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A Closer Look at SUSE 10
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that MadPenguin is running a review of the recently released SUSE 10.0. From the review: "Novell has made some interesting changes in distribution and development since our last review of SUSE Linux. Many say it's for the better and I'd say I'm inclined to go with that theory. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd see the day SUSE opened up it's doors to the community to help expand and concert development efforts, but here we are in a world where SUSE is open and still making geeks sweat every time a new release comes out"
SuSE 9.3 was the distro that finally got me seriously considering cutting the Windows cord, and 10 handed me the scissors. It's such a great, complete distro that's easy to install and maintain, easy to customize. It's the most polished distro I have used. Between SuSE 10 and Ubuntu the reasons for sticking with Windows and its licensing/upgrading hell are slim. Yeah I'll still need Windows for some things (mostly PHB stuff) but SuSE is my new default boot.
I've never seen a Flash movie of a Linux distro install before! Nice.
I tested the boot.iso on an XP box, until it failed to detect that I was using a MN-510 (a usb wireless networking adapter made by Microsoft.)
So thumb's up on this review -- but the distro is not a smashing success, because it fails to properly embrace the MS switcher. The test is not can we install it--it's "can the previous generation..."
BlueRayMan
Um... maybe because nobody installs windows, or OSX on a blank box... but most everyonehe installs linux on a box that was either blank or had another OS preinstalled. Get a grip, the install is very important for potential new user. When was the last time you tried to install windows... for me it was 3.11... other than that, it has always been pre intalled.
No one here gets out alive
I've been using 10.0 since about the 8th and I've got to say it's pretty nice.
Easy, Quick install
Nice auto-update features
Pretty console
Easy to configure firewall
Not too hard to figure out where they hid the config files
The problems I've had so far:
A crippled libxine is used EVERYWHERE. I've tried pakman's and super's xine but still can't get all the media to play that I could with Gentoo.
The last two security patches (firefox and snmpd) have broken their respective programs.
This is my first Suse. I've been running Gentoo for the past 3 years(compiling everything gets way old). I think I'll keep it for a while. Hopefully Novell doesn't let it go to waste.
First, you have to realize that I'm pretty geeky... my experience may not translate well to Grandma or Uncle Joe.
My transition was almost accidental. I'd taken on a new job administering a network of Linux servers. I was provided a Windows desktop and several spare machines that I could use for whatever.. the prior administrator had liked to tinker with things. The Windows machine proved to be unreliable, and I was unable to determine if the company had paid for my Windows license at the time, so I just installed Mandrake on a spare box. I'd originally intended it as a secondary machine, but I ended up being happy enough that I never switched back, at least for work. (I still run Windows at home, mostly for gaming.)
After getting past the initial learning curve, I felt more productive because I had instant access to a huge range of powerful utilities. One of them, interestingly, was the humble bash shell. After settling in permanently and learning how to script properly (which I had never actually done before, though I'd been using Linux for years...I'd just not needed the ability sooner), I was able to automate a great many administrative tasks. That would have been much harder with Windows. I would have needed Cygwin, which is essentially Unix anyway. And screen and ssh were incredibly useful as well. I don't mean just the basic command-line ssh, but the remote-command, piping, port redirection, and proxying capabilities. That kind of thing is harder to do in Windows, and you definitely have to pay for it. (unless, of course, you use Cygwin, but it's still not native to the platform in quite the same way. If you're going to use free software anyway, might as well do it right.)
From a desktop perspective, I prefer Evolution to any other email client I've tried. It has the look and feel of Outlook, but is all Unixy underneath, so gluing in other programs is trivial. Adding in spam detection took very little time, for instance, and cost nothing, quite unlike the commercial alternatives. I loved the sorting rules and the ability to transparently support multiple email aliases (so I could be postmaster, webmaster, support, and my 'real' email address, without having to think much about them.) And I prefered Konqueror to any other browser I'd used up to that point. It ran faster, had tab support, and just in general struck me as superior to IE, except when it failed to render something. Fortunately, that wasn't terribly common, and Mozilla was there when Konqueror couldn't handle it. (Firefox wasn't out at the time I was making the transition.) And I absolutely loved the High Performance Liquid theme in KDE.
Multiple workspaces was a big productivity boost once I figured out how to organize it.... web browsing in one screen, email in another, remote jobs in a third (abstracted with the 'screen' utility so I could check up on things from home if I wanted), music player, network monitoring, and various random things (nethack!) in a fourth.
