So a technical preview of Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is out..

[siriusnova]

So anyone try it, how good or bad is it?

Have they fixed the utter horrible package management system?

:lol:

[jrattner]

From what I heard they migrated to the SMART system. I hear this is actually causing quite a delay for them. Because of the situation they have been forced to delay the release of their enterprise edition.

[Peturrr]

Just installed it in vmware server on Ubuntu.

It is amazing... much more slick and clean than Dapper. Very Very polished. I am considering to install it instead of Ubuntu.

[siriusnova]

Do you need all the 5 cds or just the first 2 for a default install?

[Peturrr]

You'll need the first 3 cd's.

[evilmrt]

I've heard nothing but good things about "SLED" 10 so far. Things like "Its the best distro ever" and "its better than ubuntu". Who else here has tried it? I'd like to hear some more, before I try it out.

:cool:

[bruce89]

I thought you had to pay for it (once the beta is over)?

[rshd301]

Tried it and got hung up with the usual SuSE type dependancy issues when trying to install apps. I do like the new 'Computer' menu option though as it's quite intuitive and pulls up results quickly and efficiently. But still ....

..... I promptly reloaded Ubuntu. Good to be back.

[GuitarHero]

Yeah I was looking to try it out but it looked to be that i had to buy it. I did find a live dvd though, but it didnt work on my system.

[oskie]

I tried it out on my presario v2000 laptop. It was noticeably slower to boot and it did not detect and configure my hardware nearly as well as Dapper. It also froze up solid on me several times and this prompted me to remove it. I have no clue what the issue was. While it worked, it was definitely more polished looking than other Linux distros but it still has the old Gnome 2.12 look in some places. The new menu layout is quite useful and avoids clutter. Perhaps others will have happier things to say. I never judge a distro by one installation on one machine.

[Iandefor]

I thought you had to pay for it (once the beta is over)? They offer an "eval" edition, which is SLED 10 without the fancy support package and manuals and the like.

Who needs fancy printed manuals when you have man pages :-D?

[Kilz]

There is only one thing I can say to people thinking about switching to SuSE.
I hope you dont have any problems. Because if you do there is no fantastic community to ask for help. Get ready for RTFM! and GOOGLE IT! and being ignored.
I left SuSE behind for just that reason.

[wylfing]

Well, that is because it is for enterprise. In other words, they expect you to purchase support contracts.

[Kilz]

Well, that is because it is for enterprise. In other words, they expect you to purchase support contracts.
Even Open SuSE is like that. Its suposed to be community driven, well maybe it is if they want to drive the community to paying them for support.
I think I will just stay with Ubuntu for a bit. :D Even though SuSE has way better multiarch support (I use AMD64 Dapper, it has a little) I still perfer the community here.

[Qrk]

I have it installed on my "testing" partition. I liked it very much on the surface, but underneath I found it rather difficult.

I like the "default" gnome much better than SuSE's changed one. But I found that my friends, who groan every time I mention Ubuntu, loved the new menu. That new menu is slick... like a cross between XP's huge mess of a start menu and Apple's applications folder. I found it quite intuitive, but since I already know gnome, the extra keystrokes aggravated me.

I think Linux needs YAST to become popular, but I found it difficult to use. Perhaps if I were used to hunting through control panels like Windows I'd like it, but I like the command line much more.

All in all, it seems like Novell hit their target corporate market right on the head. It won't take long to get used to SuSE from XP. But for my hobbiest self, I'd rather stick with Ubuntu.

[matthias_k]

SLED 10 has the single best user interface I have ever seen in any operating system. Everything is driven by indexing and seems to be connected throughout their application suit. That's very nice, especially their SLAB menu is awesome.

But when it comes to things like package management, the glory is over. Ubuntu is lightyears beyond SLED when it comes to package management. In any situation, I'd prefer the distro with the better package management over the one with the shinier desktop, as package management is at the heart of a linux distro.

I have already seen a HOWTO explaining how you can integrate their SLAB menu into GNOME on Ubuntu. Sweet.

[Nomearod]

There's allready some *deb packges that let you install the new gnome menu in Ubuntu. (Look in the Edge sub-forum)

I tryed Suse 10.0 and I didn't liked... I couldn't get my wireless card to work and I didn't find any guide ou support. Synaptic is much better than YAST.

