I like opensuse better
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| herzeleid Jan 08, 2007 6:43 PM EDT |
SLED 10 is polished and complete, but too narrow in scope for me. I like to have not only the cool multimedia and eye candy, but also the full range of up-to-date server and development tools on my desktop. So, suse 10.2 works better for me in that role. There are places where SLED is a good fit, but probably not for the typical linux geek power user. |
| tracyanne Jan 08, 2007 7:04 PM EDT |
I don't use SuSE at all, I just don't like it. |
| herzeleid Jan 08, 2007 7:14 PM EDT |
Quoting: I don't use SuSE at all, I just don't like it.Is that a religious objection to the microsoft deal? Just out of curiosity, what distros have you tried? In my 13 odd years of linux I've used sls, slackware, redhat, fedora, debian, caldera, mandrake and others, and like suse best of all. Seriously, as much as we all love to hate Novell, I have to admit that they bought themselves a really sweet distro. |
| rijelkentaurus Jan 08, 2007 7:32 PM EDT |
>I don't use SuSE at all, I just don't like it. I have to agree with this. I have found it quite bloated in general, and I have found nothing about it that sets it apart from the herd, IMO. To each their own, but I won't touch SUSE because I think it's...well, as close to garbage as Linux gets. >Just out of curiosity, what distros have you tried? I know that wasn't directed at me, but for an FYI, I've tried just about everything that's out there, and definitely at least one or two distros from each "family." I prefer Red Hat distros, and I like Debian distros also. I have found that Slackware based distros (such as Zenwalk...REALLY like Zenwalk) are the fastest overall. |
| jimf Jan 08, 2007 7:49 PM EDT |
SuSe isn't my favorite either, but it's a good Distro and one could do a lot worse. I personally think this 'best' Distro thing comes down to personal taste. I've tried most of them and I still keep coming back to Debian. I just don't expect that everyone will agree with me..... Heh... Just kidding :D |
| herzeleid Jan 08, 2007 7:58 PM EDT |
Quoting: I have to agree with this. I have found it quite bloated in general, and I have found nothing about it that sets it apart from the herd, IMO.As far as bloat goes, that is completely under your control. You can install a basic server without X on a very modest machine, or you can go all the way and take everything, as you decide. Personally, I use kde, and after nuking beagle, I get a nice fast desktop. On low resource machines, I run icewm or xfce. The thing that *really* set suse apart from the herd when I first looked at it after many years of redhat, was that it all just worked, out of the box. I also never realized how crippled the redhat version of kde was until I saw kde in all it's glory, on suse. Other things, like flakiness of bind on redhat smp boxes, which I never saw on suse. The list goes on. I understand redhat and fedora have begun to do some of those things better, but that's hardly inducement for me to switch back. I really am open to finding a better distro, I just haven't seen anything that comes close yet - and yes, I've tried ubuntu. |
| jhansonxi Jan 08, 2007 9:33 PM EDT |
I've been doing distro shopping lately and I've found that OpenSuse is a decent distro overall. Some random thoughts: Mandriva has a better install and admin tools (especially the partition manager) but more bugs. Suse's package management is more reliable than Mandriva's. I often run into dependency circles with rpmdrake especially if I repeatedly select and unselect packages when I am browsing. It starts wanting to uninstall X, etc. Ubuntu's tools are inferior but improving quickly. For installing packages I like YaST, Synaptic, and Adept. The current version of rpmdrake is garbage compared to the previous version or the Smart package manager. Kpackage is a fine example of bad interface design. I did a lot of testing with compiz and Beryl and they are buggy and hard to get working on all distros. The Suse menu is very different from Gnome and the K Menu, it's easier to browse but slower. I don't like the game category in Ubnuntu's menus because is not subdivided. If you install a bunch it's just a big mess that scrolls off the screen. Not kid friendly. Mandriva has better community support with many more games and educational packages available. They have more third-party repositories (Seer of Souls, PLF) and they are very easy to add with the EasyURPMI site. Ubuntu of course has the Debian repos available but the freedesktop.org menu item standard is not fully implemented in them so you have to rely on the "Debian menu" hack to