openSUSE 10.3 Public Release

Shizawana writes "The latest version of openSUSE was released this week. The site has a sneak peak of all the new features and additions, including highly anticipated changes to the YaST package management. The official announcement of the release offers a few highlights as well: 'The openSUSE team is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 10.3. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE project provides free, easy access to the world's most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE. openSUSE is released regularly, is stable, secure, contains the latest free and open source software, and comes with several new technologies. openSUSE 10.3 will be supported with security and other serious updates for a period of 2 years. This version contains new beautiful green artwork, KDE 3.5.7 and parts of KDE 4, SUSE-polished GNOME 2.20, a GTK version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, MP3 support out-of-the-box, new and redesigned YaST modules, compiz and compiz fusion advances, virtualisation improvements, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Xfce 4.4.1, and much more! Read on for details of what is new and available in openSUSE 10.3, and for all the necessary download links.'"

Thoughts

[TopSpin]

SUSE is being pretty aggressive in terms of key packages like gcc, glibc and the kernel. 10.3 provides GCC 4.2.1, glibc 2.6.1 and the 2.6.22.5 release of the kernel.

My one serious complaint with YaST is the time wasted waiting for the package manager to download metadata every time you enter it. I've taken to just leaving it running on a separate desktop. Please, YaST folks, apply some caching; it should take at most only a few seconds to bring up package manager if it has been run in the last few hours. If I should need to ensure absolutely current metadata provide a simple means to force a full update, otherwise get the thing open as quickly as possible. Yes, it's probably possible to work-around, tweak or otherwise get this behavior now... I want it out of the box.

21%

[Metaphorically]

21% downloaded already. Thought I am considering switching from the x86_64 version to the 32-bit version this time. My only really solid reason for this is the lack of a 64-bit Java browser plugin, and I don't even use it that much (but the kids like Runescape, so qhat can I do).

Re:Finally I can be worry free. . .

[kjj]

Actually you can still be sued if you just download a copy because you are not a Novell customer. The coverage does not extend to anyone outside of those paying Novell for a support, not even developers who contribute to the Novell code base.

Re:Finally I can be worry free. . .

[hasbeard]

Actually, I don't think OpenSuse is covered by this agreement.

Re:Sneak peak

[maxwell demon]

How do you sneak a mountain?

You walk on it with sneakers?

One of Many Sneak Peeks

[apokryphos]

The Sneak Peek linked to is only the final one in the series, there was many more:

• Greatly Improved Boot Time [opensuse.org], with Stephan Kulow
• 1-Click Install [opensuse.org], with Benjamin Weber
• New Package Management [opensuse.org], with Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett
• Compiz and Compiz Fusion [opensuse.org], with Matthias Hopf and Jigish Gohil
• KDE 4 [opensuse.org], with Dirk Mueller
• SUSE-Polished GNOME 2.20 [opensuse.org], with JP Rosevear
• 1-CD Installation & Multimedia support [opensuse.org], with Michael Löffler
• Virtualisation [opensuse.org], with Frank Kohler
• A Plethora of Improvements [opensuse.org], with Andreas Jaeger

Re:21%

[ericrost]

Ubuntu gutsy has a 64 bit flash and java.. I was surprised it wasn't advertised in the new features (as they didn't have adobe flash for 64 bit in feisty). Come on in, the water's fine.

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[Maelwryth]

I installed it last night........it's beautiful. Definitely worth checking out :).

Re:Thoughts

[mj01nir]

From the 10.3 announcement:

The package management team have been working hard on improving the new openSUSE package management, and there is a lot to show for it now. It is reliable, more mature, and an awful lot faster. There is no more parsing during startup, greater compatibility with tools like yum and smart, and increased speed for the most common use-case: installing a package.

Sounds promising.

Yes They Have

[TheNinjaroach]

Yes they have fixed those very annoying bugs from 10.1 -- I have been using SUSE since 9.1 and you speak of my most hated release. It seemed Novell crammed a bunch of their Zen Management tools into the 10.1 release and they mostly came out broken. By 10.2, SUSE was back to its standard, highly-polished state.

Sometimes you gotta go backwards before you can go forward. I am usually on top of new SUSE releases, but I'm so pleased with 10.2 I will stay put until a KDE4 version of SUSE is released.

Yes.

