OpenSUSE 12.1 Released

MasterPatricko writes "The openSUSE project is proud to present the release of openSUSE 12.1! This release represents more than eight months of work by our international community and brings you the best Free Software has to offer. Improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, XFCE and LXDE; your ownCloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system on btrfs; and much, much more. Other notable changes include moving from sysvinit to systemd, improving the boot process, and being built on GCC 4.6.2 including link-time optimization. More packages than ever are available from the openSUSE instance of the Open Build Service, and soon you'll be able to create customized respins on SUSE Studio."

Comments

Woot!

[HarrySquatter]

Woot! All 3 users are jizzing in unison over this announcement!

Re:Woot!

[Captain Splendid]

Actually, only 2. I switched to Debian this year.

Re:Woot!

[snikulin]

Nope. 3 again: I got back to SUSE from Debian.

Re:Woot!

[nzac]

I assume you have never actually used openSUSE.

Its a European distro so is never on the American "list" of distos that are recommend to try. Novel going with microsoft never helped though that's the excuse to troll it now rather than having any current justification that MS has effected openSUSE.

Re:Woot!

[nharmon]

2 again. I switched to Apple.

Re:Woot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, someone spent 8 months on something that didn't even work properly the last time they released it. Let me guess: more drivers removed, more cloud, facebook and twitter, more compact touchscreen UI gadgets that are completely irrelevant to the increasingly common monitor format known as HD to those of us that acually own a desktop workstation Wich distro will be the first to only include drivers for hardware less than 12 months old and call it a 'feature'?

Re:Woot!

[craigminah]

Love OpenSuse cuz its one of the last mainstream distorts that hasn't been dumbed down via Gnome 3 or Unity. LXDE, XFCE, and KDE aren't a good alternative IMHO.

Re:Woot!

[tomhudson]

Yay, someone spent 8 months on something that didn't even work properly the last time they released it. Let me guess: more drivers removed, more cloud, facebook and twitter, more compact touchscreen UI gadgets that are completely irrelevant to the increasingly common monitor format known as HD to those of us that acually own a desktop workstation Wich distro will be the first to only include drivers for hardware less than 12 months old and call it a 'feature'?

Sorry, but you want the "Trolling Ubuntu" articles. Though with the damage Unity has done, no need to troll - it will disappear by itself.

Re:Woot!

[darkinnit]

4 now then. My other half and I were having terrible wi-fi issues on two different brand laptops with any *buntu based distro (including Mint). Switched both to OpenSuse and it's been fine since.

Re:Woot!

[cyclomedia]

I actually did, switched from OpenSUSS 11.4 to a Hackintosh, don't ever want to go back (unless the ghost of steve jobs comes to haunt me, then I may consider it)

Re:Woot!

[tehcyder]

2 again. I switched to Apple.

You don't count then.

I may give this a go...

[IANAAC]

I've been on Ubuntu for some time now, but with 11.04 and 11.10, it's not been as stable as I'd like.

Plus, the last time I used JAD 1.0 (based on Suse) it was rock solid. Anybody know the specifics of what's installed besides desktop environs? That seems to be all they've listed at their site.

Re:I may give this a go...

[halfaperson]

Here is a detailed list: http://en.opensuse.org/Product_highlights

Re:I may give this a go...

[IANAAC]

No Rosegarden in their repository. Bummer. Last time I tried to install it from source it was a total PITA.

Re:I may give this a go...

[Anonymous Coward]

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=rosegarden&project=multimedia%3Aapps

I see that 12.1 is not a enabled buildtarget yet, but it probably will be real soon.

Re:I may give this a go...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not in the main repository, but there is a Rosegarden package in one of the additional repositories - http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education/openSUSE_12.1/.

Package search is helpful:
http://software.opensuse.org/search?q=rosegarden&baseproject=openSUSE%3A12.1&lang=en&exclude_debug=true

Re:I may give this a go...

[recrudescence]

I find this comment interesting. Rosegarden was the first time I compiled something from source in years and thought "This is how compiling from source should be like!"
In particular, it was the first program that offered me a concise but inclusive list of all the commands that I would need on my system, and the packages that provide them, before going on to compile at all. No crappy 'configure, oops you're missing this, retry' business. If only this requirement had been made a gnu standard ages ago!

Re:I may give this a go...

[IANAAC]

It's not in the main repository, but there is a Rosegarden package in one of the additional repositories - http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education/openSUSE_12.1/.

Package search is helpful: http://software.opensuse.org/search?q=rosegarden&baseproject=openSUSE%3A12.1&lang=en&exclude_debug=true

Thanks for that! I was looking under the multimedia section - silly me.

Seriously, thanks.

Re:I may give this a go...

[timbo234]

Yes there is, it's in the Education repository. You can find it by going to http://software.opensuse.org/ and searching for 'rosegarden'.

Unfortuantely opensuse still operates a two-tier repository system where packages go into a 'devel' repository with similar packages (the list can be seen here http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/) and only get moved into the main distro repository (called 'oss') if someone promises to maintain them. (Even though of course not all packages in the main repo are well maintained)

In short if you can't find something go to http://software.opensuse.org/

Re:I may give this a go...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why, but it is now (12.1) in the Education repo, where, formerly it was in multimedia or something. Enable the repo. Install. done

choices are good

[roman_mir]

Choices are good, but regardless of this axiom I cannot shake off the sense that something is wrong with Suse because of Novell/Microsoft connection. It's just tainted for me for this reason and I can't get over it.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are a zealot and are no longer a reasonable person.

Re:choices are good

[FlyingGuy]

Baby with the bathwater much?

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

You are maybe right. But that does not change my perception. Do you know - image is important. I see now Novell and Microsoft as a couple of conspirators together for whatever reason. Maybe I am 100% wrong, it doesn't matter. It's impossible to get rid of the taint.

Re:choices are good

[Billly Gates]

Suse once had great font rendering on LCD screens due to their version of XOrg implementing proper font rendering and hinting.

Cleartype fonts semi existence thanks to the MS deal. They are crippled intentionally and butt ugly on purpose because MS wants you to use Windows instead. I refuse to use SuSE and yes the deal harmed Suse and crippled their own product.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

yes, and it is just one reason. But it is deeper than that. It's about Novell working with MS in principle. I am sure many don't see it that way and they will point fingers here and say: you are biased, a zealot, blah blah.

Well, it's perception, and that is near as important as reality (and in this case it is even more important.)

Once a company is tainted by working with the likes of Microsoft or say Oracle, that's it. Sure, at work many people have to use products from these companies, but that's not what I am talking about.

The question of-course is: IS perception really that important (never mind the actual problems with the deal itself)? Is it important and how important, in terms of how many people refuse to deal with Novell for this reason alone.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a religion, people.

Right?
RIGHT? ...you guys?

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

It doesn't have to be a religion to be disgusted enough with something. I don't have a problem with quite a number of companies (even though I am probably wearing rose colored glasses there as well), but MS and Oracle are two examples of companies that I can't stand in terms of their basic behavior.

I would not deal with them on voluntary basis, why is that a religion? If not dealing with them includes not dealing with large companies who have agreements with those particular businesses, then I don't want to deal with them by proxy either. How is that a religion?

There is a practical matter here as well - I don't want any part of my time or money going towards those companies, even if by proxy in any way shape or form. It's a choice.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

can't post anything without somebody getting offended.

Feelings, you are hurting some feelings around here.

Re:choices are good

[vurian]

You do know Suse is no longer owned by Novell, right? That it's been spun off as a separate company again by Attachmate?

Re:choices are good

[Grishnakh]

Once a company is tainted by working with the likes of Microsoft or say Oracle, that's it.

Oracle isn't even in the same ballpark as MS. MS has actively been trying to harm Linux and OSS with its patent extortion and racketeering, and only now has someone (Barnes & Noble) finally stood up to them and release the info on the patents in question (which of course have turned out to be totally bogus with tons of prior art not to mention total lack of non-obviousness). MS has been actively hostile to Linux and OSS ever since these became popular, and is only getting worse. What has Oracle done to OSS? Nothing I can think of. They even bought Sun and kept OpenOffice.org as an OSS product; of course, they handled it in a totally incompetent manner causing a fork, and are now throwing in the towel, but this doesn't come close to being a malicious action like those of MS. Oracle hasn't been much of a friend to OSS, but they haven't been much of an enemy of it either. They even have their own Linux distro that they try to push with their proprietary database software. They also bought MySQL and haven't killed that or taken it proprietary either. Honestly, I don't know what's with all the Oracle hatred. They have a few OSS products that they semi-competently (or incompetently for OO.o) handle, they haven't been suing Linux users over bogus patents, what's the problem?

