- Site menu:
- Latest Discussions
- Latest Newswire
- Archives
- Submit Story
- Story HOWTO
- Syndicate
- E-mail Alerts
openSUSE 12.2 RC1 out now
|
|
|
Comments (60)
40 earlier comments in the full thread.
There is one last thing I'd like all LXer people to know if they were not aware of it before. Okay, I am running openSUSE 11.4 (in my opinion, a terrific version) which in turn has KDE 4.6.00 (not bad at all) and KMail 1.13.6 and it is this latter piece of email client software which works brilliantly.
Support for openSUSE 11.4 finishes in September this year (circa 15th)......BUT........wait for it.......the Evergreen project will then keep openSUSE 11.4 running with updates until May 2014.....Fantastic.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Evergreen
This means that all pressure on KMail from my end stops and can proceed at a leisurely pace. I can play with Kmail, play with Claws, do all sorts of experiments and have plenty of time in which to simply "play". What a marvellous project.
It makes me also return to something I said in an earlier post somewhere on this site. OpenSUSE gets some really good release versions.......and because of this need, this incredible need to be seen to be updating and improving, dumps these really, really good versions in favour of later versions which aren't as good as the ones that have been dumped. However, the Evergreen project gives them a new lease of life.
I reckon openSUSE is one of the best distros out there.....Oh sure, I'm biased, but that's normal for a Linux user. It's nice to see openSUSE 11.4 will be kept active for an extended period, because in my humble opinion, it was a darn good release.
Support for openSUSE 11.4 finishes in September this year (circa 15th)......BUT........wait for it.......the Evergreen project will then keep openSUSE 11.4 running with updates until May 2014.....Fantastic.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Evergreen
This means that all pressure on KMail from my end stops and can proceed at a leisurely pace. I can play with Kmail, play with Claws, do all sorts of experiments and have plenty of time in which to simply "play". What a marvellous project.
It makes me also return to something I said in an earlier post somewhere on this site. OpenSUSE gets some really good release versions.......and because of this need, this incredible need to be seen to be updating and improving, dumps these really, really good versions in favour of later versions which aren't as good as the ones that have been dumped. However, the Evergreen project gives them a new lease of life.
I reckon openSUSE is one of the best distros out there.....Oh sure, I'm biased, but that's normal for a Linux user. It's nice to see openSUSE 11.4 will be kept active for an extended period, because in my humble opinion, it was a darn good release.
That is indeed good news about Evergreen. I am currently flirting with SolusOS and am extremely happy with it. It's not going to be good friends with the FSF because it comes with absolutely everything you might want or need when you first turn on your computer. It identified my Radeon HD RV670 immediately and installed the propietary driver witih one click....I think it took about 15 seconds. We are seriously looking at it to replace our current distro(s) at Reglue. While it runs what seems to be Gnome 2, you soon realize that it's actually Gnome 3 with all the extensions needed to give you the G2 experience. I can't see the difference on the surface at all. It's that nice.
I did a synaptic installation of KDE 4.8 on this machine because I have wanted to get back to KDE4 for some time. For reasons I can't figure out, not one version of OpenSuse will install on this computer but I had troubles all last weekend finding a distro that would install on this quad 4. Since I don't use any on-board mail client, I did not suffer the woes many have with Kmail so that isn't an issue with me. Sitting down and working with KDE4 was like revisiting an old friend after a long seperation....sans cashew.
I am personally glad to see the KDE team coming full circle and applaude their work.
I will find a download for 11.4 and see if it will install today....
I did a synaptic installation of KDE 4.8 on this machine because I have wanted to get back to KDE4 for some time. For reasons I can't figure out, not one version of OpenSuse will install on this computer but I had troubles all last weekend finding a distro that would install on this quad 4. Since I don't use any on-board mail client, I did not suffer the woes many have with Kmail so that isn't an issue with me. Sitting down and working with KDE4 was like revisiting an old friend after a long seperation....sans cashew.
I am personally glad to see the KDE team coming full circle and applaude their work.
I will find a download for 11.4 and see if it will install today....
@helios......Interesting you mention problems with Radeon. I recently bought a Toshiba laptop which seemed excellent....It has a Radeon card.......and it will NOT permit an install of graphics mode in openSUSE 11.4. However, openSUSE 12.2 RC1 will install quite happily and is stable enough to have a good play about. I'd try this RC1 version first. You can download at:
http://software.opensuse.org/developer/en
I'm using the 32bit version.
http://software.opensuse.org/developer/en
I'm using the 32bit version.
