Oct
8
2007
openSUSE 10.3 – Review
Posted by luna6 56 Comments
openSUSE is a community-driven project sponsored by Novell – similar to Fedora and RedHat. I haven’t used SUSE in quite sometime and with the release of their latest version 10.3, it seemed to be a good time to see how they have progressed.
The installation procedure for openSUSE 10.3 hasn’t changed a lot since I last used SUSE. I always thought SUSE made some of the best default splash screens in Linux and again I was impressed by the initial welcome screen for the installation. Granted it’s not a big deal – but noticeable for me. The installation procedure itself worked without any major hiccups, but it does take longer than most Linux releases. As a matter of fact the slowness of openSUSE will be a recurring theme in this review as I found it to be the biggest drawback to the operating system.
Once the installation finished, I was treated to another slick GDM login screen and then openSUSE’s version of Gnome 2.20. It didn’t take long before I noticed this wasn’t a stock Gnome desktop. Rather than the traditional top and bottom Gnome panels, there is only one bottom panel in openSUSE 10.3.
The familiar Gnome menus for Applications, Places and System has now been integrated into a single “Computer” launch icon on the bottom left of the Gnome panel. Clicking that reveals a control-center-like window, which lists 6 favorite applications and two recently used appliations. There are also system applications available on the right hand column and a search box and three tabs at the top.
When you need to launch an application not listed under “Favorite appplications” or “Recently Used” you then have to click the “More Applications” button and then wait for another popup applet “Application Browser”.
There is a noticeable 1-2 second wait before the “Application Browser” is completely loaded. I found this to be more annoying as I continued to used openSUSE 10.3. Having to click the extraneous “More Applications” button was bad enough, but having to wait a few seconds more for the following window to load grew tiresome very fast.
Once the “Application Browser” appears you are then inundated with way too many icons that are unnecessarily large. This results in a crowded feel and having to scroll up and down way too much.
There are shortcuts on the left for specific sections like Games, Graphics and Internet, but that would be the forth click to find the application I want to use!
Setting up the proprietary Nvidia drivers was a painless procedure with the new one click installation. Available here (legacy Nvidia drivers here), the driver installs itself with ease. There is also a version for Ati which can be downloaded here.
Compiz also worked as easily in openSUSE 10.3. I did get a scary message that XGL wasn’t compatible with the Nvidia driver that was installed, but it worked fine regardless. *Note “Desktop Effects” is available on the Gnome installation cd, but not the KDE installation cd.
Another aspect I found annoying about openSUSE 10.3 would have been the redundancy between similar main applications. An example of this would be “Yast” and “Control Center”, which provides most of the same functions – yet exists separately to cause confusion. “Control Center” is a product of Gnome, while “Yast” is the familiar SUSE control center. Since the openSUSE team has already modified Gnome substantially, they might as well have removed the redundant “Control Center”.
One of the new features that openSUSE mentions is the speed improvements found in YAST. Yes it is faster than prior versions, but compared to other Linux options, YAST feels bloated and slow.
Furthermore YAST is in serious need of being streamlined. As an example, under the “Software” section you have 10 choices, including “Software Repositories” and “Community Repositories”, “Online Update” and “Automatic Online Update”. Last time I checked, everything available in the “Community Repositories” consisted of software repositories, so having separate gui’s seemed entirely unnecessary. The same applies to “Online Update” and “Automatic Online Update”.
While the interface for openSUSE 10.3 is 1 step forward and 2 steps back, the operating system itself works well. Everything you expect in a modern Linux operating system is available in openSUSE and works as expected. Security is well done with the easy to use “Firewall” configuration app and Novell’s very own AppArmor.
I should also mention that if you do decide to download openSUSE, the Gnome version seems to be a better choice. You don’t get “desktop effects” with the KDE version and trying to setup Compiz in KDE resulted in my system exhibiting strange behaviors (white cube of death).
While openSUSE’s efforts to simplify Linux or Window-fy Linux can be commended, the inconsistency in their implementation is its downfall. Opening applications quickly becomes a chore with the excessive amount of clicks needed to find the application you want. The application browser loads slowly, looks cluttered and uses icons that are too large. Yast has been improved but still feels slow. As an example when you open up “Software Management” the program first updates all the repositories (30-45 seconds) before you can even start browsing. There’s also too much redundancy in the system managers – control center and Yast. If you want to change a simple setting like screensaver, good luck clicking between those similar apps and browsing through way too many applets to find that function. One of the more disappointing Linux releases I have used.
Pros :
One click install of proprietary Nivdia drivers works well.
Compiz works great.
Utility applications like Firewall & AppArmor are impressive.
Installation does a great job of setting up hardware (tv cards etc).
Cons :
Redesign of Gnome feels like 1 step forward and 3 clicks backward.
Reduncy in applets is confusing (Yast & Control Center or Software Repo & Community Repo).
Icons in “Application Browser” are too large – causing needless scrolling.
Yast is faster than before but it still feels bloated and slow.