Re:choices are good

[Grishnakh]

What's the problem with Oracle? It's not like they're running around trying to extort money from Linux-based device makers using bogus patents they refuse to reveal. The only thing to be mad at them about is how incompetently they handled OO.o, but it doesn't matter anyway since LO is doing just fine.

Re:choices are good

[MrHanky]

You don't have to be religious to have an irrational hatred of everything Microsoft. Being an idiot is perfectly sufficient.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

>Baby with the bathwater much?

Well, if you had lots of babies - siblings, all performing the same tasks adequately - and one of them made a deal with Microsoft, wouldn't you throw that one out with the dirty water if any of the others could do what babies are supposed to do well enough?

Besides, there are too many humans as it is. Throwing this particular baby out would have synergistic effects in areas besides freedom.

Re:choices are good

[Shimbo]

What's the problem with Oracle? It's not like they're running around trying to extort money from Linux-based device makers using bogus patents they refuse to reveal.

It looks very like that to me, except that Oracle went after Google directly. They still want their piece of Android though.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Novell got Microsoft to pay them a big wad of cash and also got Microsoft to encourage companies to install Linux.

Don't you wish every distro could pull off that sort of deal?

Or is it only okay if it's Canonical trying to pull the same sort of deal "give us money and encourage people to use our distro" with Ubuntu and hardware manufacturers?

Re:choices are good

[sourcerror]

B-b-but but but Google is good, and Oracle sued them, so Oracle is bad. (I agree on that software patents are really bad.)

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

But it is deeper than that. It's about Novell working with MS in principle ... Once a company is tainted by working with the likes of Microsoft or say Oracle, that's it.

Linus Torvalds has said he has no problems working with MS or any other company. As he put it, "Microsoft hatred is a disease".

I'm a big believer in "technology over politics". I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing etc issues. I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out. There are 'extremists' in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do 'free software' any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.

"extremists" - in other words, freetards like RMS, and, evidently, you. Sad, really.

And further, here:

âoeI agree that itâ(TM)s driven by selfish reasons, but thatâ(TM)s how all open source code gets written! We all âoescratch our own itchesâ. Itâ(TM)s why I started Linux, itâ(TM)s why I started git, and itâ(TM)s why I am still involved. Itâ(TM)s the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree.

So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. Thatâ(TM)s the point of open source â" the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the âyourâ(TM) in question happens to be.

Does anybody complain when hardware companies write drivers for the hardware they produce? No. That would be crazy. Does anybody complain when IBM funds all the POWER development, and works on enterprise features because they sell into the enterprise? No. That would be insane.

So the people who complain about Microsoft writing drivers for their own virtualization model should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are being so hypocritical.â

So, since Linus cooperates with Microsoft (even the SAMBA team is now taking patches from Microsoft), what OS are you going to switch to? OSX? They've cooperated with Microsoft in the past. Plan9? Won't you be running that on Intel? Intel cooperates with Microsoft. And Microsoft is now working with ARM ...

I guess it's time for you to stop being a hypocrite and go on eBay to look for an old Atari800, since ALL Linux, and all current hardware, is "contaminated" by Microsoft. Let us know how that works out for you with your 8k of ram (48k max)... oops - Atari BASIC by Microsoft. Sorry. Guess you'll have to stop using computers entirely now.

Re:choices are good

[shutdown -p now]

The reason why Windows fonts look ugly on FreeTypeis because they have embedded hints that are hand-tuned to look pixel-perfect on Windows font rasterizer (with or without ClearType). Unless your font renderer works exactly the same as ClearType, you won't have them looking as good.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

I am disgusted with Oracle almost as much as I am with MS. It's because of their business practices, I worked in too many places where I saw people working as 'technical consultants', being in reality Oracle sales personnel, pushing their products, be it BEA or Aqualogic or whatever flavor of the month. It didn't matter what the question was, the answer was always the same - Oracle, oracle, oracle. And I don't have a problem with their database for large stuff, but I can't stand their guts because of all the BRIBERY that I saw. Is that a good enough reason? Bribes. Bribes to management, not directly as in money, but all the things, the 'seminars' done at some resorts, the tickets to games, all the 'golf playing' - that's how the decisions are being done and I vomit from their name.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

You can preach your vomit inducing 'enterprise' level bribery if you like. I am not interested, go sell Oracle licenses to somebody over at resorts.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am not interested in dealing with Microsoft or Oracle, what is not clear? What do you CARE what I think? Don't you have something better to do?

Re:choices are good

[rim_namor]

They are a patent whore.
They are a whore in general, whoring themselves out in any large company with so called 'technical consultants', who are in reality sales whores, just pushing Oracle for everything, and apparently the management was always happy to buy yet another piece of shit Oracle product (Aqualogic, as a great example of real real fecal matter, the kind that makes goatse and tubgirl look and feel like those who OCD over microbes on their hands).

It's disgusting from start to finish, what can I say. I always recommend something else.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Where in my post did I mention Oracle? Oh, I didn't. Where in my post did I mention anything "enterprisy"? Oh, again, I didn't.

What I did do was point out that even Linus thinks freetards need to grow up, take a bath, and stop hating on the competition.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Well, at least this time you remembered to check the "post anonymously" box.

Still, your zealotry still makes you a freetard ... you can go back to sucking RMS's ...um ... cheesy toes or something. The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.

Re:choices are good

[rim_namor]

Oracle is just a metaphor, same as MS, it doesn't matter which one it is.

Why should one STOP hating on the competition even? There is no rational reason NOT to hate 'competition', but it's not about competition.

In fact Windows XP or 2000 are pretty decent systems, and so what? The hate is not about their products, it's about them as entities. The companies, their behavior, their entitlement. They have the money and so they are 'entitled' to waltz into anything with their bribes, and that's what they do.

Bribes and politics, that's what these guys are involved in. Products? Products don't matter. It's the companies and their behavior.

This is not even about free source or open source, it's about these particular entities - companies.

MS, Oracle - those are just two. I don't need to start a list here, it will not be too short unfortunately. Whatever you have to say, keep it.

Re:choices are good

[rim_namor]

Well, at least this time you remembered to check the "post anonymously" box.

I post anonymous because my limit of 10 posts a day is reached. While you, I am sure, are only posting the kinds of messages that are well received by the /crowd, the groupthink shit, mine are generally voted up and down many times over and over and over, and generally those who don't like the message have more moderation points, however this is done, and thus I can either post as an AC or I can post from my second account.

Are you satisfied with the explanation, enterprise boy?

Still, your zealotry still makes you a freetard ... you can go back to sucking RMS's ...um ... cheesy toes or something. The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.

As to accusing me on 'sucking RMS' whatever, why don't you go fuck yourself.

I am quite anti-RMS on the issue of proprietary software and I have comments to prove it, you prick.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Here's a suggestion ... prove the bribes. Lockheed was fined for bribery. It's a criminal activity. So, either prove the bribes or move on.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to prove anything to you, prick. What I saw is enough for me, you go ahead and move on, dickhead.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

While you, I am sure, are only posting the kinds of messages that are well received by the /crowd

No - I get lots of posts that are modded down to oblivion. I was one of the first to rag on Ubuntu and Canonical when everyone else thought they were the next "great Linux hope", for example. Just like I'm one of the more vocal voices against RMS and his stupidity (and the damage he does to open source).

However, unlike you, many of my posts are seen as offering more than your silly rants - I back up mine with facts rather than your schizoid fantasies.

Re:choices are good

[rim_namor]

Yeah, I just glanced at your "well reasoned" posts. I don't know what you are, a tom boy or a barbie girl, but your 'well reasoned' posts are shit.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

I don't have to prove anything to you, prick. What I saw is enough for me, you go ahead and move on, dickhead.

Oh looky looky, someone is really angry that when they make an accusation and they're told to back it up or STFU.

You didn't "see anything" in terms of criminal behavior by any such corporation - if you did, and you didn't report it, you're an enabler. Instead, you're just another freetard who can't accept that people like Linus Torvalds have no problem with cooperating with companies like Microsoft to advance technology.

Grow up. Do you actually eat food with that mouth?

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Don't like it that most of the people who believe in open source software think that RMS is doing more harm than good with his public demeanor, his lack of personal hygiene, his attitude towards women, children, and families? Too bad, so sad, SUX 2B U.

