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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."
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.
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.
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