Users Rating: 7.57 
(149 votes)
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Comments
56 Comments so far
Open suse was once my favorite Linux distribution. I don’t care for Gnome that much, but I don’t hate it either. I much prefer KDE and Xfce. Suse’s use of KDE is really nice, but the suse updater was a real dealbreaker.
I much prefer using YOU or SMART and the suse updater, zen/rug combination thing was a real frustration in the 10.1 and 10.2. The suse updater has continued to be a problem for many people I work with that have gone to 10.3.
I have tried the 10.3 and I have to say that I was still impressed by the number of packages, the choice and the little tweaks here and there, but there is still a lot that is missing.
A good deal of tweaking is still needed to get the machine to be able to run all the things most need it to run. Also, though most do not like Windows, it is still by and large the standard of compatibility. Trying to do something as simple as watch a DVD on Opensuse was still a frustration in itself. I could not find the codecs in the repositories, and was having to find xine complete and libdvdcss, compile and install. There is just not a lot of out of the box functionality for some of the stuff that Windows can do with opensuse like there is with some other distributions.
Why compare it to Windows? Because that is what most of us use. Most people use windows at work or have used it in the past and are looking for alternatives, but want the same basic functionality. Most linux distributions fall short on that, and Opensuse is no exception. One distribution that has come along with far more Windows type functionality than most other distributions is PC Linux. In my opinion PC Linux is what Suse has been promising to become. Yet, suse and open suse have not come close to the functionality that I have found in PC Linux.
I would suggest that anyone wanting a good distribution that works out of the box, with all kinds of media and systems, should try PC Linux. If Opensuse would progress to the out of the box working style of PC Linux I might switch back, but for now I have to stick with PC.
I think that Opensuse is fantanstic.
I don’t care what Gnome lovers say, KDE rocks! Besides,Gnome is just to much like macs! KDE is fun, and getting better. Anyways, Opensuse has been, for me, much faster than Ubuntu. Also, it is important to remember the point of free open source: Customization, multiplicity, and fair criticism. What is useful to me, may not be useful to you. The Software management section and the community repositories are not the same thing. Those who complain about multiple apps being used for the same purpose miss an important point of open source: choice. There is no perfect app for a task, and I use multiple programs for to get the job done. While some apps may “do the same thing” many apps have slight differences, which are important. That’s why all the apps are there. Yes, things can be improved, but Opensuse is only steps forward and not steps back. Also, to previous
This review is spot on. I had been a SuSE user since 7.2 until the debacle that was 10.1. Although the promise of SuSE is an admirable one the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. After taking 10.3 for a month long test drive I can safely say that Ubuntu will continue to be my distro of choice. There is no reason on Gods green earth that a distro should come pre-loaded with all the redundant software and haphazard SLAB interface that Novell has thrust upon the SuSE community.
It might not have been the best idea in the world to review openSuSe with a Gnome instead of a KDE desktop. Novell’s implementation of Gnome in openSuSe seems to be as flawed as Ubuntu’s implementation of KDE in Kubuntu. However, I can certainly say that I didn’t like working with openSuSe 10.3 KDE, either. Here are my personal observations, and I’d like to add that I’m light-years way from being a Linux power user. ;-)
Yes, this distro can be configured to excess even during the initial setup and even more so once it’s up and running. But it’s a painstaking job to do, and the overall feeling is that Novell has been “inspired” by MS in such manner that openSuSe looks and feels like a cheap copy of XP. Apart from that, the setup procedure took almost two and a half hours on my Pentium D despite a very fast DSL connection as openSuSe felt compelled to update everything and thus downloaded more than 350 MB of files during the setup procedure! Just to “compensate” for this rather off-putting length, hardware detection is OK but far away from flawless. It correctly identified my EPSON scanner but failed to install a working driver, the same applied to my AVM ISDN card. I don’t want to mention the Terratec DVB-T stick (USB) as I haven’t seen any Linux distro yet that is able to provide a proper driver for that “beast.”
Yes, openSuSe offers a zillion of apps, most of them unfortunately for one and the same purpose: you get three different image manipulation programs, two different productivity suites, three e-mail clients etc. Personally, I prefer Ubuntu’s approach of just one app for each purpose as this keeps the installation smaller and better to administrate. By comparison, openSuSe occupied almost 3 GB of disk space whereas Ubuntu was content with less than 2.5 GB. It’d be untruthful to say that openSuSe provided a considerable more of useful apps or functions to compensate for this rather wasteful handling of disk storage space.
Yes, the KDE desktop is very logical and well-structured in its appearance but it’s fails to fulfil the promise that the very pleasing GRUB boot menu and boot screen make during start-up. On an LCD monitor, letters appear fuzzy, even jagged, so the eyes get tired from reading (or rather: deciphering) text on the screen fairly soon. The NV driver for Nvidia graphics boards doesn’t offer any settings for something that resembles “Cleartype” in Windows, and again, I have to praise Ubuntu for their down-to-earth approach of installing the best driver available regardless its status (”open source code” versus “proprietary code”).
