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openSUSE 10.3 Public Release
Shizawana writes "The latest version of openSUSE was released this week. The site has a sneak peak of all the new features and additions, including highly anticipated changes to the YaST package management. The official announcement of the release offers a few highlights as well: 'The openSUSE team is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 10.3. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE project provides free, easy access to the world's most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE. openSUSE is released regularly, is stable, secure, contains the latest free and open source software, and comes with several new technologies. openSUSE 10.3 will be supported with security and other serious updates for a period of 2 years. This version contains new beautiful green artwork, KDE 3.5.7 and parts of KDE 4, SUSE-polished GNOME 2.20, a GTK version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, MP3 support out-of-the-box, new and redesigned YaST modules, compiz and compiz fusion advances, virtualisation improvements, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Xfce 4.4.1, and much more! Read on for details of what is new and available in openSUSE 10.3, and for all the necessary download links.'"
I recently overlayed my laptop installation of SuSE with Ubuntu Feisty because of problems I had with YaST. YaST update performance was so slow and unreliable I gave up and started using the various SuSE yum repositories. That worked pretty well for me for a while, and I certainly appreciated the good multimedia support in SuSE. About the only thing I didn't like was lack of usable ACPI with my laptop.
However a couple of weeks ago the bubble burst. A yum upgrade pulled in some new packages, a kernel and so on. When the upgrade was done I lost my wireless connectivity, and reverting back to the old kernel didn't help. Basically I was hosed. I did a fair number googles, posted some questions and got pointed to pages written by others with similar problems with the Intel 3945abg that I had. Eventually I gave up. I thought of waiting for 10.3, but decided to try Ubuntu first. I am glad I did. Not only did the install go MUCH faster, but the Debian package manager Ubuntu uses is WAY nicer and faster. Hardware detection was nearly flawless, and even the ACPI works. The overall performance of the GUI is also considerably better than SuSE's.
As far as I am concerned the problems I had with YaST plus the obvious quality of apt-get etc. have made me an Ubuntu convert.
Now I am really looking forward for Gutsy, and would not go back to using SuSE on a bet. The only thing I have found that SuSE handled better was the multimedia stuff, and I am working on understanding what I can do to make my Ubuntu do what I need in that regard.
People love to make Gentoo jokes. I started using Linux when I was 14. My first distro, Gentoo. It's NOT hard to install, it DOESN'T take 2 weeks to compile packages. Please, Slashdot, before making any more Gentoo jokes, try it out for yourself. I can get Gentoo installed in under an hour. And guess what, do I sit around watching KDE compile? No! There's times when I don't have to be on the computer, seriously.