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.'"

have they fixed bugs?

[sentientbrendan]

I remember trying out suse 10.1, and a fresh install was full of bugs. Various suse utilities seemed to break immediately after running update.

Have they made much progress towards more stable releases (marketing blurb aside)? Is it worth checking out?

Re:

[Culture20]

Parent is not a Troll. zmd.exe (the default updater) is a mono app, and is prone to hanging. I've had to kill zmd and restart novell-zmd several times to get updates to work whenever I notice that a cron-run update is still in the process list 8-10 hours later.

Re:

[maxwell demon]

Just throw off zmd from your system and use opensuseupdater instead of zen-updater.

Before I did that, openSUSE managed to make a dual-core system almost unusable: One core was running zmd at nice 0, the other one was running beagled-helper at nice 0. Now I only get one core filled up from time to time, and therefore only need to kill or at least renice when I need full processor power. For normal operation one core is enough, and beagle can have the other one.

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[trolltalk.com]

Just remove mono and zdm.exe, and use guru or the smart updater. Mono sucks, pegs the cpu, and IMNSHO (in my not so humble opinion) there is NO excuse for having a file that ends in .exe on a linux box.

Re:

[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:

[Culture20]

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.

GGP was talking about opensuse 10.1, not 10.3. Please read more fully before reacting.

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?

Actually, I don't know what a PE executable is, but it's irrelevant to the discussion since zmd.exe runs via mono by default (on opensuse 10.1, 10.2, SLED 10). That extra interpretation eats up my CPU(s). Only thing worse would have been if they wrote their daemon in lisp or perl.

Re:

[und0]

Only thing worse would have been if they wrote their daemon in Python or perl.

There, fixed for you.

Re:

[Grishnakh]

But Miguel works for Novell, since Novell bought his company Ximian, so they can't just leave his crap out of SuSE.

This is one of the reasons why I now use Ubuntu (kubuntu actually), even though I had used SuSE since 6.3. 10.1 was the last version of SuSE I used, and after the zmd debacle and the stupid agreement with Microsoft, I decided to move to greener pastures.

Ubuntu is much nicer; the company really does believe in open-source, they don't believe in signing deals with Microsoft, they don't include M

Re:have they fixed bugs?

[trolltalk.com]

> "But Miguel works for Novell, since Novell bought his company Ximian, so they can't just leave his crap out of SuSE."

Looks like they're actually doing just that as far as the package management system is concerned, and about time.Don't be surprised if openSUSE 11 doesn't have any mono in it by default.

IF Ubuntu was readily available as a horking large DVD with the ability to select all the dev packages, etc., I'd consider it. As it is, I like the ability to slap a DVD in my box, select 7 gigs of software, and come back an hour later to a fairly complete development environment.

... we all have different needs, and different distros fill those niches.

I wasn't happy about the Microsoft agreement either (it was predictable that Microsoft would try to spin it as something it wasn't), and Mono is a real tar baby (in both senses of the term), but I balance that with the work Novell has done with linux, and the heavy lifting they're doing against SCO et al., and I'm sticking with them. They deserve a bit more patience from the community than they've been getting, all things considered.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look a bit harder :)

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

Re:

[Grishnakh]

Hmm.. I've never even heard of this application, much less used it.

As long as they don't put in any system apps (those that run constantly in the background by default) written in Mono, like zmd.exe was, then I don't really have a problem with it. There's tons of applications installed by default that I never use.

Re:

[Maelwryth]

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

Re:

[smilindog2000]

No can do... gotta stay away from pure evil.

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.

Re:

[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:

[WhiteWolf666]

The standard 10.2 install included zmd and mono, for sure.

Libzypp has since replaced zmd, and I think they made it the default in one of the 10.2 updates, and then updated the disk images.

But I'm 100% sure that the standard backend at 10.2 release was ZMD.

Re:

[NoseyNick]

... so you un-tick the box for ZZZ package you dislike. If you've broken something by doing so, it says "XXX needs YYY or ZZZ", you didn't like ZZZ so you tick the box for YYY instead.

