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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."
I for one Welcome our new Novell overlords, I would like to remind them that as a trusted programmer I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground coding labs.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
There was quite a lot of buzz around the Novell booth today regarding OpenSuSE in San Fran at Linux World. I am not a Novell employee, but as my booth is right across from theirs, the interest from the public was obvious...then again it could have been the pea-green free hats!
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
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.
YaST is the absolutely worst part of SuSE, but Novell is lauding it as one of their key features? YaST gets just about everything wrong: handling chroot cages with symlinks *OUT* of the chroot cage instead of *INTO* the chroot cage, an insistence on wrapping vendor software packages in badly written install scripts that are wildly inconsistent with the underlying RPM package management, the world's most complex and least organized auto-install system, and overfriendly GUI's that refuse to let you manage more than two kernels on one machine and overwrite your hand-edits? And that YaST package management and update system that doesn't have the concept of handling both an update and base OS package site, or allow unattended operation for cron scripts or kickstart installs? Novell should take the money they overpay the YaST team and give it to the author of fou4s, which actually works, and the http://packman.links2linux.de/ website which actually keeps packages like Mplayer up-to-date and compiled with all the options, instead of forcing you to recompile packages to actually contain all the available features built into the SRPM. And especially they should take the money away from their kernel team, who couldn't publish a working SRPM if their lives depended on it because they have this custom "build system" that actually prevents the SRPM's from being compilable without hand-editing.
They also pretend that their freely downladable versions of things are the same as their commercially published ones. Roughly half the packages are different: if you use the commercial installations, you cannot use the free mirror sites for package installations due to the YaST stupidities I mentioned and their inconsistent release numbers. This is why even if you buy SuSE licenses, you should always install from the free download sites, to keep good access to updates and consistent OS numbering with them.
It's sexy, it's stable, and has an emphasis on the desktop. I've used SuSE in one way, shape, or form since about 8.0. It's always been a reliable, well-put-together (although somewhat too 'commercialy' for me at times) system. Early provider of AMD64 support didn't hurt either. It's one linux distro that I never had an issue paying for, as they didn't go the "screw the users on pricing" or the "we're focusing on the server" attitudes that Red Hat did.
I use it in some instances as a lamp server, used to on the desktop(with great results), and have never been underwhelmed by it's stability and completeness.
If it weren't for OS X, I'd probably still be using it as my primary desktop. Bottom line is, use the right tool for the right job. Each system, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, GNU/Debian, NetBSD, Solaris, IRIX(gah!) each have their own place in the mix.
The older I get, the less I like everyone else.
I've been a long time Redhat user starting with Redhat 6.0 all the way to Fedora Core 4. I was having a lot of problem with FC4 on my particular x86_64 machine so I went out to purchase the SuSe 9.3 Professional DVD and installed on another machine. What I found is that the default installation of SuSe is very good because it has a good balance of open/closed software that makes it very easy to use Linux as the primary work machine. After I got the hang of YaST I started to really like using it. It is more encompassing than Yum and seems like a very good balance for people who know how thing work but don't feel like always spending time treaking things.
Over all, I give high mark for SuSe for the engineering.
Of course there are still some problems with SuSe but so far I like it more than the current version of Fedora.
So are there ISO images or do you still need to take several hours doing an FTP install?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
So YaST is there and such, but it seems like they are discounting any need for more technical users. Isn't it the technical users that give something like this the boost it needs to get to be more usable? I thought the whole purpose of opening something up was for the technical users.
As I understood it, SuSE employed several KDE developers. I assume this talent went with the sale to Novell. The same Novell that has also recently purchased Ximian. I would say that if anyone in the Linux market had the wherewithal to polish the Desktop, it would be Novell/SuSE. Just my 2cents.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I have taken the liberty of checking out the author of this story. It seems that this "Anonymous Coward" fellow has very long a history of all sorts of trolls, offtopics and soforth. He is quite obviously trying to incite a flaming distro war. Pay him no mind.
(btw - just to set the record straight: you can have your redhat and suse. Everybody knows Linspire is the most hardcore distro out there...)
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" -Jesus (John 14:6)
Maybe Linux will evolve into the 21st century with Novell and SUSE.
My ideal Linux distro:
My next computer will be a Mactel.
ditto. I buy at least every other boxed version for the manuals, and to pay back those who are working their butts off to help my computers run so well.
To edit gnome menus, you don't need a separate tool, just drag and drop, but because of many KDE folks not figuring that out, the next version will have a configue tool. As far as the compressed XML files go, I have yet to run across any of them, perhaps the GUI related ones are, but in all honesty if a tool is designed to edit a conf file, most likely you shouldnt be editing it by hand, and that holds true for quite a few popular open source CLI apps too. Fedora does *NOT* cut off updates until 2 releases later, also they recently extended the development time to 9 months to give them some time for some really advanced features in the next release. Upgrades have never failed for me and I have no lost functionality. If you decide to not upgrade, Fedora Legacy is active now and effective at keeping older Cores up to date with security fixes.
The reason Fedora tends to be integrated so well is simply because you have literally the best of the best linux engineers working on the stuff. The GUI works so well because of great guys like Havoc and Seth, the kernel tends to have the latest and greatest (i.e. Xen, SELInux, LVM, GFS). Fedora also consistently has security updates out faster then other distros, typically a few days, sometimes over a week. I've used every distro out there including Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, Yoper, Knoppix, Ubuntu, and Suse, but find myself always going back to Fedora. Who better to get my distro from other then the guys who do a large portion of the coding and whose job it is to ensure clean integration with other components. Not to mention, Fedora has a very strict free software only stance which sits well with me.
Regards,
Steve
The OpenSuse home page links to a sensibly large mirror list. So it doesn't really make sense for you to link straight to the Göttingen mirror from here, does it?
Please change that link to the download page, and let your readers select the mirror closest to them.
Sheesh.
Well, it is a question of licensing. Do you really think SUSE/Novell does not want to bundle these packages directly too? Java, Media Players, Codecs? That they are left out as a deliberate hurdle for end-users?
You really can't blame openSUSE for the licenses and software patent issues.
Trust me, if it was possible right now, all of these additional packages would be included. Please help with rewriting superior OSS packages for them and abolishing software patents by engaging in politics and lobbying.
You missed saying that FC4 will upgrade you from previous versions of Red Hat (from 7.x, 8.0, 9 and FC1, FC2 & FC3), but only hinted at in the release notes. I think that this, retaining your $home directory and other preferences is easier than a total reinstall.
/.
I suspect that Disk Druid isn't a stand-alone application because of the dangers of allowing people to alter the partitions of disks in use. The source is in the srpms (here, particularly anaconda-10.2.1.5-2.src.rpm ), and it shouldn't be too hard to hack it out of there and disallow access to either drives mounted or disallow access to the drives supplying important mount-points -- Fedora uses LVM2, so any drive can be mapped into