openSUSE 10.2
openSUSE is a widely known distribution for its huge array of unique tools for managing virtually every part of the system, without having to even think about using the console. It’s also known for the stability of the official packages and releases, and it’s known for a very stable package-system.
SUSE was acquired in 2004 by Novell, which meant a significant change in the future development of the distribution. From now on it would be an open-source project for everybody to help developing, while Novell kept maintaining a commercial pay-only edition, focused mainly for corporations.
As it’s a free project it’s available for download, both via torrents and using one of the many mirrors available. openSUSE comes in both CD-editions and a DVD-edition. It is not a necessity to download and burn all 5 CD’s if you don’t have a DVD-burner, as there’s also a network-boot-CD available, which is only capable of starting the installation, while all the packages will have to be downloaded from the Internet (or the LAN if you have a server available with the installation-sources).
Expectations
Knowing that this distribution has a long history and has siblings sold for commercial usage, I expect a lot of this distribution. I expect it to be very user friendly - I expect to not ever have to touch the console, even for rather extraordinary tasks not usually supported by a GUI front end.
I hope it to include all necessary packages for all the tasks needed for general usage, or at least easily, safely and officially available.
Test-system
The test-computer used in the article is my parents workstation, so the specifications are not very impressive (they use the computer for word-processing and mail-checking only). The final set-up which was created during the research for this article, is actually what they’re going to use when they come home from the vacation they’re currently having. Because they’re going to actually use it, the need for the distribution to get up and running perfectly, as they’re used to a stable and responsive Windows XP, is critical. The hardware is as follows:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2200+
RAM: 256 MB Kingston DDR (PC2700)
Harddrive: 40 GB Maxtor (7200 RPM)
Mouse: Logitech MX 700-mouse
CD-writer: Teac CD-W512EB (12x CD-R)
DVD-ROM: NEC DV-5700A (using a flashed firmware for region-unlocking)
Ethernet: RTL8139B-based on-board
Audio: VT8233A-based on-board
Graphics: S3 Trio3D/2x AGP-graphics card
Printer/scanner: Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 3210 All-in-one Network-printer/scanner
First impression
Booted into Windows, I inserted the DVD in the DVD-ROM-drive and expected to be greeted by a friendly autorun-menu with general tips on how to boot to the installation, but nothing happened. Well, fair enough, I went into “My Computer” and opened the drive to find some documentation. What I found was some release-notes and a lot of other useless files, and that was about it.
Well ok, so Windows-users are in for a rough start, let’s move on though to the interesting parts.
Installation
After booting the installation, welcoming was nothing special. I was greeted with a simple interface that asked of me what language I spoke, then it wanted me to read and accept a license (ironically only available in a small subset of the languages openSUSE supports) and then it wanted me to choose whether I wanted to do a “New install” or… well, that was my only choice, which made me feel kind-a stupid - like when mothers asks their kids if they would be nice and go to bed, obviously not giving the poor kid a real choice as the only valid answer is “yes” - then why bother giving the choice at all?
Now, I was asked nicely if I wanted KDE, GNOME or “Other”, “Other” which contained “Minimal Graphical System” and “Text Mode”. I choose KDE as I believe it to have the most Windows-like interface, although in general I believe both GNOME and KDE are just as powerful and if you have the time, you should definitely try both out - they both have their pros and cons which I’ll not dig into in this article, but I’ll most likely do an article on these two (and a third one called Xfce) in the near future. Having to do choose this instead of having a default picked is not very user-friendly. A new user who only heard about Linux and not about KDE and GNOME should not have to choose.
Anyway, it then presented me with a suggested scheme for how the computer would be set up. It suggested the Windows-partition would be shrunk to make space for the Linux-partitions and it suggested a default setup which would take up 2.2 GB of space. I had already done my backups so I entered the “partitioning”-menu to change that, so I could remove the Windows-partition in order to utilize all the space for Linux.
Update: It should be noted that openSUSE does not warn the user that shrinking NTFS-partitions (default file-system for Windows XP, 2000 and the other NTs) is not fail-safe. The user should receive a warning that his data on the Windows-partition should be backed up if not already, before continuing (thanks Nikoo for pointing that out).
A user-friendly note: The button I needed to press in order to gain access to the partitioning-schemes was just a text-link, which made it look like it was not a button, but just a heading. Normal users would not think they could click there and would therefore probably not enter any of those menues, while technically minded would at least try hover their cursor over the text to find out if it changed shape, indicating a button was underneath the mouse. I like this, because then the basic users will just accept the defaults (they only recognize button-looking buttons as buttons).
I had a quick look at the default package selection and I noticed that several closed-source, but free applications, were available, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Macromedia Flash 7 (Macromedia is actually Adobe now, but the distribution is from primo December 2006) and RealPlayer, all before-mentioned selected per default. Of things it lacked was multimedia-support in general. Nvidia-drivers, ATI-drivers, w32codecs (for WMA and WMV) and mplayer was not available during installation. I accepted the default package-selection and the installation started like it expected.
Update: It should be noted that if you select additional packages, openSUSE automatically selects whatever other packages the package you selected might need. While this is good, as the user definitely wants these packages, the size-counter, which tells you how much space is going to be needed for installation, does not count these additional packages, although they obviously also take up space, which gives a quite misleading count (thanks Nikoo for pointing that out).
First it formatted my hard drive and then it started copying from the DVD. During the copy-process which took about 40 minutes, static banners were rotated with simple messages about openSUSE. The rotation was awfully slow though, which I guess is because instead of having predefined intervals for how long a banner should be shown, the banners were shown until some percentage of the installation had completed, which on a slower system like the test system resulted in long pauses, so I decided to grab myself a bite instead of waiting for interesting banners. This is a bit sad, as somebody has probably worked on those banners, but on slow systems nobody will hang around to see them and on very fast systems, they might rotate so fast you don’t fully get to see them either.
During installation, a “Detailed” mode could also be switched on, which wasn’t more fun though. It just stated what packages it was currently working on, which isn’t a sight for general users, but okay, if you like looking at live-logs, hey, have a look!
Afterwards it did a reboot and it booted into the new system like it should in which the wizard continued. I choose root-password and so on. Perhaps I had too many options, as I had to choose both hostname, domain name, 
whether I should accept the DHCP-servers suggested hostname and so on. Now, home-users don’t care about any of this (they’d rather have the choice of DSL, Dial-up, Cable, etc.), so I believe this could have been hidden for the advanced users to find.
Now for some technical reasons, the test system wasn’t properly connected to the Internet during install, which resulted in a big error:
I got no repositories set up but my installation-DVD!
Now, what does this mean? It means that it decided, as it couldn’t obtain Internet-access, to simply not let me add repositories from the default list. This meant that even though I got the Internet connected shortly after, I had no update-sources, so my system would not be updateable until I found an update-source - this would prove to be a big problem, as the link for the mirror-list found in the official documentation, was dead - capish - /dev/null - 404!
Anyway, installation was over and the system booted like it should.
Technical note:
I did the installation through a VNC-server in order to be able to make screenshots. Use the parameter vnc=1 vncpassword=*, where * is the password needed for logging into the VNC, to do the installation from a remote computer using VNC. If you don’t have a DHCP-server the computer can access, also add the parameters hostip=*, where * is the IP of the installation-computer. The screenshot to the right is a screenshot taken during installation of the entire window I used for remote-installing. This type of installing can be really nice if you have to do a lot of similar installations or if whoever you’re doing it for is far away.
First boot
At the first boot I was welcomed with a message telling me that I should register to obtain free support and that I should keep my system up to date, oh, and that I should also subscribe to the Free Novell Linux Newsletter. Anyway, after closing this welcome-message, I got the probably most misleading tip to date from KTip (Tip of the Day) which tried to give me a useful tip. It gave me the tip: “Double-clicking on the titlebar of any window ’shades’ it, which means that only the titlebar stays visible.”. Ok, I gave it a shot by double-clicking on the titlebar of KTip. Now I would definitely expect the titlebar to ’shade’, but what did it do? It maximized the window! Double-clicking it again, restored original window-size. Haha, that was really misleading! It seem the openSUSE-designers customized the KDE-interface to simulate the Windows-way of handling windows, but simply forgot to customize the tips.