I'm not sure I remember what a "default install" is (I think you have a choice of about 12 different types of "default install" in SUSE), but anyone who complains about a default install should probably try a non-default install before pretending the entire distribution sucks "because it uses ZZZ", particularly when in reali

Re:

[WhiteWolf666]

IIRC, libzypp wasn't an option in the original DVDs, so a bunch of people who upgraded right at the beginning of its (10.2's) release got burned.

It was resolved in a month or so, but at release you couldn't choose not to install ZMD without breaking the install completely.

Re:

[NoseyNick]

I never mentioned mono once. What are you talking about?

I was replying to a post after yours (modded Troll, so maybe you didn't see it) which said "Does 10.3 still rely on Zen and mono?"
... and since you mention it...
% rpm --query zmd
package zmd is not installed
I probably deliberately un-ticked "mono" during install and spent a few seconds helping it satisfy dependencies. SUSE MAY install mono if you just select a default bundle, but it certainly doesn't NEED to install mono, or zen, or zmd...

Re:

[mrsteveman1]

No

Anything else? You could have just turned off ZMD like the rest of us did, its not even included anymore.

And by the way, the software manager and updater work perfectly now.

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

Re:

[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:

[bluelip]

Nah, it's just that Redhat wants to be the aforementioned devil.

Re:

[renegadesx]

Alot of people have been telling me if you were ever going to go back to Red Hat, Fedora 7 is a good time to do so.

I've been sticking with Ubuntu for a long time as its been a great system. It's interesting that alot of the new distro's are really catching up and getting hype. I should really test SUSE 10.3 and Fedora 7 before Ubuntu hits its final version, the beta has a few bugs but overall it runs pretty sweet.

As far as the "buggy" remakrs, I remebmer there was a problem with their update system th

Re:

[hollywoodb]

I'm running Fedora 7 now, and it is really nice. I think Fedora 8 (due in little over a month) will be a nice forward step since it includes things like "Codec Buddy" and the RPMFusion repository (a collaborative effort by formerly separate repositories) should be entering full swing. Fedora is a fast-moving distro though. Fedora 7 is finally settling down (fewer updates) and it has been out for quite a while.

Also, if you're considering running more OSes virtualized and are thinking of considering Xen, C

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

Fedora might be more quirky...but it's from a company that never made any deals with the Devil.

I haven't done any research, but are you sure Redhat has never made a deal with the BSD groups?

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.

Re:

[FranTaylor]

My Fedora machine is running 2.6.22.9, what's so modern about 2.6.22.5?

YaST is a piece of junk. If you use rpm to install a package, you have hopelessly screwed up YaST and it will never behave correctly again. It's why I gave up on SuSE. Maybe there's a way to fix it, but there are plenty of distributions that behave correctly and don't require putzing around.

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:

[FranTaylor]

Well, my employer's customers use SuSE 9 and SuSE 10, so that's what I have to use. None of this openSuSE stuff. Hey, we still support VMS. What can I say?

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.

Re:

[plazman30]

You know with Zenworks, I couldn't update through our work's authenticated proxy. But I could using Yast. Now that 10.3 is out, they ripped out Zenworks and somehow managed to break Yast updates through an authenticated proxy.

10.2 Caches

[TheNinjaroach]

They finally added metadata caching in 10.2 - but you're right it was way overdue.

Re:

[Culture20]

Not out of the box. With Opensuse 10.2, I still have to wait for timeouts when I want to install something from one repo while others might be unavailable, or remove a repo that's been shut down.

Re:

[grommit]

I wouldn't say that it's fast now but it is definitely faster than any previous version of YaST's package manager. Ubuntu's package manager is extremely fast and it would be difficult to match that speed but thankfully I don't install/uninstall/reinstall packages very often so 10.3's package manager speed is fine for me. I would like it if the OpenSUSE team would work on having the package manager do multiple package processes at the same time such as downloading the next package while the previously down

Re:

[WhiteWolf666]

I'm using it, and yes, its fixed. It's cached, and at each package manager startup it checks the cache versus the online version, and even if it needs update the cache update is an order of magnitude faster than a normal startup of the package manager used to be.

It's quite useable now; time from clicking "software manager" to a usable interface is similar to using SMART.

Speed seems to be one of the primary focuses of this release; from the package manager to the boot sequence.

