gnome environment, you're going to feel a bit restricted by KDE. Some major features are missing in KDE:
-themeable login manager
-flexible bitmap themes that allow you to tweak window behavior into something that you want
-granular control over the look-and-feel of the environment (multiple toolbars, drag and drop launchers, etc...)
-a more standarized approach to where binaries go: '/usr/local/bin' rather than '/opt/kde' (Of course it would be better if things were more like '/usr/local/kde', but thene again I compile everything I use.)
If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.
RedHat's Blue Curve approach is probably a little stronger than SuSE's version of KDE. I've only seen screenshots, but it's much prettier.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
First she complains about the installer not making enough decisions, then she complains about SaX making decisions.
In reality, the installer DOES make all decisions. All it does (and that was obviously confusing Eugenia) is SHOW these decisions to you and allow you to change it. But it doesn't force you to do anything at all.
What's wrong with that? The below-average complete moron (which everybody seems to be targetting these days.) just presses "Install" and it installs without any need to configure anything. On a computer with one clean harddrive or partition, the install should work just fine with the default settings.
Hell, even Eugenia was able to install the damn thing, so it's dumbed down enough.
Also, unlike Eugenia sais, SuSE comes with CDs *AND* DVD, not "or".
I, for one, think you'd have to try pretty hard to find SuSE's installation difficult. She complains about the problems for newbies, but this is SuSE 8.1 Professional. Yes, it's for professionals.
Having said that, I think the installer is wonderful for newbies. I like the fact that you get a summary (which is like a web page, as Eugenia said), and you can drill down as deep as you want to customize it. If you like the defaults that the installer has chosen, you can click OK and go right to the installation. I can't imagine why a linear progression through a wizard would be preferable.
If you honestly have a hard time installing SuSE, then I just can't imagine what kind of installer you'd find easier. (I guess that's why I don't design installers.)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I have been a RH user since 4.2 and a KDE user since before their first 1.0 release. I just bought RH 8.0 and the tweeking of KDE that they have done irks me to no end. I have just started to look at it, but it appears that you can't simply change themes back to the KDE default to recover the KDE 3 look and feel. Would anyone like to share their experience with how they recovered the KDE 3 look? I know it must be simple but I haven't had time to probe into it much. Sorry for the OT post.
> It's odd that RH, SuSe and Mandrake compete with
:)
> each other more than their common enemy.
I don't think so. I think this is a good thing, because it will give us better Linux distros. And better Linux distros will someday jam Linux into Microsofts monopolistic gears.
The day every hardware gadget and game in stores comes with a anonymous note on the back that says "Supports Windows YX and Linux", the goal is reached.
Through competition (and only competition) will Linux improve to that point.
IMHO and YMMV
//TheToon
Just select the K menu and select control panel. Select the default theme. After that find the sytles menu. From their select kde default instead of bluecurve. Last click on the upper left hand Window title bar on any running program. I am not a on a linux machine currently but I believe you can change the Window decoration on one of the settings by right mouse botton clicking it and selecting docarations. Browse and find the default kde2. This will get rid of the bluecurve default titlebar. You may want to keep the default font since the orignal kde ones are ugly as hell.
The only problem I noticed is the default kpanel is gone and replace with the gnome one. I know this because I played around with some of the settings and they are almost identical to the gnome panel. Also you may need to download the default icons from kde's website.
Doing all of these will bring back %95 of the kde desktop back.
What really annoys me more then the gui is the exclusion of apache1.3x and perl 5.6!
Do you have any perl cgi scripts that access a mysql database? Your SOL. Redhat included the older gcc 2.9.5x compiler but not the older perl or apache. And no, perl is not fully source compatible with perl 5.6 like the perl mongers say it is.
I am learning perl programming from a college level book called "How to Program Perl" by Dietel and Dietel. Many cs majors have used their c and c++ books. I tested all the example programs and noticed alot of problems. Particularly with return statements, threading, mysql access, and cgi since mod-perl has not been fully ported to apache2 yet. The return statement problems seems to be caused by some changes in default scoping rules. I can easily changes these but I want to learn how to program and not learn how to deal with perl 5.8. Everything else can not be ported. I do not mind the newer versions of apache and perl being included. I would just like the older ones installed optionally as well as gcc. Apache 2.x is not ready for anything besides static webpages.
In other words avoid this release if your an internet developer.
On the other hand my gripe with suse is that their distro's have always been buggy and not as reliable as redhat or debian.
For my games which require low latency sound(sucks on w2k), and low ping times I will stick with redhat. I have noticed ping times cut in half in some circumstances and my scores are higher due to low latency for sound. I am already dead before I hear the rocket sometimes under w2k. For software development, I will stick with Windows2k.
http://saveie6.com/