Installing OpenSuse, any things I should be aware of?

[billgoldberg]

Just for kicks I decided to install OpenSuse over Ubuntu 9.04 (the iso is downloading right now).

I'm going for the KDE version.

I never used a RPM based distro before.

What are some of the biggest differences between Ubuntu and OpenSuse?

[FalloutMan]

the fact that there are a few features missing and my sound didnt work made me leave OS and go to ubuntu. i dunno its alright but imho ubuntu is better.

[SuperSonic4]

I found OpenSUSE to be quite clunky and relatively confusing as to sorting out my repos and installing stuff from nvidia.

[MikeTheC]

I, too found OpenSuSE to be inadequate. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some neat things about it. Scribus, for instance, runs *considerably* better on it, and their startup manager looks a heck of a lot more professional. However, and especially under a KDE install, both their app launcher and software installation manager (yast, I believe) are not at all intuitive or user-friendly. The Gnome install is a little bit better, but not much.

In short, it lasted about a day on my system.

Might I suggest that, with respect, you should wait another couple days until Fedora 11 is released and then usethat if you want to try an RPM-based distro.

[billgoldberg]

I, too found OpenSuSE to be inadequate. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some neat things about it. Scribus, for instance, runs *considerably* better on it, and their startup manager looks a heck of a lot more professional. However, and especially under a KDE install, both their app launcher and software installation manager (yast, I believe) are not at all intuitive or user-friendly. The Gnome install is a little bit better, but not much.

In short, it lasted about a day on my system.

Might I suggest that, with respect, you should wait another couple days until Fedora 11 is released and then usethat if you want to try an RPM-based distro.

I didn't realize that a new Fedora release is coming out.

I'm in the process of burning the iso image right now, after failing the get it installed from my usb drive.

If I don't like it, I will give Fedora a try.

[MikeTheC]

I didn't realize that a new Fedora release is coming out.

I'm in the process of burning the iso image right now, after failing the get it installed from my usb drive.

If I don't like it, I will give Fedora a try.

Yeah, they're defaulting to ext4 and aiming for a 20 sec max boot time from kernel load to GDM log-in. In my experience it usually takes about 18 seconds on my 2.7 GHz Athlon 5200+. That to me is *very* impressive.

[Screwdriver0815]

the biggest difference is that opensuse uses this so called "one click install" for activating repositories and to install some things like the graphics drivers.

For that you have to search on the opensuse site for a one click install link. This leads the package manager (yast) to the right place where to find the repo respectivly the install data for the desired software.

This is a little bit confusing.

using rpm instead of deb is not such a big difference.

My experience was also that the help and support always repeats all the knowledge, the User already knows while the real existing questions remain unanswered.

But anyway: good luck! (meant serious, not sarcastic)

[gnomeuser]

with openSUSE, the packman repo contains all the codec stuff, you can add it directly via YaST.

Also YaST while powerful is all to confusing and a lot of it's functionality should be replaced with automatic configuration like has been done upstream by Fedora (and which you have here on Ubuntu).

It's a very nice distro, especially the KDE edition I hear is a superior KDE offering (mostly since pretty much all the original SuSE employees use KDE and thus it gets tested and polished).

I really like openSUSE, having used Fedora and Ubuntu though it does feel a bit like the middle sibling. It doesn't have the vast community of contributors that Fedora boasts and it doesn't have the huge following of users Ubuntu does. Yet they do a lot of interesting work and openSUSE is a very solid offering.

Fedora 11 is coming out in 2 days, it might be worth it to have a look at that as well (and you are most welcome to poke me for help, I used to be a Fedora developer so I know my way around the system - in general though it works beautifully and rpmfusion.org provides those pesky legally encumbered packages).

[billgoldberg]

Thus far I'm pretty impressed by the KDE version of OpenSuse.

I still have to get used Yast a bit, but I like what I see thus far.

I hope I still feel the same way after the updates are installed and I actually start doing stuff on it.

[billgoldberg]

Fedora 11 is coming out in 2 days, it might be worth it to have a look at that as well (and you are most welcome to poke me for help, I used to be a Fedora developer so I know my way around the system - in general though it works beautifully and rpmfusion.org provides those pesky legally encumbered packages).

I might take you up on that offer.