Re:

[griego]

Go into "Installation Source" in YaST and turn off Refresh for the slower repositories. Then refresh them manually once a month or something.

Patent

[maxwell demon]

a new 1-click-install technology

I smell a patent lawsuit with Amazon ... :-)

Finally I can be worry free. . .

[saterdaies]

knowing that Micro$oft won't sue me since I'm using an MS approved Linux from Novell! :)

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:

[marcello_dl]

I'd add that unfortunately openSuse is a distro that is more likely to contain lawsuit material from MS. With all the respect for the achievements of openSuse team, i'm not touching it.

Re:

[hasbeard]

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

Re:

[saterdaies]

The comment was actually meant as a joke, but it's good to see people taking it seriously :) Just wanted to get a little dig in at Novell.

Re:

[BokLM]

I guess the people who answer understood it was a joke. But a comment that say something wrong, even if it is a joke, still says something wrong.

ok

[User 956]

Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE project provides free, easy access to the world's most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE.

That's an interesting statement. Is there a distribution that aims to hinder the use of Linux everywhere?

Re:

[niteice]

Windows.

Re:

[Arcturax]

You haven't heard of Windows?

Re:ok

[nwbvt]

Actually, I think Windows Vista has done more than virtually any OS release to promote the use of Linux.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

yes. Gentoo!

OSX

[Zombie Ryushu]

There is a Unix, OSX.

Sneak peak

[$RANDOMLUSER]

How do you sneak a mountain?

Re:

[maxwell demon]

How do you sneak a mountain?

You walk on it with sneakers?

Re:

[Duct Tape Pro]

How do you sneak a mountain?

Easy. You swap its name with some other mountain. Then tell people you snuck both mountains into each other's place. No one will have observed you sneaking either mountain, so your sneaking skills will be proved superior.

Sneak peak?

[rrohbeck]

Is that a peak that sneaks up on you? Like a volcano or something?

Re:

[theskipper]

Wanna bet the spell checker caught "sneek" before the article was posted?

(my karma's finally excellent...just kidding Zonk!)

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:

[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:

[Metaphorically]

I've been toying with the idea of going to Kubuntu for a while but I haven't had the inclination at the right time :)

It isn't that 64-bit Java doesn't work, it's that there's no plugin for a 64-bit browser. This is even a problem on Windows XP x64 (the red-headed step-child of XP). I could, supposedly, install a 32-bit version of Firefox and use the 32-bit Java plugin but I didn't get that working.

I did discover that 64-bit Konqueror somehow figured out how to run Java applets (though there's no sound

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:

[Metaphorically]

I guess that settles it, I'll do the 64-bit install and see how things look. Thanks.

"Giver"

[planckscale]

The little Giver app looks nice. If I had a new network to set up, I would consider this distro for all the clients, 20 barebone machines with OpenSuse installed and maybe Google Apps for a suite - simplicity!

Re:

[rustalot42684]

Do they have a "Receiver" app too?

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

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.

One Click Install?

[GroundBounce]

Does this violate any Amazon patents?

Fisher-price theme?

[Tibor the Hun]

Damn, what's with the blue plastic window borders?
I won't say anything else on the account of flaming or trolling, but damn. Fisher-price?
Please note that my home is MS Windows-free. (3 OS X, and 1 Linux)

Torrents of installation repository?

[NoseyNick]

SUSE has always been good at providing Torrents of the CD and DVD ISOs, but I was wondering if there's a torrent of the installation repository available? I prefer to dump the install repository on one server somewhere, then net-install all my other machines, but I've always had to mirror with wget -r, and I'd rather torrent the lot...

... as in, a torrent for the entire tree of RPMs and stuff, not for an ISO file?

Re:

[wwrmn]

It's simple:

1) Torrent DVD
2) mount -oloop DVD.iso /mnt/cdrom
3) cp -ar /mnt/cdrom/* /path_you_want

Viola! You have a net installation depot.

Unless I'm missing something...

Re:

[NoseyNick]

I meant the "repo/oss" and "repo/non-oss" trees used by net installs.
No, they're not the same as the DVDs, though I'll concede there's a fair bit of overlap.

