Thinking of switching to OpenSUSE

[Gamingphreek]

I love my Ubuntu 8.10 install but it just doesn't seem very solid right now. After 7.10 Ubuntu seems significantly less snappy and stable. Nothing against it, but I am curious and have the time to switch to a new OS.

I am running a Lenovo T61 laptop.

Are there any huge changes that I should expect or anything? I know it is switching from Debian to Slackware, but outside of that anything that I should know?

Any other input is fine as well and very very encouraged

Thanks Guys,
-Kevin

 

[SickBeast]

I tried a previous version and hated it.

I'm downloading the latest version now and I'll let you know what I think of it.

I also run Ubuntu 8.10 and it's been fast and stable for me. Perhaps you need a fresh install or something.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't care much for OpenSuSE. VinDSL seems to be lovin' it. Check out his thread here http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2259667&enterthread=y My favorite distro after Ubuntu is probably Mandriva, but it's a distant 2nd. I'm not crazy about the KDE window manager.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I downloaded the Gnome version of OpenSuSE (LiveCD) so I'm going to burn it and give it a go real quick.

My problems with Ubuntu have been some T61 specific problems (Scrolling, Pulse is HORRIBLY implemented, Networking (Perhaps Network Manager wont grab speeds over 54mbps), Power Savings isn't the best right now even if the tweaks and scripts I am running). I have to use VLC to play DVD's because of Pulse + Totem crashing (Invalid Argument Bug)

-Kevin

 

[SickBeast]

Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

Agh that stinks man I'm sorry!

I actually had problems with the installer and am just now able to install and test (I downloaded the Gnome 64bit version). I'll let you know what I think after I get off of this LiveCD (So far the Gnome environment is very clean - I like the color scheme and everything).

My problem was with the partitioner. I partitioned a SWAP and a / mount point. Without telling me it kept trying to create a /home partition bringing the total to 5 (I already have a service partition and a window partition). Unfortunately it didn't decide to create an extended partition to encapsulate all of this so I have been sitting here for over and hour trying to figure out why until the /home deal caught my eye

-Kevin

(Oh, I really really love LiveCD's)

 

[SickBeast]

Yeah, it created too many partitions for me as well, plus it trashed the Windows MBR, so just keep in mind, you might need to repair that afterward. I'm not a fan of OpenSUSE or KDE.

 

[postmortemIA]

opensuse is one of most bloated (meaning comes with tons of software) and slowest...

font sizes can be easily adjusted in performance, that is not reason to ditch it. I personally though it has better looks and themes than default ubuntu brown sh** theme

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

Um...

30 minutes?!?!?

Do you consider "30 minutes" giving it a fair trial? n/m Rhetorical question... Of course not!

LoL! At least I gave Ubuntu 8.10 a day or two before deleting it...

Hell, it took me - VinDSL (138 IQ) - 2 days to figure out how to get rid of the 'potato letters' in openSUSE 11.1. And, I spelled it all out in the link lxskllr provided above.

Look, I don't have anything against Ubuntu. It's great for 72-year olds with Alheimer's - and Africans with flys buzzing around their mouths - or the typical Windows user who just expects it to work - like Vista (ahem)!

Believe me... at the first opportunity, if openSUSE doesn't meet my expectations, I'll dump it off my drive like yesterday's garbage, but that isn't the case, so far! I'm loving it!

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I personally though [openSUSE 11.1] has better looks and themes than default ubuntu brown sh** theme

Cow pies have their place too! :thumbsup:

"It's like the blue, red and white lotuses that grow in the muck but bear no water." - Buddha

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Any other input is fine as well and very very encouraged

Here's the deal...

Laptops are oddballs - and the true test of Linux on the desktop!

I've tried many different flavors of Linux on my Toshiba A215, and the only one that worked 'out-of-the-box' was openSUSE 11.1 e.g. the sound chip and WiFi worked.

I was running openSUSE 10.3 before 11.1 came out, and it worked great on a hardwire ethernet connection, but WiFi was illusive. Ubuntu 8.10 x.64 worked great, but I had the same WiFi problem. openSUSE 11.1 works great, all the way around, including WiFi!

That, however, doesn't mean it will work on a Lenovo!

All you can do is try this-or-that until you find a distro that works with your particular hardware.

Put another way, it isn't easy to get Linux working on most laptops!

Happy hunting!

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Yeah, it created too many partitions for me as well, plus it trashed the Windows MBR, so just keep in mind, you might need to repair that afterward. I'm not a fan of OpenSUSE or KDE.

A couple of final thoughts...

I'm running openSUSE 11.1 on my Toshiba A215 lappy, alongside Vista HP SP2 beta, with '0' problems.

Um...

Everyone else... Please see my sig!

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
opensuse is one of most bloated (meaning comes with tons of software) and slowest...

And...

Truth!

openSUSE 11.1 is designed for ppl that know what they're doing, and...

It's trying to be the perfect server, the perfect desktop, and the perfect end-user OS - all at the same time!

Novell really needs to find a niche, and go for it! They aren't focused yet!

In the meantime, it's basically trying to be everything to everybody - think Vista Ultimate Edition...

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I personally though it has better looks and themes than default ubuntu brown sh** theme

I love Ubuntu's color scheme. It makes me happy, like Vista's GUI does. Dark and soothing... I'm F'n tired of MS blue :^/

 

[Gamingphreek]

I'm switching back to Ubuntu now.

