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curuxz
September 20th, 2007, 03:50 PM
So I thought I would download and try out opensuse (latest) just to see what its like (also need to test some compile tools on an rpm distro but thats another story).

Anyways, let me first say wow, its really really really good. Now its been 3 years since i last installed suse, and boy has it come a long way. First impression, well having to download 3-5 iso's was a pain in the *** I have to admit but after that here is how things went:

Install:

This is one of my pet peves in ubuntu, our live install sucks balls IMHO, why? because its designed around the first time user getting it on their computer as fast as possible which ok is fine but for anyone wanting a custom install is a pain. Distros like Suse, Redhat and mandrieva have much nicer install systems which allow you to tallor your system, personally I dont mind 3 cd's in order to have just one easy prompt that says would you like gnome, kde or other instead of upteenth diffrent *buntu's for their DE.

The install was smooth, and enjoyable.

First boot

I obviously chose KDE, because well I use kde. There version of KDE looks much nicer out of the box however I dont like this new menu since its very slow to browse for applications, I much prefer old style kubuntu menu but i can see where they are going and its an intresting idea.

Good set of default apps, for instance if you chose kde they give you both konq and firefox, its not hard. the world did not end and i know how much this annoys the like of JR to keep saying this but...it would not hurt to have firefox installed by default in kubuntu.

package management

kept asking for more cd's, a real pain, and was hard to figure out if it could download from the internet if i did not have packages. Im sorry its just not as freindly as synaptic or appitiude.



I stoped playing around about here, but my main point is why cant we have a better installer for those that want it, and why cant we have our distro looking as good from the get go, its opensuse after all so we should be able to 'borrow' as many ideas as we like.

One final note, Ubuntu and Kubuntu would be 345349859384593845938495839458345 times better if we had something as good as YAST.

oh well just thought I would share my 2cents :)

LaRoza
September 20th, 2007, 03:57 PM
I stoped playing around about here, but my main point is why cant we have a better installer for those that want it, and why cant we have our distro looking as good from the get go, its opensuse after all so we should be able to 'borrow' as many ideas as we like.


Use the text installer, faster and easier, otherwise I agree GUI installers are a pain in general.

Defaults are defaults, they are there to change. My Ubuntu and openSUSE setups look nothing like eithers defaults. (Yes, Ubuntu by default is quite unimpressive)

openSUSE is a very nice as a distro, however.

curuxz
September 20th, 2007, 04:09 PM
Use the text installer, faster and easier, otherwise I agree GUI installers are a pain in general.

Defaults are defaults, they are there to change. My Ubuntu and openSUSE setups look nothing like eithers defaults. (Yes, Ubuntu by default is quite unimpressive)

openSUSE is a very nice as a distro, however.

oh i agree, the alt installer is the only way to go since the graphical one is a total waste of time, its trying to be a live distro and an install distro at the same time, great for noobs but a waste of bandwidth for existing users

LaRoza
September 20th, 2007, 04:14 PM
The live disk has a text installer also.

ajgreeny
September 20th, 2007, 04:28 PM
And the live CD lets you check out the hardware compatibility and detection before you go ahead with an install. I can remember trying to install a distro a couple of years ago and wasting hours because the hardware that ubuntu then found easily was not found or compatible with that distro (can't remember which now, I tried many).

I think a great strength of ubuntu is having just the one CD to d/l and a good, if not perfect choice of apps. I agree yast is great, but the package management and installation in rpm distros is not anything like as good as apt or synaptic.

curuxz
September 20th, 2007, 04:51 PM
And the live CD lets you check out the hardware compatibility and detection before you go ahead with an install. I can remember trying to install a distro a couple of years ago and wasting hours because the hardware that ubuntu then found easily was not found or compatible with that distro (can't remember which now, I tried many).

I think a great strength of ubuntu is having just the one CD to d/l and a good, if not perfect choice of apps. I agree yast is great, but the package management and installation in rpm distros is not anything like as good as apt or synaptic.

I agree, but we are the ones with the better package management so we have the core stuff right, they have the fluff ontop right, surrly its easier for us to add the fluff than them to intergrate our better core package system.

Why cant ubuntu get yast, it cant be that hard to adapt an opensource application ,maybe its a licence thing??

SlayerMan
September 21st, 2007, 08:41 AM
OpenSUSE's biggest drawback is its slow package management. Updating a fresh Ubuntu installation to the current state takes about 30 minutes for me, whereas OpenSUSE 10.2 needs over 90 minutes.

Apart from that, OpenSUSE is a nice distro and certainly the main competitor of Ubuntu.

Amphios
September 21st, 2007, 09:38 AM
The openSUSE developers did a lot of work concerning the package management in 10.2 for their new release (10.3). Just give it a try, there has been made much improvement since the last stable release. YaST runs fast and so does the (new) package manager, too.

Here you can read the announcement:

http://news.opensuse.org/?p=153

karellen
September 21st, 2007, 10:26 AM
opensuse is, imo, the most polished kde distro and one the most user-friendly. I started using linux with suse linux 9.3 professional and it was such a nice os. it has everything you need under a nice hood. yast makes using the cli very rare and unusual. his only drawback: speed. it's not challenge for apt-get/synaptic. I'll try opensuse 10.3 when it will be released

SlayerMan
September 21st, 2007, 05:31 PM
@Amphios:

I just checked out 10.3RC1. And I take everything back. It really is lightning fast now! And on top of that, with the new opensuse-updater applet, updates work like a charm (just like in ubuntu, maybe even better)

mech7
September 21st, 2007, 05:39 PM
OpenSUSE comes on DVD and a player is what like $10 these days :p and a dvdr is cheaper then a cdr So who would even bother with multpiple cd's?

Incense
September 22nd, 2007, 04:23 AM
Nice review. I think the one disk image burn is both the bane and beauty of (k)ubuntu. Yes the install is super fast and in less then 30 minuets I can have my new desktop up. While it is somewhat usable; I have another hour or so installing all the apps that I want to use, and getting rid of apps I do not want. The yast installer is much more customizable in this way.

You need to make sure you remove your CD from your Install Sources so you will not need to keep throwing it in to install apps. I don't know if you are still running SUSE or not, but you should check out the extra repositories at http://en.opensuse.org/YaST_package_repository . Glad to see that you tried out openSUSE. It really is a nice little distro. Cheers!

curuxz
September 22nd, 2007, 07:32 AM
ah that makes sense about the cd's

yeah I am still using it because after litteraly weeks of trying to get kolab to install in ubuntu it worked pretty much first time in suse. So now its our mail server.