MP3 support

[bioglaze]

How can they provide MP3 support out-of-the-box? Does it mean that they can't distribute their distro in the US?

Re:

[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:

[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: MP3 support

[Dolda2000]

Actually, I was quite surprised when I installed Debian Etch in a VM the other day, and found gst-plugins-ugly installed by default -- including, of course, MP3 support. I know that Debian has a non-US repository, but I cannot remember choosing to download an explicit non-US DVD.

I've no idea how it works legally, though.

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.

What makes it better than Ubuntu, in your opinion?

[jopet]

You said you have tried quite a few linux distros, among them Ubuntu, and you claim nothing comes even close to OpenSUSE.

What, then, are the big advantages of OpenSUSE over Ubuntu? I know both distros, and I do not see that clear superiority of OpenSUSE. I think both distros have their respective strengths and weaknesses.

So why do you disagree and think that OpenSUSE is a clear winner?

Tired of SuSE

[the eric conspiracy]

I recently overlayed my laptop installation of SuSE with Ubuntu Feisty because of problems I had with YaST. YaST update performance was so slow and unreliable I gave up and started using the various SuSE yum repositories. That worked pretty well for me for a while, and I certainly appreciated the good multimedia support in SuSE. About the only thing I didn't like was lack of usable ACPI with my laptop.

However a couple of weeks ago the bubble burst. A yum upgrade pulled in some new packages, a kernel and so

Re:

[NoseyNick]

As far as I am concerned the problems I had with YaST plus the obvious quality of apt-get etc. have made me an Ubuntu convert.

The problems with YaST are allegedly fixed. Personally I'm in the exact opposite situation as you, whereby I tried switching from SUSE to Ubuntu on one of my laptops and I'm now bitterly regretting it and will almost certainly now switch it to SUSE 10.3. Ubuntu seemed to be vastly slower for "most things", whereas SUSE was only slow for YaST package-management (allegedly now fixed,

Re:

[the eric conspiracy]

I did not need any additional Ubuntu repositories to get Java or Flash. These are available from the base Ubuntu repository. My WiFi function also uses a proprietary Intel firmware load and was supported using the basic installation. The only non-base repository I am using is to support multimedia.

While as you say package management is not a daily activity, if it doesn't work properly you can become hosed like I was because it is such a fundamental piece of a modern Linux distribution. As far as YaST being

Now for DVD support

[RogerWilco]

I don't realy care how they do it, f I can download it, or need to buy a box of the shelve, but I would like it if somehow SuSE came with DVD support. My Medion laptop I bought 1.5 years ago has a separate linux partition with a DVD player. It boots when you push a special "play DVD" button, without running Windows & friends. Even comes with the source for the kernel and other stuff that's on there, not the DVD players software though.
But my conclusion is, that commercial closed source DVD playing softw

Re:

[RogerWilco]

That link has been bookmarked, it's realy nice.

Super bandwidth full iso download via FTP

[Culture20]

ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/opensuse/distribution/10.3/ [iu.edu]

Most useable Linux distribution ever

[usv]

This is simply the most useable Linux distribution I have ever tried. I highly recommend new Linux users to check out this release :)

Not FLAMEBAIT!!!!

[speaker of the truth]

I've used Windows all my life and I'm wondering which desktop would be the one for me (Gnome or KDE). I realize there are differences, I'm just not sure what they are, and what can be easily overcome simply by installing the software into the other desktop.

Also I'm wondering whether openSuse or Fedora is more newbie friendly (again not meant as flamebait!). Having looked at the two websites, openSuse certainly seems to have the better features, however the Fedora website is certainly inferior to the openSus

Re:

[NoseyNick]

I've used Windows all my life and I'm wondering which desktop would be the one for me (Gnome or KDE). I realize there are differences, I'm just not sure what they are, and what can be easily overcome simply by installing the software into the other desktop.

There's license differences, which most people won't care about, there's graphical differences, but either one is so configurable it can be configured to look a lot like the other. Apps from one will run pretty seamlessly in the other if you have both s

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

Thanks, I'll have to give Suse a try. It seems like its much easier then the last distro I tried (and yes muds are still telnet based. I just included it to be exhaustive ;)).