access everything. Automatix makes it easy to add other packages but some people have had it mess up their system. Adding third party repos with YaST is a pain. It can't handle extra leading or trailing slashes and there isn't any quick way to add a bunch at once like with copying and pasting from EasyURPMI. It doesn't help that published mirror lists don't have updated paths so you have to verify every repo manually. Ubuntu's disabled direct root login is a little annoying but I'm used to it. I normally use a more secure (much longer) password for root and their policy means the same is needed for every admin user's normal login. I now create a specific "administrator" account with admin access and just use the desktop's "switch user" option to log into or "sudo su" from one of the other terminals to get a root terminal. I have found that Mandriva's update policies are lacking, I would update the kernel to fix one problem but then find that updated modules had not been released (madwifi, slmodem) and the old ones didn't work with the new kernel. Mandriva's last development cycle was too long (a year) but they've changed to 6 months now. The really nasty problems I've encountered are common on all distros. Broken 3dfx (tdfx) driver, kernel IDE and ACPI faults, and the 3D desktop problems. I'm still shopping. Fedora is next on my list. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 08, 2007 11:07 PM EDT |
Ok, here it goes.. I still like SuSE. Are there things I do not like about it? Yes. I have had issues recently with the Zen Installer and had to do some digging to get it to quit crashing. It is a little bloated but that is mostly my fault because I like to try out new software when I can and forget to un-install them sometimes. Getting installation sources into YaST2 has turned out to be a real pain but I am learning and have figured out a couple of things along the way. The people who work on developing OpenSuSE do not make trash, they work hard to maintain one of the main 'flavors' of Linux. The actions of the corporate entity that produces SLED are not their fault and they hold no sway in its dealings. Linux is like ice cream, everyone has their favorite flavor. Over time your flavor of choice may change, but it is still ice cream. Like or dislike a distribution of Linux on its merits or lack thereof, but don't blame mostly unpaid developers for something they had nothing to do with. Blame them for making bad software, they can do something about that. /steps off soapbox.. |
| tracyanne Jan 09, 2007 12:07 AM EDT |
quote:: Is that a religious objection to the microsoft deal? Just out of curiosity, what distros have you tried? ::quote Nothing to do with the Microsoft Deal, I just don't like YAST, never have. Recently openSuSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora Core 5 , DSL, Puppy, Knoppix, SimplyMepis, Linspire, Xandros, SLED 10 (on a VMware image), CentOS. I've sold machines with Xandros, Linspire and Mandriva. I prefer Mandriva with KDE, I like DrakConf, and I prefer KDE to GNOME, nothing political there either, I just find that KDE seems to give me the sort of desktop I like, without too much fuss. |
| jdixon Jan 09, 2007 2:43 AM EDT |
> I have found that Slackware based distros (such as Zenwalk...REALLY like Zenwalk) are the fastest overall. With the possible exception of Gentoo and other source based distros, that's the consensus opinion, yes. |
| jdixon Jan 09, 2007 2:51 AM EDT |
> Just out of curiosity, what distros have you tried? Well, I've tried SLS (could never get it working), Slackware (which I'm still using), Red Hat (which I stopped using when they stopped supporting the consumer version), Mandrake (which I was never happy with), Debian (which I found largely unusable over dialup), Mepis (OK, but not better than Slackware), and PCLinuxOS (ditto). Since SuSE was originally just Slackware with Yast and RPM, I didn't see any reason to try it; especially since Yast wasn't open source at the time, and they didn't offer ISO's. Now that I have broadband, Debian seems perfectly usable, so it's now my preferred second choice after Slackware. I've taken to recommending PCLinuxOS to new users, unless I'm setting up the box for them, in which case I'll use Slackware. Setting up Slackware isn't something I'd wish on a new user. |
| rijelkentaurus Jan 09, 2007 3:30 AM EDT |
>I also never realized how crippled the redhat version of kde was until I saw kde in all it's glory, on suse I have found KDE on Red Hat to be far more stable than on any other platform, and yes, far less sexy. |
| herzeleid Jan 09, 2007 7:36 AM EDT |
