Ubuntu`s Installer and SuSe`s Installer

[DjDarkman]

When I didn`t have internet for a month I installed a SuSe 10 just to see how it works and I was suprised that Suse`s installer is much easyer and better then ubuntu`s.

The problem with the live cd installer is that it`s extreemly slow ,even on a PC with a 2Ghz 64 bit AMD processor.

I was thinking wouldn`t it be better if ubuntu had an installer simmilar tu Suse`s?

[Kateikyoushi]

I did not notice that the live cd was slow, the installation wasn't longer than 15 minutes, barely had to set anything, seems to me you have to set more things during the suse install.

[equal]

I've been running Ubuntu since Hoary (5.04), and I gotta say the Dapper installer is the most efficient installer I've ever seen, especially for the average user. The big advantage is it lets you use your OS while it is being installed.

I've installed SuSE as well. I had no problems with the installation, and I definitely liked the look of their OS as well. I think the SuSE installation is more configurable for power users, but remember, Ubuntu is Linux for Human Beings.

It's all a matter of preference. I personally prefer this new installer. 5.04 and 5.10's installers were much more similar to the SuSE installer.

[Engnome]

I think the SuSE installation is more configurable for power users, but remember, Ubuntu is Linux for Human Beings.

It's all a matter of preference. I personally prefer this new installer. 5.04 and 5.10's installers were much more similar to the SuSE installer.

I use the alternate ubuntu disc. The suse installer was not my style. Doing a server install and then add what you need is more effiecent. Sitting 20-60 minutes configuring a suse install for how you think you are gonna use was really irritating.

[darkhatter]

Ubuntu installer can't touch the suse installer, but I'm not installing my O.S. 2 times a day so it doesn't matter to me.

[ComplexNumber]

Ubuntu installer can't touch the suse installer,.
i agree. the ubuntu installer is faster, but the suse installer is light years ahead in every other department.

[prizrak]

i agree. the ubuntu installer is faster, but the suse installer is light years ahead in every other department.

How? From what I seen Ubuntu has a much more well thought out and streamlined installer. SuSE has a lot of config options but that's about it. Also I find the installer interface pretty convoluted.

[ComplexNumber]

How? From what I seen Ubuntu has a much more well thought out and streamlined installer. SuSE has a lot of config options but that's about it. Also I find the installer interface pretty convoluted.
the suse installer is the best there is(IMO), and i've used a heck of a lot. your definition of "well thought out" seems to mean 'sparse', 'restricted', and 'lacking' to others. the ubuntu installer is also as buggy as heck and ended up hosing my home partition because it crashed about 7 times in a row.

[Engnome]

Very diverse opinions coming in here, I thought it'd be easy to agree on a "best installer" but I guess not...

Is it possible to remake this thread into a poll? Would be interesting to see what people like.

[chaosgeisterchen]

Well.. either sides have their advantages. So why not developing towards a mixture?

A streamlined graphical installer with optional power-user-customizability. I want to have the possibility to deselect packages while installing ubuntu. And/or having the possibility to extend the installation. Self-created Ubuntu DVDs would really profit from that.

[DjDarkman]

Very diverse opinions coming in here, I thought it'd be easy to agree on a "best installer" but I guess not...

Is it possible to remake this thread into a poll? Would be interesting to see what people like.

Sorry don`t know how to convert it to a poll.

[DjDarkman]

I did not notice that the live cd was slow, the installation wasn't longer than 15 minutes, barely had to set anything, seems to me you have to set more things during the suse install.

Maybe it`s beacuse I had slightly less then 256 Ram ,but if this is the real reason ,then that means ubuntu`s live installer is highly ram dependent wich is not good cause people with less ram can`t use it.

[bastiegast]

I found SUSE's installer very confusing, its interface is like YasT which may be nice, but I HATE its GUinterface(and slowness but thats another topic). Of course its just the interface im talking about, dont know much about the quality, but I prefer the ubuntu installer for its simplicity and being able to surf the web while installing :P

[Engnome]

Sorry don`t know how to convert it to a poll.

I didn't say it was possible, in fact I think it is not possible, someone would probably have to make a new thread about it. But I don't care enough to do it...

