openSUSE 11.1 Review

I’ve been a long time SuSE user, I enjoyed the old boxed sets with the big manuals and CD books full of software. With that view I have always looked forward to every release of the distribution.

openSUSE 11.1 features all of the great new improvements in the Gnome and KDE desktops, combined with many of their own direct innovations.

Having been a user of SuSE, now openSUSE as well as their enterprise offerings such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server I’ve seen this distribution from a lot of different perspectives. The various releases always seems well integrated and have a lot of small touches that give it a polished feel. The enterprise version has key features that fit that role perfect, and the desktop always seems to nail it’s target. I recall when SuSE was the first Linux distribution to ship with the ability to boot off the installer CDs and perform a system recovery that could restore your boot loader or kernel, something that saved my bacon once or twice when I was still learning “the right way” to do things!

These days I’d say the gap between distribution features is starting close up, but did I find something that stood out about openSUSE? Watch the video and find out:

Some major features by category

Major App Improvements:	Firefox 3.0.3 OpenOffice.org 3.0 Gnome 2.24.1 KDE 4.1.3 + KDE 3.5.10 Mono 2.0.1 openJDK as replacement of Sun Java
Desktop Environments	KDE 3.5.10 KDE 4.1.3 GNOME 2.24.1 Xfce 4.4.3 3D desktop using Compiz Fusion
Multimedia	Banshee 1.4.0.1 AmaroK 1.4.10 & 2.0 kaffeine 0.8.7 PulseAudio 0.9.12 Audacity 1.3.5 flash-player 10
Mobility	Networkmanager 0.7 3G and Bluetooth support External Monitor support Support for docking stations
System Components	Linux Kernel 2.6.27 GCC 4.3 glibc 2.9 X.Org 7.4 XEN 3.3.1 KVM 78 Virtual Box 2.0.4

In some ways openSUSE is a distribution (like others) caught in a transition world between KDE3 and KDE4. As the KDE user base makes it’s switch, the developers must spend a lot of energy in making both KDE3 and KDE 4 work well, on top of Gnome and XFCE. It’s difficult task I am sure, but I think in a year or so it will have paid off, as KDE4 seems to be steadily reaching a point where it will be useable for the everyone. Despite this nether desktop environment seems to lack polish, truly a job well done!

Great job to the openSUSE team, they’ve got a great release on their hands!

Technorati Tags: openSUSE,Review,Linux,KDE,Gnome

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December 4th, 2008

Tags: In Depth, Linux/OSS, openSUSE, Review

oren

does anyone know where i can find a list of supported wireless cards for it? i tried to use ubunut, but no wireless, and i cant acces wired connections
Beavis

KDE 4 is a mistake of epic proportions.

Why the KDE team is wasting so much time and energy on it is mindboggling.

There are too many issues and bugs in 11.1, if you are using 10.3 or 11.0, just update the kernel and you are set. Zypper still sucks. Many of the repos listed have broken URL's. Audio is sketchy, it will work, and then magically stop working until forcing your user account to join various groups. FF3 is very, very slow by default, Flash audio doesn't work out of the box. In fact many important proprietary packages are missing from the CD. They made it more difficult to play DVD's or listen to MP3's.

The list goes on. Polish and attention to detail is lacking. It is almost amusing, 11.0 is more solid and polished then 11.1 is.
SafeTinspector

Unlike some of the commentors, I like the SUSE mainmenu (slab) with its quick search box.

I've been on the fence about upgrading to 11.1, I've been running 10.3 a long time and getting all my laptop's integrated peripherals to work under 10.3 took me awhile and I stupidly didn't document everything I did. :(

Also.... should I switch to KDE or stick with GNome?
Steven

I installed OS11.1 on my Fujitsu Stylistic 5010D (Tablet).
It's the first time everything worked from the first run. With previous versions I had either problems with WIFI, the video drivers, or video playback.

Some quircks though: the tablet is no longer at com1, but at com5 (took some time to find that out), and the virtual keyboard doesn't work at the login prompt.