Having said that, I need to add that ACPI works properly on neither openSuSe nor Ubuntu. On both installations “suspend to disk” inevitably lead to a total freeze upon reboot on my computer – no such problems with XP, so I can assume that the hardware works as it’s supposed to do.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend openSuSe to Linux first-timers but it might be a good distro for experienced Linux users who are willing to spend hours on the configuration of their system, chasing up drivers on the Internet etc. On the other hand, I feel that a distro like Ubuntu quickly provides you with a good and usable system and lets you concentrate on getting your work done (or on having fun).
I would like to say that Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon has convinced me a lot more than openSuSe 10.3. This doesn’t mean in any way that openSuSe is bad or useless. It just wasn’t made for me. I’ll rather stay with Ubuntu because it just lets me do what I want to do. In that respect, I find Ubuntu preferable to openSuSe 10.3.
This isn’t a serious review. It is not realistic and in my opinion the guy that wrote this hasn’t used the System for more than 30 minutes. I feel that OpenSuSe 10.3 is a great Linux System that has improved tremendously, giving the end user time to do his/her work rather than tweaking the system all day long, like other distros do. I believe that giving a 6 only shows how inexperienced the reviewer is, or just how much the writer dislikes the OpenSuSe platform. I think that writers shouldn’t let their personal feelings roll into a review, we don’t care if they have favorites or not, we care about objective opinions that are backed with facts.
Thank you
What a biased one sided review.
Think about it a moment….any Bozo who can’t get Ubuntu working probably shouldn’t be writing a review in the first place
I have just started using Opensuse 10.3 after using Ubuntu for some time and have found it to be slick and fast in most everyday situations.
Next time try using the system for more than 15 minutes before attempting to write a review. Geez….what a bonehead!!!
This review is ridiculous. Don’t like the app menu? Turn it off with a click. Yast still is “slow”? How much time by comparison is the user in Yast, other than initial setup? And it’s only a matter of a few seconds, anyway (I have a dozen repos). The majority of the review focuses on just these two areas, and the author repeats himself. But what is so bad about the review is that the very many powerful aspects of openSUSE are ignored – probably because the reviewer doesn’t know they are there, or didn’t bother to do any homework. I’ve used all the major, and a few of the minor, distros – and continue to do so to keep up with which offers what. openSUSE w/KDE continues to be a preferred distro particularly for those intermediate and power users who don’t want to get into the extra work reqd by Fedora or Gentoo. openSUSE is even easier and faster to install and configure than Ubuntu – because it has YaST, while most distros don’t have a full equivalent.
It’s really a shame that this review is the first one that comes up when I google “OpenSUSE 10.3 Review”. I recently loaded OpenSUSE 10.3 on my Dell D620 laptop, and it’s working fine. I’m using KDE, so I don’t have any of the Gnome menu stuff to complain about, and I could care less about Compiz Fusion. The D620 is not slow with OpenSUSE 10.3. I’ve been using it at work for a couple of weeks now, and it’s been rock stable.
First I tried Kubuntu 7.10 (64bit version) on the D620, but I had stability problems (frequent crashes in the Adept package manager and some crashes in Dolphin and Konqueror). Every time I brought the laptop home to my wireless network, I had to manually reconnect, then disable/enable eth1 to get a DHCP address. I had other issues as well that I won’t go into. It was tempting just to change to Kubuntu 32 bit, but I decided to try SUSE 32 bit instead, and it solved every problem.
I don’t particularly like the sliding menu in the KDE version of SUSE 10.3, but then again, I don’t really like the START menu in Windows, either. Whether in Linux or Windows, I just set things up so that I don’t need the menu for the most commonly used items. The menu is not slow, however.
I’ve tried a lot of Linux distributions, and earlier this year, openSUSE 10.2 was kind of in the middle of the pack for me. I like the new 10.3 better. In a work environment, stability is extremely important, and 10.3 just works. My employer requires data encryption on laptops, and with OpenSUSE 10.3 I was able to ecnrypt the home and swap partitions during installation.
This review does not match up with my real experience.
I disagree with a couple of things. I have stopped using Windows completely and I have to say that after loading different versions of Fedora and other linux flavors openSuSE 10.3 (OS10.3) is the best. I changed the new Main menu with the traditional one and had no problems with speed. I, unlike the gentleman reviewing the OS was floored by the speed. This has the fastest YAST I have ever used. I would say that if you don’t care to pay all that money for probably the worst Windows OS I have ever tryed (Vista) you can get an OS wich is feature rich and comes with free office produts for FREE!!! Keep in mind that you can also run DHCP, DNS, EMAIL, NMS, WEB servers FREE!!! and has the best networking tools built in. Windows better watch out……x
Problem solved!! to my last post( i am a noob ) add a new panel , then add to panel , select “menu bar” now i get in and out of apps way faster (thank god) but missing stuff that are just auto added into the right sub folder like in ubuntu. darn i miss ubuntu , im using opensuse because of bad playback of multimedia on ubuntu even though i had all restricted add ons.
