OpenSuSe 10.3 My Experience

[wetelectric]

I have an amd64 chip, with a via 82Cxxx sata chip set. Three ide drives and one SATA drive of 400 GB. I attempted to install OPENSUSE 10.3 x86_64. It uses the 2.6.18.22 kernel

First of all I tried a net install (smug mode: since I have an uber fast connection) using the 'upgrade' option. Found they have renamed the hard drives devices. hda is now sda, hdb is now sdb etc.. This turned out to be a problem...see later

Got to the point where I had to check the packages to be installed. There were about one to two hundred software conflicts. These turned out to be unsolvable. Went through each conflict (most painful) didn't work. You end up in a never ending loop. RPM hell doesn't exist anymore(!). I did notice at the bottom they have a feature that tries to solve this problem automatically by trying all configurations. Good effort suse guys, didn't work though.

    So I thought forget this, let me try a format and an install. This is OK because (smug mode) being a sensible chap, my root and home stuff are on separate partitions :)

Did the format, got to the install bit. STILL had the rpm conflicts! This I felt was a bit odd because I was using the default opensuse repositories.

These conflicts were solved though. I generally just choose not to install whatever is causing the problem, then install later.

So during the download/install connection to the default download server was intermittent.  It would stop and I would have to hit retry three times or so. This was my fault though, I should have chosen a mirror. Although I expected a slow connection, not to be disconnected.

So I went though the usual beautiful install screens (best of any Linux distribution I have seen) and booted up my new system. I then installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver (I know, I know but it's the easiest way to get my dual screen working. Still haven't managed to get the dual screen and the compiz stuff working), installed the smart package manager then ran my script to install all those lovely media gubbins 'they' don't want you to have (libdvdcss, xine etc), compiled the latest version of mplayer, tried kde4 preview and found it consisted of just a blue desktop and a few useless options, loaded kde 3.5x then had a cup of tea.

Success! I thought, after my hard 'work', that I would watch one of my erm.. special videos. Opened up kaffeine to load it up. mmm...couldn't find the mount to my SATA drive. I start to sweat... I think: 'don't panic, i'm sure it's in the /dev list and I just need to mount it'.... umm not there.... now I panic.... I check the modules loaded... via..yup..ahci.... yup.... I run menuconfig and recompile....still wasn't detecting it... now I start crying....

Cue a kettle of kernel compilations and a pot of failure.

I re-install opensuse 10.2 x86_32 edition (I found the 64bit edition would often eat my memory. I think this was a kde thing though.. I mean I have 2gig of ram and occasionally it would have to go to swap. The box would also just freeze up every 30-40 days and I would have to reboot). 2.6.18.8-0.7-default Kernel. I have access to my special video collection.. I have my dual screen .. I still don't have my shiny compiz stuff.. but meh...so all in all yay!... I think

I'll wait for a while before I 'upgrade' again.

[digip]

I can't beleive Sparda didn't jump on the post to say "Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu"

(Just kidding Sparda - Don't flame...)

Actually, I never was able to get Suse to install, other than in a VM. For some reason, Linux (all that I have tried) work great in VMWare, but when I go and try to install it directly to the pc, they crap out on me. It's funny how they work in a VM with my ATI graphics card, but as soon as I go native, they break X and it crashes constantly.

Love VMWare. I generally only like playing with Linux when using VMWare since they seem so stable there and anything I screw up is just for funr and can be deleted like any other file on my hard drive. As far as installs go, I have to say thats one thing I like about Windows. Pretty much just walk away during the install and let it do its thing.

[Sparda]

SuSE is the Linux version of Vista, the DVD won't even boot in my laptop.

[digip]

SuSE is the Linux version of Vista, the DVD won't even boot in my laptop.

Hehe...yeah, I had a few machines I tried it on that couldn't even load a Live Disc of Suse. But I also had the same problem with a Live Disc Ubuntu, although it gave me the menu to install, once I hit enter, the screen scambled like a cable tv channel, froze, then rebooted itself.

[VaKo]

BSD BSD BSD!

I did like SuSe, but then it became openSUSE and it had fecking christmass pengines on the boot screen. From what I can see, if you want an easy to use distro but find ubuntu insulting/ugly/not-suitable-for-long-term-use then try Fedora.

[K1u]

BSD BSD BSD!

I did like SuSe, but then it became openSUSE and it had fecking christmass pengines on the boot screen. From what I can see, if you want an easy to use distro but find ubuntu insulting/ugly/not-suitable-for-long-term-use then try Fedora.

Fedora FTW. Also VaKo... the reason many do not try *BSD is mainly because it feels like a much harder OS to grasp to many. It really is not if you try it, for n00bs that would like to get into BSD, I suggest trying DesktopBSD.

[SmoothCriminal]

BSD BSD BSD!

I did like SuSe, but then it became openSUSE and it had fecking christmass pengines on the boot screen. From what I can see, if you want an easy to use distro but find ubuntu insulting/ugly/not-suitable-for-long-term-use then try Fedora.