Besides that, the default setup was clean and I personally like the theme for no particular reason, it’s just nice and plain. Oh, besides the mouse-cursors, they… hm… I somehow think about Ms Paint when I look at them (which is not good)… The default theme looks like this:
I found the “Industrial theme” to be much prettier and as switching to it was very easy, it didn’t bother me much that I had to do so. This is the “Industrial theme”:
A merry surprise was the Kicker (KDE’s replacement for the start menu-button from Windows). In standard KDE a very Windows 9x-alike start menu pops up, with more options and automatic organization though, but still very Windowsy. Now, this new one is really revamped. Now it’s more Windows XP’y, but yet again, very unique.
In the top it has a search-bar which searches all your documents, e-mails and your Internet-history, by utilizing a rather new Linux-technology called “Beagle”. Beagle continually scans your files in the background and indexes the content in the same manner Google indexes websites, which makes searching for something very fast, yet the Beagle-daemon is very light, so you won’t feel it indexing in the background.
Per default the new menu starts in “Favorites” which keeps a list of your personally picked favorite actions (well, there’s a default selection, but they can easily be replaced).
The next tab is your history of your most recently visited locations on your computer and most recently used applications. The third tab, Computer, has a list of your connected devices, links to network places and shortcuts to applications for administering your computer.
The fourth tab is a complete list of all your installed applications and games, nicely organized. The last tab has shutdown and log off-options.
I wasn’t quite sure if I liked this new layout, but after switching back and forth with the original KDE-menu, I quickly ended up using the new one more and I’m quite sure any new user will like it better. It’s much simpler, yet still at least as powerful as the classical KDE-menu.
YaST
YaST is the special tool bundled with openSUSE. This is an old tool which has been modernized a dozen of times.
I’ve heard people calling it the most powerful system-administration-utility for Linux in which you don’t have to do any manual console-hacking whatsoever, as it is capable of configuring pretty much anything (only stuff which affects the entire system, ie. all users) by a GUI-interface (for individual user-configurations like background-switching, KDE has a built-in control-panel named Kcontrol).
YaST is a package-manager, YaST handles services, YaST takes care of backing up your configuration, YaST manages user-accounts, YaST sets up your network, YaST configures your firewall, YaST … you get the point.
This is both a good and a bad thing: The good thing is that you need no other tools for those tedious tasks. The sad thing is that you don’t necessarily get to try out the alternatives to the YaST-tools, as you’ll very quickly feel comfortable in YaST as all the sub panels within it, all are very similar. A lot of what YaST can do (if not all), is possible though through other tools with similar easy interfaces. But hey, you can always go explore the other tools. YaST doesn’t shut the other tools out, but using both YaST and some other tool to do the same task cannot be recommended.
But it really is amazing - I didn’t need to open the console at all during all the testing I’ve done - this is so much different than anything I’ve ever tried!
Hardware
As the test system uses pretty modest hardware (besides the hard drive which is only a few months old, each component is at least 2 years old) so all hardware worked pretty much just out of the box. Scrolling wasn’t very smooth in all applications, due to the very old graphics card, but that could easily be fixed by disabling “smooth scrolling”.
About the external hardware, the printer/scanner, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be an issue, as Hewlett-Packard officially supports Linux and does so by releasing fully open-sourced drivers for all their models. The only annoyance was that I had to manually activate the appropriate service. This could be a big headache for general users, but I believe it would have automatically activated had the printer been connected directly to the computer instead of through the LAN, but besides manually having to activate the service, the rest of the installation was a smooth GUI-only installation and the printer worked perfectly afterwards, responding instantly when I hit the Print-button.
Then I went right on to installing the scanner. The installation was very similar and because I had previously configured the printer, the network-part of the scanner-configuration just automatically copied itself right over so installing the scanner was a real treat - I had to pick it’s name from a list and I was done.
Default software-choice
openSUSE has a pretty default configuration with some interesting twists (reminder: this is the default configuration for KDE-systems, had GNOME been chosen during installation there would be different packages included):
- KDE 3.5.5
- Mozilla Firefox 2.0 for browsing, as well as Konqueror (a matter of taste, but Konqueror starts faster than Firefox if you’re running KDE).
- KMail for e-mail. Korganizer for Outlook-replacement.
- Gimp for pixel-image-manipulation, as well as Krita (I’ll do a review on those two and some more similar graphic-applications soon). For vector-graphics, Karbon from KOffice is included.
- OpenOffice.org 2.0.
- Kopete for chat. It can connect to MSN, ICQ, Jabber/GoogleTalk, IRC and some other networks.
- KPDF for PDF-showing.
- Kerry Beagle for searching your documents and e-mails.
- Amarok, kaffeine and RealPlayer. Amarok for large music-collections, kaffeine for movies and smaller music-playlists and RealPlayer for RealMedia and MP3 (yes, it’s the only application capable of playing MP3s! More about that later in the article).
- digiKam and GwenView for image-organizing and basic image-manipulation.
- KTorrent for bittorrent-connectivity.
- OpenOffice.org Writer/Web for website-creation.
Multimedia-support
As I mentioned just above, the only application capable of playing MP3s is Real Player, as Novell is an American company so they follow American legislation, which includes those (sorry, can’t keep it in me) absolutely insane software-patent-laws.
The same problem occurs with CSS-encrypted DVDs (all retail-DVDs are encrypted). No software-players are capable of playing legally purchased DVD’s per default in Linux as far as I know. Ironically, pirate-DVD’s which have had their protection removed, should work out of the box. In other words, if Americans want to watch legal DVDs they have to break the law, one way or the other - either by pirating the DVD or pirating the software on the computer.
As I live in a country with sane laws, laws which were actually written with the people and not just the corporations, it is legal for me and my fellow citizens to make our computers fully capable of playing legally purchased DVDs and not just pirated DVDs, same applies to music. Therefore I started searching for a solution (the official documentation, due to the laws of the USA, could not aid me in the search). I found this nice site, following a link from the official website for Xine:
http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/
Follow it to find the files needed for making all the players on openSUSE capable of playing DVDs, MP3s, Windows Media Video and Audio (only files without DRM though), Real Media (so the other applications besides Real Player can play Real Media too) and a dozen of other formats. What you should install is the following (remember, this is illegal if you’re in the USA):
- libdvdcss
- libxine1
- w32codec
Installing is just a matter of downloading the files and opening them in Konqueror and then just following the on-screen instructions.
Result: Now I can play my legally purchased DVDs with the series of “Far away from Las Vegas”, with complete DVD-menus, 5.1 sound-track and everything - just like in Windows - and I can play my MP3s:
Although I know Novell is just trying to follow the law, having to manually find a website (not even mentioned how to in the official documentation anywhere) is a very big lack. I expect to be able to watch my DVDs and listen to my music out-of-the-box, but the way I had to find packages on some random site, is not very nice. The packages I installed could have contained viruses or spyware (okay, none of which really exists for Linux yet) or perhaps just be of so low quality that they would never pass the quality-requirements of openSUSE.
When it comes to surfing the web, as you might expect, there’s not direct support for the various formats the rest of the system just got access to. Flash is supported per default, so is PDF, but live-streams of music or video you have to install additional plugins for. Now, on the page I linked to just before, there’s also a browser-plugin for Mozilla Firefox, which makes it capable of playing video and music directly from websites, but…
DON’T INSTALL IT!
It is extremely unstable and very buggy. For instance, if you have a page which both embeds a live-stream of some sort and a flash-movie, Firefox will simply vanish. If you see a live-stream and you decide to browse on, the browser is likely to crash shortly afterwards. Instead, if you like a browser-plugin for handling live music and video, I recommend mplayer and mplayerplug-in, which is available from various sources, for instance here:
mplayer: http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=mplayer
mplayerplugin: http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/download.php
After installing mplayer and mplayerplug-in, streaming from the net using Firefox works just like expected. If you browse the web using Konqueror, I highly recommend kmplayer, as it integrates much better than mplayerplug-in does and uses Xine, so you don’t need to install mplayer too.
Package-management
As the package-management is RPM-based, all the command-line RPM-tools are readily available, but if you’re not a console-guy, then YaST includes its own package-manager. There isn’t really much to say about it - it’s a bit slow to start and it takes a bit long to end installation, but it does it’s job and it does it well. It has support for adding multiple sources and do advanced searches, while a categorized view is also available. So nothing extraordinary here. I might prefer an installer like the one in Ubuntu for easy installations were available too, but beginners seems to just have to learn to install stuff the hard way.