SPOT ON! I actually thought this slowness was a problem on my pc and found it highly irritating. I switched from kde to gnome for compiz and in the hope the menu system would be a bit like ubuntu, but its actually slower. When would they fix the slow menu? he forgot to say that sometimes the log out and shutdown menu dont work. please any suggestions on the extraordinary slowness? e.g click > computer (on the taskbar panel) now “more applications” i’m left with a loading mouse for around 8 seconds, click anything on control centre e.g the scanner icon and i’m also left waiting all day. any advice?
The complaint about four clicks makes no sense because in a normal menu I would click “Menu Lancher, Applications, Games, Free Cell”
Only if for some reason you didn’t know/realize that most things are selected on release. ;-)
I only click once then point to what I want and release to launch.
I find that the new Gnome menu works better than any other menu once you add the apps you use frequently to favorites and learn to use the search field in More Applications.
The complaint about four clicks makes no sense because in a normal menu I would click “Menu Lancher, Applications, Games, Free Cell” and on the new menu I click “Computer, More Applications, Games, Free Cell” or if I play Free Cell a lot I click “Computer, Free Cell”. Scrolling through the More Applications window is unnecessary if you use the search which works not only on the application name but on the application description so if someone doesn’t know what application does vector graphics they start typing “Vector” and get a list of the apps that can do it. On other menu designs if you don’t know what Pan or Kate do then good luck finding a news reader or an editor.
I think the biggest complainers for the new menu either haven’t used it long enough to have moved favorites to the menu and get used to the search field, and people who regardless of how well the new menu works would find fault in it because it was created by Novell/Suse and not their favorite distro. Some distros may be able to launch Free Cell with less clicks of hovers but only because they have started spilling parts of the menu on to the taskbar.
“I should also mention that if you do decide to download openSUSE, the Gnome version seems to be a better choice. You don’t get “desktop effects” with the KDE version and trying to setup Compiz in KDE resulted in my system exhibiting strange behaviors (white cube of death).”
In other words, I started out with the KDE version but because of problems with Compiz and KDE – white cube of death, I wrote the review on the Gnome version only.
Also for what its worth, I found the new KDE menu implemented in openSUSE to be as bad (if not worse) as the new Gnome menu.
Are you being paid by GNOME zealots? Are you incapable of writing an unbiased review?
Guys, quit supporting crappy reviews. Waste of time.
Quit being a GNOMEFAG and use a real desktop twat.
P.S SUSE 10.3 rocks
All your problems are GNOME problems, and the result of “corporate agenda”. A lot of things have changed since SuSE was bought, or should I rather say raped, pillaged, and plundered?
The type of testing these corporate entities require is on the magnitude of 100′S OF THOUSANDS of machines. OpenSuSE is the Novel testing mechanism, same as Fedora is the Red Hat testing mechanism. This is quite frankly not debatable, but a matter of fact.
As per your confusion on there being multiple options available to achieve the same task – you seem to either be forgetting or not even realizing a simple fact: YaST existed YEARS before either Gnome or KDE had such tools. YaST can also be run anywhere – QT, GTK, even CLI (on a terminal). So, of freakin course there is going to be overlap when some bloody desktop environment vendor goes about coding garbage and forcing it to be installed along with their desktop (installation of such components is mandatory in Gnome last time I checked – there is no ‘without option’).
Yes you could argue it is the vendor’s job to coalesce these objects into one working form; however my point is the stance of Gnome and their UNWILLINGNESS to allow you – whether you are an individual or institution or organization – to allow you this ‘freedom’ of customization. I say this realizing hordes of zealots will retort this vainly to no end, claiming such things as ‘use the source’ etc., regardless of the impact this would incur and without the foresight into the ramifications of such a measure – or put bluntly overlooking the actual root of the problem at hand (hypocrisy).
As for YaST being slow, listen to a previous poster – it’s the version used in Gnome installs. YaST is blazing fast in 10.2 under KDE and even faster on 10.3, and that is on a machine slower than either of yours. (Yes faster than Red Hat tools, Gnome tools, Debian tools, etc.)
Regarding your ‘problem’ with “Software” selection, seriously that is a non-issue which springs from your own perception of the meaning of those terms. Maybe they should be all grouped into one tool, but all those options NEED to be available separately due to configuration differences. Using as an example community packages, it is both useful and sometimes necessary to be able to disable all of those in one pass, so as to reduce conflicts when upgrading all packages to the most recent versions.
For instance core support libraries (think multimedia) that are required by the community packages that have subtle changes (codec support), which do NOT make them binary incompatible with ‘official’ versions of dependent packages, but will forever be ‘unofficial and unsupported’ – due to vendors’ refusals to pony-up and pay the “codec taxes” for things that would otherwise result in “patent abuse” (hey these people should get paid to, why should the user have to pay when it is the VENDORS’ responsibility – ALWAYS has been). Please no, don’t offer me another junk codec replacement – that is neither the answer nor the right thing to do.
If a corporation can spend HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS on R&D alone, why can’t they afford to license DVD decrypt etc. for a very, very, very, very small amount of $$$ compared to that? The answer: they CAN, they choose not to…
Anyhow that may seem to be digressing, but if you actually read and understand it then you begin to realize just how complicated things are.