Don't like it that the people who are actually producing stuff, like Linus Torvalds, said that freetards should grow up and stop the Microsoft-hating? Again, who cares except other freetards.

Re:choices are good

[rim_namor]

Oh, so you are well reasoned

  and my comments are 'silly rants'.

This comes from somebody making arguments like these:

Q. Why does RMS hate Oracle's Java?
A. He thinks the garbage collector has it in for him.

Q. Why doesn't RMS use Gold Bond medicated foot powder?
A. Because it's finger-lickin' good!

Q. Why doesn't RMS use toilet paper?
A. Because he *likes* to raise a big stink!
A2. It's part of the infrastucture for his own personal "cloud".
A3. ... ask Colonel Sanders ...

Q. Why do hotels ban him from the pool?
A. The Coast Guard won't send an oil skimmer afterward.

Q. Why did RMS make the tasteless Steve Jobs remarks in the first place?
A. Because when you don't have enough enemies to feed your paranoia, crowd-source it!

Q. Why does RMS hate the iPhone?
A. When he enters "5318008" and turns it upside-down, it rights itself.

---

My position - Oracle and MS are corrupt thieves, who use bribery in day to day activities.

My position is that RMS doesn't understand economics and I have clearly shown it.

Your positions is that RMS has a nasty beard or whatever, while Oracle and Microsoft being respectable businesses (and at least one of them is a convicted monopolistic abuser - proven in court).

How about you go fuck yourself.

Re:choices are good

[RubberMallet]

openSUSE isn't Novell anymore... it's its own thing now that is community run, not managed/directed by Novell/Attachmate.

Re:choices are good

[mikechant]

Grow up.

(Not the GP or any previous poster in this thread)

I usually find your posts quite reasonable and informative, but telling someone to grow up because of *their* childish abuse when you've just used the word 'freetard' twice and mentioned 'having a bath' shows you've got some growing up to do yourself.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Also nobody from previous posts...

I would argue it's different. Basically, "grown ups" use insults that link back to some ideology or agenda. Children throw insults for the sake of throwing insults

tomhudson is using "freetard" as a stereotype label against the anti-MS/anti-enterprise people. It's sort of like using "commie" and "republitard" (yes I saw this somewhere on /.) as insults in a political flame war - and even adults use those (or rather, it's especially adults who engage in such partisan bickering)

Conversely, "prick" and "dickhead" are just insults for the sake of being insulting. You could replace it with "poopie head" or "you're ugly" and it would make little difference

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

No, nowhere in this thread have I even mentioned Oracle, you silly moron. However, YOU have made the claim that both companies are involved in bribing people. I pointed out that bribery is a criminal offense, and that if you have knowledge of such crimes (which you claimed to have) that you had a legal obligation to report it, or you yourself are aiding and abetting - so either you're a liar, or a crook. Your own words condemn you to this Hobson's choice.

So, which are you, a whiney lying freetard who makes things up, or a crook? Either way, you're just some fat loser.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

The poster in question is doing the "look through the target's last posts" and posting, both under their nic, and because they are in karma hell and limited to only a few posts a day, also anonymously.

I've been through this sort of thing more than a few times, and the people who do it are uniformly immature, no matter what their ages. They really do need to realize that life is a lot more complex, but they can't - they're too psychologically invested in a black-and-white world, with no shades of grey and no nuances. Most of the time, they go away after a few days to a few months (it's possible to apply game theory to this sort of problem, which is what dictates the form of my responses ... basically, call them out on their lies - there are always lies - and treat them as you would a spoiled rotten brat).

Of course, there's always the exception. The one time that the police got involved (it was the stalkers' employer who called them in, not me) the person doing the harassment was fired. The police officer asked me if I wanted to pursue further action wrt the cyberstalking, and I said basically "They're an idiot, they've been punished sufficiently by being fired, they won't be doing it again, so it's all good."

Now, on the use of the term "freetard" - this is something that I thought about for a while before whole-heartedly adopting it after RMS did his uncouth dump the day after Jobs died. If we are going to make open software generally acceptable, we need to lose the freetards, and the only way that's going to happen is if we ourselves actively oppose them. This includes labeling them as such, so that people know we're not all "programmers don't deserve to make a living you should just write free code because otherwise you're evil and people should steal your code" like RMS publicly says (I've posted links to speeches on the FSFE web site where he actually says that people should pirate closed-source software because if you work on closed-source software, you're evil. That's more than just retarded - that's the essence of the freetard, and when stripped to those basics, it's obvious that it's retarded :-)

So we have three choices.

1. Publicly disavow the whole freetard philosophy, labeling people who adopt freetard stands and exposing the often-nasty tactics such as demonizing their opponents (as RMS continues to do) as freetards;
2. Be silent, because otherwise the freetards will attack you (and we all have our vulnerabilities, and many will quite naturally figure it's not worth the risk or hassle);
3. Try to "bargain" with them, which, while reasonable, doesn't work with zealots. Their hierarchy of needs is not the same as a non-zealot, which is why being reasonable just doesn't work. "With reasonable people, try reason. With unreasonable people, try something else." They see it as a zero-sum game, with no "win-win" scenarios possible. You can't convince them, you can't reason with them, you can't bargain with them - but you CAN outlast them. If it happens often enough, then sometimes a lightbulb will go on and they'll chance a win-win. But if you don't challenge them, that will never happen, and we all end up a bit poorer.

Of course, I'm willing to hear counter-arguments or other thoughts ... like anything else, YMMV, and it's not black or white.

Re:choices are good

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, those are bad practices. Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty common in most large corporations; they're always going to want to sell you their most expensive crap, and sales reps giving customers game tickets, taking them out for golf, etc. is nothing new.

I had forgotten about the Oracle suit against Google, but still when I look at which company affects me personally the most, it's easily MS because of their constant anti-OSS patent trolling (exfat, android patents, etc.).

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

silly moron
liar, or a crook
whiney lying freetard
crook
just some fat loser

- that's about as useful a conversation as can be had with you.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Just remember - you started it. Don't start what you can't finish. BTW - we're still waiting for you to produce any evidence for your claims that Oracle or Microsoft have bribed people.

You made the claims, but you're doing everything you can to avoid backing them up. Typical big-mouthed zealot - long on rhetoric, short on facts.

You said you knew of incidents where Oracle or Microsoft had bribed people ... so put up or shut up.

Or you can keep on providing me with opportunities to show how much of a stupid liar you are ... because a smart liar would at least pick an easier target.

So, show us some proof of your claims.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

This is my thread, bitch.

Your statements mean exactly nothing. I provide opinion.

You provide shit that belongs in kindergarten. (and all the other nonsense that comes out of your mouth).

You are not even a target, you aren't even playing the same game here.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

You'r so full of sj*t - you forgot to check the "post anonymously: when you wrote this

I can't stand their guts because of all the BRIBERY that I saw.

So, either you're a crook yourself - after all, you claim to have seen criminal activity and not reported it - or you're just a lying freetard. Our you're both.

So again, back up your claims about bribes. Liar.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

You'r so full of sj*t - you forgot to check the "post anonymously: when you wrote this

- you are a total ass. I never check 'AC' on purpose, only when my account reaches the limit and I have to post as AC or switch to my second account. So go fuck yourself, you ain't helping anybody here, that's for sure.

So, either you're a crook yourself - after all, you claim to have seen criminal activity and not reported it - or you're just a lying freetard. Our you're both.

- you are an IDIOT as well. Bribes are given left, right and center, not in the form of money even, but as gifts and expensive trips and tickets. It's done INSIDE PRIVATE COMPANIES, you moron.

This is not a government issue, there is nothing CRIMINAL about it, but there is the problem of ETHICS, which you clearly don't understand or know about. Again, go fuck yourself, you are not helping anybody here, you fucking moron.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

- you are an IDIOT as well. Bribes are given left, right and center, not in the form of money even, but as gifts and expensive trips and tickets. It's done INSIDE PRIVATE COMPANIES, you moron. This is not a government issue, there is nothing CRIMINAL about it,

So, now you want us all to believe that no government ever bought anything from Oracle or Microsoft? You're such an idiot. Keep back-pedaling ... it's fun to watch you drowning in your own BS.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

So, now you want us all to believe that no government ever bought anything from Oracle or Microsoft? You're such an idiot. Keep back-pedaling ... it's fun to watch you drowning in your own BS.

- you are a fucking idiot of amazing degree. I have never worked for government. I worked for telcos, banks and insurance. I am talking about private companies, where Oracle and MS and some others as well come with 'gifts' to top management so that their products are selected not on merit but based on those gifts. You are a moron of unbelievable proportions. Also no logic. Are you a chick?

