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It does look rather pretty. I'm a sucker for looks.

Mee too. When you look at these screenshots: http://news.opensuse.org/?p=264 it clearly stands out from the crowd.

I just wish they offered a screaming fast Fluxbox version for my old computer as well.

not really, though. nothing innovative in what ubuntu does. they just try and do what they do very very well.

Umm, I didn't use SuSE back in the days of version 4.2, but I did use Windows back then. I can state with full certainty that SuSE 4.2 contained a helluva lot more applications back in the day than did Windows of the same era. I don't know why you're acting retarded!

Edited 2007-09-21 18:23

Maybe try to re-read what I actually said please?

SuSE came with seven cds--which is exactly what I said isn't it?

I also said that I was unable to use it for much as a desktop, simply because I didn't have ANY internet connection at the time. I used the local library's connection (all three of them!) and then from there I began frequenting various cybercafes in the area. Given most places didn't have cd-burners and iomega drives were just coming into fashion most of the time I was stuck ferry my files around via sneakernet....

When's the last time you were able to install and run a distro with all videohardware drivers, all your basic codecs for audio and video, and all the applications (plus their dependencies and the dependencies' dependencies...) right out of the box?

Given THAT and the fact it was easier to get software with installers back then, can you try to understand I'm not "acting retarded" I'm just telling it the way it was.

As it was, SuSE was the best Linux install at the time IMHO. They always made deals with various *nix companies to get the best software deals and bundled them with the boxed distro for their customers to enjoy. I still remember how I'd buy each new release hoping to get better at using Linux or manage to stay with it before I'd get stumped by something I didn't know how to do in Linux.

At only $30.00 a box (with SEVEN cds!!) SuSE made it easy to experiment with Linux! The fact they included that huge book with every box really helped me along when it came to troubleshooting my hardware... I had one of the first SCSI iomgea zip drives, and that involved reading the manual and lots of print out from the library on isapnp, etc... Good times!

If nothing else I'd remember them for being the first software installer I could run from a cd, back when everything else at the time demanded a floppy be used first to initialize the cd drive and making bootable cds was the blackest of black magic.

I was a rabid SuSE fan. Don't make me out to be a troll just because I no longer am one.

--bornagainpenguin

EDIT- Fixed stupd spelling error, changed 'rapid' to "rabid"

Edited 2007-09-21 23:41

Yes the good old days of big boxen with multiple CD's and heavy manuals

I didn't start as early as you did, but certainly a lot of time before SuSE was bought by Novel. I was quite suspicious of Novel to start with. The great 9.0 was the last release by the old ownership, and from there on I felt that SUSE was going downhill somehow.
However 10.2 is my main OS and I expect 10.3 to really rock.
Besides I'd almost say that SUSE/openSUSE isn't just a desktop distro. It can be used for many purposes, almost like Debian.

SuSE 6 came with four CDs and a big manual written in Latex in German, and then translated for us Englishers: I know because I bought it. I doubt very much SuSE 4.2 came with more than 7 CDs, in fact I suspect it was less than four. Indeed, when 4.2 was released in 96, KDE had only just been proposed by Matt Ettrich: without KDE or Gnome (which came after 6.0) there was little need for so many CDs. No-one would have used it expecting to get a great desktop experience, the best you could hope for was fvwm95, and the lack of desktop applications meant it was only good enough for people who wanted to use the Unix console.

All of which makes me wonder if you really did use SuSE 4.2, or if you dragged out an obscure reference to back up a somewhat weak, and definitely inflamatory assumption.

Qt and Intel sponsor huge amounts of work in X11; RedHat leads the way in desktop standardisation, and has developed a number of configuration utilities; Novell, with Mono, have done a lot of work in apps like Banshee and others, and Ubuntu have done a lot of work creating configuration utilities (like RedHat) and packaging all the software in a manner conducive to use by non-technical users. They currently lead the pack in that regard, but are by no means the only game in town.

SuSE 6 came with four CDs and a big manual written in Latex in German, and then translated for us Englishers: I know because I bought it. I doubt very much SuSE 4.2 came with more than 7 CDs, in fact I suspect it was less than four. Indeed, when 4.2 was released in 96, KDE had only just been proposed by Matt Ettrich: without KDE or Gnome (which came after 6.0) there was little need for so many CDs.