[prizrak]

the suse installer is the best there is(IMO), and i've used a heck of a lot. your definition of "well thought out" seems to mean 'sparse', 'restricted', and 'lacking' to others. the ubuntu installer is also as buggy as heck and ended up hosing my home partition because it crashed about 7 times in a row.
I didn't find anything restricting about the Ubuntu installer, it has very sane defaults and installs for the most part what most people would need. As far as it being buggy, I never had a problem with either the "alternate" or the "desktop" versions.

SuSE in my opinion had a very convoluted installer in some ways and in others hugely lacking. Yes it allows for customization but at the same doesn't have an option of "SuSE KDE/Gnome Desktop". It is also incapable of recognizing graphics hardware correctly it installed "vm" video driver on all 3 machines I tried it on all with different Linux supported cards.

While Ubuntu lacks the net install option, SuSE has one of the worst implementations I have ever seen (the worst one is turbo linux) it doesn't have a list of mirrors to choose from, you have to manually put the URL in, it also doesn't allow for the "extras" repository URL to be added in the beginning.

Perhaps the SuSE installer is good for someone who likes to select every package by hand but it's definetly not a very easy or quick one.

[ComplexNumber]

Yes it allows for customization but at the same doesn't have an option of "SuSE KDE/Gnome Desktop".
really? when was the last time you used it?

[prizrak]

really? when was the last time you used it?

On the latest OpenSuSE w/e it is now 10.1 I think. I'm not trying to flame you but can you give me actual features that SuSE installer has making it the best, and what Ubuntu is lackingin your opinion.

[maniacmusician]

The SuSe installer is okay, I guess. I like how easy the Ubuntu installer is. But i have to say; it has crashed on me a lot. which was a bit annoying. But other than that, I like it. Could it be better? yes. I think it's ease of use is amazing, but I wouldn't mind some "optional" setup options that advanced users could go through and adjust. so basically; I think the ubuntu installer is good, but it needs to be a little more stable (understandable, seeing as how its new), and could use some more features (which is a personal opinion). I like SuSe too, but after I found ubuntu early this year, I never really went back to try it again.

[ComplexNumber]

On the latest OpenSuSE w/e it is now 10.1 I think. I'm not trying to flame you but can you give me actual features that SuSE installer has making it the best, and what Ubuntu is lackingin your opinion.
choice of packages, ability to configure everything BEFOREHAND, rock solid stable, great facilities to repair installations successfully, great hardware detection.
apart from the last one, everything that ubuntu doesn't have. there are many that include most of the above, but not all of them. 2nd best installer is probably mandrivas.
btw it does allow you to select either gnome or kde. if the user wants to, he can leave it at that or he can select individual packages.

[prizrak]

choice of packages, ability to configure everything BEFOREHAND, rock solid stable, great hardware detection.
apart from the last one, everything that ubuntu doesn't have. there are many that include most of the above, but not all of them. 2nd best installer is probably mandrivas.
btw it does allow you to select either gnome or kde. if the user wants to, he can leave it at that or he can select individual packages.
Yes I know there is a choice between DE's but I meant more along the lines of integration. SuSE doesn't seem to have as much integration of their DE's with the rest of the system as Ubuntu does. Then again I suppose because of YaST it's not as critical to have both GTK and QT front ends to system settings. I suppose the installers target different things. Ubuntu has probably one of the most painless installers out there as it is basically 3 clicks and you are done (unless you like to tinker with your partitions like I do). As for stability, I never had any problems with either so I don't know.

[ComplexNumber]

SuSE doesn't seem to have as much integration of their DE's with the rest of the system as Ubuntu does
"intergration"?

[darkhatter]

Suse is nicest desktop, I'm not sure where you are coming from, and yast has a gtk frontend coming, they are already working on it.

[ComplexNumber]

Suse is nicest desktop, I'm not sure where you are coming from, and yast has a gtk frontend coming, they are already working on it.
yup, historically, suse was very kde based, and therefore yast was qt. everything was integrated. now its going(gone) in the direction of gnome. so very soon the user will have the choice. so i don't know where this supposed lack of integration is in suse.
then again, at least there is a full set of admin tools in suse, and which are central too. unlike some.

