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'Sneak Preview' of SUSE 9.1
Roblimo writes "SUSE 9.1 won't be out until May, but Joe Barr got access to a 'secret' beta download and tried it out. He liked some of what he saw, and found things he didn't like, too, but is willing to overlook some of the negatives because, he points out, 'This is a beta. Bugs are expected. Work will be done before it goes gold.' The review's at Linux.com." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
He doesn't say whether he reviewed SUSE 9.1 Personal or Professional.
Fact is, it sounds like he reviewed SUSE Personal which is geared to novice users and with the "one task, one app" philosophy. No wonder it has only KDE and various spit-and-polish suitable for novices. By cutting out the cruft SUSE because all the more usable for this demographic.
Fact is, Joe Barr isn't a novice user so he's going around looking for stuff that isn't there. SUSE 9.1 Personal provices a swiss-army knife selection of choices including GNOME. So he should use Professional instead of Personal if that's what he's looking for.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
It's relatively painless if you do the Ximian Red Carpet install from the Ximian site.
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This guy just installed SuSE 9.1 without Gnome (his choice) and then complained about not having Gnome and Gnome applications!? I have installed SuSE 8.0 and 8.2 (both home and pro) a couple of times and never had any problems installing Gnome (I prefer KDE but install Gnome just in case). I don't think it's very likely that they would brake YaST so bad that you can't install Gnome. Yes, it complains about dependencies but it resolves them and installs everything you need. SuSE is by far the easiest OS I have had to install (well apart from a bizzare NIC problem...).
The system, aside from the small fonts on install, ran very well.
I agree with you though, I'd like to see some usability reviews from the POV of a non-techie. Especially considering ESR's recent criticism of Linux usability.
If you haven't used the recent (3.2+) versions of KDE, then you don't know what you are talking about or what that abomination of a "review" is probably referring to. In those recent versions of KDE, if there's only one item inside the menu group, then the sub-menu is not displayed. Rather, the name of the group is displayed and acts like a menu item that you can click on to run an app. When you do so, it runs an app that is the only entry under the menu group.
So, for example, if in the menu you have Internet->Chat group, and Chat group contains only Kopete entry under it, then when you click on K->Internet, the Chat entry will show up as an application item, rather than a sub-group, and clicking it will launch the only entry under it - Kopete. If you install more chat apps, or edit menu and add more entries under that group, then it will display as a sub-group.
What was to be expected anyway? KDE desktop with GNOME defaults? Did he expect GNOME to have KDE and QT app defaults? Did I mention the "review" was abysmal?
As far as I know, SUSE 9.1 is supposed to include the new KDEfied OpenOffice, better quickstarter, new KOffice. Is 2.6 kernel faster? How does OO.org look? Did the "reviewer" do anything other than try to click on the SUSE website links, documenting every banner ad and pop-up, and try to install xchat? What kind of a "review" is that?
How do you pronounce Suse? I've never seen it anywhere...
Soo-SEH.
From the latest FAQ:
Will there be a PPC edition of SUSE LINUX 9.0?
No, sorry!
Stock SUSE 9 comes with 2.4.21 and Gnome 2.2, in addition to the defaujlt wm KDE 3.1. I'd say you've changed your distribution quite a bit, really.
Actually, it's closer to
SOO-zuh
(emphasis on SOO)
sig != null