Localization
As this system is for my danish parents, all applications must be in danish, as well as a global spell-checker for any form whatsoever needs to be present.
When I tell YaST that I want a secondary language to be installed on the system, and that language being danish, it automatically installs all the translation-packages and spell-checkers. But how is this second language activated?
I try in the kcontrol and I tell it that I want danish to be the primary language for the current user. It says ok and after a log out and log on again, it does seem very danish, but when I open Firefox it’s still english, when I open OpenOffice.org, it’s still english.
The only solution I could find was to set danish to be the primary language for the entire system, as only KDE-applications were affected by the language-change. Perhaps there’s some GNOME-tool I don’t have that could change the rest of the applications to danish, even though the system-default is english, but that’s not very intuitive.
So I set the global default to danish, I created a new user-account for my parents and it was in danish all the way through - and I mean that literally. All applications they’re going to use, was in danish. Good job, YaST.
File-sharing
On this subject too, I found a lot of interesting tools in YaST, because enabled file-sharing directly in KDE did not seem to do the job. After having followed the wizard in YaST, which included that it installed SAMBA which is a protocol for file-sharing, which is out-of-the-box compatible with most versions of Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and most desktop-Linux variants, it still didn’t work though. Now I was capable from MacOS to get to the login-screen, but when I entered my username and password, I would get rejected.
Now, I’m sure there are some GUI-way of making this work, but as this article was already when I did this, I decided to pull forth the terminal and use it for doing the last part, which was enabling a user to share files - after all, if you know the command, it’s most likely faster than navigating some GUI. To make one of the user-accounts accessible via SAMBA, open a console and type:
sudo smbpasswd username
where username should be replaced with the username you want to be able to share files.
Documentation
YaST is very well documented and the documentation is available through the KDE Help-center. There’s dozens of screenshots for the subjects described and lots of links for how to get going. If the built-in documentation is not thorough enough, opensuse.org should fill the gap as the website is basically one big very active documentation-wiki. It has topics on virtually everything, besides getting media-playback support (well, there’s some, but it’s useless due to ridiculous American laws as described earlier).
Web-server (LAMP)
Now, a LAMP-web-server (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) is not a thing my parents would ever need so setting such one up on their computer seems pointless. I did so on my own workstation which presently also runs openSUSE. I did not do any screen shots, but it was a very straight-forward process. After installing Apache, MySQL and PHP using the package-manager, a new icon popped up in YaST in which all configurations could be accessed and a special wizard was available for setting up virtual servers (generally used for hosting multiple domains on the same computer).
This is the first distribution I’ve tried where editing the configurations did not include having to hack text-files manually. It just worked out of the box, and editing the default configuration was available from a GUI.
Conclusion
openSUSE is a stable, fast and very powerful distribution, capable of anything Linux without having to do a lot of extra work, as there are RPM-packages for virtually everything. It is not the most user-friendly distribution, as the installation gives the user some tough choices (although hitting next will give a good default, I think such options should be hidden away from the beginners) and playing DVDs and listening to MP3s or WMAs, or watching live-content from the web, is not possible without installing unofficial packages. Finding and installing these packages feels like breaking the law, as there’s warnings all over the official documentation warning against making such content possible - but it isn’t illegal, unless you live in the USA.
If you are a power-user you will not feel in any way cheated for options. Even though YaST is a GUI for managing virtually everything, it doesn’t hide any options, and even if you feel like hacking your configurations on your own, feel free to do so. If something goes wrong, it’s easy to restore configurations with YaST. Some parts, especially the package-manager, is quite slow as it does a lot of unnecessary tasks before and after you install anything (like it always updates your list of fonts, even when you haven’t installed or removed any fonts).
If you’re a beginner there’s easier distributions out there, but not necessarily better, as openSUSE is fast and very stable, but it’s just not that intuitive.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:14 am
It seems to me that all the packages necessary for playing dvd, mp3 etc., are available through Yast from openSuse repositories (guru and packman) - at least I got them there and without any warnings. As with package management I would advice you ti try smart (available from the mentioned repos) as it is faster and more intuitive - you get there the same functionality as in Ubuntus synaptic.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:04 am
Nice and thorough review.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:36 am
Clearly, your good review doesn’t fit well with your conclusions.
Installation much too long : 40min whereas most famous distros can be installed in less than 20 min (Ubuntu/Kubuntu or Mandriva).
Something you didn’t mentionned enough : by default, SuSe is setup to shrink windows partitions, without asking or even warning enough the basic user ! Very dangerous I think, considering Windows file systems don’t like these kind of operations if they haven’t been defragmented first !
Internet not working at first boot.
Localization not working at first boot.
Package manager : slow.
Distribution speed : I don’t find it particularly fast, and in my own hands, SuSe is slower than Ubuntu or Mandriva.
In my own hands I found another big problem : during package selections/choices, the program doesn’t directly take into account the changes (if you select or unselect one package). This results in the stupid fact that : when it begins to install, you don’t really know the diskspace that will be used !
For me, SuSe is far from being that good as it is described on multiple reviews that we can see over the Internet.
But thanks for the review, I think you nicely highlighted the reality with this distro.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Thanks for the nice comments!
#1, even if you select the non-free-sources from YaST, mplayer and a fully capable xinelib is not available, or it wasn’t for me. I found alternate sources for YaST (unofficial I might mention), but the link for the libdvdcss is easier to use, hence I tell about that.
#3, well, about the time-issue, I don’t believe users mind waiting a bit, but true that Ubuntu and the rest is faster at installing.
About the shrinking of Windows - it’s true that a warning that data might get lost and backup should’ve been done, should have been presented to the user, I’ll update the article in a moment, as unless openSUSE handles NTFS flawlessly, the user should be warned (full NTFS-support is rather new in Linux and therefore should not be fully trusted I agree).
Internet only didn’t work because I wrote some special boot-parameters for the installation to run through a VNC-server. On my other computer which I installed normally, Internet worked right away, so I don’t think there’s an issue here.
Localization not working at first boot: I intensionally let it install all in English at first, both so I could do internationalized screenshots and so I could test how easy it was to add more languages later on.
About the auto-included packages during package-selection: Wow, that does sound bad, I didn’t notice that, good point, going in the article too.
Thanks again for the good comments, I really appreciate them!
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Excellent article! very well done. I am looking forward to many more articles in the near future!
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Still, I find the issue about installation a bit superfluous. First, I do not mind to have a bit longer installation time (20 and 40 min for installation is no that big difference.) as you have to do it just once. Otherwise, if this is so important then one might wonder why anybody is going for gentoo. Second, I have installed Ubuntu and it took about 30 minutes and it was not that big difference as mentioned in a comment (for my system it was around 30 min for Ubuntu and around 40 for SuSE - although I should admitt that I have not done any exact measurements because I really don’t care for such a negligible detail. There are other regards that I consider more important.). Third, I prefer an installation where I am in better informed about what is going on, and one cannot say that about Ubuntu installation.
As for mplayer I still wonder. I added some repositories using a console commands from open suse org. page (http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories#Adding_multiple_aditional_sources_via_script_at_once) and it seems to me that I got all the packages you mentioned frome here. So may be try that? Well, of course, I might be wrong.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
openSUSE 10.2 is by far the most usable linux desktop distro. It is stable, easy (you just need to add some extra repositories), has a professional look & feel and it’s full featured. I was an Ubuntu user, but openSUSE 10.2 is amazing.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
#6, I agree, I don’t believe users mind waiting a bit. About knowing what’s going on, sure, I like that too, but it should be an option that would have to be activated manually, if that part should be considered user-friendly and about that I think openSUSE did the right thing. About Ubuntu, it’s been a while since I installed Ubuntu, but I believe it’s possible during the early stages of installation, to choose an advanced mode/text-mode, in which you have full control of which packages to install and so.
About the URL. The corresponding page doesn’t say anywhere which of the repositories includes mplayer, xinelib and w32codecs, but I found out by trying them out, that the PackMan-repository from that URL does have all that I search for in the article. One way or the other I still, legal or not, think that it’s too much for the general user to ask to go find such sites of his own and I still don’t like having to install anything from 3rd party sources. I also have the worry, in the worst case scenario, that when the day comes when virus-writers come around for Linux, they could easily set up such a repository and put up some fake files with virus or spyware. Think about it, when you install packages you have to be root and the packages can have install-scripts in them which could do anything to your linux-distro, so you really got to trust your package-sources. The list of 3rd party repositories is a wiki, I mean, how hard is it for a bad person to add his fake repository to the list? It would be found out, sure, but until then, panic.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Hi mortenskyt.