It's been quite awhile, so my memory has dimmed, but I believe but the rough edges were mostly determining how to get the hardware configured. Screen resolutions were a real pain. Getting sound working properly was also hard, and then determining/shopping for the best program to use for the different available functions. (I had quite a bit of experience with server Linux, but desktop Linux was pretty new to me.) A lot of this stuff was hard simply because related settings were spread all over multiple screens... they were organized by how the software was built, rather than by how people thought about the problem. Even now, the interfaces to system configuration stuff tend to be much harder than they should be.
Overall, there just weren't any artificial barriers between me and the system. It was still easy to use, but it was easy without hiding the power underneath. Windows abstracts things but then makes it very hard to get down to brass tacks, past the abstractions. Linux isn't like that. If you want to see ho
That's a roadblock on Linux'es way of "widespread adoption"? there's no "print selection" feature in Kmail? Uh, OK....
My experiences are completely the opposite. I too have an USB-keyboard (Apple Keyboard in fact). I plugged in in to my Gentoo-box while it was running. System detected it without any problems and I could use it right away. What happened in Windows? I plugged it in, but I couldn't use it. It needed to install some drivers. I installed the drivers, and the machine rebooted. But I still couldn't use the keyboard, I had to plug in my old PS2-keyboard so I could log in! It installed even more drivers and rebooted. And it STILL did not work! It installed even more drivers and THEN it started to work!
No, it doesn't stop there. What happens if I unplug the keyboard and re-plug it in to a different USB-port? In Linux, it just works. But in Windows, it wont work untill I reinstall the drivers! Hello?! it's the same keyboard, only on different port!
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From TFA: Microsoft has tried a similar approach with their remote desktop support built into Windows XP but, as usual, it's only a half-assed attempt at something the rest of the free world is doing properly.
Strange.. I find Remote Desktop on Windows one of the most easy to use and fully featured remote desktop systems on any operating system? Could someone please elaborate and tell me exactly what is so half arsed about it when compared to the competition?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
1-CD Installs (performance-patched with Minimal, KDE and GNOME-centric sets) in particular are very welcome as the official SUSE and SUSE-OSS DVDs or 5-CD sets are on the heavy side and most users don't need anywhere near the full set of packages included there. The 1-CD Install set, as Ubuntu has already shown, keeps the user experience simple (while allowing for future expansion) and lowers the barrier for user-to-user proliferation of the distro.
The growing community around the OSS distro versions also helps Novell/SUSE to grow the momentum and mindshare of their commercial and supported releases. It'll be easier for Novell/SUSE to sell systems and support to businesses and other institutions when there may already be people around who are familiar and comfortable with their widely available free-for-all offerings. It'll also encourage third parties to pay more attention to making SUSE compatible packages.
I hope they'll get around to creating the planned liveCD version of SUPER as well, as an easily redistributable alternative to the current liveDVD offering.
FWIW, since Ubuntu stormed the scene I've mainly promoted it to people interested in trying out Linux, but for the technically-inept I've still recommended a SUSE box. These new OSS versions, and in particular the planned liveCD version, would dramatically lower the barrier of trying SUSE out but I'd still recommend a box set for the inexperienced users due to their better QA, less breakage and availability of official support.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I have an Athlon 64 3200 using a DFI Lanparty UT Motherboard with built-in Marvel Yukon and Nvidia network interfaces.
All worked well in windows and Fedora. I had the machine up and running in windows and browsing while I copied the dvd
to my install server. Shut the machine down and installed Suse 10 across the network. Once all was installed i played with it a few minutes and then rebooted back into windows to play wow. No go. Windows now thought the network cable was unplugged on the Marvel port. Checked all the cables and tried a reboot into Suse. Network port works in linux. I powercycled the machine and it was still dead in windows. The only way to fix it was enable the Nvidia port and spend an hour searching for a newer driver.
The latest DFI drivers didn't work but the latest from Marvel fixed the problem. I can only assume the Linux driver made some permanent change to the nvram on the card.
The GNOME desktop in the Novell Linux Desktop edition is far suprior to the one in the regular SuSE 10 release, so I would argue that the SuSE engineers are the incompetant ones (or else they purposely make it bad to make GNOME look bad).