BTW, I actually agree with you that package management sucks, just not on the same point – I believe ALL types of packages on Linux are abhorrent: RPM, DPKG etc., including their futile management systems: apt/yum/etc. These are all just band aids to cover the scars of the remnants from another era (UNIX), where a person only has to go look at how others sidestep this (example: Apple.com) to understand how a ‘real solution’ can be achieved.
I also would like to say that I agree with you that the Gnome ‘application chooser’ is weak and pathetic, but please don’t blame that on Novel/SuSE – as that is a GNOME.ORG CHOICE.
What it all boils down to is this: just who do you believe is ‘running the show’ or ‘the driving force’ or ’spending the big bucks’ behind this so-called “Open-Source Movement”? Things would be a LOT different if more kind attention was spent towards other efforts (enightenment.org or kde.org).
Let me ask you something: what if you could take your entire set of [free] applications that you use on your desktop with you and use them on ANY operating system – Linux, BSD’s, Mac, Windows, etc.? Let me introduce you to KDE 4 and QT, my friend…
If you’ve taken the time to read all of this, then Thank You and Good Luck.
I always have the same old problem with Linux distros trying to find in which menus the apps are located. The higher level menus are often far too vaguely named to be of any use. What precisely does “system” mean? Or utilities? Fact is most apps will fit into more than one category.
In practise once you have used a distro for a while, you begin to remember where the apps are located. That explains perhaps why the distro developers feel obliged to keep moving stuff around – so that the users are kept on their toes.
Perhaps if the developers stopped continually revising the menu structure, going round in ever decreasing circles, and started instead to develop things that have real useful functionality Linux might move foward instead of marking time.
How about an applet for formatting drives (hard disk, optical etc) so that one did not have to remember the command line syntax? Or a decent application that authors DVD’s? Useful stuff. Thats what i’d like.
But im sure the next version of Suse will have a new menu structure, yet another revamp of the package manager (that still does the exact same thing only slightly differently), and some spanking new wallpaper.
I didn’t finish reading the review. Darkening the web page to see a screenshot is the wrong way to give access to them. It’s dumb. I’ll never come back here again.
Well… It seems you’ve upset a lot of users with your review. Good job! ;-)
I have to say that your review is spot on in my experience.
While SUSE has many slick, actually very slick aspects to it. For example the installation process, hardware recognition/configuration, artwork is top notch.
It is most certainly THE slowest distribution on the planet.
The thing I hated the most about it was the feeling that I was using Windows, a crippled version at that, not good.
And while Kickoff is pretty cool eye candy, anyone who thinks that adding five clicks to find a simple application or resorting to typing into a search box to avoid all the excessive clicking is an improvement, or that multiple bloated “Control Center” applets are a good idea should stay far, far away from user interface design or anything with *design* and or *user* in it.
Let’s hope this isn’t the future of Linux desktop design.
This review is half right, half false.
First of all, why only reviewing gnome? You can’t comment opensuse when you haven’t see all it’s facets which means: gnome, kde, xfce, fvwm.
And most of the time, suse’s qt integration is still better. Kickoff is more featured than slab and gtk-yast is still a new project.
Then yast is bloated, that’s true, however saying that gnome/kde control center must be within yast, this is stupid. Yast is the configurator for the entire system and a misconfiguration of yast can lead to a unbootable system. Yast is a system admin tool.
Then gnome control center is per-user and mostly safe. Control center is a user tool.
Please remember that opensuse is not build in the same mind than ubuntu. Suse is more professional.
Yeah… So you dare to publish such a critical review of the ‘new’ gnome menu, yet you never had the genius idea of right clicking any application shortcut and maybe… add it to your favourite ones? How dumb is that? It’s like my little brother reviewing the new BMW car and ditching it badly because he couldn’t find a Wii in it.
You don’t know shit, no need to share that with us, really.
I don’t like openSUSE, but if I want to share that dislike, I try to substanciate it. I’m so tired of fools like yourself giving a bad name to some projects with no knowledge, understanding or honnesty.
Let alone the foolish comments about a ‘evil’ deal with ‘M$’… What is this? The Linux Dumbologue Community?
“One click install of proprietary Nivdia drivers works well.”
I don’t really like proprietary drivers. :(
From screenshots, I liked the menu, really nice :)
Thanks for the review first of all… Useful and objective (thumbs up)
I’ve just downloaded the dvd release of 10.3 yesterday and I am anxious to get started… Up until now I’ve been using 10.2 on a 1,67GHz, 1024Meg 12″ laptop and even though I agree on the fact that the gnome ctrl panel is an unnecessary feature and that yast is painfully slow I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else atm…
Summa summarum thanks for the review!
I don’t use Gnome, so I have to demonstrate it with KDE, but again, very easy.
>In openSUSE easily. Just try search bar. You can use name of the application or description, i.e. Akregator or RSS Reader, Konsole or terminal, Amarok or music player, Kaffeine or video player, or in Gnome Liferea or RSS Reader, etc. Easy.
> how else will users will find what they are looking for?
In openSUSE easily. Just try search bar. You can use name of the application or description, i.e. Akregator or RSS Reader, Konsole or terminal, Amarok or music player, Kaffeine or video player, or in Gnome Liferea or RSS Reader, etc. Easy.
