InformationWeek reviews OpenSUSE 10.2, and concludes: “All told, I consider openSUSE 10.2 to be a real winner for server duties in my labs. Given the number of pre-release packages that are included, this probably isn’t a particularly good choice as a server platform for business-grade networks, but Novell doesn’t position it as such, either (that’s what their ‘enterprise’ products are for). I don’t think it’s as good of a desktop release as SUSE 10.1, either, and there are better distributions for that anyway, but other people are likely to disagree with me here.”
This is a good review, in that it doesn’t just list a couple of new package versions and post screenshots. He actually goes through several things that were good and bad.
Yes, it’s an interesting review, but his ideas about distributions seem a bit odd.
He says he needs a combination of stability and cutting edge features. SLED 10 and RHEL 4 are not enough bleeding edge for him, yet he uses SUSE 9.3. Then he finds Gentoo and Debian too bleeding edge. Well, Gentoo has an unstable and a stable branch (the stable is quite conservative) and Debian has unstable, testing and stable branches. None of them suit his needs? He goes on saying that the only one that could replace SUSE is Fedora (which is a bleeding edge distro)…
Not that it matters, the review itself was good and unusual. But I would have liked some feedback about how Debian or Ubuntu did in that same environment.
I also found what he wrote about Debian pretty odd. If anything, the only complaint could be that Stable becomes too old before the next one is released.
Agreed. I’m just happy this was different and hoping that other people in the future can take a cue from this.
Edited 2007-01-04 22:59
When I remember all the problems, obstacles, hours of vasted time with solving Windows problems, I must be crazy to install OS which is to MS related. Even today when there are GNU solutions. Switch to GNU Linux, or even better to *BSD.
I agree with him about the Gnome menu. Fortunately I use KDE, but even in KDE I reverted to the standard menu, I didn’t think a lot of the customized one.
Ati cards: I had my share of problems too, but eventually I found the right way. I might write an how to somewhere.
I had to give up apt4rpm, which was an absolute trauma for me. Now I am using Smart, but smart-gui doesn’t come even near to synaptic.
Fonts: I haven’t noticed that they are ugly. I installed the MS Fonts as usual, but if I understand the author correctly, it shouldn’t make any difference.
I can’t see why OpenSUSE 10.2 can’t be a good desktop OS: the only problem I have is watching WMP streams, but that has always been a problem with SUSE, even if you download the plug-ins from third party repositories.
Fonts: I haven’t noticed that they are ugly. I installed the MS Fonts as usual, but if I understand the author correctly, it shouldn’t make any difference.
You will notice the bad fonts if you connect a LCD screen via DVI.
can’t see why OpenSUSE 10.2 can’t be a good desktop OS:
The package manager is still a weak bird.
“You will notice the bad fonts if you connect a LCD screen via DVI.”
I see. I have LCD via VGA.
While the crippling of Kaffeine and Xine on Novell’s part is braindead, you should be fine after you replace both by setting up the pacman and guru repositories.
I have done that, but still Kaffeine or Totem (or VLC) fail to start from a browser (or segfault).
some screenshots to accompany this review at LinuxQuestions http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=openSUSE~*~@…
http://en.opensuse.org/Screenshots/Screenshots_openSUSE_10.2
Do others get penguins with christmas hats? That is the only thing I don’t like.
🙂
nope, i did get windows from the redlight district though:-)
Yeah, got those as well.
Kicked 10.2 out of the window (in favor of kubuntu) after a few days, crippling a media player so it can’t play dvd’s even when you install the right packages, come on? Compiz is nice, but it’s really disturbing when you throw your mouse to the upper right corner that you get an overview of all the running applications, instead of being able to kill the running app (which was why I threw it to the upper right corner), their new k-menu replacement really sucks, perhaps their gnome version might be ok, didn’t try it, but the kde one, no thank you.
Yet suse 10.2 ran a lot faster than my last encounter with suse, even yast was fast.