Turns out many of my woes were caused by different versions of kernel panic in the 64 bit versions. This problem is wide spread throughout several distros, at least on my machine. The 32 bit works just fine. I now just install the 32 bit release and install the PAE kernel. Aside from being able to utilize all my RAM, I am not seeing a lot of difference in performance between the 32 and 64 bit releases. In fact, I don't see any at all on my desktop.
@helios.....Again, your experiences are mirroring my own. Not with respect to the kernel panic, but from testing the 64bit versions of openSUSE. Like you, I found speed was not a significant factor. What I **did** find, was that trying to put a variety of software designed for 32bit into a 64bit system was often a "not good" factor and worse still, 64bit versions of that software were usually unavailable. I play safe now......I use 32bit for everything. I can always find the appropriate software, I have no hassles with stability and it all just works. This is NOT a criticism of 64bit software by the way, merely my personal experiences with it. I have a friend who swears by it because he says it is so much faster and he won't use 32bit stuff. How you can type faster than 32bit allows I am not sure, but I guess if he was (and I happen to know he isn't) manipulating gigantic/enormous files, it could be useful......each to his own and what works for him/her I suppose.
Quoting:However, openSUSE 12.2 RC1 will install quite happily and is stable enough to have a good play about. I'd try this RC1 version first.
I'm actually downloading the 64-bit version now. It looks like I'm going to land a contract to do some work in a SUSE shop. There is no free clone of SLES or SLED so OpenSUSE is probably the best way to refresh my memory of various and sundry SUSE-isms as well as seeing what direction the distro is going in.
Yeah Caitlyn, YAST takes some re-acquaintance right off the bat but it all comes back after a few minutes. YAST is actually a brilliant tool in both concept and reality...it simply is just too much for the "normal" computer user I think.
And so far, and by far, (Open)Suse does KDE4 better than any other distro I have tried. I don't know just how they do it....it's an intangible but the "wow factor" in KDE is much more intense in Suse than anywhere else. It's sharper, faster and seems to be extremely bling-full. (did I just say bling-full?).
I'm not sure if you are going to notice much difference between the Open and SLED versions...probably in networking most of all but if I remember right, getting the voodoo right to work with Exchange and Sharepoint are the only things you won't get in OpenSuse....at least the last time I did a side by side, and that's been a while ago.
And so far, and by far, (Open)Suse does KDE4 better than any other distro I have tried. I don't know just how they do it....it's an intangible but the "wow factor" in KDE is much more intense in Suse than anywhere else. It's sharper, faster and seems to be extremely bling-full. (did I just say bling-full?).
I'm not sure if you are going to notice much difference between the Open and SLED versions...probably in networking most of all but if I remember right, getting the voodoo right to work with Exchange and Sharepoint are the only things you won't get in OpenSuse....at least the last time I did a side by side, and that's been a while ago.
@helios...agreed. YaST is a fantastic tool. I don't use it too much, but I find it simple and very straightforward and so far, there just isn't anything I want to do system wise, that YaST hasn't been able to take on and achieve. Also, I'd very strongly agree with you: in my opinion, openSUSE is just about the best KDE4 implementations around.
@caitlyn....that's rather nice. Be interested to know how you rate the 64bit version.
@caitlyn....that's rather nice. Be interested to know how you rate the 64bit version.
Ah, YaST... that excellent tool that worked the same in both text mode and GUI.
That rawked.
That rawked.
I am currently using Chakra and it's KDE implementation is really nice. They take some of the opensuse tweaks, use some of their own, and pull some from various other places, it is really slick. If you are interested in looking at KDE implementations, it is probably worth a look.
I'd have said the same about the ROSA Desktop KDE implementation but I know helios had problems installing it. Pity.
I am trying out the latest Fedora with KDE. So far I am really impressed. Those who have written off KDE in Fedora in the past should revisit it.
Any word on which of these distros trim the fat from KDE??? I'd lovemit if someone came up with a package, named something like KDE-dietsoda, that existed for the sole purpose of tweaking KDE to run leaner and meaner...
Yeah JaseP....like having Akondi and neopunk (that's what I think of it) disabled at startup. However, when I installed the Vanilla version of KDE 4.8, I really didn't see that much of a performance hit with both running. BUT....I have a quad with 4 gigs of RAM. I suppose that might make a difference.
I tried KDE in Debian Squeeze recently and liked it. I hadn't really used KDE since the 3.x days, and it looked pretty good.