Try to go online with a 56k Modem in OpenSuSE 10.3 and GNOME. First install kinternet with a load of KDE packages and then discover that it’s not working. Well i really like openSuSE but 10.3 is a step back from 10.2. There is kinternet too but at least its working.
PS: FROM MY POINT OF VIEW. Try a 56k modem!
apokryphos :
>No, you completely missed the point. You emphatically do NOT want to browse through an application list 99% of the time. 99% of the time you want to launch those 4-5 applications that you use daily. The rest of the time you might be looking for that extra application (i.e. once or twice a week). The usability studies are available; take a look at them.
As a user I can tell you when I want to find an application I don’t want to hunt through multiple layers in different applications to find a application. Regardless if you tell me that I should think otherwise.
>Did you even open it to see what it contains? Perhaps it could be named better, sure.
You don’t think naming is an important part of usability? – that was my whole point.
>You also completely ignored my comments on your baseless “Windows-like” comments. I would love to hear what you have to say, or is it that you just slander other free software projects for fun?
I didn’t respond to it initially because I (incorrectly) assumed it was already self evident. Why else would openSUSE take out the top gnome panel? To make it look like Windows and stuff the menu structure that worked well (one click to open the cascading menu and one final click to launch the program) into one “start menu” like thing for Gnome. The centralized control panel itself is another windows like function. If done right I’m all for that – but in this iteration at least it feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Again you yourself said the naming scheme is bad. That’s an important part of usability – how else will users will find what they are looking for? I’m sure that’s listed somewhere on someone’s usability survey?
Again having over 50 system applets placed in the application browser is ludicrous.
Having similar functions with similar names in similar looking applications again is poor from a usability standpoint. I’m fairly knowledgeable with linux and I found myself bewildered with the similarities in YAST / Control Center / Application Browser – often confusing which application I was actually in or should be looking for :
I installed 10.3 and overlayed my previous home directory so my desktop settings were left over from 10.2. In 10.2 I replaced SLED with the Traditional Gnome (Menu Bar). Just a personal preference. If you don’t like SLED than just switch back. Simple as that!
Maybe it’s because I’m a KDE fan, but I haven’t seen ANY of the problems you mention. Yes there’s two setup systems (Yast and KControlCenter) but their functions are pretty seperate: One is a system-wise tool for doing stuff like installing software, managing users and configuring runlevels, the other is a User tool to change things like desktop skins/themes, wallpapers, fonts, etc. I would assume that the situation is similar in GNOME. The situation with “Community Repositories” and “Software Repositoies” is also rather simple: “Community Repositories” is a simple frontend that automatically finds online repositories and allows you to add them, without you having to know their URL. “Software Repositories” is simply to manage EXISTING repositories and to add things by hand that aren’t “known” to the master list.
I also lack the speed issues you mention. (Except for the software management, but I can except that as I enjoy having package lists which reflect the actual status of what’s in my chosen repositories)
My big issue is the inability of KDE to properly handle any but the most simple font families (Condensed and Extended versions tend to get “eaten” by the font installer and any Type 1 font family that has more than the “standard” Normal, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic members is likely to act screwy, meaning that I’m forced to use a tiny subset of all those fancy Adobe and Monotype fonts from the early 90s that I’ve carefully preserved and transfered from old 720KB floppies to CD-R. But’s that’s the fault of KDE3’s codebase, not SuSE so I can’t hold it against an otherwise perfect distro.
This is so true. SuSE is made worse and slower since the evil Novel-MS deal.
I don’t like your javascript-based screenshot thing. Please don’t do it anymore. Thanks to it you can’t open screenshots in new tabs, it’s really annoying.
> With applications, 99% of the time I want to find the application and launch it. Not spend 2 to 4 clicks and then scroll up and down to find the item.
No, you completely missed the point. You emphatically do NOT want to browse through an application list 99% of the time. 99% of the time you want to launch those 4-5 applications that you use daily. The rest of the time you might be looking for that extra application (i.e. once or twice a week). The usability studies are available; take a look at them.
> and there’s a “system setting” applet in YAST – i thought that’s what YAST was for?
Did you even open it to see what it contains? Perhaps it could be named better, sure.
What you’re missing and complaining about with YaST is that it contains some similar modules to the GNOME control center.
Fact is, YaST contains a LOT more than that, and it’s nto that other distributions have an “equivalent” to YaST. No other distribution has anything remotely comparable to YaST. It’s consistent, and hosts the configuration for countless administrative settings.
The thing that you’ve completely missed is that YaST is there for administrative settings (I said this to you before). You might configure Bluetooth, Network Card, etc under GNOME, but that’s only for your USER-SPECIFIC setting. Not the system-wide one. For example in YaST’s network card module you can handle connecting before login. Since the GNOME one is user-specific, it would be incorrect to allow the setting to do that.
This is UNIX/Linux basics, come on guy.
You also completely ignored my comments on your baseless “Windows-like” comments. I would love to hear what you have to say, or is it that you just slander other free software projects for fun?
