I learned on SuSE back in the early days and switched when they went to yast2
because my lower powered computer was too slow for it. I recently upgraded and tried OpenSUSE. I liked it. Mind you, I tried the beta, 2 weeks ago, so some of these bugs may be fixed.
Pro
1. The expert installation options give you full control over the process. Things like the partition resizer, encrypted partition setup, and password-encryption-type all work great. I've yet to see this in other distros.
Con
1. The Xorg server seemed to have permantly disabled the Alt-F1-F6 keys to prevent you from switching from X to a console. It could not be overriden in Xorg.conf.
2. The KDE was patched somehow, and my Perl/Tk apps lost the "maximize" window manager control. It is fine under Gnome. It is fine under Slackware's KDE
3. One minor nit, was during installation, it was very difficult to get lilo to work as a replacement for grub.
4. The install process must be watched very carefully. I have a dual boot system, with a second harddrive(with plenty of data on it), and the default install recommended that I format my second drive and install there. Yikes!! I'm
glad I didn't just "click thru" all the "Accept" buttons. READ CAREFULLY.
All said, I would recommend OpenSUSE to anyone who had a machine fast enough for it, probably at least a 1600 Mhz processor and 512 Meg ram, but that is easy to get nowadays. Also, if it is a multiple boot install, be very careful and read the screen carefully.
Slashdot Mirror
US College students have been working on that for years. :-)
Pro
1. The expert installation options give you full control over the process. Things like the partition resizer, encrypted partition setup, and password-encryption-type all work great. I've yet to see this in other distros.
Con
1. The Xorg server seemed to have permantly disabled the Alt-F1-F6 keys to prevent you from switching from X to a console. It could not be overriden in Xorg.conf.
2. The KDE was patched somehow, and my Perl/Tk apps lost the "maximize" window manager control. It is fine under Gnome. It is fine under Slackware's KDE
3. One minor nit, was during installation, it was very difficult to get lilo to work as a replacement for grub.
4. The install process must be watched very carefully. I have a dual boot system, with a second harddrive(with plenty of data on it), and the default install recommended that I format my second drive and install there. Yikes!! I'm glad I didn't just "click thru" all the "Accept" buttons. READ CAREFULLY.
All said, I would recommend OpenSUSE to anyone who had a machine fast enough for it, probably at least a 1600 Mhz processor and 512 Meg ram, but that is easy to get nowadays. Also, if it is a multiple boot install, be very careful and read the screen carefully.
mars discovery