Re:

[orcrist]

I just wanted to add one more tip to all that great advice from the GP:
Forget the FAT32 partition. There is a pretty decent ext2 driver for Windows [fs-driver.org] now, and SuSE installs everything as ext3 by default, which can be mounted as ext2.

Just to be clear, ext3 is the journaled version of ext2, so you can access your Linux partitions using that, with the caveat that it will not be journaled when using it in windows (i.e. make sure to force a file-system check in Linux if Windows doesn't end cleanly). Another proble

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

I just wanted to say thankyou very much for for recommending openSUSE and KDE. I've used both for a little bit now and there's definitely a learning curve, but already I'm seeing the advantages to the differences. Also installation was absolutely painless. Much easier then installing Windows. So thankyou.

I love SuSE but

[dragin33]

I love SuSE, it's my favorite distro.. But I just find the linux community funny sometimes.. Case in point.. 'MP3 support out of the box.' Come on people that should have been an 'out of the box.' feature in 2000. This is 07' And people wonder why MS still sells their OS.

Re:

[NoseyNick]

This isn't a programming problem, it's a silly licensing / patent / legal problem...
... and only really in the US, in fact.

Re:

[BokLM]

What are you talking about ? If you're talking about Compiz Fusion, then it's optional. KDE4 is optional. I don't see how it is bloatware.

Re:

[Xybre]

Hrm, I disagree. Those are all legitimate enhancements. If you don't want them, they're not baked into the operating system. On Windows, even though Aero is pretty (like Compviz) it's part of the OS, and is always there. Same with the browser. On the other hand, SUSE's parent company, Novell, has signed agreements with Microsoft, which is disconcerting. I myself run Windows at home, as I am realistic, no current OS is as good as the one which does what I need, and Windows does that. Linux, BSD, Solaris, Sk

Re:Great!

[sumdumass]

I think you hit on something here. The idea of bloatware is something you are stuck with. If the ability to remove or replace the boat was available instead of being forced onto the user, it would be enhancements instead.

Or at least that is the way I see it. If product X (whatever that may be) offers options and feature A, B, and C, as long as they let me disable them and not load it when I don' need or want them they are specifically options. But if they force me to load and use them when I don't want to need to, then it is bloat. "Bloat" seems to revolve around your needs and wants and ability to not use things in the program or operating system.

You've been trolled by a...press release?

[msimm]

I'm not a fan of Suse but if you work hard on something and then have to write a announcement I'd say brag too. Of course hands on use and time will tell (I hated the last release). But getting upset because they talk nice seems kind of silly.

Re:

[El Lobo]

Not completly true, but the point is: the argument usially used when MS adds, for example, animations to the Windows, 3d font rendering, transparent borders , etc is: " is they only used those programmers and resources to fix bug or to do SOMETHING USEFUL... instead they do that crap. But when MacOZ or some Linuzzz distro adds it, nobody thinks about those infamious resources... no, that is the RuLeZ!!!!!!

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.

Re:

[El Lobo]

BTW... It seems that many people feel insulted cause my tag of Linuzzz but every single article about MS is taget M$, haha, etc... No reaction... Oh, and I don't care about being labeled troll (BTW, my karma at this moment is excellent), which means that not evry slashdoter here is thasst fanatical and a lot of moderators actually agree with my ideas.

Oh, and BTW, I never post annonymously.

Re:

[brunascle]

but every single article about MS is taget M$

no, none of them are. you cant put a $ in a tag.

Re:

[ericrost]

You're welcome, it only takes one tagger early in the article, but it never stays there for long if its just one :)

Can we get over these childish trolling comments?

[flydpnkrtn]

openSUSE is just that - the Community edition. Please relax.

I think it would help if this risk was clarified..

[cheros]

The principal problem is that Novell has been tainted by the Microsoft reverse philosopher's stone: turning gold into lead (witness the ISO process). As said entity hasn't exactly endowed the world with graceful, law abiding and ethical behavior (and is known to not exactly be a friend of Linux) it is natural that anything in close proximity ends up sharing the stench. Maybe that was THEIR whole idea of partnering with the house that holds IMHO the best distro (I *said* iMho :-).

It would thus be a very go