So far, Ubuntu was the only distro that made me leave Windows and in my opinion, is the best distro out there.

[tsb]

I never had any problems with the SUSE community. They were just as helpful as this one. I will be trying SLED soon. I'll report back ASAP.

[Protostar]

There is only one thing I can say to people thinking about switching to SuSE.
I hope you dont have any problems. Because if you do there is no fantastic community to ask for help. Get ready for RTFM! and GOOGLE IT! and being ignored.
I left SuSE behind for just that reason.

Thats exactly the reason I left as well. I couldn't get any questions answered. What I did figure out I did on my own. Also their wiki was poorly organized IMO. Nothing like the Ubuntu Wiki, where everything is in place and easy to find. I think I'll try it out anyway though (not to replace Ubuntu of course, just as a friendly romp). For those who said that the SuSE communities were helpful, what forums did you frequent?

[matthias_k]

By the way:

There is a way to enjoy SUSE's polished desktop and Ubuntu's stability and community at the same time: Install XGL, Network Manager, Beagle, F-Spot and The Slab in Dapper, and you have the best from both distributions.

Really, SLED10 is only about eye candy, the rest is rubbish. With a little modification, you can get that in Ubuntu, too. I did it, and I love it:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/1569/desktop5dj.th.png (http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=desktop5dj.png)

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/724/slab3vu.th.png (http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=slab3vu.png)

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/1714/cc6hv.th.png (http://img68.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc6hv.png)

[tsb]

SLED is sluggish (especially YaST) for me and my Broadcom 4306 acted spotty with ndiswrapper. I don't like the new menu system at all either. I'm d/l MEPIS RC3 now to replace it. My notebook hotkeys don't all work in SLED either, but they do in Ubuntu. The KDE workarounds I know didn't solve the issue either. I'm sure with some configuration it would be fine, but I don't like the menus and it's sluggish comaperd to MEPIS and Ubuntu. The fonts sure are nice though.

I usually went to SuSE Forums and always found lots of helpful people for whoever asked.

[Adamant1988]

I installed the technical preview on my laptop (which I use for testing systems as I'm always home so my important data is there).

At first I didn't like how Un-Ubuntuesque it was. The install took a good 40 minutes (My dapper install took more like 20..) and when I first started using it everything was SLOW. Flash support worked oob though, and I enjoyed being able to listen to my pandora account (something I can not do on my desktop because it has errors with flash in firefox).

As I used it more the new menu system was the first thing to 'grow on me'. I LOVE the new menu system, it is very user-friendly and VERY intuitive. Everything is what you would expect it to be, not what you've been taught it should be. I hope that Ubuntu really takes a que from Suse on the new menu system. Or at least offers a fully functional version as an option..

The integrated search (the cause of the slowness in my experience) is another REALLY good thing... Although I would like to be able to make folders that are set to do a specific search when opened so that all of my data matching those resuls would be in it, I'll wait for that feature (hopefully in edgy). Regardless the integrated search has made searching for programs and files a breeze.

For the negatives: I don't have wifi so I can't test it, but one BIG problem is software installation... it took almost 10 minutes to install opera from a .rpm. That's a bit rediculous... and I actually missed the gnome-app-install program when I started up. The first thing I try to do with an OS is make it feel like home, and I can't do that in suse because there isn't any repos yet, I just have what's on the disk.

I've determined that I am going to play with the beta for a week and see what I come up with, but those are my initial thoughts...

[K.Mandla]

Do I have to start an account with Novell to download this? I'd rather just try it, but it seems the only way is to register with them. I looked on distrowatch but didn't see anything.

EDIT: Never mind. I found a torrent on Linuxtracker.

[Adamant1988]

I wen't aheead and started an acocount , it might be helpful if I decide to order.


Another things I found AWESOME about the suse distro I downloaded, the user tutorials included. I think that Ubuntu could use tutorials like that...

[K.Mandla]

It's funny that you mention that. One of the things I liked about my brief experience with Gentoo was the detailed installation guide. I feel a little silly saying it, but I didn't get a guide like that when I started with Ubuntu. I'm sure there's one out there, but even now I don't know where it is.

