OpenSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 Has Been Released

Francis Giannaros writes "The first beta release for openSUSE 11.0 is now available. Some of the highlights include fast package management, KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1 and an impressive new installer using Qt4 CSS-like stylesheets. Changes behind the scenes include switching to RPM LZMA payload and making RPMs smaller (faster to download), and quicker to decompress (faster installation)."

Dodgy Link

[kernowyon]

Please mod the parent down - this is the dodgy malware linky yet again :(

Karma whore?

[LingNoi]

Don't post malware links to boost your karma asshole.

I hope

[hansraj]

that comments are about the distro and not about Novel.

Re:I hope

[Darundal]

You expect comments about the article, and not a moralized tangent discussion? What site do you think you are on?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments about the licensing, legal, and ethical aspects of a distro are entirely legitimate and on-topic discussion of the distro.

If many Linux fans consider Suse to be the anti-Linux Linux distro, in the sense that it sabotages the larger community, then it would be foolish not to discuss this as part of discussing Suse.

And it's Novell, not Novel.

Re:

[hansraj]

Thanks for pointing out the typo.

The discussions about policies of Novell are certainly worthy of discussion and maybe even relevant to the topic, but it has been discussed so much on slashdot that one would have to be foolish to expect anything new. Anytime a story featuring Novell (even superficially) appears here, the discussions end up looking like a rehash of some discussion that happened last week which in turn was a rehash of a discussion two weeks ago and so on. What's the point?

Moreover, even thoug

Re:

[LingNoi]

The discussions about policies of Novell are certainly worthy of discussion and maybe even relevant to the topic, but it has been discussed so much on slashdot that one would have to be foolish to expect anything new. Anytime a story featuring Novell (even superficially) appears here, the discussions end up looking like a rehash of some discussion that happened last week which in turn was a rehash of a discussion two weeks ago and so on. What's the point?

Welcome to any discussion on GIMP, Vista, GNU vs BSD,

Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

the year of the Linux desktop!

SuSE does seem the best for packaging mechanics

[moreati]

SuSE Linux was my first Linux distro, back when I thought 'I paid money for this, it came in a box' automatically means 'This is better'.

I've moved to other distributions since, but I still think SuSE has the best packaging mechnanics. I'm not talking about their packages/repositories or the merits of apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. I mean that SuSE better optimise the package transfer and installation.

To my knowledge, SuSE Linux is still the only pre-compiled distribution that patches/upgrades a package by downloading only the changes. They have delta rpms that are much smaller to download than completely new packages.

The linked video would suggest that their new package front end is much nippier also.

Hats off to you.

Re:

[IBBoard]

Fedora were planning to include Presto for Yum to allow Fedora 9 to take advantage of 'delta RPMs' that just download the changes. Unfortunately it seems they haven't made it yet. The delta RPMs in SuSe did always seem like a great idea that I thought more distros should take up.

Re:

[the eric conspiracy]

delta upgrades is a great feature. However this is about the 4th version of SuSE that promises fast package management. I moved away from SuSE a couple of years ago because of slow package management and package management bugs.

I hope package management is SuSE really is competitive with other distros this time. Otherwise I enjoyed using SuSE.

Re:

[miscz]

It's quite fast since 10.3. I have been waiting for reasonably fast package management in Suse for some time now and most promises were not fulfilled. It seems that Suse developers finally got their act together and 11.0 will bring near apt/dpkg speeds. Actually OpenSUSE 10.3 was the first RPM-based distro that didn't make me want to throw some furniture at my computer. There are still some nasty quirks (like opening dozens of windows that steal focus during installing packages via YaST) but I can stand th

Re:

[paulatz]

throw some furniture at my computer. There are still some nasty quirks (like opening dozens of windows that steal focus during installing packages via YaST) but I can stand those.

There have been a lot of complain on that yast "feature", I think it have been somehow softened, if not fixed, in oS 11

Re:

[Azuma Hazuki]

Uh...no. Foresight Linux (and any distro that uses the Conary package manager) download delta-packages for upgrades. SuSE may be the first one to do it, but it doesn't have a monopoly on the idea.

Re:

[moreati]

Ah, thanks for the info. I'll check out conary. Now if only Debian and Ubuntu would do it..

Anyone else...

[Darundal]

...see something wrong with x86_64 live CDs do not fit on 700MB, need to be tested with DVD-R?

Re:

[apokryphos]

It is the first beta; for the next beta this issue will likely be resolved. There was quite a big rush to get features in, and pretty much all the time from now will be spent on bug-fixing.

Re:

[genericpoweruser]

There's an easy work-around for that: simply use the live-cd in a virtual machine, straight from the ISO.

Re:

[pxc]

Don't bother. Most VMs don't support 64-bit guests anyway.

The second screenshot is great!

