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OpenSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 Has Been Released
Francis Giannaros writes "The first beta release for openSUSE 11.0 is now available. Some of the highlights include fast package management, KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1 and an impressive new installer using Qt4 CSS-like stylesheets. Changes behind the scenes include switching to RPM LZMA payload and making RPMs smaller (faster to download), and quicker to decompress (faster installation)."
Disclosure: I am a bit of an Ubuntu fanboi ;) (please notice the wink *nudge-nudge*)
Right - One of my first distributions was also Suse - SLED and SLES - got it from the novell stands at Software Freedom Day here in South Africa.
I liked it, but because of some niggles I moved on.
1. I run on limited hardware, and Suse being a bit hardware intensive (my impression here) it was a bit slow - took four hours to install on my pc and five hours on my laptop. Not a fault on the Distro's part I am quick to point out.
2. Everything did not just work in my case, but I enjoy tinkering so that was not a big reason for movin on.
Currently I am using Ubuntu.
1. It contends better with my limited hardware. A clean install takes only about 40minutes to an hour. (Yes my computer/laptop is O_L_D!)
2. It "feels" more intuitive, but that is more personal taste than any real advantage over SUSE.
3. Shipit. This is a real advantage over other distributions. Being able to order a free disk of the latest version is a real plus.
Here are a few critiscisms of Ubuntu:
1. Heavy reliance on the internet to install anything from codecs to extra software.
2. DVD releases that in fact have extra software are not available as boxed sets is a disadvantage wrt boxed sets like Suse.
3 The color scheme - what the heck with the brown? Many distro's look much better - Suse, Linux Mint are just a few examples. Fedora looks great too.
One thing that gives Suse a great advantage is the effort that goes into the Enterprise Desktop package. It makes a lot of effort to be easy to integrate with an office environment - this naturally spills over to the Opensuse version.
I don't think Ubuntu is OVER hyped - it has many good points, and is really a leader in many aspects, just as Suse, PCLOS, Fedora, Mandriva and so on all have areas where they lead. What I really find exciting is that every distro has access to what it lacks and is available in another. Take PCLOS using Synaptic for instance.
THAT is what has handed the lead to Linux, and has placed Windows in second/Third place.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I recently removed XP and put OpenSuse 10.3 on it. As people before have said, the packman repository makes everything work re:mulitmedia.
The real nice thing is, it just works. I tried Ubuntu before, and Fedora etc etc but went back because a lot of it didn't work or i couldnt be bothered messing around for hours. OpenSuse is so good that I now just have Opensuse on it, and can do all my sysadmin work just as easily. It is THE distro that converted me to Linux full time, so much so im about to take my CLP exam in a few weeks. Windows really is becoming a has been to me, at least.
The other really nice thing about Suse is that it has all the packages one could reasonably expect ready to install. Unlike some other distros that have broken RPMs of such important software as MySQL. Best thing is, it takes literally 3 or 4 clicks to install MySQL onto a system in a usable.
Try it, it really does rock. It's slick, all the packages work! Ok so their alliance to another company sucks but hey, cant win em all.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Does SuSE "just work" on amd64? I had a few problems when playing with Ubuntu and Flash on amd64. But one of the labs where I work just installed OpenSuSE 10.3 on its computers, and the Gnome theme/style is beautiful.
Anyway, I also bought SuSE at Best Buy around 2000-2001, for $39.95. I installed Postfix, and whenever I did updates, it would install Sendmail. So I sold the box on Ebay for about $17. Switched back to playing with Mandrake and RedHat. Now I'm permanently sold on Gentoo on the desktop, Debian on the server, and Debian in KVM guests (runs well on just 128MB RAM). I'll try OpenSuSE in a KVM guest to see how well it runs.
SuSE was my first distro too, and I'm certainly glad I forked out for the box set, because it came with a couple of really awesome manuals that were a huge help to me as a complete Linux newbie. The YAST configuration tool also allowed me to set up a home server to replace the Windows 98 machine my dad had set up for that task (yeah, I know). There were also a couple of other nice touches for Windows refugees, e.g. some DOS commands were aliased to their UNIX equivalents, which allowed me to make limited use of the command line without any extra knowledge. If you can still buy the box sets with the manual in, I would definitely recommend that to someone thinking of switching to Linux.
I also made the same move to Slackware, for the same reason as yourself, and like yourself I got frustrated with its rather sparse nature. This spurred me on to Arch Linux though, which is sort of like Slackware for the 21st century, complete with a package manager which automatically resolves dependencies, downloads new packages and all the rest. If you ever yearn for the clean simplicity of Slackware, but want something with all the power of a modern distro, I would highly recommend it.