[flydpnkrtn]

Try it you might like it :)

No but seriously the update manager was based on zen-updater in 10.1 and 10.2. That functionality has been removed in openSUSE because a.) you don't need ZENworks stuff updating from your house and b.) it's bloated and kind of broken

Thank you Fluendo for the free MP3 support

[schwaang]

I remember when that was announced a while back, nice to see it in a major free distro.
Too bad the source code isn't freely distributable, but I'll take the binary with thanks.

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[mrsteveman1]

If you knew what you were talking about you would have known that opensuse 10.3 doesn't even have ZMD, not turned on, not included by default, not installed.

Besides that .exe files are PE executables, wine uses them just fine, so does mono. Do you refain from using Wine out of some fear of PE executables? DO you even know what a PE executable is?

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[grommit]

Yeah, 10.1 was easily the worst release of OpenSUSE. 10.2 fixed a lot of problems but IMO it wasn't as good as 9.3. I've tried out 10.3 RC1 and it is *much* better than 10.2. They've done a lot of work on this release and it definitely shows. I had been trying out other distributions recently to see if I want to switch away from OpenSUSE but if 10.3 stays as good as my initial look at it, I'll be sticking with OpenSUSE for a while.

Re:Yes They Have

[NoseyNick]

% cat /etc/SuSE-release
openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
VERSION = 10.2
% rpm --query zen
package zen is not installed
% rpm --query mono
package mono is not installed

10.2 doesn't, nor did 10.1, nor 10.0. What are you talking about?

Re:Great!

[jeevesbond]

I know, don't feed the trolls, I'm sorry but someone might actually believe this idiot and it's not going to take much effort to prove them wrong.

Look at this image: http://news.opensuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/yast-list_thumb.png [opensuse.org] that is YaST giving the user the option to install whatever desktop environment they like, under the cursor is XFCE [xfce.org] whos tagline is '...and everything goes faster'. It's very lightweight, ideal for older computers and does not include any of the things you're complaining about.

Welcome to the GNU/Linux world, where you get the choice of what software to run. That's rather the point with Vista, Microsoft will force people to upgrade to it even if they have to buy a new computer to do so. My apologies if that offends your sensibilities as an MS fanboy, but I'm afraid we don't support bullying in the form of forced upgrades 'round these parts.

Just after installation of 10.3

[eimikion]

I've just installed a new OpenSUSE. All these little bugs from previous releases are gone. Yast software installer finally works with a good speed. Desktop responsiveness is amazing - KDE 3.7 works faster than GUI of Windows 2000. The default green artwork is very nice and gives a distinct feeling to this distro. Hardware detection is very good. My graphic card - nvidia 7600 and audio card - Creative Audigy 2 were working out of the box. Even installation of ADSL modem was a breeze - it is a cheap Sagem modem, used by the all telcos controlled by France Telecom, and most linux distros has problems with it.

What is especially important to people in countries with stupid law (read USA) - OpenSUSE gives you mp3 playback out of box, due to legal fluendo gstreamer plugins. In addition, there are provided Flash 9, newest Java runtimes, RealPlayer and seamless Wi-Fi support.

In the last year I've tried quite a few linux distros - Fedora, Ubuntu, Sabayon, Mint, Mandriva... nothing even come close to the OpenSUSE. Quality of Deutsch engineering.

Re:MP3 support

[wile_e_wonka]

It doesn't provide MP3 support out of the box--that was misleading. The first time you try to play an MP3, Amarok says, "You currently can't play this file. Would you like to downloa MP3 support? Yes / No" or something along those lines. So really it's one step away from MP3 support out of the box. The difference looks like a legal fiction to me, but it is technically not shipped with an MP3 codec.

Re:MP3 support

[eimikion]

Not true. There is a gst-fluendo-mp3-2.7.rpm package on the goldmaster DVD. MP3 playback works out of the box. Eat this, american law system.

Re:21%

[WhiteWolf666]

32-bit java on 64-bit firefox on 64-bit suse works just fine.

nsplugin has grown in leaps and bounds.

Re:Thoughts

[WhiteWolf666]

That hasn't been my experience, and I install quite a few packages via rpm command line.

YaST was borked for 10.1 and 10.2. It made sense to try and use an alternative package manager.

As 10.2 matured, YaST started to work properly, but was slow.

In 10.3, YaST is quite speedy, very capable, and runs very solidly. Plus, the one-click-install thing works really well.

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look a bit harder :)

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/dvd/current/ [ubuntu.com]