I can't for the life of me use the Zypper commands in CLI, tab wont bring up the different packages - this forces me to use YaSt which isn't too bad, but it isn't really working. The downloads time out about 40 times and I have to keep hitting retry.

Additionally, what is downloaded isn't really working. They said flash player came working out of the box - it didn't so I grabbed it using YaSt. Well it still doesn't - I could download and install it from adobes site but a grep shows that I have adobe and 2 other flash players installed (pullin?).

The menu's are really aggravating. I see what they went for with the recent programs deal, but jeez everything is buried under 2-3 browsers.

The install software's partitioning tries to do too much for you as I said earlier.

Too much GUI, snappy (save for YaST) are 2 big things.

-Kevin

It did identify all my hardware 100% on the first try (Including Fingerprint reader), and it is snappy.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

Um...

30 minutes?!?!?

Do you consider "30 minutes" giving it a fair trial? n/m Rhetorical question... Of course not!

LoL! At least I gave Ubuntu 8.10 a day or two before deleting it...

Hell, it took me - VinDSL (138 IQ) - 2 days to figure out how to get rid of the 'potato letters' in openSUSE 11.1. And, I spelled it all out in the link lxskllr provided above.

Look, I don't have anything against Ubuntu. It's great for 72-year olds with Alheimer's - and Africans with flys buzzing around their mouths - or the typical Windows user who just expects it to work - like Vista (ahem)!

Believe me... at the first opportunity, if openSUSE doesn't meet my expectations, I'll dump it off my drive like yesterday's garbage, but that isn't the case, so far! I'm loving it!

Seeing as I recently spent a fair bit of time to really figure out Ubuntu, I don't feel like doing that again for OpenSUSE.

It seems like a nice system, and I probably would have liked the GNOME version. It was fast and responsive, and the themes were nice.

Right now I have an awesome set of themes set up in Ubuntu; it looks nicer than Vista IMO.

Anyhow, enjoy your OS. I might put it onto my laptop.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

I liked KDE in Kubuntu, but there were too many little problems that added up with KDE 4.1

With OpenSuse 11.1 and KDE, I didn't like it at all. I should have gone with Gnome, but even then, there were still issues on my laptop and went back to Ubuntu Intrepid in the end.

Issues included: no easy way to install the ATI driver available for 11.1 when I tried it out. Laptop function keys didn't work, couldn't find a way to disable tap to click on my touchpad (which is a huge issue since in Linux, the touchpad disable button on my laptop doesn't work.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Ok I just installed and tried OpenSUSE 11.1 64-bit KDE 4 and I hated it!

I hate the look of it, and the font sizes are stupid. It feels way different compared with Ubuntu, in a bad way.

I deleted it within 30 minutes.

I liked KDE in Kubuntu, but there were too many little problems that added up with KDE 4.1

With OpenSuse 11.1 and KDE, I didn't like it at all. I should have gone with Gnome, but even then, there were still issues on my laptop and went back to Ubuntu Intrepid in the end.

Issues included: no easy way to install the ATI driver available for 11.1 when I tried it out. Laptop function keys didn't work, couldn't find a way to disable tap to click on my touchpad (which is a huge issue since in Linux, the touchpad disable button on my laptop doesn't work.

Again lack of reasonable effort from the user results in crapping the distro

There's Touchpad item in control panel, and one of tabs has option to disable touchpad.

If you tried to search in google for it, you'd see that it is easy as 1-2-3 to do it by hand: edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf like on
link

And for ATi- all you need is to add ATi's repository using UI provided in YAST

Hell there's one click install for 11.0+ on this link.

Could it be more easier?

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Again lack of reasonable effort from the user results in crapping the distro

There's Touchpad item in control panel, and one of tabs has option to disable touchpad.

If you tried to search in google for it, you'd see that it is easy as 1-2-3 to do it by hand: edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf like on
link

And for ATi- all you need is to add ATi's repository using UI provided in YAST

Hell there's one click install for 11.0+ on this link.

Could it be more easier?

Touchpad issue - I think I was messing that up with my Kubuntu issues, which I bypassed by using the SHMconfig file.

The ATI one click was not available when I installed it on the 18th. I didn't realize there was an ATI repository and I didn't want to go through the longer process explained on the OpenSuse ATI driver installation page.

I just didn't like it. My biggest issue anyway was the nonfunctioning function keys of my laptop along with the hotkeys on the side being nonfunctional.

 

[quadomatic]

I couldn't stand Hardy Heron, so I gave up on Ubuntu and moved to openSUSE 11. It was SOOOOOO much better than Ubuntu, since I didn't have wireless issues any more. Ubuntu lost a lot of respect in my book. Feisty Fawn was excellent. Then, Gutsy Gibbon gave me issues with wireless and I had to use ndiswrapper. Then in Hardy Heron, I would get a kernel panic every few minutes because the wireless drivers included in the kernel were so glitchy.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: quadomatic
I couldn't stand Hardy Heron, so I gave up on Ubuntu and moved to openSUSE 11. It was SOOOOOO much better than Ubuntu, since I didn't have wireless issues any more. Ubuntu lost a lot of respect in my book. Feisty Fawn was excellent. Then, Gutsy Gibbon gave me issues with wireless and I had to use ndiswrapper. Then in Hardy Heron, I would get a kernel panic every few minutes because the wireless drivers included in the kernel were so glitchy.

HH worked perfectly for me. Strangely, there was only one room that I ever used my laptop in where I could induce kernel panic. Never happened anywhere else...