A Closer Look at SUSE 10

SilentBob4 writes to tell us that MadPenguin is running a review of the recently released SUSE 10.0. From the review: "Novell has made some interesting changes in distribution and development since our last review of SUSE Linux. Many say it's for the better and I'd say I'm inclined to go with that theory. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd see the day SUSE opened up it's doors to the community to help expand and concert development efforts, but here we are in a world where SUSE is open and still making geeks sweat every time a new release comes out"

Why do people always review the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people always review the install? I mean seriously, who gives a shit. I haven't heard anyone complaining about an install since 2000, and even in 1998 it really wasn't that hard with some documentation scribbled on a napkin. There's even a howto for installing [strangehorizons.com] linux on the carcass of a dead badger.

Microsoft isn't pushing their OS for its easy install. You never hear about OS X's install.

Why is linux judged by it's ease of install!? Who gives a flying rats ass. Does it work after it's installed? Probably not every well.

Re:Excusee-my-SuSE

[vandit2k6]

Yea SUSE 10 is great. The gui is really nice. But it still is not my default boot. One problem is that it doesn't like my wireless card on my laptop and for me thats more than important.

Re:Excusee-my-SuSE

[MiKM]

I've never understood what "just works" means. From my experience, every operating system (Windows, Mac, *nix) always has some problem/missing feature that needs a workaround.

Re:Why do people always review the install?

[saskboy]

I don't see how this got an insightful moderation, since it's just a troll.

How many people you know have bought a computer with Linux pre-installed, or comes with Linux recovery CDs? Macs come with OS-X already on it, so people don't tend to install it. If a Linux distro doesn't have a friendly install process, then its not going to be accepted by the masses. It's nothing personal against Linux, it's just a fact of the market place, and getting Linux's foot in the computer door.

Hardware support

[applecrumble]

I always find it unfair when Linux distros are labelled poor because they don't support somebody's hardware, like their wireless card not working. The Linux developers would happily develop drivers for software if they were given the hardware specs to do so, but that isn't the case and drivers must be created with little help from the manufacturer. For example, I'm sure Novell would love to have native drivers for every wireless card out there, but if the companies won't co-operate, the best they can do is the ugly hack of using the win32 driver wrapped in an emulation layer. It's similar to complaining about why you can't play Playstation 2 games on Xbox hardware; the latter was never designed to work on the former and Microsoft wouldn't offer any help to get it working, but that doesn't mean Playstation 2 games are rubbish.

Re:Why do people always review the install?

[i_should_be_working]

His point was that since every distro has a very easy install these days (with the exception of some distros that aren't meant for noobs) there's no point in talking about the install in a review. It's a waste of space and time.

For distros like SUSE, Mandriva etc. the only thing that needs to be said about the install is 'it's easy'.

Way too many reviews talk about the install way too much and then don't spend enough space talking about how it is to actually use the distro.

Re:Hardware support

[Anonymous Coward]

I always find it unfair when Linux distros are labelled poor because they don't support somebody's hardware, like their wireless card not working. The Linux developers would happily develop drivers for software if they were given the hardware specs to do so, but that isn't the case and drivers must be created with little help from the manufacturer.

I think the more common complaint is that a given distribution doesn't support certain hardware out of the box that other distributions do. If distro X supports my wireless card, why doesn't distro Y?

Re:Why do people always review the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Mac users get so devoted is that the Mac is sold as a lifestyle not a product. Once you've internalised that "lifestyle" image, it becomes part of their identity. Criticise the Mac and you criticise them. It's the oldest marketing trick in the book but it still works for people who don't like analytical reasoning and tend to react to things emotionally. Their little motto "think different" is ironic since so many Mac users see themselves as "artistic" and have largely rejected thinking as "boring".

Re:Excusee-my-SuSE

[Jon-o]

I wasn't too pleased with it either - haven't used the most recent version, but I spent a little bit of time with the evaluation version last year. Seemed there were a lot of nice ideas, but a lot seemed kinda half-assed. Lots of stuff that would work really nicely if you used it just like they wanted you to use it, but then didn't support anything more esoteric. And then if you tried to go outside of the "standard stuff", you find undocumented and unfinished scripts and the like. I found it rather annoying... especially since it seemed relatively impossible to get help on it other than through the paid support, which I didn't pay for, of course. But it's really not the sort of distro I'm interested in - I much prefer the flexibility and transparency of Debian (fully realizing that half the transparency is a result of my knowing better where to look, having used Debian for about 8 years now). SuSE just seemed to have too much "do it our way, or don't do it at all!" mentality about it. But maybe if I used it more, I'd change my mind.

Still doesn't support my Wireless card

[frankcow]

despite the increased hardware support, my wireless pc card (DWL-650 revP) still doesn't work with it... must I buy a new card to use suse?????????