Evolution’s exchange-connector is not authenticating to exhcnage 2003 anymore !!!! it was working just fine with suse 10.2 running evolution 2.8
I downloaded the source package for the connector from evolution’s website , compiled & installed….but still the same !!!
You can remove the SUSE’s GNOME main menu and add the GNOME’s original menu bar in the panel, instead. I did that.
I’m wondering what felt so slow on your computer. I felt the boot time had decreased greatly… And regarding the different repository, I think its because you can see the list of repositories and you can select from either on those… And I think most problems you thought were more to do with GNOME than openSuSE!!
Check my review here. With KDE I had a fairly amazing experience. Really liked the simplicity and ease-of-use of openSuSE!
I really think this is a poor review. A lot of your comments are poorly aimed, and specific to gnome desktop. I personally don’t like gnome ( albeit slightly faster ), and find that the KDE menu is much nicer. The size of the icons is a product of gnome. As for the control centre vs yast thing, I give openSuSE a lot of credit for yast. I have not tried an extremely large amount of distro’s but in my experience, Mandriva and SuSE and the only distro’s with decent centralized control modules. You don’t have to use a term to configure a TV card and networking is a breeze ( thanks to a novell tut I converted one pc into a router in a few minutes with yast ). In ubuntu, I couldn’t even get my 2 network cards working, and had no clue how to configure them in detail without a terminal. YAST is an awesome tool, and even though there might be some redundancy, I feel that it is needed irrespective. If linux is to hit the desktop market seriously, we need things like the one click install to make life a lot easier, and I feel that this is a giant leap forward. And tools that limit terminal usage are also a great improvement. If you have time review the same OS with KDE enabled, and then you will see that your con’s list has dropped to 1, since you are probably using a newly implemented GTK version of yast, as opposed to the faster ( imo ) older implementation, still active in kde.
4 years ago MEPIS had a live CD / install CD combined into one, that installed in 15 minutes (less than 10 minutes with the current version). Everything worked /works out of the box, is snappy and it has no redundant fat.
Suse issues releases that are simply not up to par and keeps being the more popular distro. I don’t understand….
I would like to point out one more annoying aspect of openSUSE 10.3 (maybe fixed for the next release?). The major control applications
like Yast, Control Center and Application Browser look so similar and so cluttered its easy to get lost in one trying to find something that resides in the other application. Screenshots provided below of each to show you what I mean.
I agree with most of your review.
With KDE & Compiz Fusion all I see on my desktop are white and black colors. With KDE, for me only compiz is working.
Also I hate SUSE (SLAB) menu. Too many clicks to go to the required application. It may be good for those who started using computer 1st time, but I guess those people will hardly use linux. And I hate it when some one says there is a problem, others try to give excuses and try telling back why its not a problem. But you are confused with gnome configuration center and Yast. They are not redundant. Also in the pros, you forgot to mention 1)Yast 2)it is more polished compared to most of the distros out there. I tried lot of other distros, but came back to Suse with in couple of days.
The KDE start menu UI is definately way better than the Gnome one. I guess this is just the early phase of Novell moving Suse away from its original KDE focus to Gnome.
I think its a real shame that a great Euro distro had to be bought out by the Yanks. Their is enough American software already. Lets hope that at least Ubuntu stays away from tinseltown.
Why have an applet to enable 3d effects in Gnome and not in KDE? Wheres the sense behind that? How hard would it be to create one? If enabling 3d effects only requires adding a few lines to a config file, the kind of things the Nixes are great at, why not knock one up. After all this is a big time distro backed by a (relatively) large corporation (Novell) – surely they could find an hour or two to do this job.
Instead someone spends probably as much if not more time creating a WIKI page to describe how to do this simple job manually.
Pathetic.
No clicking is necessary to find application. Just use search bar or Alt+F2.
YAST and Control Center are not the same.
Control Center is for Gnome. YAST has the same options in any desktop environment. Gnome’s repeats some of what’s in YAST so they should have simplified there.
You may be right about gnome in opensuse, I wouldn’t know. But I think that opensuse provides the most polished KDE implementation. Kickoff, the custom KDE menu has an great UI. You can create as large of a list of favorite apps as you like, and there is also an app history tab. But the easiest way to run an app is the built in search, which also works like a run dialog.
As far as overlapping configuration, I do see some of that. I think the reason is that opensuse tries to do both KDE and Gnome, so must produce a desktop independent configuration system. While it is quite confusing for a first time user, people with a little suse experience know to go to the KDE control panel for user – specific settings and YAST for everything else.
I love the setup tool and think it is perfect for users who have some linux experience, with great partitioning and package selection. And for most everyone else, clicking net will suffice.
It is unfortunate that there is no out of the box setup tool for compiz on kde or aiglx, though i am sure it will come reasonably soon, and experienced users can set it up quite easily.
As far as things that are not gnome specific, I think most of the issues stem from the fact that (atleast IMHO) the distro is not targeted at first time linux users but at those who want a flexible and powerful system but don’t want to do all the legwork.