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Are YOU a chick? Because you certainly are a slut!

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

I see I touched a nerve. Well, this is a boys' club, honey.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

Again trying to avoid proving what you claimed. You're such a liar, and SO easy to prove you're a liar. PROVE that Oracle or Microsoft bribed someone.

Name names, dates, and the type of gift. Both Microsoft and Oracle have policies about that.

Oracle's Code of Ethics and Business Conduct - see page 13 - Gifts

Oracle employees generally may accept unsolicited gifts or other business courtesies from actual or potential customers, suppliers, or other business partners provided they are not of material value and are not given with the purpose of influencing oneâs judgment. It is never appropriate to solicit gifts or other courtesies directly or indirectly. If you are offered a gift or other business courtesy of material value from an individual, firm, or representative of a firm who has or seeks a business relationship with Oracle, you must demonstrate that the gift could not be construed as an attempt by the offering party to secure favorable treatment. You must obtain written approval from the Senior Vice President of your organization and from your Regional Compliance & Ethics Officer before accepting the gift.

As an example, on page 14 they say that if a vendor sends them a gift certificate at their home "because it's the holidays", they have to return it to the vendor along with a note explaining that Oracle's policy forbids it.

Microsoft's Code of Business Conduct

Microsoft prohibits corruption of government officials and the payments of bribes or kickbacks of any kind, whether in dealings with public officials or individuals in the private sector.

So, again, since Microsoft prohibits all bribes or kickbacks, even in the private sector, or gifts totaling more than $200 per year under any circumstances, put up or shut up.

You keep trying to weasel out of proving what you said. Prove your claim that Oracle or Microsoft engage in bribes via inappropriate gifts, since both companies have policies against bribes, including gifts. Name ONE instance, since you (falsely) claim to have seen this when you (allegedly) "worked for telcos, banks, and insurance."

Also no logic. Are you a chick?

Riiiight, after all, women are not logical .... and yet, you're the one who keeps looking like an idiot, trying to lie his way out of things. Oh, and now we can add misogynist to the list of your character flaws.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

To both you and the parent poster, this is not a "boy's club". Of course, only little boys think that they need a "boys club". So again, back up your claim that Oracle and Microsoft, contrary to their published policies concerning gifts and bribes, gave bribes in the form of gifts.

Because we all know now that you're just a lying schmuck, out of your league, can't even get your story straight, every time you try to embellish it or patch a hole in it you just dig yourself in deeper. Amateur. But keep on - you're a good example of why we need to publicly put down freetards like mad dogs if open source is going to have any credibility with the masses.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

So you are a chick. No surprise, with personal attacks all over the place, clearly a chick SOP.

As to specific cases - clearly I am not going to be provoked on the web to put myself into a situation where I actually start naming names, times, locations. But I do have a resume on line and obviously the cases are linked to the places where I have worked.

Again: this is none of your business. Oracle, MS and others, including HP, IBM, etc. ALL are participating bribing the officials.

As to an UNRELATED TO ME case of Microsoft giving out bribes, that's just TOO EASY,

LMGIFY

and nothing gets done in Russia with buttering the way

As to Oracle, why let's see more.

So you can yell till you are blue in the face. All you are good for is some 'smelly socks' jokes.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

The case you pointed out were against company policy and the people involved were punished. Sort of messes up your lies that the companies do these things. Trying to hold a company responsible for a rogue employee who violates company policy, and fires them when its found out, that's like arguing the post office is responsible when an employee goes postal, or that a school is responsible when a shooter walks in and starts firing. You'll always have problems in any large enough organization.

And remember - YOU are the one who started with the insults. Not me. So, you might want to re-think your criticisms of my giving back as good is I get, lard-head.

BUT - you claimed to have witnessed these incidents personally, and you failed to report them, making you complicit. Remember that - you made the claim, then you tried to modify it, and now you STILL refuse to back it up. You complain that something is corrupt, when you by your own admission are a BIG part of the problem.

Then again, freetards are not noted for logic. It's one reason why Torvalds refuses to say that he does open source software any more - he doesn't want to be associated the extremists nutjobs who think it's some sort of quasi-religion.

Re:choices are good

[Anonymous Coward]

So much love for chicks - do you kiss your mother and wife with that mouth? ;). Or do you have either? The first had no choice.. the second, a fucking fool.

Re:choices are good

[FlyingGuy]

Well that is not particularly true. OpenSuse has always been their own deal, they just get sponsorship dollars from from Novell, not to mention code. And if you go to the website, is still has Novell's logo on the bottom (c) 2008 and the words "Founded By Novell" I still login with my Novell credentials.

Re:choices are good

[roman_mir]

rogue employee who violates company policy,

- bullshit. This is no rogue employee, this is a systematic thing that I have seen happening in a number of companies as a contractor. This is normal operating procedure for large vendors like Oracle and MS and others, their official policy is like US official policy on negotiations between Israel and Palestine, but their real policy is like the real deal that US always pursues in that case. No difference.

And remember - YOU are the one who started with the insults. Not me. So, you might want to re-think your criticisms of my giving back as good is I get, lard-head.

BULLSHIT.

Quote:

in other words, freetards like RMS, and, evidently, you. Sad, really. ..... .....
I guess it's time for you to stop being a hypocrite

you are full of shit and that's the record.

BUT - you claimed to have witnessed these incidents personally, and you failed to report them, making you complicit

- I didn't start with insults, but I am going to finish with them - you are a MORON. You are a functional idiot.

The companies I worked for had this going on at the HIGHEST levels, so you can go complain about CEO and his top circle to himself, but that just would prove you to be a total retard.

You lose at every turn, you don't even need to understand it, but you are such a complete waste of my time.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

You keep changing your story ... you claim that Microsoft and Oracle bribe and that you've seen it. Then you claim that you saw it when you worked for the banks, telcos and insurance cos. ... now you're not even an employee, just a contractor .... which means you were never employed by any of them, just some small 3rd party vendor that did what - fill the coke machines in the cafeteria?

AND it gets better (or worse) ... you STILL claim you've seen Microsoft and Oracle bribe, and you still refuse to give a single instance of where you've personally seen it, even though both companies have policies in place, including firing the people involved.

So it's simple - you're either part of the problem yourself, or you're a liar. Or both. I'd tell you to get lost, but you already are.

"What a maroon" -- Bugs Bunny.

Re:choices are good

[unixisc]

It's only Suse, not all of Linux, that has this history, and that too, Suse has now been spun off. At any rate, if one decides to jettison Linux b'cos of Linux cooperating w/ Microsoft, there are still the choices of the *BSDs, and if one feels brave enough, Minix. As far as hardware goes, the old sparcstations were good, if one can get one any more, a lot of which happened before Oracle bought Sun, and which can be used w/ BSD. Then there are other non-x86 based computers as well - currently mostly legacy boxes, but if one wishes, and there's a big enough market, one could start something based on MIPS or PowerPC and put one of those boycott MS/Oracle/your select group of companies w/ it.

Re:choices are good

[tomhudson]

In case you missed it, Microsoft involvement with linux is not history ... the linux kernel team has accepted patches from Microsoft for the 3.0 kernel - so this certainly isn't "just something OLD Suse did". Microsoft made the most changes to the linux 3.0 kernel :-)

And of course FreeBSD (and by extension, the others, since they do tend to share) has a ton of code from Apple, as well as code the devs were paid to write by Apple.

Some zealots would say that such cooperation is anathema, but the kernel devs obviously take a more pragmatic approach. For them, there's gnu/hurd, "under development" for more than 25 years - which needs to use drivers from linux (from linux 2.0 as of this summer - talk about dead!), and run in a vm (usually atop linux), blah blah blah but not do any real work.

Have your pet spayed or neutered

[TommyGunnRX]

Is it me or has Gnome 3x neutered the desktop? When I first used Gnome 3 with F15 I really liked the clean and cutting edge look. But 15 minutes later I choked on the fact that Gnome 3 had me bent over and handcuffed... doing things the way they wanted.

I looked at the screenshot and couldn't really tell if I was looking at Fedora or openSUSE, save the open browser content.

I LOVE what Linux Mint has done. They've incorporated the best of Gnome 3 and greatly improve the experience.

Oh, and YEAH for openSUSE, high-five!

Re:Have your pet spayed or neutered

[Grishnakh]

I looked at the screenshot and couldn't really tell if I was looking at Fedora or openSUSE, save the open browser content.

