An Early Taste of OpenSUSE

Anonymous Coward writes "Finally the site OpenSUSE.org is up and includes some beta downloads. The stable version can be expected around September 2005. Looks like there are some differences between Novell's SUSE and Redhat's Fedora mentioned in the FAQ."

Comments

diffs?

[Ossifer]

Looks like there are some differences between Novell's SUSE and Redhat's Fedora mentioned in the FAQ

Yast? It that it then? The FAQ answer doesn't exactly make the differences between opensuse and fedora sounds terribly large...

Re:diffs?

[rpdillon]

Well, from TFFAQ:

The openSUSE project explicitly looks beyond the technical community to the broader non-technical community of computer users interested in Linux. The openSUSE project creates--through an open and transparent development process--a stabilized, polished Linux distribution (SUSE Linux) that delivers everything a user needs to get started with Linux. (SUSE Linux is consistently cited as the best-engineered Linux and the most usable Linux.) To fulfill its mission of bringing Linux to everyone, the openSUSE project makes SUSE Linux widely available to potential Linux users through a variety of channels, including a complete retail edition with end-user documentation. Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience.

So, more than simply YasT. One of the things that drove me away from Fedora was that it is publically acknowledged to be public grounds for vetting Red Hat's technology which will be the basis for RHEL. Novell is taking a very different approach when they indicate that OpenSuSE will be directed towards end users, and will focus on the user experience. That was never a focus of Fedora Core, and, IMHO, is why a lot of people are fed up with it.

Re:diffs?

[homer_ca]

"Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience."

Umm.. Ubuntu?

Re:diffs?

[Digital Pizza]

Actually I think that Fedora is pretty user-friendly. I've loved the Redhat distribution ever since 5.1 (I think). I still love the "user experience" of Fedora, meaning its GUI for preferences and system settings, and the programs menu.

It's unfortunate that some fundamental things about it suck to the point I'll sadly be forced to abandon it.

They've moved from simple config files to cryptic and often compressed XML files for no good reason that I can discern, making it a pain in the butt to edit certain configs from a terminal.

As far as I know, you still can't edit the Gnome menu from the GUI without doing a flakey hack.

The worst thing is that they cut off updates for each release when the new one comes out every six months. Upgrade installs are unreliable and leave out new features, meaning you have to do a fresh install every six months! This is unacceptable to me, and is what will, sadly, cause me to switch to something else.

I've used Suse before and liked it; I'm just too cheap to pay what they wanted for it each time a new version came out, and the FTP install never seemed to work for me (I kept losing my FTP connection during the long download). I look at OpenSuse with great interest - it just might take Redhat's place as the "good" free Linux distro with business support.

Re:diffs?

[Anonymous Coward]

We were running RH (paid for) on several machines, then they dropped us like a rock.

    Next I found Gentoo...

Re:diffs?

[iwan-nl]

Supported? As in paid tech support? Ofcource it is.

Re:diffs?

[ahillen]

As I understood it, SuSE employed several KDE developers. I assume this talent went with the sale to Novell.

Why? SuSE still is a strong supporter of KDE. They even still look for KDE developers (sorry, link in German).

Re:diffs?

[dieScheisse]

One of the things that drove me away from Fedora was that it is publically acknowledged to be public grounds for vetting Red Hat's technology which will be the basis for RHEL.

also from the FAQ:

Why is Novell starting the openSUSE project now? (last sentence)

"They will also ultimately influence the commercial SUSE Linux products businesses use to run their applications."

and

What is the relationship of the openSUSE project to Novell? (last sentence again)

"The SUSE Linux operating system and associated open source applications are used by Novell as the basis for its fully supported and hardened enterprise Linux offerings (for example, Novell Linux Desktop)."

if this is your reasoning for (not) choosing a distro, guess you better find a new one (again).

Re:diffs?

[FictionPimp]

Actually.

Ubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or the current development release. Each release is supported with security updates for at least 18 months.

source www.ubuntulinux.org

Desktop

[Eightyford]

For those of you like me wondering what the desktop looks like, I found this image on of regular SUSE linux:

SUSE DESKTOP from OSDir.com

And I'm quite aware that the desktops are highly configurable and very much the same on most distributions.

Re:One thing the "FAQ" is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat/Fedora : Leader in bugs
SuSE/OpenSuSE : Follower far far way behind

Yes there are

[Original Buddha]

9.3 is 5 cd's and 10.0 is 4 cd's.

Re:4 CDs?