I’m running opensuse 10.3 at the moment and I must agree to your critic view on the application browser. I have simply added another panel where I have added the standard gnome menu-line which is more functional in my opinion
I also feel 10.3 is the best yet. while i prefer gnome i installed kde .multimedia codecs are now finally easier to install. Having said that, for me, debian based distros are best i prefer ubuntu and ubuntu based linx mint . give them a try .
Luna6, for the white cube problem on restart in KDE, I had the same problem, but solved from:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compiz_Fusion
You can ensure that Compiz Fusion will always start at login by appending a desktop entry to the KDE autostart directory. Create the file ~/.kde/Autostart/compiz.desktop with the following contents:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=compiz –replace ccp
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-KDE-autostart-after=kdesktop
apokryphos :
> Last time I checked they were the same size as the icons in the file manager. Why do you think it should be inconsistent and take a smaller size?
with files, sometimes you want to browse through the content and other times you just want to zero in on an item. that’s why there is the option for icon or list view.
With applications, 99% of the time I want to find the application and launch it. Not spend 2 to 4 clicks and then scroll up and down to find the item.
The most grievous offender is found under the “SYSTEM” section in “Application Browser”. Over 50 applications/icon are there! Just scrolling through that makes me want to reboot out of openSUSE.
> I’m sorry, but if you think that the GNOME control center and YaST do the same stuff then I don’t think you’ve looked at either of them for any sufficient period of time.
similar applets found in YAST and CONTROL CENTER :
bluetooth, scanner, sound, graphics card and monitor (+ screen resolution in control center), printer (yast) printers (control center), date and time, modem, language, DSL (found under Network Devices in YAST and under HARDWARE in Control Center), Mouse Model (YAST) and Mouse (Control Center), keyboard layout (YAST) and keyboard (Control Center).
and there’s a “system setting” applet in YAST – i thought that’s what YAST was for?
I’ve recently installed OpenSUSE 10.3 and now use it as my main OS. I’m impressed; I think this is the best SUSE release in ages. By the way, apart from a brief encounter with Slackware in 1996, SUSE 8.1 was my first experience of Linux.
I’ve always thought the YaST install method was really the way to do it, at least for someone like me with a bit of computer sense. In a “big-package” OS like SUSE, Mandriva or Fedora, I find the software selection screen the easiest to use of all of them. It might not work so well for a single-CD distro like Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS, where additional software comes through APT.
Perhaps it’s familiarity, but I like the walk-through installation, and the fact that it doesn’t partition your hard drive until you actually decide to go ahead with the install.
I agree that the software management tools can be slow to start up, although that has improved in this release. I think it is faster than Fedora’s YUM, or at least no slower.
Also, boot time is drastically reduced in this release. And they have the best KDE out there, although their fonts, IMHO, aren’t as well-formed as Ubuntu’s.
> Icons in “Application Browser” are too large – causing needless scrolling.
Last time I checked they were the same size as the icons in the file manager. Why do you think it should be inconsistent and take a smaller size?
You’re not meant to go into the “All Applications” browser regularly (and research shows that new users don’t). If there’s something you use regularly, it should be added to your “Favourites” menu. Again, research shows that people typically don’t use more than 4-5 applications in a day.
The review doesn’t cover KDE, at all. So really this is only a review of GNOME in openSUSE. The only thing it covers about KDE is completely false: desktop effects _are_ available by default on the KDE CD.
I’m sorry, but if you think that the GNOME control center and YaST do the same stuff then I don’t think you’ve looked at either of them for any sufficient period of time. The control center generally handles user-specific, while YaST is for *Administrator Settings*. This is a UNIX/Linux distinction, so I’m not sure that we should really put away with it.
Again, there is almost not a single design decision ever in openSUSE that is done that way “because Windows does it like that”. Any new changes are the result of usability work. One single menu? Yes, all research studies suggest that the new menu is a lot more efficient to a broad range of different users.
> Yes it is faster than prior versions, but compared to other Linux options
What are these other ‘Linux options’? dpkg-reconfigure? (only CLI) Mandriva’s drakconf? (usability nightmare)
Eraser : I don’t know where it says that, but from downloading the KDE installation cd of openSUSE 10.3 I can tell you that its not installed by default (as it’s a gnome app). It was a pain to get compiz working on the KDE version and I eventually did it get it working but on reboot, the entire desktop/cube went blank white.
The Gnome version on the other hand worked without any hitches with Compiz.
From where is the information, that “You don’t get “desktop effects” with the KDE version”? Does the openSUSE itself says it somewhere?
According to openSUSE News Compiz and Beryl should work fine with KDE and kwin (http://news.opensuse.org/?p=167) Actually I’m running these successfully in my current system on openSUSE 10.2. Only disadvantage at the moment is, that kwin don’t work out-of-the-box with them, but other than that, it works flawlessly.
I tested 10.3 primarily on “Big Bertha” – AMd 64 +3000 cpu, 2 gigs of ram, nvidia 6600 AGP.
I also used it on “Mount Doona” – AMD X2 +4400, 2 gigs of ram, nvidia 6600 PCI-X card.
Out of curiosity, on what kind of computer did you make the review?