This is by design. The Gnome developers want all Gnome installations to look exactly the same. Jon McCan't even said in an interview that he doesn't want you using any themes or customizing your Gnome desktop in any way, because this diminishes Gnome's look, and other people watching you at your computer won't be able to tell it's Gnome. Basically, the Gnome devs are trying to copy Apple and their totally non-customizable UIs, thinking that if it works for Apple, then it'll work for them too.

Re:Have your pet spayed or neutered

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you babbling about?

Re:Have your pet spayed or neutered

[mcgrew]

Hmmm, I never did like Gnome. This makes me like it even less. IMO the best thing about Linux is unlike Windows, it works the way YOU want it to work. With MS (and from what you say, now GNOME) it's their way or the highway. Nope, it's MY computer, not some gnome's box.

Re:Have your pet spayed or neutered

[couchslug]

"Jon McCan't even said in an interview that he doesn't want you using any themes or customizing your Gnome desktop in any way, because this diminishes Gnome's look, and other people watching you at your computer won't be able to tell it's Gnome."

That's a fine reason to work against Gnome and steer new users away from it. "It's a half-arsed Apple imitation by fanbois who hate choice as much as Apple."

If they want Apple they should BUY Apple and get the "good" parts of that walled garden.

Re:Have your pet spayed or neutered

[serviscope_minor]

100% agree.

This is why fvwm, xmonad, ratpoison, etc all exist. The unix philosophy has always been that the user is king. I like it that way, and I dislike some of the recent trends.

Snapper/btrfs

[mx b]

I am curious about the btrfs filesystem and the Snapper (file snapshots and backup/restoration) usage, but I have been a bit afraid to use it as my main fs since I do not believe I have seen an official stable btrfs and tools release. Does anyone have experience with btrfs, is it production ready? (not necessarily for a server, but you know, would hate to lose any of my personal data - sure I can make backups but I prefer reliable things)

Re:Snapper/btrfs

[Anonymous Coward]

it is definitely not production ready.
It doesn't have a fsck tool yet, which means any kind of inconsistency will make your fs unusable.
there is a btfs fsck out already, but it only detects corruption, and doesn't fix it (the major problem).

Re:Snapper/btrfs

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, have been wanting something like this for ages - as easy as taking a VirtualBox snapshot and rolling back. Perfect for testing those software installs that might screw up your system. Great for supporting users as well.

Actually

[masternerdguy]

I've been a suse user since 8.1, and have tried many distros (ubuntu, debian, gentoo, mandriva, fedora, etc). I prefer suse. So yes I use openSuSe on my laptop and desktop.

Re:Actually

[mcgrew]

Hmm, I use to use Mandriva (Mandrake before that) and am on kubuntu now. It's been well over ten years since I tried SUSE, iirc the only probelm I had with it was a flaky video driver, and from what I've seen since I'm pretty sure they've patched that one up. I'll have to give it another try.

Wouldn't you know it, I just upgraded my kubuntu box over the weekend. Oh, well.

I was happy to find that the latest kubuntu has Samba turned on by default, and was able to see shares from my win 7 notebook, and then at lunch today was chagrined that it stopped working. How is Samba support in Suse?

Re:Actually

[rubycodez]

I *used* to be a SuSE user, until Novell made deal and took massive monies from Microsoft. To hell with Novell

Re:Actually

[InspectorGadget1964]

Novell is no more. I'm sure you will be well received if you come back.

Re:Actually

[rubycodez]

They are still around, now as a wholly owned subsidiary of Attachmate. The Microsoft payments continue in this year. Fuck 'em.

Re:Actually

[InspectorGadget1964]

No need to be vulgar, you are just showing your true colours.....

Re:Actually

[tian2992]

It's actually pretty good, SUSE even hires several of the devs for Samba. It is also easy to configure, thanks to the YaST modules dedicated to Samba.

Re:Actually

[rubycodez]

we need more vulgarity, as mega-corporations take away freedom, quality of life, and useful tools for computation. It raises awareness.

Re:Actually

[InspectorGadget1964]

So, you imply that vulgarity increases freedom and quality of life? Your language will only reach those that are not offended by it. It will turn away everyone that you need, those with education and good manners, because, believe it or not, those are the people making decisions that will affect all the rest of the world. You better learn to speak and write clearly and politely so they pay attention to you.

Re:Gay is as gay does

[masternerdguy]

Whether mono the disease or mono the toolkit, I dare say I enjoyed both. When I had mono I was in elementary school and got to miss 3 months. Mono is a neat toy to play with as well.

downloads truncate

[Anomalyst]

the anl, tds mirrors the and direct link downloads all truncate at ~325MB of 4.3G

Re:downloads truncate

[nzac]

Use the metalink though a download manager, aria2c worked last time.

Re:downloads truncate

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried a torrent?

Re:downloads truncate

[PReDiToR]

Don't be silly, only pirates use .torrents for movies and music *sigh*

Horray! Oh wait GNOME 3...

[Tyrannosaur]

I am happy for the new release- but will it be hard to install with the nice GNOME 2 or do I have to switch exclusively to XFCE?

Re:Horray! Oh wait GNOME 3...

[nzac]

There will be repos in multiple locations roll back to Gnome 2.
I suspect they will not be found on the front page yet though.

Re:Horray! Oh wait GNOME 3...

[PReDiToR]

Install with anything you like, then use YaST to remove the crap and install whatever you want.

There might even be a version of KDE3.x in a repo somewhere if you really want to see openSUSE doing what it did best.

buzzword bingo

[DrSkwid]

distros are so 90's

It works nicely!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it on x86 and x86-64 systems for a month or so and it is working quite well.

The announcement above neglected to mention that its running the 3.1.0 kernel and that plus the new compiler/libraries will make life interesting for those of us that live and work in the IT world. Other updates like systemd will also have interesting consequences. Most apps seem fairly happy living and playing on 12.1 however those using CommVault may expect some real pain.

For those that use RHEL and SLES/SLED in their enterprise this is a good introduction of things to come. For some of us that will be sooner rather than later. SLES/SLED 11 SP2, slated to show up in the first quarter of 2012, will be running the 3.0.7 kernel so playing with 12.1 now will give you a taste of things to come.

Re:It works nicely!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually the changes you are seeing in OpenSUSE 12.1 won't show up until SLED/SLES 12.0. I have already seen the betas of SP2 for SLE 11 - not much difference. It is just maintenance updates and some changes to autoyast.

Re:It works nicely!

[Anonymous Coward]

Got any more info on SLES/SLED 11 SP2 you can share? What version of GNOME is in there? (Please don't be GNOME 3, please don't be GNOME 3... Moving to GNOME 3 in an SP release would be crazy.)

I beg your pardon

[Anonymous Coward]

They never promised you a rose garden.

Re:I beg your pardon

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang you, Anonymous Coward, if infact that is your real name. Shame on you for stealing my joke even before I had a chance to think if it. You're like the Denis Leary to my Bill Hicks.

Wouldn't it be nice to get a room full of developers (of open suse or Ubuntu studio (which i think was the distro whose menu I was staring at while I asked why no rosegarden)), all hunched faces close to their monitors synchronously to raise their heads and look at the camera/you and burst out singing that line? I think that would be neat.

Re:I beg your pardon

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg your pardon.

Re:I beg your pardon

[Anonymous Coward]

Doh! didn't see the heading's changed.

You must feel so proud of yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until 12.2 arrives...

I got news for you: OpenSuse 12.1 is already old. That's why I compile my own sources from the maker. I'm not even compliant to Linux From Scratch.

Re:You must feel so proud of yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you, you must be a real man. I bow down before you and your hordes of concubines.

Re:You must feel so proud of yourself...

[Stormtrooper42]

Well, there's this repository ("Tumbleweed" they call it) that basically turns OpenSUSE into a rolling release distro.
It's optional, though, and not enabled by default.

KDE 3 back as DE choice

[SharkByte]

Given the general negative reception of GNOME 3 (and Unity and to a lesser extend still also KDE 4), it surprises me that I haven't seen it much mentioned on the net that KDE 3 is back as a DE choice. Now if only the MATE (GNOME 2 continuation) was also included...

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[amRadioHed]

As far as I've heard, the only negative reception KDE 4 still gets is from people who haven't used it since 4.1 was released.

