OpenSUSE 10.2 - something to catch up with

I have the oposite feelings towards SuSE 10.2 as it relates
to Kubuntu.  I
had several problems w/ the install, couldn't get the CDs
downloaded w/o
timing out, had problems w/ the DVD iso that I was using in
my virtual
machine and it was a really slow install.
As to Kicker the new KDE start menu, it is ok, but not the
greatest in my
view.
I thought that Kubuntu Edgy was a smoother install and
didn't have any of
the problems getting mp3s and others to work that I did in
SuSE.

-----Original Message-----
From: sounder-bounceslists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:sounder-bounceslists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Carsten
Agger
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006 9:59 AM
To: sounderlists.ubuntu.com
Subject: OpenSUSE 10.2 - something to catch up with

I recently got a new laptop at work, and since its default
Windows XP
installation seemed to include nothing I couldn't do with a
Gnu/Linux
operating system instead, I burned an Ubuntu 6.10
live/install CD and
tried to install.

The Live CD, however, crashed while attempting to start the
X server, so
I was left with no opportunity to progress or to see how
Edgy would
support the wifi, graphics card, etc.

So I thought "Oh no!", and not wanting to go
through a whole lot of
hardware debugging trouble I decided to burn the OpenSUSE
10.2 install CD.

I must say, after a somewhat long download it installed
flawlessly,
setup all the hardware, recognized the hardware without any
trouble,
recognized the screen resolution (1440x900) and included a
nice GNOME
desktop and an excellent selection of applications.

The user interface is less intuitive though, and took some
tweaking (in
the direction of Ubuntu/Debian's default GNOME desktop) for
me to like
it ...

But apart from that: After doing the "Hacking OpenSUSE
10.2"
(
http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60/)
steps to include
DVD and MP3 playback &c., ... obtained as swiftly and
painlessly as I
never tried before with an Ubuntu system.

It's not ALL to OpenSUSE's credit, though - Ubuntu got me
started on
Linux and I know more about setting up Linux systems than,
say, a year
ago, but still ... with this system installed I don't really
need to
think of having an operating system installed, I just have a
computer
with applications that work, that was installed easily with
everything
working out of the box.

And Ubuntu never did exactly that for me yet.

I later tried the Ubuntu Dapper LTS live CD and found out it
actually
doesn't crash when loading ... so installing Dapper and
updating Firefox
etc. from backports might have worked. From which we can
learn two things:

1) Crashing install CDs are BAD - they really turn of even
quite
enthusiastic users
2) Technically, OpenSUSE 10.2 is giving Ubuntu a run for its
money. I'm
also running Xubuntu and Edubuntu Edgy on an older machine,
and I won't
hesitate to say that technically, OpenSUSE 10.2 is  superior
to Edgy.

There are bad things too, though: I don't really like YaST,
for
instance, and the menus aren't organized as well as in the
default GNOME
setup - but, the overall impression is that of a really,
really good distro.

I'm not saying this to thrash Ubuntu or to
"defect" - the
Microsoft/Novell deal has made me a bit suspicious as to the
intentions
of Novell, and the Ubuntu community support is second to
none - BUT,
OpenSUSE is a worthy competitor, a worthy target for Ubuntu
7.x to match
(and hopefully surpass!)

regards
Carsten

--
http://www.modspil.dk
- fordi tiden kræver et MODSPIL!


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