[Adamant1988]

I think that's an important part of the end user experience...

I'll give an example:
I wanted a manual for my fiance who is potentially switching to Ubuntu. In fact I *wanted* to buy an Ubuntu boxed set for her so she could have everything she needed to start, but there's not one in English.

So basically the task before her is:
Install Ubuntu, Learn how to install applications in Ubuntu, learn how to get around the new desktop enviroment, etc.

What is there to tell her how to do this? A wiki page she'll never find unless I point her to it. I know that disk space is important, but at least include a link to stream the help videos for people like her (oh and make them too), but my preference would be a bought boxed set and a manual.

[K.Mandla]

Well, I downloaded the disc set, burned the first three and tried it out.

It didn't go so well. Installation took about 1.5 hours, and locked up in the final step -- hardware configuration.

When I reset the machine, it booted into a Gnome environment, but with a wacky resolution that I couldn't fix.

My network was functional (which is always good), but the screen dimensions were weird and hard to read (very narrow; almost like widescreen compressed to 640x480). Kind of made it a dealbreaker. [-(

The "Computer" menu didn't really do anything to convert me either. It looks more or less to me like the fancified XP start menu, and I've never had any love for that.

It was fun to try though. I'm always willing to burn another disc and try something out. This one will go into the "other distro" CD stack, though ... along with a lot of others. :)

(By the way, the test machine was a 5-year-old HP XT856 -- 933Mhz, 384Mb, 20Gb, i810 graphics, DVD-ROM/CDRW, Realtek network card ... only $3 at the recycle center! :mrgreen: )

[Derek Djons]

I've read an interesting review about SLED 10 at Mad Penguin (http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=7150)

Since I grew up with SuSE Linux I decided to re-install it on my notebook once more for fun and knowledge. I am curious if SuSE Linux is going to recognize all my hardware properly and give me headache with configuration and use.

My test notebook is an Acer Travelmate 290 (Clone). It has a 1.5Ghz Intel Mobile, 512MB DDR SDRAM, Intel 2200BG Wireless Network and a 40GB Harddrive.

[darkhatter]

I use suseforums.net, its good for suse linux, but I haven't been able to find support for sled 10. you can use packman, but some packages work and others don't. I'm not sure why your install was so long I have a computer about the same specs and I got about a hour. The package manager *works* now, but its really slow.

I just hope this all goes into OpenSuse and that they create a version of the slab for kde.

[blitzd]

I'm using SLED right now, and I have to say it's pretty damned slick.

I didn't have to manually edit one config file really. Hardware was all detected. I didn't have to disable IPv6 (had slow DNS lookups in Ubuntu if I didn't). Installed the nVidia drivers through 'Install Software', picked my external monitor (I'm on a laptop) from a list and it defaulted to the native resolution (1680x1050). Enabled Compiz/Xgl with the click of a button and a logout/login. Enabled dualhead with a couple more clicks (turned it off later because I really only want my external monitor). It was all very impressive...

...UNTIL, I tried to get DVD playback to work. You'd think they could include some sort of DVD playback in a commercial linux distribution, enterprise or not (I work in an enterprise environment and often watch training videos on DVD). Maybe it will be there in the final release though.

Trying to get some other repositories set up to install some decent video support I quickly realized that the package manager sucks ****. The GUI is slow and unusable for anything but installing the packages included in the distro (again, I work in an enterprise environment and often have to install non-standard packages). I'm reminded yet again why I hate RPM based distros (it's not using Smart by the way - just YaST AFAIK, I had to install Smart myself)...

I did finally get the DVD playback going after sacrificing several live chickens, but the performance is shite (the same packages that worked perfectly fine with great performance in Ubuntu).

There really isn't much of a community that I have found for support either - nothing that seems as active as these forums anyways.

Anyways, I'm willing to write off the few bad experiences on the fact that it's a release candidate. There hasn't been time for a community to get behind it yet, or to set up all those fun repositories/instructions for the packages everyone really wants. I'd give it six months after it is released in final for some good resources to appear on the net. I just hope the simple configuration experience spreads to other Linux distros...