Quoting:I'd lovemit if someone came up with a package, named something like KDE-dietsoda
I don't like DietSoda, it taste weird & funny. :-)
If your favourite Distro doesn't have Nepomuk & Akonadi disabled by default, No need to sacrifice it, just disable them and they won't bother you at all. I don't believe removing their code is going to gain you much other than regaining a little of disk space.
What is going to even improve performance is when Qt 5 is implemented.
Quoting:... and neopunk (that's what I think of it) ... when I installed the Vanilla version of KDE 4.8, I really didn't see that much of a performance hit with both running. ...
That is really a funny name, Ken. :-)
Nepomuk & Akonadi used to be resource monstrous hogs, but no more. They have been cleaned up and optimized quite a bit. The nice thing about them also is you can configure the indexing to just do certain list of directories and files. And the only time you see any hits is when you start a new indexing or add a new directory. Other than that, they should not be noticed any more. Also you can select to index KMail and disable any other indexing if you want to search your email.
JaseP I don't use Kubuntu but I remember they had some sort of "low fat" settings package.
https://code.launchpad.net/~kubuntu-packagers/kubuntu-low-fat-settings/trunk
https://code.launchpad.net/~kubuntu-packagers/kubuntu-low-fat-settings/trunk
JaseP I am not sure what you are looking for in lean but my system right now is using 630 MB of ram, 275 of which is firefox, I have /tmp mapped to a ram drive, as well as storing my browser profiles in ram as well. I also have several system monitor widgets running. It seems that not running many applications and not using ram drives This wouldn't be horrid on 512 MB ram, and very usable with 1GB. Not extreemly light, but not outrageous either.
I also have desktop effects enabled, but I am not sure if that affects ram usage.
I am (or was) a long time user of Google Desktop search. Now you want to talk about bringing an entire machine to a screeching halt? Try to work through an indexing cycle with that process running. And while the end result was absolutely great (and fast), it was a painful process to endure. I finally got smart enough to set indexing between 3 and 7 AM (that's when I am asleep). Took about a week for it to index my drive folders, my 500 gig music collection and another 300 gig backup drive. Unfortunately, Google has discontinued support and development of Google Desktop, which is a shame.
Hopefully, with the improvements you speak of, these two services will combine to be just as good. To my experience, the traditional Kfind sucked wind. Years ago, we had a long discussion about it right on this forum and what it came down to is that Kfind worked fine IF you knew how to configure it....weird switches and non-standard path names were the norm and not the exception...whereas the Gnome Search Tool picked up everything immediately with no indexing. The argument was made that the command line search options were just as good but I argued that they were not. Sure you can find what you are looking for but you are left to enter other commands or a gui in order to access the requested files. That's why I like GST and Google Desktop so much. Immediate access to the files searched for.
At any rate, it is nice to be back in a KDE environment but I enter back into it with a backup plan this time. I no longer feel I can trust the developers with MY desktop, given how they abused that trust a few years ago. There is forthcoming good news coming via blog of helios concerning a new and exciting Distro that has completely repatched G3 to work Exactly as G2.
News at 11....stay tooned
Read the whole commentHopefully, with the improvements you speak of, these two services will combine to be just as good. To my experience, the traditional Kfind sucked wind. Years ago, we had a long discussion about it right on this forum and what it came down to is that Kfind worked fine IF you knew how to configure it....weird switches and non-standard path names were the norm and not the exception...whereas the Gnome Search Tool picked up everything immediately with no indexing. The argument was made that the command line search options were just as good but I argued that they were not. Sure you can find what you are looking for but you are left to enter other commands or a gui in order to access the requested files. That's why I like GST and Google Desktop so much. Immediate access to the files searched for.
At any rate, it is nice to be back in a KDE environment but I enter back into it with a backup plan this time. I no longer feel I can trust the developers with MY desktop, given how they abused that trust a few years ago. There is forthcoming good news coming via blog of helios concerning a new and exciting Distro that has completely repatched G3 to work Exactly as G2.
News at 11....stay tooned
Post a comment
A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.
Your message:Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help
Sign up and post (it is free) or Log in and post
I totally agree and I am not sure why would they change the defaults from one release to another. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they must have a good enough reason, one is to avoid corruption when having multiple versions (I doubt it since users can change them). If not, it is inconsiderate and some developers tend to take it lightly thinking it is not important to the user.
I think most Mail Agents (MA) have good sorting capabilities by various key fields. But others with pretty large number of e-mails accumulated over many years have the need to search the contents more than key fields. That is why KMail 4.x has Nepomuk and Strigi to save indexing in a database to improve on search performance and results quality.
If you haven't noticed, KMail has sorting under "View => Message List => Sorting" where you have elaborate settings and by date is the default. :-)