Well I know I bought at least one version of SuSE with that many cds...

I don't remember which window manager was default but I know it wasn't KDE or Gnome. KDE at the time I used my first copy of SuSE was still in beta on release and I don't remember seeing Gnome at all until a later release. I recall using fvwm95 and playing with afterstep--which lead me to Litestep and back to Windows with the whole shell replacement scene for awhile. In fact my first glimpse of BeOS was through an early Litestep theme that intrigued me enough to start hunting down more information about them and to my purchase of BeOS 5.0....

All of which makes me wonder if you really did use SuSE 4.2, or if you dragged out an obscure reference to back up a somewhat weak, and definitely inflamatory assumption.

I'm not here to measure e-penises with you; I only mentioned SuSE 4.2 in the context of having been a long time user and fan. It's possible I may have used the wrong version number--maybe it was actually 5.2?

The point is I'd been using SuSE for a long time, and I think it's hilarious so many people were modding me down who'd probably not even heard of the distro until the 8.x or 9.x days...

--bornagainpenguin

You are officially the most macho SuSe user of all of these SUSE 10.3 articles; before you the earliest user was 6.0. I was a 6.4 guy, but now I bow to you :-)

I've always viewed ubuntu as a slimmed down version of Linux. I don't mean featureless, but rather they don't try to install a bunch of crap by default and instead opt for more of a minimum.

I don't view Ubuntu as being any better or worse than any other distro. The one thing I've always like about ubuntu is that it comes on one CD. I've also found synaptic to be a good package manager. And over all easy to use. I think ubuntu has good direction, simply put.

However, I think openSuse has the ability to steal some thunder from ubuntu. I haven't used openSuse since 10.1, but I have every intention of trying out the final release of 10.3.

openSuse 10.3 seems to have some very positive buzz around it. I look forward to trying it out.

And what exactly can we thank Ubuntu for?

Mono? Beagle? Xgl? Compiz? F-Spot? Tomboy?

Ubuntu doesn't try and innovate so much as it does polish.

KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.

Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.

I much prefer quickly starting up a small app and doing what I need and then being done. With KDE you have to start a huge app (Rich?)and then configure it for your specific circumstance.

For music, whats wrong with Rhythmbox or Banshee or Listen or Exaile?

For CD burning I will admit that nothing beats K3b. But there are plenty of full featured tools for gnome that expand upon the defaults like Graveman or Gnomebaker or even NeroLINUX.

I know this is likely going to turn into another GNOME v. KDE flamewar, but I'll just throw in my two cents before it gets too hot for me.


Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.

Not necessarily. What you're describing is more akin to Fluxbox or something similar. When compared to KDE, this might hold some water, but some GNOME-centric apps like Evolution have multiple functions. Hell, Kmail and KAddressBook and friends are also standalone programs in addition to offering integration into Kontact. Also, for some, not offering sufficient preferences or features means the app doesn't do its thing well.

KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.

KDE is a lot more complex and offers a lot more options compared to GNOME; however, they are usually intuitively presented (minus Konqueror, the panel, and the god-awful Kopete), unlike how things are in Windows. KControl does a reasonably good job of sorting the plethora of customizations available for KDE itself.

Each KDE app has its settings and customization dialogs in the same menu. While that's true for GNOME (Edit menu, IIRC) as well, it's not for Windows; I've seen Options dialogs stored in everything from File to Help. I prefer the dedicated Settings menu that lets you customize everything and the kitchen sink, to GNOME's minimalistic approach.

That's the thing, though: "I prefer". Neither elegant minimalism nor endless customization are better than the other. One may be better for certain people or certain circumstances, but one is not definitively superior for everybody. That's the beauty of having the two major desktop environments in Linux so contrasting in philosophy and approach.

Edited 2007-09-21 17:03

KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.

Nope, never really seen evidence of that philosophy. You'll get features that actually make using a Unix/Linux desktop useful over anything else, such as your middle mouse button being able to do something. Despite some better organisation being needed, I have never seen a feature thrown in that didn't turn out to be a gem at some point.

Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.

On the other hand, if you want to run an application as another user like every other desktop can do, or if you actually want to make your middle mouse button do something like all Linux/Unix desktops have traditionally been able to do then you're going to have to turn to something else.

With KDE you have to start a huge app (Rich?)and then configure it for your specific circumstance.

Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure how I had to configure Amarok the last time I used it, other than adding the location of my music collection and letting it add away. I also have great stuff like album covers, support for lyrics, Magnatune and other things that are great if I want, but don't have to configure.

If your favourite application just simply doesn't have the features, it's always easy to use simplicity as an excuse ;-).

I don't about amarok. When I use a music player I want it to be simple and to work. Amarok works, but I'm not sure its simple. Its interface is cluttered (as are most KDE apps) and there are things that Rhythmnox and Banshee do in much impler ways that I like. That's not to say that Amarok is bad, far from it actually.

Its easy to have bad UI design and clutter and call it a feature. Simplicity is a lot harder to achieve, imo.

I slightly disagree. Having a lot of features and still retaining a simple interface is hard to achieve. Cutting features and making a GUI for the few remaining or obscuring them in GConf is much more easier.

I was not going to flame, but this is too much even for me.

If you are THAT easily intimidated by a button or two then you shouldn't use computers AT ALL. Amarok is just about the cleanest as it gets UI wise. Damnit, even OSNews has gazillion more distracting elements on their site than 'Rok has in its interface. Pry tell me, how DO you manage to browse OSN? Don't you feel a bit scared? Y'know with all them buttons n'stuff?

I know that idiots prefer to have a single big button labeled "do stuff" that they can click to DO STUFF(tm) and get confused when there's a second button added so they have a *gasp* CHOICE!!!!
Fine, have it your way but do not squeak about programs that are actually usable instead of "simplistic" and with "no clutter".

Hmmmmmm, I can never understand what any of this means.

When I use a music player I want it to be simple and to work. Amarok works, but I'm not sure its simple.

What do you mean by simple?

Its interface is cluttered (as are most KDE apps)

I don't really understand what this means either. You've got Banshee and Exaile that look very similar to Amarok, and Exaile is basically a clone of Amarok in GTK and Python.

Its easy to have bad UI design and clutter and call it a feature.

What do you mean by bad UI design, and that immortally meaningless word, clutter? Amarok has good, powerful features and people can name them one by one.

Simplicity is a lot harder to achieve, imo.

What do you mean by simplicity?

That is some serious philosophical perversion you're promoting there!

apparently you know absolutely nothing about application development and what kde does. Noone makes you use the kde libraries if you don't like them and as far as the qui is concerned you can just used qt and skip the other stuff. As far as OS/DE design goes both KDE and Gnome provide libraries only gnome is written in plain C with structures that behave much like object ( gobject ) while KDE is written in C++ with all the benefits that come from using a newer language with a higher degree of abstraction. But there are ways of using other languages than the basic ones and especially with gnome you see a lot of stuff like that.


Also I really fail so see how openSuse has a better and more polished gnome distribution than they do kde. Both are quite polished and pretty much look the same. I personally like the KDE start menu better and also KDE has a lot better front end to beagle and every configuration tool ( at least the major ones ) is integrated into yast. The same cannot be said for the gnome version. Overall I find both the KDE and the gnome versions to be of equal quality which is a surprise for people coming from ubuntu.

Most notable feature in 10.3 is that the update manager works a lot faster than in 10.2 and now is on eaqual speed to aptitude. A welcome and much awaited change if I might say so.

Best combination ever Gnome WM + a lot of KDE Applications + CLI

I don't know anything about Banshee, Listen or Exaile, but for me, Rhythmbox doesn't cut it. Close, but not there.

First, one can't sort a playlist. You can sort in the library, but not the playlist. I have a long playlist I like to listen to but I want it sorted so I can add new songs without duplicates, or to find a song in it.

Second, I couldn't figure out how to create a playlist on an iPod. I would like to think it is there, but I couldn't do it. I also had to copy the songs to the iPod and then move them to the playlist for it to work.