[prizrak]

It's just a feeling I got working with SuSE. It seemed alot like RedHat/FC where there is the underlying code that does all the grunt work and the GUI is just put on top of it. Ubuntu feels more like Windows in this respect, the GUI seems to be an actual part of the OS not just something running as a separate layer. I don't know perhaps it's the slowness of SuSE vs Ubuntu or even Windows. Like I said it SEEMS to be less integrated, doesn't mean it's reality :)

[igknighted]

Ubuntu's installer is ok. Overall, I find it to be a lot like Windows. Faster, but very little configuration options. Suse's installer gives you all the options, but also configures them for you to what it thinks they should be. The average user will accept them and move on, and the advanced user can tweak to his/her liking. The biggest gripe I have with both of these installers is that they give very little control over the bootloader. At least in suse there is a yast tool to fix the bootloader if it doesn't do what I want, in Ubuntu this involves a google search or forum post and editing some text files (I don't mind too much, but not very user friendly). I think that Ubuntu needs to have a more advanced install before we can compare it to the suse install.

NOTE: I am not terribly familiar with the alternate install CD for Ubuntu, is it a more advanced installer (option wise, I know it's text based, but thats not such a bad thing)? If so then I'll have to check that out.

[xXx 0wn3d xXx]

SuSE's installer is nice but I like Ubuntu's better. Ubuntu's is much faster and less complicated in my opinion.

[russell.h]

Right after SuSE 10 came out last year I needed to install it on 5 computers for my robotics club. They were all old computers with no DVD drive, and at that point I was paying for my bandwidth by the GB, and thus I decided to go ahead and download all 6 SuSE CDs. Some ungodly number of hours later I had my .isos, which I then got the joy of burning.

At that point I had litterally no experience with Linux, and I actually found the SuSE installer very easy to use. It detected all the hardware in all five machines just fine. The single thing that made the whole install process just miserable and tedious was the fact that they didn't seem to have given any thought at all as to which packages should go onto which CD. Every single installation (each was a little different depending on what we intended to use the computer for) required the use of all 6 CDs. And rather than just go 1,2,3 etc they go 1,3,2,6,3 again,5,1 again or whatever. It drove me absolutely nuts.

Overall I liked what I was seeing of SuSE at school though, so I decided to go ahead and install it at home too. The computers at school I had just let go with the "nv" video driver, but at home I wanted to try to run America's Army (which at that point had a current linux release), so I needed the nvidia driver. But my video card was so old that the installer just plain didn't work, and I ended up building all these kernel modules and whatnot by hand.

BAD IDEA. It turned out that every week or so SuSE's (rather well done) automated update system would go back and undo all of my work at which point X wouldn't start. The first time it happened I had to totally reinstall since I had no idea what I was doing. Later I learned how to go in fix it (rebuild the kernel modules again, modify xorg.conf, etc) from the command line.

The need to rebuild the kernel module every week just to keep the GUI working drove me back to windows after about a month.

The only complaint I had with the SuSE installer was the ridiculous CD switching nonsense. And it did ask me whether I wanted KDE or Gnome.

[dca]

The only plus I saw in openSuSE was the ability to create an image of the install (AutoYaST) you just performed so installation on duplicate machines was easier...

Other than that, I'm quite happy w/ Ubuntu's installer.

[julian67]

openSUSE's installer is easily the best if you want to take time to pick and choose your packages and desktop environment(s) etc. Installing from the Kubuntu DVD live was very easy and reasonably fast but now I have to spend time removing the stuff I didn't want....can't really see that this ultimately works out quicker than deselecting during install. I'm not saying it's bad because it isn't, in fact it looked better and worked much better than when I used Dapper alternate or live CDs which both were unstable for me on installation. If you're completely new to Linux or ok with default applications/environments then the Ubuntu, freespire, and PCLinuxOS installers are probably the quickest but if you know what you want and what you don't want then the openSUSE installer is great. I'm not sure why anyone says you can't choose your desktop, you can choose any and all of Gnome, KDE, Blackbox, Window Maker, Icewm and more...really it's up to you. One person's openSUSE install can be almost entirely different to another's with great hardware support, the Linux kernel and YaST maybe being the only major common features.

You get a lot of choices with the openSUSE installer but you get summaries and and tips throughout. To me it's the standard other installers have to match. But like someone said you probably don't use it that often so it isn't the biggest factor in choosing your distro for most people. For people making frequent/multiple installs it might influence the choice of distro. For the purpose of helping people switch from Windows or Mac then probably Ubuntu's speedy and magical-seeming install while using a live CD is perfect.