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[richlv]

i'm using 4.6. i still regularly see tasks overlapping in the taskbar, kmix ends up with some binary crap in xml and then decides to stop working & eat 100% cpu, upon startup it does "something" for good 10 to 15 seconds before i can launch any apps, notes plasmoid right now has part of the text invisible, network statistic plamsoids/widgets/whatever are still way worse than knetstats was for kde3...

kde4 is usable, and some features are nice. but damn, 3.5.10 was rock solid. kde4 still has way, way too many bugs. i will try 4.7 (in this new opensuse release, btw :) ) soon, hoping that at least some of the issues have been fixed, but given how they are still there in 4.6, i'm not having much hope.

oh, and there's one long lasting bug even since kde3 - ctrl+shift+c to copy from konsole doesn't put the value in klipper :)

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[timbo234]

"oh, and there's one long lasting bug even since kde3 - ctrl+shift+c to copy from konsole doesn't put the value in klipper :)"

I just tried it right then on an Opensuse 11.4 system (KDE 4.6) and it works.

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[richlv]

it does not. i have 11.4 with kde 4.6, and it does not work :)
see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126221, which maybe, maybe is finally fixed in 4.7 as https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240912

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[timbo234]

It does work, as I said I just tried it. Doesn't mean there's not a bug there but it's something specific to your configuration or what you're doing.

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[richlv]

oh, yes, possible. if you check the history of the first issue, multiple people couldn't reproduce the problem, but then some could.
one thing which might affect this - i have "ignore selection" marked in klipper

Re:KDE 3 back as DE choice

[RubberMallet]

Activities were broken until the end of the 4.6 release cycle. They work quite well now in 4.7 and up... and the speed issue.. yup, they were there in 4.5, but.. basically gone in 4.7 now. I use openSUSE 12.1 on my low end EEE netbook, and it performs VERY well there.. so do not assume that KDE4 was stuck in the mess it was at the 4.5 release... ask anyone who uses KDE4 right now if they would want to go back to 4.5 after using 4.7 and they'll throw rocks at you :-) So... give it a whirl again, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Nope, I tried SuSE

[HalAtWork]

That's silly. When Novell bought SuSE, they gave away kits at nearly every consumer electronics show, including those in america, that's how I got mine. They also offered to mail them out free if you couldn't find one in your local area. That was for SuSE 9. I've still got mine. Prior to that, a friend had been paying for SuSE since 7 (I'm not sure what the deal was, apparently it was hard to obtain free because of YaST, or update services, or something?). At the time though, I was getting into Fedora and had a much easier time with it. I didn't want to use SuSE because you did everything through their proprietary configuration interface (YaST), and I wanted to learn a more "standard" way of doing things that would apply to all distros. Since I was just testing the waters at that point, I didn't want to have to learn something I couldn't use elsewhere. Not only that, but many how-tos would refer to editing .conf files, and YaST would throw up errors and try to replace my manually configured file every time I wanted to do something like this. It also seemed much easier to find .rpms for RedHat, or .debs for Debian.

Ultimately I ended up using Ubuntu, because at one point there was a controversy over Fedora with regards to versions not being supported very long or at all, or being bleeding-edge-only, and I wanted something a little more stable. I also got bogged down in RPM hell because I did want to try certain packages that were not officially supported, and repositories that packaged them didn't have common dependencies, and although I tried compiling the software myself, there were compile issues I had trouble resolving for certain software.

Now I'm trying out Debian, to gain experience and progress in my knowledge of the GNU/Linux platform on something that's not too far off from what I'm using now.

Re:Nope, I tried SuSE

[wintercolby]

Actually, all decent Linux distros come with some form of proprietary configuration tool. One can configure SuSE and OpenSuSE about as easily as RedHat, in fact most of the configuration files and log files are identical between the two. The big difference there is that SuSE has an excellent configuration tool where one can go to do all of their GUI administration. It's really well done, and makes RH tools remind me of Windows for Workgroups. Any good admin can configure their system quickly from the command line, I make many of my modifications with sed, awk or vi. You don't have to use the very well made config tool if you don't want to.

Re:Nope, I tried SuSE

[pnutjam]

I adopted SUSE back in the 8.x days because the only spare computer I had was an old laptop. I tried dozens of linux versions and only SUSE reliabley detected hardware and allowed me to use the wireless card. OpenSUSE still has better hardware detection then any other linux distribution. For awhile I switched to Ubuntu because some sofware was packaged for debian and not for suse, but the Suse has been closing that gap agressivley. Suse Studio is also one of the most amazing products. I will be starting my torrent later tonight.

I am a very satisfied OpenSUSE user!

Re:Nope, I tried SuSE

[nzac]

I am referring to home desktop usage as I assume the OP was. Such as in i don't like Ubuntu/fedora /. recommends fedora/Ubuntu and if you don't like that try Mint/Debian and if those fail well you wont like Arch/gentoo so you may as well go back to windows. Notice that openSUSE is ignored. I think opensuse should be the second recommended 'fall-back', after 'fedora/Ubuntu'.

I didn't want to use SuSE because you did everything through their proprietary configuration interface (YaST), and I wanted to learn a more "standard" way of doing things that would apply to all distros.

I'm fairly sure for some (possibly all Yast appears to read config files for the options) options is just a front end to a config file when you don't feel like reading the man/web page for the available options you don't have to use it but sometimes it saves time and stress.

Re:Nope, I tried SuSE

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice in that the ncurses version is pretty much the same as the GUI version, and I appreciate the ability to store the configuration and deploy it among multiple workstations, but I'd still like to have the knowledge to do that manually, and I found that the interface mostly got in the way of doing this. I was just interested in this for desktop use, and the enterprise tools had a lot of options I didn't need.

Re:Nope, I tried SuSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also referring to home desktop usage.

About YaST, it seems to create a hash of the conf files it modifies, and the next time you run it (or at startup), it tries to detect if any of them have been altered and then replaces them if it thinks that's the case. Back in the 7.x days, I couldn't figure out how to get around this. I don't know if this behavior has changed. Wikipedia claims OpenSuSE started with version 10, in 2005, which was after Fedora (2003). I had heard of RedHat a lot, and even had some books with CDs of RedHat that seemed to be easy to get up and running, that's why I was drawn to Fedora. The first Linux I ever tried was Slackware and couldn't really get it running, so I didn't go back to that after I had troubles with SuSE.

I don't feel like openSuSE/SuSE are ignored, they're just not as popular for whatever reason. Neither is Slackware, Gentoo, Yellow Dog, etc. I think maybe Ubuntu/Debian are mentioned so much because of the exposure, Knoppix was the first LiveCD and a lot of people were exposed to the debian architecture. You could use Knoppix as a pre-configured Debian to get started off. Fedora/RedHat are popular just because of how often they are mentioned everywhere and how popular they are in professional use.

I'm sure it's different now, but you have to remember that early on it was difficult to experiment with SuSE without paying for it and also paying for updates, it was hard to get a hold of. I don't remember being able to find ISOs or disk images of it easily. It was a hurdle for someone who is just fooling around on their computer. Because of that, it was also hard to find SuSE rpms for popular software. I remember choosing distros to fool around with by seeing what packages were available for software I wanted to try, and it was pretty much RedHat RPMs and Debian .debs.

Maybe I will try

[mmontuori]

This one looks good, maybe I will try it... push me away from Ubuntu is kind of hard... http://www.montuori.net/

Not a linux user, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSUSE is one of the most widespread distributions in existence, particularly for enterprise solutions. (Yes, I realize you wouldn't be aware of that sitting in your parents' basement playing warcraft.)

Re:Not a linux user, are you?

[Desler]

That would be SLES not OpenSuSE.

Re:Not a linux user, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that openSUSE is relatively conservative (unlike eg. Fedora which is cutting edge) it is a rather safe bet for corporations. With "Evergreen" there is even free long term support available.

Gnome has always been neutered

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome has always had a neutered desktop.

Even way back when it was first getting off the ground they were in process of removing functionality, moving from Sawfish to Metacity.

I can't say I liked the gnomeification of KDE with KDE-4; but even that crippled interface has more functionality then Gnome.

Re:Gnome has always been neutered

[unrtst]

Bump this up :-)

Sawfish was one of my absolute favorite window managers of all time! I fought with the gnome desktop env to get sawfish back in place on my box for years after they made the metacity switch, and only recently gave up (was just starting up a gnome-panel on login, and considering that my desktop env - no desktop icon manager thing either). Now with gnome 3 sprouting up everywhere, it's looking like LXDE, XFCE, or going back to sawfish.