Amarok makes both of these simple. Even though I typically use almost all Gnome applications, I still have to install a KDE one.

For music, whats wrong with Rhythmbox or Banshee or Listen or Exaile?

I can't speak for everyone, but I'll tell you what I think is wrong with them. They're kind of a worst of both worlds approach. On the one hand they're more complex and cumbersom than an mp3 player needs to be (think winamp 2), on the other hand they're lacking some features of the more rich and complex players. If you're going to try to be feature complete then be feature complete, if you're not then try to be a simple clone winamp. As far as I'm concerned they fall into some kind of limbo.

Whats wrong with Banshee, rhythmbox and all the other music players for GTK/GNOME?, K3b is a frontend to cdrecord.

I dont understand where you get this idea that SUSE dont invest time in KDE, kickoff menu, YaST, kontrol with Yast built in. Infact it's GNOME that SUSE left without much new and only the lest few releases have seen new GNOME features.

I dont understand where you get this idea that SUSE dont invest time in KDE

People say that because time was SuSE was known as being the KDE distro with Gnome only getting basic support, much like Red Hat has become known as being a Gnome distro...

It's also worth noting SuSE never put much effort into Gnome until they purchased Ximian....

--bornagainpenguin

Maybe that is because Nat, Miguel, and Federico are ximian monkeys. You know that those 3 are the *founding fathers* of gnome, right?

http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html

You know that those 3 are the *founding fathers* of gnome, right?

Yes I knew that. I was being slightly sarcastic. OF COURSE a formerly KDE centric distro is going to pursue improvements in their Gnome installation after purchasing those guys!

--bornagainpenguin

And it's certainly sad that Novell allowed that little startup to erode the $210M they paid for Suse. Which I'm going to go out on limb and assume was much more than they paid for Ximian, due to the fact that Suse had actual revenue and marketshare.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed, the primates have since been kept in check, and KDE remains a strong focus from Novell...

SUSE never bought Ximian. Novell bought Ximian, then made the Ximian managers the head of Novell's new Linux department. Later SUSE was bought by Novell.

Same difference.

Like Apple buying Next, and Palm buying Be the purchase of Ximian resulted in the people from SuSE who made their product so great leaving and the people from Ximian taking more of a controlling interest. Check the archives, I know I wasn't the only one outraged by SuSE's sudden shift towards more of a Gnome centric desktop....

--bornagainpenguin

Too bad they didn't invest as much time on KDE. Anyway, wasn't OpenSUSE a more KDE-centric distribution (even if SLED adopted Gnome as its default DE)?

To me, it seems like they're going both ways and supporting both GNOME and KDE equally. A lot of improvements have also been made to the KDE side of openSUSE (which I'm still wanting to call 'SuSE'--old habits die hard).

GNOME's just getting all of the attention because, in the opinions of many (including myself), GNOME support on SUSE has been abysmal at best. Sure, GNOME was there and worked just fine, but it wasn't as polished as KDE on SUSE.

The keyword here being arguably. But lets not denigrate this into another KDE/Gnome flamewar.

What I really don't understand though is the GTK frontend to Yast. Yast, a system tool that you really don't use often. Why does there need to be a GTK frontend? What a colossal waste of time to develop this, and in the future, even more waste of time maintaining it. This philosophy of "everything in the system must be GTK" is insane. It goes both ways of course, kynaptic is a good example of stupid cloning using Qt. Some apps, like Exaile, even blatantly state that fact. "like amarok, but for GTK".

I think distro's should force people to install both the qt/kde and gtk/gnome libs. Then people will have less of a phobia of "if I install this app, I'll bring in tons of libraries!" Who the hell cares! Since when is disk space at a premium? How about we don't waste time making two copies of every application and instead make those applications BETTER.

Of course, I am a hypocrite, in that I try to use all KDE applications. With a bit more work into integration, I wouldn't be so adverse to GTK apps. The most important part is the open/save file dialogs. I find the Gnome/GTK dialogs incredibly crippled, and can't bring myself to use them. If the apps used native dialogs depending on the environment it would be much nicer. Can't be that hard, Openoffice does it very well.

What a colossal waste of time to develop this, and in the future, even more waste of time maintaining it. This philosophy of "everything in the system must be GTK" is insane.