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is diffrent between this and the simply mepis with KDE that i have dual booting? Will it actualy run at native resolution for my laptop? (mepis wont work at anything higher than 1024x768) better programs? why are there so many diffrent linux versions? why can't you all just get on the same page?

Youre' right...Sort of

[katharsis83]

You're right, I'm sure Linux developers would be happy to work on driver support if the manufacturers were more forth-coming. I'm also sure that most Linux developers are also saints who donate to UNICEF, help old ladies across the street, and also only say "LOL" when they're actually laughing. None of that's relevant.

The problem is that none of this matters to the end-user who's giving Linux a shot for the first time. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that their digital camera doesn't work, or why their laptop's sound card can't play back sound. You just lost a customer.

it *scared* me

[rubycodez]

my Xeon workstation has some win-sound card built in, and for the first time it made music after I installed SuSE 10 - never before used my main server for multimedia but now I can. Later that night it scared me again with BSOD screensaver finally coming up in the random selection. I also installed it on my Thinkpad T22 with wireless linksys card, it's all good. Used to be a paying RedHat customer from RH 5.0 to 8, but "crossed over" to SuSE at 9.0 and haven't looked back.

Re:Why do people always review the install?

[jonesy16]

In your response you say, talk about how it is to actually use the distro. But let's face it: with over 300 distros, what separates them? I'll tell you, the hardware configuration utilities, server configuration utilities, installation, and package management. That's it folks. I've got news for you, Gnome 2.12 functions the same on SuSe as it does on gentoo, on redhat, yadda yadda. Yeah, maybe a menu moved, or a theme changed, but nobody is rewriting these things from the ground up to reinvent their distro and set it apart.

At the end of the day, what makes RedHat unique from Ubuntu, or Mandriva unique from SuSe is the easy of the install, installation of software and updates, and configuration of services. For SuSe, this means Yast. As a comparison, for a newbie, the install process on RedHat is a hell of a lot cleaner than it is on Ubuntu. Sure, they accomplish the same thing, but the mass public will feel better about the experience if it's polished.

Re:What a media-rich Distro Review

[MoogMan]

Well, to be fair, my parents haven't got a clue what a device driver is, neither could they install Windows XP from scratch. I wouldn't be suprised if a huge majority of other parents were similar.

Re:Just installed SuSE10 last night

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, of course you are blind:

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/profe ssional/xfce4-desktop.html [novell.com]
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/profe ssional/postgresql-server.html [novell.com]

Ok, mr I-know-it-all-master-of-the-universe?
I can tell you all the other clients (like xfce-mcs, xfce4-session) are there too. In fact, Im posting from a SUSE with XFCE right now. So next time, please do exactly what I said, and go to a mirror, add it as installation-source and do "yast -i postgresql", "yast -i xfce4-desktop", ok? Or, as I said too, get the boxed set and will be all there. The boxed dvd is easy for people with poor knowledge of the distro, and saves you time and problems, not to mention you wouldnt post incorrect information, ok?

I see you are not very knowledgeable in package management. apt-get just manages RPMs.... It cannot "cause rpm hell by conflicting with identical versions". Your phrase almost make me laugh. Said that, I dont recommend using another manager when you already have yast and y2pmsh.

What do you mean with "distro go obsolete in a matter of months"? You want SUSE to start upgrading madly to the new version everyday? This is not debian testing. This is a stable release. You dont get the release cycle thing? Since you dont, now you can also use SUSE 10.1alpha3, to stay on the edge.

I thiink you are a debian fan boy. Sorry, but its all it seems. If you want debian, go debian, but stop this non sense comments. If you refuse to pay, dont pay. If it keeps "commercial", certainly its not caused by usig RPM (or I cant have a commercial distro with .deb's).

How does this get insightful, 2, when all I see is wrong information, and a little rant on "rpm distros"??

gosh

Re:Youre' right...Sort of

[The Bubble]

The problem is that none of this matters to the end-user who's giving Linux a shot for the first time. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that their digital camera doesn't work, or why their laptop's sound card can't play back sound. You just lost a customer.

The difference here is that, in most of the open source community, the concern is not that we have greater sale rates, but that we write better software. When hardware can't be driven by the Linux kernel, the open source user base is less likely to complain at the Kernel developers, and more likely to complain at the manufacturer that stands in the way of better, more capable software.

People need to stop seeing the conquering of Microsoft, or the desktop, or whatever, as the goal. We are more concerned with having better software, so long as it's better for us. If Windows gets better in competition, it's better for them, and better for consumers. Typically that would drive even further improvement in the 'Nix world, and the cycle would continue.

Would I like better wireless support in my SuSE system? Sure. But for now, my Prism2 card works just fine. I'd like a standard wireless stack, too, but growth comes with time, and my software will continually improve as long as we remember that that is the goal.