[denominateur]

"Multimedia sucks."

http://jimmac.musichall.cz/images/blog/qt4-rocks.png [musichall.cz]

OpenSUSE is awesome

[Skylinux]

SUSE was my first Linux distribution because I could purchase it at BestBuy.... that was many years ago.
I eventually switched to Slackware to learn Linux but decided to switch back to SUSE a few years ago because I wanted to become productive instead of hunting depended software to satisfy ./configure
Don't get me wrong, there is noting wrong with the "hands on" Linux systems as I recommend Slackware to anybody who wants to know Linux.

One thing that makes me shake my head is the over hyped Ubuntu distribution, bracing for negative mod points now... Seriously though, OpenSUSE makes it so simple to install almost any program, add Pacman's repository, install Mplayer and it all begins to "just work"...

If you have not tried OpenSUSE, give it a try, I doubt you will regret it.

BTW, I am typing this on my Fujitsu laptop connected to a wireless lan which worked "out of the box" ... Windows is a true sandbox OS for me now, useful only for gaming....

Re:

[pionzypher]

Different strokes... I've used SUSE on and off since '97 or so. I prefer the feel of debians. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Ubuntu being over hyped, it is a solid distribution. It seems that there has always been one distro that has taken the spotlight for a time before being surpassed by another. One that's more _mainstream_ than the others. It doesn't take anything away from the value of that distro except perhaps some imagined geek cred.

Most modern distros make it simple to add reposit

Re:

[Skylinux]

I see Ubuntu as over hyped or over advertised because it feels like every time I open Linux Journal there is another article about something Ubuntu related as if it was the only disto left on earth.
Same goes for other websites, Ubuntu here, Ubuntu there .... enough already.

I will admit a degree of bias here as I just don't like Gnome and since Ubuntu is Gnome focused I would never use it. I know there is Kbuntu but then I might as well use a different distro all together.

So my choice for Server, Workstation

Re:OpenSUSE is awesome

[AndGodSed]

Disclosure: I am a bit of an Ubuntu fanboi ;) (please notice the wink *nudge-nudge*)

Right - One of my first distributions was also Suse - SLED and SLES - got it from the novell stands at Software Freedom Day here in South Africa.

I liked it, but because of some niggles I moved on.

1. I run on limited hardware, and Suse being a bit hardware intensive (my impression here) it was a bit slow - took four hours to install on my pc and five hours on my laptop. Not a fault on the Distro's part I am quick to point out.
2. Everything did not just work in my case, but I enjoy tinkering so that was not a big reason for movin on.

Currently I am using Ubuntu.

1. It contends better with my limited hardware. A clean install takes only about 40minutes to an hour. (Yes my computer/laptop is O_L_D!)
2. It "feels" more intuitive, but that is more personal taste than any real advantage over SUSE.
3. Shipit. This is a real advantage over other distributions. Being able to order a free disk of the latest version is a real plus.

Here are a few critiscisms of Ubuntu:

1. Heavy reliance on the internet to install anything from codecs to extra software.
2. DVD releases that in fact have extra software are not available as boxed sets is a disadvantage wrt boxed sets like Suse.
3 The color scheme - what the heck with the brown? Many distro's look much better - Suse, Linux Mint are just a few examples. Fedora looks great too.

One thing that gives Suse a great advantage is the effort that goes into the Enterprise Desktop package. It makes a lot of effort to be easy to integrate with an office environment - this naturally spills over to the Opensuse version.

I don't think Ubuntu is OVER hyped - it has many good points, and is really a leader in many aspects, just as Suse, PCLOS, Fedora, Mandriva and so on all have areas where they lead. What I really find exciting is that every distro has access to what it lacks and is available in another. Take PCLOS using Synaptic for instance.

THAT is what has handed the lead to Linux, and has placed Windows in second/Third place.

Re:

[twistedcubic]

Does SuSE "just work" on amd64? I had a few problems when playing with Ubuntu and Flash on amd64. But one of the labs where I work just installed OpenSuSE 10.3 on its computers, and the Gnome theme/style is beautiful.

Anyway, I also bought SuSE at Best Buy around 2000-2001, for $39.95. I installed Postfix, and whenever I did updates, it would install Sendmail. So I sold the box on Ebay for about $17. Switched back to playing with Mandrake and RedHat. Now I'm permanently sold on Gentoo on the desktop,

Re:

[Bralkein]

SuSE was my first distro too, and I'm certainly glad I forked out for the box set, because it came with a couple of really awesome manuals that were a huge help to me as a complete Linux newbie. The YAST configuration tool also allowed me to set up a home server to replace the Windows 98 machine my dad had set up for that task (yeah, I know). There were also a couple of other nice touches for Windows refugees, e.g. some DOS commands were aliased to their UNIX equivalents, which allowed me to make limited us

Re:

[colinrichardday]

I like it too, but I noticed that y2base (a program for managing rpms) was taking 100M on my desktop machine.

This message was posted from a laptop running OpenSuSE 10.1.

Re:

[cbart387]

If you have not tried OpenSUSE, give it a try, I doubt you will regret it.

I currently have Fedora installed and am quite satisfied with it. I was wondering if you (or anyone else) has experience in both openSUSE and Fedora, and is able to compare the two? I'd be interested in trying it out if there is a compelling reason to do so.