Yep. They seem to have had this paranoid trip where everything depending on Qt and kdelibs needed to be removed. GTK seem to get installed when I install KDE and no one cares. There is even a Bugzilla entry somewhere where someone complained that a fantastic bit of project management software called TaskJuggler had been removed. The answer was that they wanted Gnome and GTK everything, even if the alternative was woefully inferior.

Disk space isn't the problem. Memory is.

A graphical toolkit takes up a significant amount of memory. If all the apps you're running only use one, you save that much memory compared to having both Qt and GTK+ in memory.

Fine, if you have less than 256MB of RAM, go crazy with toolkit bias. For anyone else, it won't make a damn bit of difference. you're sacrificing maybe 10MB of RAM, and that's a one time cost, for the first application only. After that it gets shared. Big deal. How does that justify all the duplication? No other platform has this kind of irrational phobia.

I was thinking the same thing. This is a direct result of Novell owning Suse, and Novell employing lead Gnome developers. Favouritism? Yes. The same thing is happening at Suse as what has been happening at Redhat for years, and more recently at the recent darling of all things Linux, Ubuntu - blind favouritism of one particular desktop.

I prefer a Linux distro to include them all, tweak them all to be as good as possible, and then let the user choose. That's choice. Linux is supposedly about choice, but when you get a bunch of distros all favouring one desktop environment, that's bad imho.

I have a bone to pick with Debian 'etch' as well (slightly off topic) - it seems you cannot install KDE and XFCE together, at least not without removing several key components of KDE. Not very good, and what I consider a major bug. Said machine is not connected to the net, so it's only stuck at the DVD versions, so don't tell me to update it

I used to like Gnome a long time ago, but circa v1.2 they lost the plot in all honesty, and with the advent of KDE 2.2 I started leaning in KDE's direction. KDE 3 just confirmed to me that KDE was heading in the right direction even more. I'm hoping that KDE doesn't screw KDE 4 by trying to copy the Gnome philosophies to appease potential Gnome converts etc.

Dave

"""

"""

I would disagree with that point. I prefer to see distros choose a desktop and run as far as they can with it, focusing their resources on making it the best it can be. We still get diversity, because other distros pick the other major desktop and do the same. And some others might pick lesser known desktops, or a newcomer.

Choices are great when those choices are upstream choices. But the downstream distributor should focus the QA efforts on a select set of components. In my opinion, of course. QA efforts are a scarce resource, and should be conserved. :-)

Personally, I find my needs serviced quite well by Rhythmbox and Serpentine/Nautilus-CD-Burn. Simple apps for simple minds, I guess...

Those apps are poor in comparison to their KDE counterparts, so I guess that explains why he said the GTK part is failing to deliver rich applications. Note I don't agree with that, there are some nice Gnome apps out there, but I do think overall, KDE apps are better. Maybe not by much, but that makes sense, as they're mostly 2 years old (KDE 3.5) and are competing with stuff that came out days ago. Things might change when KDE 4.0 and shortly after that 4.1 get out...

Well, I rarely stick with the default theme myself. Just head over to gnome-look.org and kde-look.org to get all the pieces & parts that will dress up the UI to your liking.

it reminds me of the menu from Linux Mint:
http://linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/cassandra/2.png

The menu in Mint is a rework of the SLED menu. An improvement in my opinion.

How much patented material from MS has the Gnome/Novell team put into Gnome?

Oh please, do not go down this road.

If I can guess it's heading in this direction, so read this please if you haven't already and if you can still complain about Novell/OpenSuSE, I give up:

http://en.opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS

The short answer is nothing.

Edited 2007-09-21 19:31

no it's in fact not. Unless you feel that a backported fix that takes maybe 1 or 2 days is too laten.

It depends, how hard do you think this is ?

http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/10.3

Awesome! I was far too lazy to actually do the searching for myself.

Has wireless support been improved? I could never get any Suse to run with my old laptop and get wireless working (Broadcom chip).

No.

Is the set up process still the same?

Pretty much.

What would be the most significant visual changes from 10.0 - 10.1 if any?

None. We're on 10.3 now.