I can see that you carry over some habits from Windows to Linux. This is certainly a very legal and realistic point of view that you take. Still it wouldn’t hurt to also give some advice.
First of all when you enter the Linux world you should understand that it is all about communicating, about forums and wikis. And it is not so hard then to find advice on how to enable certain features in openSUSE. Second you should understand that installing programs or features is in 99% of the cases done via the package management system and not like in windows via >search application on internet>download>doubleclick.
As far as http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories is concerned it is an official openSUSE Wiki and shouldn’t be too hard to find. And concerning your fears about 3rd party repositories: Packman’s and Guru’s repositories have a long standing and high reputation. They became almost an integral part of Suse. Otherwise it is true that some 3rd party repositories have to be treated with care, not so much for possible spyware but because they might have some very buggy packages lying around. And generally I find 3rd party repositories still much more secure than just downloading programs somewhere on the internet. If there should appear a repository with viruses or spyware it would be banned very quickly by the community.
My standard installation is: Install Suse, add Guru and Packman Repos, do a full update. After installing vlc or mplayer for example you should be able to handle a wide range of multimedia formats. Also Mp3s will work with every sound application then. For sure there are other ways to do it. This is just an advice from my side. It is quick and works. Optionally you can also use the Smart package manager from the Guru repo. It is much faster than Yast.
It would certainly be nice if all the multimedia features would be enabled by default, but unfortunately that is not possible due to legal issues.
For localization of Firefox and Openoffice you have to install the localization packages for them in the package manager. Just search for “Firefox” or “Openoffice” in the Manager to find them.
Sombody compared Ubuntu and Suse in terms of speed here. It is true that Ubuntu boots faster. But when it comes to working on the desktop I find Suse much more responsive. I used K/Ubuntu for quite a while and know both.
Thanks for the review. I just wanted to give some little feedback and advice. It’s all a bit different than Windows world, so some things appear awkward and difficult. But once you get your head around it you will miss e.g. your package manager when you go back to windows. Anyway. Welcome to Linux!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I have found that Linux users are the most obnoxious foulmouth patronizing a$$holes I’ve ever come across. Especially the American ones,..real nasty wierdo’s.
A ” newbie” posted on forum and was greeted with abuse from the start.
The term “newbie” is patronizing, demeaning, and should be banned.
Maybe we should all call ourselves ” scabby crying newbie lowlife Linux using Jew” and see what the worlds press think?
As for Suse and Linux generally? Suse is so sloooooooooow, slow updating, slow everything.
Linux is basically all hype, and no substance. XP is far easier to use, looks better, faster, (one BSoD in over 20 years) whereas Linux ,..always problems, video does not work, no codecs, drab and dreary grey colour schemes.
So what you can make an administrator -or user account at the install? Install windows and do the same in less than 5 minute after installation.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
#9, Thanks for taking the time to write the long comment with some good points. I might have fooled you a bit, as I have been working with Linux for about two years, but that’s good, as my point with the article was to show things from the new linux-users point-of-view. I am new when it comes to openSUSE though (I’ve played around with SUSE over a year ago). My goal with the site is to find out which articles and distributions new users should try and just as importantly, not to try and as most users will definitely have some sort of Windows-background, trying to think like that I think is the most relevant.
The reason I took the approach of finding some website with a download, was actually not because I didn’t prefer having a YaST-source, but because the official wiki on this page:
http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats
says that “Do not add external links to software packages that contain illegal software [to the wiki].”. I therefore assumed that this was the same all over the wiki and hence I would not expect them to have another page on the wiki with links to repositories which actually carried the “illegal” packages.
#10, I’m sorry you’ve had such bad experience with Linux, but please don’t generalize. I’m sure you’ll find just as many forums for how-to do Windows-stuff that treats the “newbies” just as bad as the forums you are referring to.
Sure, with Windows stuff just works, but for lots of reasons we’re a lot of people who just don’t like that operating-system, which I’ll not go in-depth with here, but I found this very good video recorded during a conference a few months back. The guy speaking is Eben Moglen, one of the key-persons in the Free Software Foundation and he’s a lawyer and Ph.D. in history. The speech is about software-patents and open-source-community (it’s a bit long, but he doesn’t do anything, so you can easily minimize it and just listen to it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorfgQlEJv8
January 24th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
@mortenskyt: Thanks for this nice review, I found it intuitive and informative, though I think it would be nice to include some comments from Patrick’s post which I was going to mention about the Packman and Guru repositories, one can easily look up those repositories for almost every need.
And also there is a part of your article in the begining of installation where you mention it didn’t give any other choice (and it seems you were unhappy with that). I think it would be nice to mention that this happened because you didn’t had any other SuSe installed previously on your machine, as if you had one (or more), it would ask for upgrade or clean installations options. And I think the same is true for a M$ Windows installation too. So not having other options is not a drawback, but a feature.
@crappy_drab_linux: Thanks for your kindness, but as long as I was involved in the Linux communities, I have never seen such things in respectable and famous Linux forums. So maybe you have been at wrong places.
And no, Linux is not slow at all compared to Windows, I don’t want to flame another war of Linux vs M$ Windows. But that’s not true at all. Specially when you can have Linux distributions working on very old hardware with a bunch of up-to-date softwares, using either light-weigth X-systems or using speciall distros like Damn Small Linux.
And about stability, I have a bunch of Linux machines which I don’t even remember when I have restarted them, more than 3 4 month ago maybe, and don’t think that they are just idle machines, a bunch of computer science students work seriously with them every day, doing lots of computations and simulations. But with my experience with about 3 4 hours of computationally intensive work with Windows, you have to definitley restart your machine, and start again.
And about the better looking thingy, I bet you have never heard of Beryl window manager for example. Just search in Youtube for Beryl, and watch a few videos there. If you could find any Windows XP system capable of doing those effects in real-time with those smooth and polished desktops, and yes with normal hardware, then come back and complain here about Linux.
Every operating system has its own features, including its price. So if somebody feels comfortable with paying a bunch of money, he’s welcome to go for Windows. But what this article wants to show is that you can have more than what you might need for Free from a nice and stable Linux distribution. So think again, it’s not about the user accounts ;)
January 24th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I, too, thought the review was good and informative.
I don’t think that speed should be that big an issue here as he did say that the test machine was rather low tech. This distro runs faster on my home-built AMD dualcore money dump than it does on my 7 yr old Compaq Presario (5WV252).
Just a thought.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
#12, True about the additional repositories available should be listed in the article, I will update the article so people don’t have to read the comments to know that there are other options.
About the first part of the installation, in which I have the choice to do a new installation. My point here was that I don’t think I should be presented with a page where I only have one option. If I have more than one option, for instance if I have some Linux installed already, then sure I’d also like the upgrade-option, but when my only option is to do a new install, that page is unnecessary. It’s not a big problem at all, just yet another little thing that adds up. In the case of just one option, the page could either be skipped automatically, or a nicer description telling me that it’s going to do a fresh install and why I don’t have other options.
#13, yea, speed shouldn’t be the big issue, it’s only an issue if you know there are some system that does the same, but are much faster at it. It is important that the system I built here is not much slower than the Windows which it had installed before, as I know that my parents who is going to use this system on a daily basis, will be nagging me all the time if it’s slow. Luckily the resulting system is only a bit slower at booting and applications are very responsive and in general start almost instantly (besides OpenOffice.org, but it was the same in Windows), which is why I concluded that the system was fast.
January 25th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hi mortenskyt
About the installation option, I think one thing that usually the designers of these installation programs take care of is the software faults/mistakes. Usually the installation is a major change in any system and it could easily result in loss of data, settings, … . So now think that you had already another installation and for some unknown reasons the installation program didn’t detect it. Going straight automatic through the installation will put you in lots of troubles then. As a result, for such a big changes in any system, usually the designers put the user verification things, to make sure that if there happened any fault during operation of the software, the user is informed and could take proper actions before everything gets more worse. Of course the designers try to make the program as faultless as possible, but with all variations and diversity which exists in computers and operating systems, there could be like 1 in 1 million probability of fault, and I think nobody would be happy to be that one person. So informing the user at each step of these very sensitive operation is I think a principle which tries to reduce that 1 in 1 million to zero.