If you haven't mucked with customizing sawfish (which is super easy to do via the gui), I'd suggest giving it a try. My favorite thing was being able to change the window decorations based on numerous window attribute matches - like all xterms get one style/color of border, and other stuff gets something else, etc... made it very easy to visually spot classes of apps, and allowed me to put thicker window borders on stuff I'd regularly resize (ex. gimp windows; easier to mouse grab) and minimal borders on things I don't need to muck with (ex. IM windows).

Keybindings and configurable actions were very sweet too, and could be set to specific scenarios (when mouse is over desktop, do this thing, but when mouse is over window, do something else, etc, including basing that on window classes so shortcuts could be app-specific).

Looks like it's still actively developed too. If interested: http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Re:Gnome has always been neutered

[Wolfrider]

--I really liked sawfish as well. If you like minimalist WMs, I can recommend trying Fluxbox.

Microsoft Zealot Here...

[fiddley]

Right, MS Zealot here, love their stuff and earn a living from it, but always want to keep my options open, just in case (as well as increasing my nerd rating, of course!). After flirting with linux multiple times since slackware '96, last weekend I've given it yet another go and I'm posting right now from the previous version of SUSE. It's the first distro I've ever installed and EVERYTHING seems to work. I've tried Linux about 20 times, but had given up after a few hours of mucking around because my mouse, or my graphics card, or my sound or my network or SOMETHING wouldn't work. Finally I've found one where everything works! I've been on it a week, and apart from not knowing how to do anything, the only problem is my fans sound like they're about to take off.

So, I'm struggling with the basics, but learning a little every day. Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

Also, is there any mail client I can use to connect to my exchange server for work email? (using MAPI \ RPC over HTTPS)

This is quite a lot of fun, and I've noticed that it seems to render flash video nicer than windows, BBC iPlayer HD is a bit stuttery on windows, but is smooth as silk over here.

Any hints and tips gratefully received!

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[nzac]

Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

Drivers are always an issue in Linux. You said everything works, what divers do you want? If you want the system tray config options gui chances are the hardware manufacturer does not support Linux.

You really want to find the (preferably SUSE) RPM to install something (its much tidier) if not you generally need to follow the instructions on the website for the software you want to install. If they don't want to support openSuSE then you are on your own and need to Google for someone who has made it work.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[someSnarkyBastard]

Try trawling through the Ubuntu forums/wikis, granted it's all for a different distro but Ubuntu is specifically billed as being "newbie-friendly" and has a large, active user community and lots of documentation written for newbies. You can also try asking around on IRC chat, generally folks are pretty civil on the ones I've been to.

As to installing stuff, you can do that through a tool in YaST or possibly PackageKit, everything from kernel drivers to web browsers can be installed through Yast and, if anything, once you discover the beauty of package management on modern Linux systems you may very well look back at the days of *.exe installers and shudder.

in regards to mail clients, I've personally always preferred either Evolution or Thunderbird, give them both a whirl and see what happens.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi - hints and tips -

Always have one linux machine working - and not a desktop. This way you will always be able to set up a web server, samba server and ssh into it do try neat little server things.

Using rsync for backing up remote files is a good systems administrator task.

This way you don't need to have stuff on the desktop working - you'll be running with a linux server.

HTH

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[JCholewa]

> MS Zealot here

Liar. You're no zealot. ;P

> Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is
> 'Program Files',

In POSIX systems (Linux, Unix, BSD, QNX, Mac OS X in some cases, et al), files are split up depending on their role. You know how your settings go in "%APPDATA%\", libraries to in "%SYSTEMROOT%" and other stuff goes in "%PROGRAMFILES%\"? Well, in these systems, it is split up moreso, Generally, all binaries (the executable files) go into "$PREFIX/bin/", global configuration files go into "$PREFIX/etc/", unchanging data files go into "$PREFIX/share/", libraries go into "$PREFIX/lib", log files and changing system files (the print spool, for instance) go into "/var/". Just like in Windows, the system magically handles it all. (note: $PREFIX is usually "/usr", but it is sometimes something else -- I won't get into it here, but there are pretty good reasons for this).

> what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

That's a weird one. What do you do if it's not an msi or an exe in a Windows system?

rpm is the equivalent of msi, except that the package management is generally easier to work with. In suse, you go into Yast's "Software Management" app and it will list most programs (several thousand, generally, organized in categories and easily searchable) that people would need to install. Think of it as "Windows Update", but instead of offering programs that Microsoft makes, it offers programs that everyone makes (or like an app store, except that it's been in Linux for over a decade and doesn't cost money). On the command line, the equivalent is "zypper". You'd type "sudo zypper install firefox", for example, and firefox would be updated. But anyway, if you're using Yast, I suggest going into the "Software Repositories" section, clicking the "Add" button, choosing the "Community Repositories" radio button, and clicking next. The "Packman" repository is highly recommended, as it has a lot of apps that the suse people lack.

rpm files are what you use as an *alternate* solution if the program is not in an available repository, not as your primary means of installing stuff. Repositories can manage installation of prerequisites. You might have tried to install a program requiring .NET in Windows at one point and received an error stating that it was not installed. In the repositories, and situations like that would be subverted by the repository manager going online and downloading/installing what it needs to install the package you actually want.

Sometimes, a developer will release the equivalent of an exe installer for their product. nvidia is an example. This is a TERRIBLE IDEA that you sometimes just can't work around. Running an unknown executable as the administrative user is just asking for pain. I know, because one of my scientists here wiped out his server's entire filesystem by running an install script as root, and I had to pick up after him. rpm (in suse, mandriva, pclinuxos, red hat, et al) and deb (in debian, ubuntu, mint, et al) and various others give limited powers which simply allow the application to get its files in the right place and do some basic maintenance (like starting a daemon if it's a server app).

The third option that people seem to think is ubiquitous in Linux (it isn't ... unless it's a hardcore science research app) is that you're given the source code and you have to compile it. In 90% of these cases, the only real problem is that you might not have a prerequisite app or library installed to complete the compilation. Package management helps with that, but it's better to avoid having to do this. Still, most of the examples you just go to the command line, visit the directory, type "./configure && make install" and have some coffee. I don't remembe

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[TheNinjaroach]

As you've probably figured out, YAST is your friend. It's like a Control Panel / RegEdit combo -- puts a lot of system options in a mostly well organized GUI for changing with mouse clicks. As far as drivers go... YAST is where you go to configure a lot of them.

"Program Files" doesn't really exist. Instead, an environment variable called "PATH" contains a list of commonly used app folders like /bin, /usr/bin, etc. Downside: you may not know where your binaries live. Upside: You generally don't need to know. Just type the name of the command, and if it's listed in PATH it will be found.

Use RPMs where ever you can. When you can only find source code, you will have ~ 75% success rate with these three steps. 1) Unzip the tar.gz or .bz2 package to some folder. 2) Change directories into said folder and run "./configure" and keep your fingers crossed. 3) Type "make install" to compile and install the software. When this doesn't work, it's usually because you need some library "-dev" package installed using YAST, but sometimes you're just unlucky and need to learn in an awkward trial / error / Google cycle.

A coworker of mine uses Mozilla Thunderbird for Exchange access. I'm required to run a few other Windows tools for work, so I keep a Windows 7 VM using VirtualBox and I just run Outlook there. If I don't want to boot up the VM, I'll use Outlook Web Access to get by in my web browser.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000378.htm

Quick tutorial on how to connect Evolution email client to Exchange 2010

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Gothmolly]

You realize his whole post was a troll, right?

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I'm struggling with the basics, but learning a little every day. Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

JCholewa already did a good job of explaining a bit about how Linux breaks up the filesystem, but if you want to learn more, read the "hier" manpage. You can either access it from a terminal ("man hier"), or if you use KDE*, run Konqueror and put "man:hier" in the URL bar to get the same thing but formatted into HTML. You can also read it online here: http://linux.die.net/man/7/hier

Assuming you use your package manager for the majority of your application installing (as you should be doing), you'll rarely need to go outside your home directory, except maybe to access external media like discs or USB keys. Your desktop environment should make that a no-brainer, epsecially if using KDE. For extra partitions you'll have to look around and see where they're mounted (if they are), but you can make links to them from your home directory (as mentioned below) to save yourself hopping around the rest of the system.

Some extra information:

There are no drive letters. The directory delimiter is a forward slash (/) and one filesystem is mounted as the root, access as /, so "cd /" is similar (but not identical) to "cd c:\" a Windows command prompt. If you have multiple drives or partitions, they must be attached to directories to be accessed. Due to the way a system is broken down, you can move parts of your system to different drives as storage or performance needs change. If your user data outgrows your Linux partition, for example, you can add a new hard disk and mount it directly to /home/ without having to reinstall**.