Fedora FTW. Also VaKo... the reason many do not try *BSD is mainly because it feels like a much harder OS to grasp to many. It really is not if you try it, for n00bs that would like to get into BSD, I suggest trying DesktopBSD.

The best way to learn something new is with total submersion (the same idea with learning a foreign language).

[VaKo]

BSD BSD BSD!

I did like SuSe, but then it became openSUSE and it had fecking christmass pengines on the boot screen. From what I can see, if you want an easy to use distro but find ubuntu insulting/ugly/not-suitable-for-long-term-use then try Fedora.

Fedora FTW. Also VaKo... the reason many do not try *BSD is mainly because it feels like a much harder OS to grasp to many. It really is not if you try it, for n00bs that would like to get into BSD, I suggest trying DesktopBSD.

But it is simple, far more simple than windows or ubuntu. Its also faster to learn. But only if your prepared to actually learn about how nix works, if you want to be spoon fed, stick to Ubuntu, but in 6 months you will only be able to use ubuntu.

[K1u]

BSD BSD BSD!

I did like SuSe, but then it became openSUSE and it had fecking christmass pengines on the boot screen. From what I can see, if you want an easy to use distro but find ubuntu insulting/ugly/not-suitable-for-long-term-use then try Fedora.

Fedora FTW. Also VaKo... the reason many do not try *BSD is mainly because it feels like a much harder OS to grasp to many. It really is not if you try it, for n00bs that would like to get into BSD, I suggest trying DesktopBSD.

But it is simple, far more simple than windows or ubuntu. Its also faster to learn. But only if your prepared to actually learn about how nix works, if you want to be spoon fed, stick to Ubuntu, but in 6 months you will only be able to use ubuntu.

The whole reason why I urge n00bs not to use Ubuntu is because you will not learn anything through it. Soon they will have auto installs for tar.gz's (probably consists of a small script). It is not the simple factor that scares them off its basically the whole thing about *BSD appearing as this uber-leet os that is so incredibly hard to install... FFS it even has a auto-partition option (FreeBSD).

I also agree with SmoothCriminal if you were stuck on a P3 and all you had was a OpenBSD CD, you would naturally master it at some point.

[jollyrancher82]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX_%28operating_system%29

Enough said.

[Blunderboy]

What do you guys think of Fedora? I have been using it for about 3 months now and everything seems to be cool with it. I can't say everything was as flexable as my old Ubuntu box but since I somehow kept crashing the X server. I was like fuckit I'm going to try this out. So far the only 2 problems I've had with it is that 1. The wireless card on my gateway (broadcom) of course wont work unless I do a firmware alteration, which I'm not doing since the box runs dual booted winXP pro and fedora 8. 2. When I did an update from fedora 7 to fedora 8 I could no longer log into my old account I have to log in as root and create another account and log into that and redo all my settings again. But other then that it has been cool. Getting use to yum was pretty easy rather then apt-get. It is kinda rougher then starting Ubuntu though because fedora core 7 is the first fedora core that used the yum command so some of the walkthroughs for fedora are kinda dated. But hell all it takes was a quick obvious change of commands.

[K1u]

What do you guys think of Fedora? I have been using it for about 3 months now and everything seems to be cool with it. I can't say everything was as flexable as my old Ubuntu box but since I somehow kept crashing the X server. I was like fuckit I'm going to try this out. So far the only 2 problems I've had with it is that 1. The wireless card on my gateway (broadcom) of course wont work unless I do a firmware alteration, which I'm not doing since the box runs dual booted winXP pro and fedora 8. 2. When I did an update from fedora 7 to fedora 8 I could no longer log into my old account I have to log in as root and create another account and log into that and redo all my settings again. But other then that it has been cool. Getting use to yum was pretty easy rather then apt-get. It is kinda rougher then starting Ubuntu though because fedora core 7 is the first fedora core that used the yum command so some of the walkthroughs for fedora are kinda dated. But hell all it takes was a quick obvious change of commands.

Fedora is perfect for me. Been using it for nearly 3 years.

The main reason people start to hate it and it F's up is because they MIX third party repo's... do not do this.

[wetelectric]

I think suse is a reasonable O.S. It's just I wouldn't reccommend them as strongly as I did before that Microsoft deal. I just don't trust them. Will openSuSe upgrades suddenly require registration, payment? I don't know. Will they not include a program in their repositories because microsoft say they don't like it? I'm not sure.

So i'm really taking a wait-and-see approach to them.

ps. Things like changing the word 'root' to 'Administrator' doesn't fill me with warm stuff. Not sure if that is SuSe or KDE (see, due to a lack of trust...it starts already..).

[VaKo]

I think the whole point of SUSE is to be a drop-in replacement for Windows in corporate environments, which is a markable different aim from distro's like Ubuntu which are far more focused towards the consumer desktop. And as for the deal, I always thought that it was just a way of ensuring compatibility between the 2 platforms, so MS will support things like making SUSE talk to an AD server or similar. Otherwise it would be very easy to fall into a hole between the company's 2 support remits, continuinly being told that the other party held the answers.