But overall I am very much impressed with it. Performance is also not bad for a 1GHz centrino and 768 MB of Ram...
Astinsan

It works on my eeepc 900 without any modifications. All wifi/net/video/sound works without doing anything to it. It is the best release for all of my machines. I used to only use ubuntu.. but it gave me a lot of issues on my hp laptop so I went suse and haven't gone back. Suse also has a apt like cmd line program called zypper Its apt to the next level. Nice and clean.
Harshdeep

I downloaded it and installed on a Intel Pentium 4 socket 478, MSI Micro ATX MB, 3 gb ram and an ide hdd also with Nvidia 8600 gts with 256 MB GDDr3 ram. The processor fan ran aloud all the time. Also, it didn't recognise the graphics card.
I removed it and installed opensuse 11.0. It runs perfectly fine...Hence 11.1 is just looks yet. It needs more time to be stable.
opensuse geek

i download opensuse live gnome 11.1 x86 for 32 bit cd and booting up under vmware 1.05 where 11.0 has been there since months, and 11.1 crashes at the boot screen with a two col text menu in the top left over the first green screen. will not boot and throw me at boot: prompt. i typed linux at prompt and went little far in boot sequence to tell kernel crashed. 11.1 needs fixing.
if it doesnt work under vmware (test-bed) it sucks big time. if it dont work on foxconn (the people who sell con'ny motherboard), its understandable. 11.1 needs polish.
opensuse geek

well i think the app-browser is one of the best things i love in opensuse. i can help you to get around the issue. create a application launcher (short cut) for app-browser on your task bar - click launcher and app-browser opens up. once you have this you type the application you looking for in the left pane of window and like grep, as you keep typing first few characters it narrows down what you looking for speeds up the process. i am in love with app-browser.
if you just like the standard gnome menu why not switch to any other distro, most of the distro have default gnome menu, ubuntu, fedora and much more.
Aditya

Just one more day to go...
GiSWiG

Yeah Ian, Dolphin does have great TAB support. If you are using the 11.0 and KDE 4.0 I can understand your hesitation with dolphin over Konqueror. I've been using 11.0 with kde4.1 repos, and Dolphin is much better there. You want TAB, have them! I have my "Places" and "Folder View TABBED as well, with the Preview box. If you want, you can also change the bar above the folder view to either a click bar (like home > GiSWiG > Documents > Pictures) to a straight address bar BUT the best thing! Click say just after Pictures and BOOM! ADDRESS BAR! Plus I love ALT + . to switch back and forth between view hidden and not hidden!

At this point, I see no reason to use konqueror at all. But with Linux, it's your choice, just trying to help make it an informative one!

Wait for openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.1!
Giovanni Masucci

Ian, dolphin has tab support as well :)
Ian

I am glad to see that KDE 3.5 will still be offered with the new OpenSuSE. I still don't like Dolphin, I prefer Konqueror with it's tabbing and other features that I find lacking in Dolphin. I use probably 9-10 tabs which are linked to different systems across our network as well as local partitions.

Also some of the other interfaces for system configuration, I don't like the Gnome look that and it to me appears less functional than the older KDE local settings menu. Just my $0.32 on the matter.
zak

I agree. The app-browser in openSUSE's GNOME is a pain. Fortunately it's easy to but the normal GNOME menu on the panel. Although if you're used to a Mac. it's actually very similar, instead of a menu you have Finder window's applications folder. Still annoying in my opinion.

I can't say enough good things about the KDE kick-off menu. While I prefer to use the KRunner launcher most of the time, the new menu is so customizable, and it really has increased my productivity (whatever that is!).

Looking forward to this next openSUSE! Great job, devs!
Vadi

I find opensuse's "start menu" to be quite unusable really. If you want to get a list of all applications, you're given a huge-ass, unorganized list of everything you have installed on your computer.

While the "menu bar" applet in gnome (or ubuntu specifically, as it seems to be different in fedora" is quite simple - you can get to any application easily within several clicks. No need for a special window either, and it's organized properly.

But points to opensuse for aesthetics - they do get them quite right!

openSUSE 11.1 Review

Some major features by category

Major App Improvements:

Desktop Environments

Multimedia

Mobility

System Components

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