OpenSUSE 10.1 Review: "Versatile but Uneven"

capt turnpike writes "Calling it 'solid,' the eWEEK.com lab boys tested OpenSUSE 10.1. The upshot? FTA: "We appreciated the ambitious scope of OpenSUSE 10.1's configuration tools, but we also ran into some areas in which Yast's reach frustratingly exceeded its grasp." What does that mean for Novell's newest version of Linux? And when will it catch up numerically to Apple, which is already at 10.4.6?"

Re:Sounds very stupid to me.

[Gherald]

> It's like when AOL jumped to version 9.0

Eh? I don't see no jump [wikipedia.org]

Novell's ZenWorks killed SuSE 10.1

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with 10.1 is that the entire software management / updater system based on ZenWorks is completely broken. While they're going to patch it next week to get it to at least WORK, it will still take several minutes of maxed out CPU / HD just to check if there are updates, and it will still do so every time you login to X. It also often takes upwards of 15 minutes or more to install packages or change sources. It's not been confirmed, but the new version may still contain the problem of deleting packages without checking if anything depends on them, which could completely break your installation.

Speculation is that Novell forced ZenWorks onto SuSE shortly before release in order to boost ZenWorks Suite sales (which go for $130 / seat). If so, it has seriously backfired. ZenWorks has shown itself to majorly suck.

Lastly, SuSE's official attitude towards it has been "It's not a big issue, we'll see if we can make it better in the next release, if we get around to it."

SuSE can no longer be trusted to run on production servers.

Re:My impressions of SuSE 10.1

[kimvette]

They've done something to make the software installing part of YaST take ages to start.

Go to YaST -> Installation Sources
Check each source to make sure that Refresh is set to "Off"

They made "ON" the default in 10.1, presumably in response to many folks' complaining about the installer's handling of broken repositories such as Packman. (Great repository for selection, but it's perpetually broken).

My2 cents on Suse 10.1 (I'm using it now.)

[pair-a-noyd]

I have been using Suse for years, back to the 7.x days and Linux in general even longer, I still have my factory original Redhat 3.1 CD. Yes, a single CDR..
( http://img436.imageshack.us/img436/7408/dscn20214w e.jpg [imageshack.us] ) I also have a Redhat 5.1 CDR too. Both these discs are fully functional and installable, circa 1994ish ?? I think..

  Anyway, Suse 10.1 SUCKS.. SUCKS with a capital SUCK.
  This weekend I will be downgrading it to 10.0 (I was not too thrilled with 10.0 but it's better than this crap)

  Unless you want a miserable hellish nightmare trying to install *other* apps stay away.
  The Zen thingy is a piece of crap. It won't let me install apt/synaptic which is what I have been using for a few years now.

  I am afraid that this will be my last hurrah with Suse. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and learn Gentoo. Before this year is out I plan to be dual booting OSX and Gentoo..

  Buh bye Suse, you f**ked it up.. It was fun though..

One thing someone pointed out to me is the "smart" installer. Go to yast and search for "smart" then install it. It's similar (but not the same) as apt/synaptic. It will at least let you get some of the basic packages installed, you also have to paste this into a console, 'smart channel --add http://divine160281.di.funpic.de/smart-channel.txt [funpic.de]' to give you access to third party packages.

But all in all, I'm very unhappy in general with Suse 10.1 and will be downgrading to 10.0 no matter what. And forget about bling-bling compiz, that's a freaking disaster. You like to torture yourself? Play with compiz. Guaranteed to crash more often that M$ winders..

Once they get compiz and Xgl debugged I'll be thrilled to play with it again but it's way to unstable for me. I need stability. I have no tolerance for buggy crap.

Re:What is OpenSUSE?

[colonwq]

I am far from a OpenSUSE expert but I was able to follow their documentation to do a network install of 10.1 with the files hosted on a RH WS4 computer.

I downloaded the OpenSUSE CDs and net boot image from here [opensuse.org]
I followed this item [opensuse.org]
Followed by this [opensuse.org] one
Then I did this [opensuse.org]
I then booted off of the cd made from the net boot image. I adjusted the mount points and exports to fit my local enviroment

On a side note: I did the X86_64 install to see how OpenSUSE got the Java plugin to work in Firefox. It was easy for them, they cheated. Their Firefox is a 32bit compiled version

:wq

SuSE 10.1 = Package management from hell

[Kilz]

Sorry but 10.1 is a sad upgrade. It reminds me of M$ where eye candy is there but there are a lot of bugs. 1. When adding packages that have dependencies that are not installed you have a 50/50 chance of crashing yast 2. Adding repositories is a chore, it takes forever and sometimes they don't install. 3. People are manually installing smart to bypass yast. 4. The new auto loader auto mounts cdroms to /media/TheCd'sName, its different for each CD. This has broken wine and cedega. I loved 10.0, I hated 10.1. The person reviewing the OS must have just installed it and tested the installed software. The only thing that was easier was setting up Xgl. But eye candy isn't any good if you cant install your favorite applications.

Doing production

[LordBlackader]

I am using 10.1 on my Compaq presario V4000 laptop. Installation was fine except for my INTEL pro 2200 BG wireless lan card. I had to patch some drivers and at last I got it worked. I am using my laptop for production purposes, so a lot of OpenOffice, krdc, MySQL, Apache and VMWare workstation 5.5. An unsupported patch was nescessary for VMWare to make it work but I am pretty happy with it. It is quicker than 10.0.