Honest and helpful information, I appreciate that

[golodh]

I was struck by the usefulness and honesty of one of the comments on the SuSE 11.0 release site.

This one:

"To make a long story short: KDE 4.0 is not and never was meant to replace 3.5.x for regular users. The main goals were porting to Qt4 and creating the frameworks to create all the things announced for KDE 4. Frameworks are unfortunately hardly visible to the user, so most things that use them, like plasmoids, panel-functionality etc., will only appear after the frameworks are in place, i.e. starting with 4.1." (see http://news.opensuse.org/2008/04/18/announcing-opensuse-110-beta-1/ [opensuse.org])

Now that's a useful comment for an end-user like me. It honestly tells me what's not in the package and what not to expect, and it does so in an up-front manner in three short sentences. As such it's a relief from the way you have to dig for this sort of information on the KDE webpage (see http://www.kde.org/ [kde.org]).

Don't get me wrong, I like the KDE desktop ... but I just don't want to know about (or have to dig through) the details of how the desktop is evolving. Let alone the vagaries of all those applets starting with a K. This announcement is end-user friendly in that it gets to the heart of the matter (i.e. I can try KDE 4 in SuSE 11.0 if I want to beta-test it, but it won't give me anything new) without me having to wade through pages of details ... or worse an install. My compliments.

Re:

[QCompson]

Agreed. If only the KDE was so forthright about the release in January instead of trying to cover for the shortfalls of the final 4.0 release by relying on meaningless marketing drivel. They really should have just named it a "developer release" and avoided all this hoopla.

Warning to KDE users!

[pxc]

If you download the KDE4 LiveCD and want to install it on any system or VM, don't bother! The LiveCD installer is broken. To install the test system, you have to download the DVD.

Somewhere down this page [opensuse.org] it lists it as a "most annoying bug."

Damn right... :-\

I am a convert

[Stu101]

I recently removed XP and put OpenSuse 10.3 on it. As people before have said, the packman repository makes everything work re:mulitmedia.

The real nice thing is, it just works. I tried Ubuntu before, and Fedora etc etc but went back because a lot of it didn't work or i couldnt be bothered messing around for hours. OpenSuse is so good that I now just have Opensuse on it, and can do all my sysadmin work just as easily. It is THE distro that converted me to Linux full time, so much so im about to take my CLP exam in a few weeks. Windows really is becoming a has been to me, at least.

The other really nice thing about Suse is that it has all the packages one could reasonably expect ready to install. Unlike some other distros that have broken RPMs of such important software as MySQL. Best thing is, it takes literally 3 or 4 clicks to install MySQL onto a system in a usable.

Try it, it really does rock. It's slick, all the packages work! Ok so their alliance to another company sucks but hey, cant win em all.

Re:

[Tastecicles]

I have exactly one laptop running xp now. It runs xp for gaming and that's it. Everyhting else runs SuSE, Debian or NetBSD. I'll never go back to Microsoft for a production platform; since Linux came along I stopped looking for an alternative to the bugridden, malware-infested, botched-together mess that 80% of the people I know still insist on using even though they are, as they extoll the virtues of the "easy to use interface", fighting popups and dialog boxes and blue screens of death. More fool them I s

An impressive installer?? Really??!!

[Morel]

It amuses me to no end that we are still so sensitive about the years when Linux was so difficult to install that -even in this day and age- we still go "OMG it has a cool installer! And it's graphical! And it's pretty!"

Re:

[yomegaman]

Amen, it formats the disk and copies shit over, who cares what it looks like? You're only going to run it once.

Re:

[apokryphos]

Well, it has many improvements not only for new users, but for experienced users too:

• Installation happens in 24 minutes now. In fact, on my computer it only took 18 minutes. This was not easy, it required a lot of work: switching to LZMA, creating images for the base patterns, and the new SAT solver (which benefit general package management too)
• Installer is less hassle. You only need something like 6 clicks for the full installation. Say what you want, but we were constantly getting abused about the "lon

Those were the days...

[a.ameri]

Interesting reading this story's comments. Seems like slashdot is finally ready to move on... Have people realised it's time to stop whinging about Novel and MS deal, and talk about Suse instead. I mean seriously folks, this is Suse we are talking about, one of the original distros.

Not long ago, there were 3 distros for people who wanted to use Linux on the desktop: Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE. Debian was for servers and slackware was for those who hadn't realised that this is not 1995 anymore. There was stil

Re:

[ReinoutS]

Speaking of which. Mandriva [mandriva.org] (it's not called Mandrake any more since years) has released their 2008 Spring distribution two weeks ago and Slashdot didn't even mention it. Yet it's easily as good or better than OpenSUSE or any other distro having a release around this timeframe...

Re:

[gaute-kevin]

Yeah, that's quite odd. Why is the release of new Mandriva not mentioned here at slashdot? Even the previews of suse and fedora are mentioned. I wonder. I really do, so it would be nice if someone how know why this happens could tell!