[(H)elix1]

Can anyone tell me if all four CDs are actually needed?

Yup. Mostly disk one and two, but I always seemed to pick an install that would require a few packages off the other two CD's. Best to download all the ISO images.

MOD parent down- That's the developer version....

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh

Released Version

SUSE Linux 9.3 features an easy-to-install Linux operating system that lets you browse the Web, send e-mail, chat with friends, organize digital photos, play movies and songs, and create documents and spreadsheets. You can even use it to host a Web site or blog, create a home network, and develop your own applications. It is the most recent stabilized, fully integrated edition of SUSE Linux. If you are looking for a stable version of Linux to run on your personal computer or home server, this is the best choice.

        Note: This version of SUSE Linux contains some proprietary components such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, RealNetworks RealPlayer, Sun Java Runtime Environment and Macromedia Flash Player.

============

Development Build

Currently, SUSE Linux 10.0 Beta 1 (code name: Prague) is an unsupported, open source only, preliminary edition of SUSE Linux that contains bleeding-edge packages and represents the latest development snapshot. If you intend to test for bugs or contribute patches, this version is for you.

        Note: Development snapshots are sometimes unstable. Before installing the latest development build, we recommend that you read the list of most annoying bugs. ...

Please note that the OSS edition or SUSE Linux 10.0 do only contain open source software. Therefore some packages do miss in SUSE Linux 10.0 OSS distribution. This does include Java and all depending packages like OpenOffice.org.

Java and OpenOffice.org packages can get installed afterwards by adding the following repository to the installation sources in YaST: ftp://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/S L-10.0-OSS-beta1/inst-source-java/

========

Geeze if you won the lotry when it was 1 million bucks you'd comaplin that it was 2 million last week.

Re:Yast is considered a feature of SuSE

[Cramer]

For a seasoned, knowledgable system admin, YaST is a horrible mess. BUT, for the majority of people, who aren't sysadmin's 80hrs/wk, YaST is a very useful, powerful tool.

I'm an admin, so I absolutely hate the damned thing. It's a scripting language that has 99% of what it does hardcoded in a number of interdependant library packages -- God help you if you ever need to fix so much as one damned line of that shit. "YOU" recommends upgrading packages you don't even have installed...

Oh, and the ISO images available via ftp also contain different versions from the FTP tree. I was pretty pissed at having to mirror an extra 4+GB of shit because the DVD image has newer versions than the ftp tree. I mean, Jesus, who the fuck is managing their releases?

Re:4 CDs?

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

No, there's a 50Mb install CD that's downloadable. Grab that, and let the rest of the installation install over the wire overnight.

Re:Just a new name?

[rpdillon]

No. They provide ISO's (both CDs and a DVD) for download, free of charge. The ISOs are images of a complete retail version of the product, despite the "eval" in the name.

Re:Those arent ISOs you dolt

[core_blimey]

The link does indeed lead to the ISO's or at least the 9 series release ISOs. Go to one of the mirrors and in i386/current/iso directory you'll find the install images as the original poster requested. :)

As for the 10 ISOs, try the link "includes some beta downloads" in the article which takes you to the site with both the torrent and direct 10 Beta ISO images.

Was that what you were after?

Re:How's the media and IM?

[oddfox]

Of all the major distributions, SuSE has always been ahead in supporting multimedia for the average user. As far as IMing, well, that shouldn't be any sort of a problem as long as GAIM or some other client finds it's way onto the install. Keep in mind that these applications may need updating, as is common practice on any system, obviously. This is where YaST helps a lot with easy upgrading. I personally don't like YaST for much else, but I'm a configuration file freak.

Note that http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/lofiversion/inde x.php/t14991.html seems to indicate that 9.3 may not be as simple as I seem to remember SuSE being for multimedia, but in any case, mplayer has never failed me (Well, except for those win32codecs I miss a little bit).

Overall, your best bet would be to check out some reviews and see for yourself how the distribution's out-of-the-box experience is.

Re:Suse Linux

[thorsen]

I can see why you would think this, but it's far from the truth.

I used to work for SuSE back some years ago, and the process of going more and more open has been running since SuSE started business back in 93.

Novell does not tell SuSE what to do - they're clever enough to let the SuSE people run their own distro. And it's SuSE people that have driven both GPL'ing YaST, OpenSuSE, ISOs on the ftp server and so on.

Re:Are they all beta downloads?

[gaijinsr]

Look more carefully, there is also 10beta1, but when I downloaded my copy, not all the mirrors had the 10beta1 yet.