I also agree for example with the part of your article about shrinking a NTFS partition which could be a faulty operation on Windows-side, but then M$ Windows never takes care of any other file/operating system during its installation too, usually it shows Linux partitions like unknown or something like that, and never tells you that for example this installation could damage your data on those partitions or you can lose your boot-loader etc. I don’t want to generalize a bad habbit to a principle, but just wanted to give examples of bad software designs. IMO that part of the SuSe installation really needs to inform people about damages. Just my 2 cents ;)
January 26th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Hello all, I am writing this comment as a person that does 95% of my tasks on a windows xp machine. and honestly this is in defense of the linux OS.
I am a Computer Programmer/Analsyst, of approximately 7 years in the programming field. I mainly program in C++/C#/Visual Basic. I have very minimal Linux experience I have tried many distributions over the past 10 years, (for Ex: Debian, slackware, redhat 6.1 (which I found worked well for what I needed at the time) Caldera/ fedora core, ubuntu. and only recently Suse 10.1 and Xandros) being a windows user, I agree that the ease of use, and support for hardware and gaming is definately a bonus. but I linux has always interested me, but until now linux has always left me with a machine that I couldn’t get all my hardware working, or bring me to a console saying WTF do I do now? lol. I have really changed my ways though in the past while, I spent almost a month and a half one time doing all my work in ubuntu without having to switch to windows at all. this impressed me a lot. linux surely has come a long ways. I have two machines running at home now one running xandros. but crashed and burned after 2 days. and a suse 10.1 that I have been running for over a month without any problems. this things that I like the most once you get past the gaming not being really great, there are many games that wont run on linux. this being the main reason for sticking with windows. but as a programmer/developer, linux is better by far over windows. and the price is fantastic. and when you get the machine setup, stability is much better than windows. I think this is a great review, it is nice to see someone do a review from the aspect of a windows to linux noob. Open Suse is great combination of power and simplicity. the way I look at it is this. you can either choose a distro that is super power user, and get overwhelmed by all the technical options you know nothing about, or you could choose a super simple distro that has next to nothing with it. or you can pick a distro like Open suse 10.2 and get the perfect medium.
Great review mortenskyt I look forward to making the complete move to Open Suse.
pz
January 27th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Thanks mortenskyt. I also enjoyed your review. I have a (slightly off-topic) request: Could you please let us know how your parents got on with your SUSE desktop. I’ve dabbled with various distros for a while, but other members of my household have always regarded my linux box with suspicion. Maybe OpenSUSE (Or PCLinuxOS 0.94) is going to be the distro that wins them over…
January 27th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
#17, sure, but the thing is the vacation they’re on is rather long, they won’t be home before the 13th of February (they’ve decided to celibrate my dads 50th birthday by taking a month off and go visit Australia), so they haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.
I did convert the computer to Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org a while back and it runs pretty smoothly now, the only “new” things they’ll need to learn is how to burn CD’s (in my oppinion K3B is way easier for simple tasks than Nero which they used in Windows, so not a big issue) and navigating through the filesystem using Konqueror. I have removed all unnecessary buttons from Konqueror where possible, to accomodate the features they actually are going to use, and I have made icons large and added descriptions below.
January 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I did not realize OpenSUSE 10.2 is so poor that it is almost unusable in many hardware! Its hardware support is too poor and it is extremely ugly! It only supports 24 bit colour that makes many people so depressed. This is a colour world, but watching OpenSUSE 10.2 likes getting into a nightmare that only has two colour, white and black!
I think Novell should dismiss its current project manager AJ, who knows nothing actually and is a troll!
Novell should hire some capable people to be project manager, like students who graduated from MIT.
January 28th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
#19, that’s odd, but please note that if your hardware isn’t properly detected in openSUSE, it probably isn’t in any distribution, as they all share the same drivers (bundled with the kernel-packages).
Was the installation in color? If it was, then you did something wrong during installation, or you have a really strange graphics card, as, although I’ve not tested it in openSUSE, the OS tend to default to just enable a VESA-driver if it can’t find anything better - it gives really lousy performance (ie. takes like a second to refresh the picture and scrolling is a pain), so unless your graphics-card doesn’t support VESA (most card from late 80s and up supports VESA), but it would definitely not be b/w.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Good review.
I installed SLED 10 (which is derived from SUSE) some time ago and I think the SUSE installer is way too complicated.
They really need to rework it so it asks less questions just like the Ubuntu one.
I can see that a lot of people are suggesting that the reviewer should have done this and that but a new user couldn’t have know that. The linux distros must improve continually and not require the user to read documentation.
I look forward to more of your reviews.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Thanks for the nice review.
I have been planning a Suse installation on my PC for a long time, it seems 10.2 could be a good choice. My comments - questions to the review are as follows:
Shrinking NTFS partitions
I strongly hope that if I prepare a separate partition for Suse prior to the installation using Partition Magic for example, then shrinking or not-shrinking the NTFS partition would not be a question. With other words: I hope that I will be allowed to select a destination partition for Suse. Please confirm this.
Boot options
I am using a dual boot system on my PC working with Windows XP and Ubuntu. This solution is based on Windows XP’s boot loader and does not allow that any Linux boot manager overwrite the master boot record on the HDD. I want to keep this system. Grub (or lilo) have to remain in its root (boot) partition. The question is: does Suse offer a choice in this regard during installation ?
January 29th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
#22
Shrinking NTFS partitions.
Yes. It doesn’t give you that option by default, but when you reach the page of the installation which summarises what it’s going to do about partitioning and package-selection, you can pick and choose the destination-partition.
Boot options:
I’m sorry, but I don’t remember. I don’t think I was asked, but I didn’t look for it, but it’s probably somewhere around in the “partitioning”-page. The installer is very advanced and very powerful, so I would be very surprised if such a basic feature does not exist.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:09 am
Good review. I’m currently downloading OpenSuse 10.2. I only have a 1.2 megabit connection though. :( Probably the main reason for switching to Linux is becuase of Vista. Vista is cutting out hardware accelerated sound and ditching OpenGL support, which really has me miffed. This is more of a political OS switch then anything. But if OpenSuse, or some sort of other linux distro, proves itself worthy, I probably won’t switch back to Microsoft. BTW I already have some intermediate experience with linux in the past. Couldn’t complain much except for the lack of Dolby Digital and difficulty getting certain things to work. But I’ve heard most of that has been fixed in the past few years. Look forward to changing my computer lifestyle. :)
February 1st, 2007 at 12:22 am
#24, Thanks (-: Microsoft has actually listened and the final version of Vista should include full OpenGL-support and, as far as I know, hardware acceleration is only a problem in Windows Vista if you play DRM-secured stuff.
There’s still a multitude of other good reasons to not go the Vista-way though:
The report that probably caused the most debate
And, to be fair, Microsoft’s response
And finally, just some general Vista-GUI-annoyances
February 3rd, 2007 at 4:54 am
Thanks for the review. The new KDE start menu looks interesting. I’ve tried SUSE 10.0 and 10.1, and a little of Ubuntu. I found Ubuntu’s installation to be unreliable and the Live CD start gave me an error everytime. Also, I find it astonishing that a such an undergroundish looking distro, with everything being so black, can succeed that well. The noobs want to see the screenshots, that’s the most important first impression I’m sure. And I consider SUSE a professional looking Linux, with an ease-of-use like no other distro. I loved everything about it. The only problem was to find a way to install the important closed-source plugins and DVD playing capability. I’m really looking forward to use SUSE as my default operating system in the near future.
For your big surprise, I’m currently running XP. I was seriously considering buying Vista, but I was really pulled back when I heard that the upgrade CD would not be able to do a clean install to an empty HD. I’m not sure if this is true, but then I read about the limitation of how many times you could install it (~9?). And then if I would’ve wanted to buy the non-upgrade version, to be able to install Vista on an empty HD and / or without messing around with the XP CD, I would’ve needed to pay 3 times more for it. 300 € is too damn much for an operating system. And originally I wanted the Vista Ultimate, not the retrenched (sp?) Home Premium version. The day Vista was released, I was also released from the magic spells of Vista hype and started to think rationally. I really don’t need Vista. I only need a good and stable operating system and I think SUSE delivers exactly that.