> Nothing to do with the Microsoft Deal, I just don't like YAST, never have. Is that all that's bothering you? That's an easy one - you can ignore yast if you like, no law says you have to use it. personally I tend to just edit config files by hand, but I also find that yast comes in handy for speeding up common tasks. For software maintenance, you can use apt, yum, smart, rug or zypper instead of yast. > I have found KDE on Red Hat to be far more stable than on any other platform, and yes, far less sexy. Kde was always stable for me, whether on redhat or suse. I can't remember it crashing, ever. In other words, the drabness and lack of features on the redhat version didn't buy me any additional stability. |
| rijelkentaurus Jan 09, 2007 7:58 AM EDT |
>I can't remember it crashing, ever. I was never so lucky. Not often, but sometimes, and it seems that it always breaks eventually on PCLOS, but I do tend to heavily customize it. On Red Hat, never. |
| jdixon Jan 09, 2007 8:34 AM EDT |
> s that all that's bothering you? That's an easy one - you can ignore yast if you like, no law says you have to use it. personally I tend to just edit config files by hand, but I also find that yast comes in handy for speeding up common tasks. Yes, but in that case why use SuSE at all? Just use Slackware with slapt-get. It'll give you the same result. You'll have to perform the initial hardware configuration yourself, but if you're working with config files by hand anyway, that shouldn't be a problem. |
| dcparris Jan 09, 2007 9:05 AM EDT |
I actually like Yast, for the most part. I don't like its NFS tool. It _never_ sees my network (not in three versions), and I always wind up editing the config files. And it's slow. I can live with slow, but the NFS utility needs to be fixed. |
| azerthoth Jan 09, 2007 10:34 AM EDT |
My concerns now and why I wont use SUSE are: 1: The microvell deal, not in the closed/open source/patent issues. Rather the MS has a history of destroying technology companies that it can get its fingers into. 2: Its not a question of if SUSE will have to fork away from mainstream Linux under GPL3, but how much will it have to fork? The FSF has said that GPL3 will contain provisions to prohibit/control such deals in the future, which means that any GPL3 code will be unusable by Novell's Linux offerings. Until item 2 can be addressed I dont see how SUSE can be seriously considered. For personal use you will have limited your software choices and upgrade/update paths, basicly shooting yourself in the foot. For business use the same applies and you have limited yourself to a sole provider and limiting the strength and diversity that open source projects confer. It is concievable, if unlikely that the only thing that will remain "current" would be the kernel. Some of the major building blocks will definity go GPL3, if you look at alot of the core utilities you'll see RMS's name there. Thats why I cant/wont use or recommend SUSE. In my mind it is currently in a very untenable position that probably wont get any better as time progresses. |
| swbrown Jan 09, 2007 5:15 PM EDT |
For me, the issues are: 1) It's doomed. 2) I'm in love with the scope of software packaged in Debian. It means that almost no matter what weird or bizarre tool I or others need, it's likely packaged by Debian, so has excellent integration. Having to build and install software by hand is a maintenance nightmare - for example, you become responsible for monitoring and responding to all security issues involving that software by hand. The deal-breaker for me re distributions is always #2. I wind up thinking "So how can I import neat feature/bullet-point X into Debian?" rather than "How can I get distribution X to package and support the known universe ala Debian?". I guess it's kinda gone Borg. SUSE did have a lot of neat stuff, though - e.g., they exposed many configuration details in an easy-to-find way on the desktop. It was just much more focused around being used as a functional desktop from a cold start. However, I did forget to do my favorite "If you insert a USB stick, does it mount it sync and dirsync by default?" test (someone willing to try this out and report back?). For some reason, pretty much all distributions don't mount USB sticks sync,dirsync by default, despite the rest of the world being conditioned to yank a USB stick after copying without unmounting. It's a severe usability issue, as it's almost guaranteed people will do this. |
| tracyanne Jan 09, 2007 6:30 PM EDT |
quote:: For software maintenance, you can use apt, yum, smart, rug or zypper instead of yast. ::quote Yes I could, but I prefer DrakConf, my loss I suppose. |
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