In addition to being able to mount a partition to an arbitrary location on the system, you can also create links. For example, if your windows partition is being mounted as /mnt/windows, you can create a link from your Windows documents to a location in your home directory for easy access. The GUI file managers should have a way to create these links, or you can do it from the terminal, e.g. "ln -s '/mnt/windows/Documents and Settings/windowsusername/' ~/win-docs"

Filenames and directories that begin with a single period are "hidden" and can only be seen if you explictily look for them ("ls -a").

If you don't feel like reading the whole heir manpage, here are some basics. This stuff is pretty consistent across distros; as you get into the more specific stuff, there will be differences depending on the distro.

Global configuration files go in /etc/, user-specific configuration (which generally overrides the defaults in /etc/) go in hidden files in your homedir (which is /home/$USERNAME/, and can be referenced by ~ or ~username as shorthand). The OS doesn't use anything like the registry in Windows, though GNOME does have something similar for its applications.

The majority of binaries are in /usr/bin (for all users) or /usr/sbin (admin programs), while really important ones go in /bin or /sbin. /lib and /usr/lib hold the shared libraries (like DLLs) used by various binaries.

There are are a couple special directories, too, that let you interact with non-file parts of your system as files. /dev/ contains "files" that correspond to your hardware, such as the physical disks, sound card, input devices, etc.

In /proc/ you can get information about running processes, memory, etc. This is used by utilities like top (or htop, which is nicer), graphical utilities that act like the Windows tas

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[PReDiToR]

As trolls go, it was a great one.

Even with the parts about hardware not working, ACPI fans/power management going mad, Flash (diediedie) being good, Exchange integration and almost hitting the "WTF is compile???" (but skirting around it nicely), he still managed to get a +5.

Would that all trolls were as good at eliciting a careful considered and well thought out reply that deals successfully with these issues, that someone might read and find useful.

Kudos to JCholewa for giving such a large FU to all the FUD in the post.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[timbo234]

"what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. "

In opensuse the 2nd stop for packages is http://software.opensuse.org/ as unfortunately not everything that's packaged is in the default repositories.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that really helped me was the MS-DOS/Win to Linux how to, which I read years ago to try and understand where everything was:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html

Also, I spent a few weeks just trying to do things (with no Internet connection either!). PC magazines were quite useful back then.

A lot of the documentation on tldp.org is out of date, but some is still very relevant.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

... where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

Forget Program Files. there is not a direct equivalent and you don't have to know. I mean, you really, really don't have to know to get on with your work, and you only need the information if you desperately need to screw up your system. Just use the 'Install and Remove software' part of Yast (...or zypper...) and let it do the business.

If you want some software that is not in the standard repos, look in the online software search (http://software.opensuse.org/search), find out which repo does have that software, add the repo and then follow the previous procedure.

Can't see why anyone would miss the .exe. Just a cause of grief, in the long term.

Also, is there any mail client I can use to connect to my exchange server for work email? (using MAPI \ RPC over HTTPS)

Evolution ought to work, but it may take some fiddling (sorry, don't use it, but I have heard reports that it can work).

Also read 'Linux is not windows' (http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm). One of the problems that migrating users have is that they really have to work at unlearning some of the 'bad stuff that you get good at' with MS.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[drinkypoo]

Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

Drivers come with the OS and any that don't, the installation is distribution-specific, this being one of the original defining qualities of say Ubuntu vs. Debian. Where the program files are stores depends on the distribution as well, and you ask the package manager where the package's files are stored; anything that doesn't get integrated into the operating system with its files spread all about is usually placed into a directory in /opt. A deb or rpm is just like an MSI, and the GNU file tool/command will tell you if a file is an executable, and what's more, what kind it is (so you don't have to try to run it to find out that it's not the right kind of executable for your windows, as when you try to run a WinCE binary on Windows.)

You must be the only person in history who has better flash video performance in Linux than in Windows. I suspect you had got your Windows video driver into a confused state, needed a newer or older version, something.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are new to Linux, or just interested, there are a lot of Free and Open Source alternatives to common 'payware' applications on Microsoft and Apple platforms (sorry, no Photoshop, though.) See the sites listed at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsApplicationsEquivalents. Like many Ubuntu or Gentoo or Redhat forums, the information contained is actually relevant to other distributions like openSuSE.

One thing openSuSE has going for it is that the default browsers come with support for YaST's on-click install. So one way to get much of the stuff that you might want is to first check the search website. If someone else has already packaged the software and made it available on that site, then installing it is literally one click away in the search results.

Yes, to fit with what most people expect, the service could use an 'app store' UI with little application review pages, comments and pretty icons. But it certainly beats hunting out each dependency on rpmseek or rpm.pbone.net. (If you are lucky to find packaged software at all.)

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution from Novell can connect to exchange servers via the exchange protocol. The last time I tried it I don't think it supported accessing Exchange remotely... but it worked fine over the LAN.

Re:Actually - Me too

[InspectorGadget1964]

I have been using SuSE since before the OpenSuSE distro appeared. Since SuSE 6.0 and I have seen no reason to change to another distro. OpenSuSE is well designed, robust and does everything I need done (Except sex). If you don’t like it, go and use something else and do not bother people that are certainly wiser than you!

Re:Improvements

[couchslug]

"I stopped reading here."

You should have kept going to the less-painful "sharp stick in the eye" and "hot deep fryer emptied onto crotch".

Re:Improvements

[rubycodez]

too bad, the rest mentioned other finer desktops such as XFCE and LXDE. Of course, to be fair, to get to that great part you'd also have to stomach your way past the filthy K-desktop-word

OpenSUSE 12.1 Released...

[fisted]

...and not a single fsck was given on that day.

No Registry

[theolein]

That alone should make you a happy panda.

Re:3 users ...

[Taty'sEyes]

You can add one more user to that list - or did you already count me?

talk about pathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

still mad you can't find Jobs' coffin to suck on that decaying micropenis ?

beadm+xen4+btrfs

[ulzeraj]

I am more interested about this snappy feature. Does this work like Solaris beadm? If so, combining their Xen 4.1 system and the btrfs capabilities I might be tempted to think about implementing some OpenSuSE domain0 test servers. I am highly disappointed with the state of Xen 4 on Debian Squeeze.

Re:Microsoft Zealot Here... - good beginner's book

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide, Fifth Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Administration-Beginners-Guide-Fifth/dp/0071545883/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321498388&sr=8-1

I Started Using Tumbleweed A Week Ago...

[shuttah]

...(for desktop use) and am using OpenSUSE not out of preference, but just to get myself familiar with other systems. Alsa worked flawlessly (as opposed to Alsa having minor issues in my previous distro, Debian Testing/Wheezy). I haven't gotten the hang of YaST for package management just yet, but zypper... the command line front-end to YaST, is very powerful. You add a switch and a URL to the zypper command to add repositories, and there are a multitude of command shortcuts available for software installation. I've been using zypper a lot since installation, and as a Debian user for three years i can say it's certainly giving APT a run for it's money. The software available for OpenSUSE is great, but the whole PORTAL documentation way of organizing it has been a little difficult to get used to at times. Again, i've just been using this for a week so that may not be the most educated judgement. Anyway, default repositories are - SUSE Updates, debug, source, OSS Software, and non-OSS Software (OSS = Open Source Software). Additionally, the Packman repository for OpenSUSE makes available pre-built RPM's for another large assortment of software. They currently don't have a US mirror, but being in New York and using the UK mirror... the speeds are fine. What's interesting to me is OpenSUSE is using systemd (by Lennart Poettering who also did Pulseaudio and avahi). Anyway, have a lot of fun. Hope i don't sound like too much of a salesman here.

3 users...

[Anonymous Coward]

... say the 4 dorks who still read slashdot.

Don't use sudo in suse!

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who switched from Kubuntu to OpenSUSE a couple of years ago, I learnt the hard way that the OpenSUSE developers discourage use of sudo and always recommend su -c "whatever command you want to execute as root", which is also evident from all official tutorials. Sudo fucks up paths and permissions in OpenSUSE.

Re:Don't use sudo in suse!

[cthubik]

What, really? Source, please?

Dur, who cares? Derpity-doo!

[cthubik]

Hey, thanks for the input, Ubuntu users. What a bright young community you have there.

openSUSE has a shaky future

[Cherubim1]

The only good thing about openSUSE is YaST. The rest of it is so-so and lacking in functionality when compaed with other distros like Fedora, Ubuntu and even Debian.