February 3rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
Hi Morten Skyt,
Thanks for the review, and congratulations on the site. If Linux and and open source software are to gain wider acceptance amongst the general public, then reviews coming from the kind of stance you take are going to make an important contribution, both in advising people like me of what is ‘user-friendly’, and in providing feedback to developers.
As I’m writing this, I’m downloading the openSUSE 10.2 x86_64 version. That will be my 4th attempt to install a Linux OS that provides for my needs. I first tried RH9 a couple of years ago, which was reliable, but already an orphan back then. Next was Fedora Core 4, which worked well for a bit until I tried messing with the GNOME Start Menu one fateful day …
Last year, I bought a new box (Pentium D, Asus P5Pl2 mother-board, ADI audio, Realtek Ethernet), and have had persistent problems with the sound from Windows XP, so thought I’d see how Linux was travelling these days. I installed Fedora Core 6 x86_64, and at first things looked pretty good. TheStart Menu problems have certainly been fixed, and the OS in general seems to have matured quite a bit in the 18 months or so since I last tried it.
Then came the problems. My built in Ethernet adapter (which connects to my ADSL router) was not detected, but fortunately, for once, there were Linux drivers supplied on the installation CD. After a bit of tooling around, I got it sort of working – I have to stop and restart it about every 30 minutes or so.
Once the Ethernet adapter was working, my computer froze during the next boot. I was just about to reboot, when I noticed my ADSL connection had gone dead. After manually restarting the router, the boot-up suddenly sprang back to life as soon as the Internet connection came back – not sure what that’s about. Then when I got into GNOME, pup started automatically checking for updates. It came back with a list of several hundred, which I thought I might as well download. But every time I tried, pup froze during the download, with little indication of what the problem was. Also, GNOME was very slow while pup was trying to do its stuff.
Changing over to KDE improved things a lot – no automatic updates, so I was able to do a few things, then opened the console to update manually with Yum. At least with Yum, I could see what was happening – time-outs from the repositories. After trying a few mirrors, I finally got everything downloaded (1 gig!), only to find a dependency clash :-(
I managed to get through that by uninstalling something called FRYSK (I think that was the name– as I said, I’m writing this from Windows). Finally got the updates done, rebooted and … the system is unusable! Constant crashes, feels like wading through molasses, no sound at all etc etc.
You may have noticed that this was using the 64 bit version of Fedora, and one thought I had was to try the 32 bit FC 6. But damn it, I have not one but two 64 bit processors (well sort of) and I want to use them! So before relenting on 64 bit , I thought I’d try another distro. And here I am.
That brings me to a suggestion (or request?) for a future article. How about a comparison specifically of 64 bit distributions? Just about every CPU sold in the last couple of years is 64 bit capable. If M$ has actually got their their act together with 64 bit Vista, then unless the Linux community does likewise, Windows will have a distinct advantage.
On the other hand, if M$ has stuffed it up as usual, the first Linux ‘vendor’ to bring out a 64 bit version that installs cleanly on most systems ‘out of the box’, will make everyone else, including M$, look pretty ordinary. This will be especially telling as more and more home users who have bought cheap digital video cameras want to edit their holiday shots together.
Which reminds me – please also convey my congratulations to your parents. It’s ordinary users like them at least having the guts to *try* Linux that will eventually make the difference.
Cheers
Ian
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
#27, good idea, I’ll do a comparison on 64 bit distributions. I too had some very bad experiences playing around with 64 bit distributions and actually I decided to just run 32 bit until everything was working like it should - it’s definitely a good idea to see how far they’ve come.
#26, Vista, oh don’t get me started! About the upgrade-thing. I believe that all versions of Vista are on the same DVD, meaning that in fact there’s just one DVD and not an upgrade DVD, a home-edition DVD, a premium DVD and so on, I believe it detects it by what key you enter. About pricing I must agree, the pricing for Vista is absolutely mad, I believe home premium here in Denmark is 2.5x more expensive than XP Home - it’s insane! And then there’s the hardware-upgrades and incompatible software and drivers…
That’s why I love Linux so much and why I do a blog on it now: If something works in Linux today, it’ll always work and the system is made by and for the users, users with genuine interest in making the perfect system, not some company who’s more about satisfying RIAA than it’s users and the hardware-makers.
February 4th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
@mortenskyt,
I have been using opensuse 10.2 since December. It is a massive improvement on 10.1 and I am extremely pleased with its performance. I am just so relieved to see the back of MS which seemed to have its clammy hand permanently installed in my wallet.
Can you believe that some gullible souls even queued up for hours in the dead of night just so that they could be the first to volunteer their hard-earned cash for MS’s latest offering?
Anyway, back to your review of 10.2.
It was excellent, being honest, thorough and balanced. Most importantly, although you are an experienced Linux user, you managed to put yourself in the position of somebody who is totally new to a Linux operating system and to write your review accordingly. More Linux reviewers should follow your example so that more converts are more easily drawn to “the new religion”.
I look forward to more of the same from you in the future.
I wish that I could say the same about the poor unfortunate, troubled soul who submitted post #10.
This person, is obviously in need of some tender loving care in a very secure institution with extra-soft padded walls. This poster, no doubt, is a regular frequenter of the “Trolls’R'Us” forum.
It would have been far more entertaining for all of us had this foul-mouthed person copied the style of Shelley the Republican’s anti-Linux rants. At least that contains some humour, which is something that #10 has unfortunately never discovered in the relatively short time that he or she has polluted this planet.
@ #10, one final thing, do remember to look in Google for the juvenile forums before you decide to contribute further posts in a similar vein. You have probably exhausted both your brain cells with your last effort, so it is probably best to go and have a lie- down.
February 9th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Hello,
Thanks, first, for an absolutely amazing review that got me thinking. I’m similar to Peter in that I have a fair bit of programming experience and had always played around with getting rid of Windows. I’ve been messing around with Fedora Core (1-4) for the past couple of years and really haven’t been wowed (although I hear 6 is a vast improvement) but I wasn’t prepared for what I got when I installed SuSE.
Everything worked.
Even my joystick, which I’m sure Windows hates was detected first time around.
Then there was the 3D dekstop - I spent about 20 minutes configuring and then rebooting and there it was. A cube desktop.
So before I get carried away with my awe I’ll just leave a quick note for @crappy_drab_linux:
are you sure you haven’t got Linux and Windows mixed up? XP is a horrific operating system and Vista appears to be worse. The most offensive comment tagged to the bottom of this review is your own, feeling hypocritical were we?
So thanks for the review,
Andrew
February 10th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
i tryed many distros both live Cd’s and DVD’s,but the only one that allowed me to connect to internet using wireless directly from the live cd vas PClinuxOS 2007.
i tryed Suse10.2 but i was disappointed.I’m a lazy guy and i like that a distro would allow me to use wireless and play mp3 and other formats without a headache.
In rest suse10.2 it’s ok.
February 17th, 2007 at 2:50 am
I enjoyed your review because I am a relatively long time SUSE user (since 8.2), currently using 10.0, and about to upgrade to 10.2. I also used several other Linux distros on at least 6 different machines.
I’ve also used M$, Dos 5.0 thru XP, but stopped putting it on any of my computers after Win98. I’ve built all of my recent machines. I only mention this to point out that while I’m not a “geek”, I have a lot of computer and OS experience both professionally and at home. I’m retired now and use computers for “typical” home use.
I agreed with most of your comments and those of the other people who commented (with the exception of #10 ?????).
As I said I’ve used SUSE for some time plus have tried others, (Mepis, Red Hat, Xandros, Aurorex, etc). My first and continuing impressions of SUSE were, and are, that it is a “professional” OS in all respects, and that ‘yes’ it’s a bit “complicated” for someone new to Linux. These first impressions haven’t changed with each new version. The one thing that has always impressed and keep me with SUSE was the fact it has always steadily improved and any problems I’ve had were almost always eliminated in the next version. (Something that wasn’t true with M$. And of course I didn’t get financially raped to find out if there was an improvement!)
I wouldn’t be perhaps as “picky’ about the loading as you and some of the others. (I’ve done it many times), But not because of that but because I’ve had just as many or more complients about how other OSs load as I’ve had with SUSE. Nothing or nobody is perfect!
Good advice about being careful partitioning if setting up dual-booting. Defragging M$ first is a must and partitioning with “Partition Magic’ isn’t a bad idea. I personally have never encountered a problem with a M$ partition when loading and partitioning with Linux provided it was defragged first.
I don’t understand the concerns about what software is initially loaded. No matter what you ultimately want on your machine, its simple to achieve. I now always load the default selection (using KDE only because that’s my preference) and get the machine up and running with all the hardware setup. After that it’s a simple matter to go back and use YAST, (plus kpackage, smart, yum, etc) to customize your programs any way that you want. It is very easy and relatively quick using your CDs, DVD, and/or the web.
I’d like to make a comment to current M$ users considering Linux. I’ve introduced Linux (SUSE) to my children and their spouses and the first comment I always had was, “but I have “x” program I can’t do without or I can’t run MS programs”. Not entirely true, there are some M$ programs that can be used under Linux (it’s usually a hassle), but it’s also true that most won’t. There are two obvious answers to this problem. First there is dual-booting. Whatever you now have you can keep running just as before as long as you like. Second, there are programs in Linux that do nearly everything that you are now doing in M$ and do it just as well or better at a fraction of the cost. In addition suites like Open Office will handle most M$ files. It is interesting to see how Linux see and handles M$ directories and files, particularly when M$ is totally blind to Linux. You can easily have the best of both worlds.
One last suggestion. If you are really cautious or nervous about loading, and testing SUSE the first time get a live disc and try it. It’s a cheap, simple, safe way to get familiar with it. If it works for you, you like it, load it. To my knowledge M$ doesn’t let you do that with Vista!
February 18th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I can’t speak much about openSuSE, but Red Hat Eneterprise Linux and Fedora Core are great for servers. I like Windows Server 2003 R2 platform in some aspects… terminal services, active directory, the look of the OWA, easy of use of the ISA Server, etc., however, the GNU/Linux OS is obviously more stable and secure platform. The configuration on Linux is more complicated and often must be done by editing parameters on configuration files. But sofisticated Windows Server configurations are way far from being simple or intutive.
About the desktop, I tend to think that some Linux distributions are quite near XP/Vista visual and functional refinement, however, the Windows XP has tablet editions that can’t yet be matched by either OS X or Linux. Also, the Windows Mobile Edition is a tremendously capable OS.
I really enjoy using both Linux and Windows and would use other OS/NOS, as long as it brings advantages.
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I am using OpenSuse from quite sometime and it’s really very fast, stable and rich in user interface and it got thousands of application (free of cost), what else you want from an OS.
I would like to suggest all the Linux newbie to start with OpenSuse.
Thanks
Nikesh
February 27th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Shaking my head at you guys (gals?)! 8^)
I’ve been using linux on my main computer for 5+ years, and on my webservers for over 10. Actually started with SUSE desktop (well tried Caldera 2.1 waaay back when UGH!), then went to Fedora to get the “latest & greatest.” (They usually had bleeding edge software before other distros… Mozilla, etc.). I’ve had to purchase Windows due to my job. Picked up Vista, couldn’t upgrade from ME, so got the XP upgrade instead.
Tried Ubuntu on a friends puter, liked it so tried it on mine. All good except could not make on the motherboard nVidia Ge6100 work. Had read some reviews about SUSE, so d/led it. Setting up dual boot. Windows & Linux can read FAT32, so decided to set up my box like this. The 1st 200Gb drive as NTFS XP, 200Gb #2 as linux, 400Gb as FAT32 shared between the 2 for docs, pics, music and such.
Has anyone installed Windoze lately or just purchased pre-installed?
It took about 1 1/2 hours just to format 200Gb!!! So don’t get picky about 30 or 40 minutes to install a linux distro!
And it only formatted 128Gb, so had to use System Commander to stretch it out to the full 200Gb!
Rebooted into my newly installed XP.
NO SOUND
NO INTERNET
NO PRINTER
Call ISP. duh! I needed to install the drivers off the CD that came with my motherboard. I’ve been installing Linux for so long, I forgot about that crap.
Everything just works from linux install. (Except nVidia problem mentioned earlier).
Rounded up my driver CDs and got all that working.
Can anyone explain to me why after paying $100USD for Windoze upgrade it could not do something my FREE linux programs do like install drivers for motherboards and printers???
So now I have a great OS system installed on my box… NOT!
NO SOFTWARE!!!
Installed Office 2003, an old copy of CorelDraw I had, and some other webmaster programs, like ftp, ssh, 1stPage, etc. (You know, programs you get installed for free when using linux…)
Shelled out $40USD for Windows Live virus etc protector.
If I wasn’t dual booting, I’d still be looking around for buggy shareware to do simple things us Linux geeks just take for granted… (burn CDs, play games, make to do lists, bitTorrent, IM, etc.)
In all, it took me about 8 hours to get xp up and running close to the way I wanted.
Installed SUSE, complete with HUGE software stash, did complete update, changed a few things around like I wanted, and it only took me about 1 1/2 hours. That included formatting 3 times as much hard drive.
Oh yeah, I won’t go into trying to get FAT32 working on the large hard drive too much. Checked MS knowledge base. An older one said to go into device manager to format large hard drives. A newer article says, xp can’t do it, use your 95, 98 or ME install disk. HUH? Xp won’t see FAT32 formatted by System Commander, Linux, or DOS command line format. My conspiracy theory is that they knew Linux can read & write to it so they took it out of their OS. Shaking my head at Billie…
March 15th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Hi Morten - and his readers;
Just installed Suse 10.2 some days ago on my multiboot laptop. Took the opportunity to reorganise my partitions, threw out FC6 and an old version of Ubuntu, making three OS-partitons (win2k, suse, ubuntu) and one data partition (fat32).
Used the occation to test how the Suse installer (or fdisk?) handled resizing of my ageing, non-defragmented win2k installation on the first NTFS partition. Grub was already on MBR, the Suse10.2 installation recognised everything and gave Grub a little facelift.
After this stretching of it’s partition, Win2k started up like normally and had even less problems about those “funny disks” around (before it occationally wanted to chkdisk some of the ext3 parts). It read the linux formatted FAT32 too.
Then I installed the latest Ubuntu. Thought I did an “expert” install, everything went straightforeward. But of course Ubuntu wanted to install their version of Grub and did so. And not in MBR but in third boot partition (ubuntu).
I managed to repair my Grub, but win2k is a bit lame (have to boot from CD or memory stick).
I went again through the Ubuntu install process, just to find what I did wrong, and yes I should have made other options. But…. I really think there is a lack of verbosity in Ubuntu’s installer, and if there is a working boot loader you should at least be offered the option of keeping that one (install can always add its lines to the menu).
Yeah, I totally agree that Suse makes clearer, more thorough installer, and I don’t regret the extra 10 minutes it takes (it’s always much less than Win installation, any version… :)).
And yes, at least in my case, NTFS resizing was OK.
I’m a relative “newbie”, 4 years of graphically using linux (webmin for my servers) and only one year almost windows-free. I do commandline stuff as a parrot, reading from web pages, but I know that sometimes it’s a lot easier and faster than searching in Yast.
Oh, and not to forget; Yast-update sucks. Be smart, use Smart.
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:44 am
Very nice overview of the installation. I’ve just recently come to the openSUSE party, but it was a hard earned victory over BSD, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS and Mepis (you can read more on my blog).
One thing I wanted to add about the install time is that you have to be careful you are comparing apples to apples. While one installation may be faster, it could very well be installing much less stuff. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, but I for one liked the fact openSUSE installed lots of interesting apps.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
hi, I install openSuse several weeks ago. i dualbooting in acer aspire laptop with XP. it works fine, but there is one annoying problem. when i plug-in my headphone the sound from the internal speaker doesn’t stop. so the sound is coming from both the headphone and the internal speaker. The strange thing is, when i mute the headphone in kmix, it doesn’t work, in fact the internal speaker and headphone are both controlled by the ‘front’ slider, so even if u change the volume of ‘headphone’ in kmix, it doesn’t make any change at all!! i tried to google for this problem but haven’t suceed untill now!
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June 14th, 2007 at 12:57 am
The main article and most of your comments were great! I’ve installed Linux (OpenSUSE 10.2) as it helps me with my work. It’s much better than windows :)
However to use it as an every-day computer, it still have some issues. I’m a newbie (btw I really don’t mind being called like this, as I am a newbie, and frankly, I simply don’t understand how this could be offensive to anybody) and I would really appreciate if there was somebody more experienced willing to help me via i.e. instant messenger (any kind, yahoo, msn, etc). I was trying to use some forums, but it didn’t work too well. Most of the time, even with the solution on the screen I can’t fix things as there are other things not working along the way… Please let me know, if you are interested in helping a newbie fall in love with linux even more :)
here is my e-mail: yrth@msn.com
Thanks a lot!
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:32 am
I am using OpenSuse 10.2, just go and check my desktop running opensuse 10.2
http://linuxpoison.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/desktop-screenshot-opensuse-102/
August 27th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
First of all, thank you very much for a great review.
I am a new user of Opensuse and of linux also. Even before reading the review, I had installed it around 3 weeks back and was using it. I am getting hooked to more of the open source now-a-days for just some development purpose, not commercial though. I was trying 64 bit on a vmware and it is working well, there are issues which are mentioned above like configuring NVIDIA drivers etc. buts that’s fine as it is not a requirement. I was trying to integrate eclipse and QT Jambi on it but failing miserably so tried to run netbeans ide instead and it hanged but looks like because of my VMWare configuration so will give it a fresh try to install linux again with a good configuration and this time want to try KDE (last installation was with GNOME), just to compare, will try to post a comparison here.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Hi,
All above is really excellent stuff.
To move away from Winxp I installed Ubuntu but just could not get the ADSL broadband going. I am quite fedup of this and want to move to a better Linux distro. On the net I was led to this wonderful writing. Am really encouraged to switch to SUSE but would need guidance, being a total newbie.
I have a dual boot with WINXP pro, with 512RAM and two hard disks. One contains the WINXP and the other contains data and Ubuntu.
Is it easier to get on the net with OPENSUSE? I have an AIRTEL ADSL2 broadband connection and the ADSL modem (Beetel ADSL2 220BX) attached via onboard ethernet card. I have tried for several hours/days to get this going in ubuntu but failed.
Will it work in OPENSUSE and how?
Thanks
Mytor
December 13th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Mattbhew…
It would be great help if I could get some clarity on the real issues…
March 7th, 2008 at 8:09 am
nice
March 8th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Very nice review. Let me say right up front that I am and never have been a fan of the world according to Bill Gates. No, not a latecomer to this as before Billy, I was using Tandy Model IIs with TRSDOS and then a 16 with Tandy Xenix. When the IBM AT came out, I looked at it, looked a DOS, shook my head and went back to the office and hooded up another WYSE 100 terminal to my system in about 3 minutes. When Windows 3.1 came out, I was upgrading my system. Took a look at it, shook my head and called SCO who told me they were buying computers form some kid in Texas by the name of Michael Dell. Called Dell and guess who answered? He was the order taker, inventory manager, production manager and shipping clerk. Just told him to send me the same thing he was selling SCO and called SCO and got their Xenix. Then upgraded to SCO UNIX. All the time MS seemed to be trying to get their stuff to do what Xenix and UNIX did so easily. Scratching my head, I never figured out how MS was becoming the system when it fell so short of Xenix and UNIX. About this time, I picked up some magazine somewhere about some new fangles OS called LINUX that from reading got the idea some guy had looked at UNIX and decided to hack it and get around the patent laws. The articles seemed to say it was being used in the science community to do things. Thought it was interesting and maybe something the white pocket protector crowd would like to play with but in the business world too iffy and went back and added another WYSE terminal to my UNIX system.
No one in my area knew of UNIX or Xenix and I spent many a night learning the most simple tasks. In ‘86 I could access my office system over the phone lines from the home with a terminal, in the office my admin sent me messages from her terminal to the terminal on my desk, I could go to lunch and when I got back hit a key and look at messages form my receptionist. I spoke to a MS person about this time and he shook his head and I went back and added yet another WYSE 100 to my system. After some 13 years with Xenix and UNIX, I finally broke down and bought a DOS system as I needed it for some applications that were not available for any other system. Hated every minute of the experience each time I had to turn the infernal unit on; nothing but crashes, freezing and it was so restrictive.
Finally retired and moved and went with a Win95 system since my kid was using one. One day he showed me he had loaded his computer with LINUX and told me it reminded him of the stuff I had showed him in my office. I looked at it and tar, uucp, cp, vi, - hey this all looked familiar. vi.profile and hey this is the script I remember from Xenix, even ls |more and cat. By that time though I had been away and forgotten a lot of of what I’d done. Since then been playing with most of the gens of Linux on and off. While I’ve forgotten most of it, terminal mode is well not as foreign as other may find it. About 6 years ago I built my last desktop and at the time went whole hog techwise. Until the dual core came out, it was still near state of the art. It runs a 2.26ghz Northwood cpu, 2 gig ram, had a 120 gig hd (now a 250), 128 dedicated memory ATI video card (only 4x, 8x came out just after but not a problem for what I do), USB is 1.0 but I do not use them except for the printer. 2 dvd readers and a CD burner/dvd reader. 802.11b that has been upgraded to 802.11g. It was built to use in my business but replaced it with a Toshiba laptop. I striped out the XP pro which has been stable and seems to be the best thing MS has put out and decided to try LINUX. Oh, to backtrack, I have been using OpenOffice on and from the time StarDivision had the app and yes, used to Mosaic, Slipknot, Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox. In the end, it is the apps that matter as these are what you use to produce. Switching to LINUX therefore is not a big deal as the production apps I use are in LINUX.
I tried and like UBUNTO 6.10 but with the intro of 7 and having to do an install rather than an update, I decided to try the Suse DVD and replaced the CD burning with a dvd burner. Burnt the 10.3 dvd and booted to install. It installed smoothly and no hangups and the installation questions etc not better or worse than I found with Ubunto. When it came to the internet, it like Ubunto did not recognize the wireless which I had replaced with one that was certified as supported by LINUX. When it rebooted, called Jr. who has been using Ubunto for some time and really liked it. He has tried a number of ditros and seemed to really like the Ubunto. I had him do his magic to get card recognized which he said he did the same way as when he did it when I installed Ubunto. He had not used Suse before and commented he found it more complete and as easy to use if not easier.
In using it other than not being able to view video (thanks for the links, will try), it worked out of the box better on my system then Ubunto. Speed subjectively seems faster and starting apps is faster. Also, it seems more stable. A few times the Ubunto froze or slowed as if chewing up resourced but have not experienced it with Suse. I’ve had it on the system for about 2 months now and it is faster than XP. I’ve decided after all these years, I’ve found my successor to Xenix and UNIX on my computer. Only wish they’d get a good Windows emulator up and running so I could put my specialty software on it that only runs in Windows and I could convert the office over also. I’ve tried Wine and no go.
Sorry for the long missive but have found the following: 1) until there is a way to reliably run Window apps on it, it will have limitations as to broad appeal as tax apps and other applications for many years will still be on Windows, 2) while the installs are definitely getting better as to recognizing and configuring the system, it still is not for Joe Layperson who has little or no computer skills other than pushing the power switch, 3) once set up it is as good as MS for desktop computers but, it needs to shake the geek squad persona and get the public to understand it is not something that belongs in the science lab, 4) if it is to gain significant market share, it needs to think outside the box. Mac markets itself as better than and an alternative to MS and has done so for years, all the while never picking up market share. LINUX will need to position itself as an alternative but find a marketing strategy alternative to what it and Mac has historically done. In some ways it is evolving this strategy. It is finding its way into the low end market segment and as a consequence the public now has access to low cost computer options while MC/Intel looks at the midrange and Mac has positioned itself in the high end. Where Mac tried to capture the youth and have them grow up using Mac, the associated hardware costs and office systems the parents used stifled this idea. With the low end market, LINUX gets around the hardware cost issue and whether we like it or not, as KDE and GNOME mature they are striving to be Windows user friendly. Couple that with apps that feel familiar to Window apps users and the fear or the unfamiliar is removed. LINUX on Intel could succeed where Mac failed.
Lest you think I am critical or anti-Mac as well as anti-MS, I am writing this on an iBook.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:32 am
the open suse is not install in my laptop,and in my friend laptops also not install.it shows same error in mylaptop and my friend laptop also.the error is canot create the ///hda/temp on your hard disk