openSUSE problems - a short list

[RedDwarf]

Originally Posted by ivom66

Updated video driver: I don't know if it helped or not. After I installed it and restarted X server my desktop background went totally black. I restarted it again, and this time everything seems to work fine.

I would verify if it makes any difference. If it does, use Xv instead of X11 since it's better. If it doesn't remove it since it's not tested and Novell will not accept any bug reports related to graphics/videos with an unofficial driver.

[ivom66]

RedDward, I removed it. There is one major difference, but I do not care as the video quality is OK. With your package for intel video I was able to use XV, and without it it does not work.

Without your driver I have to use:

- X without XV in gstreamer settings otherwise the video out test fails,
- X11 for VLC
- xshm for kaffeine and mplayer (otherwise it is all black or mplayer dies).

[ivom66]

I would like to give a final summary of what are good and bad things, now that with the occasional audio glitches I have everything working.

As many people have already said on the web, one you get everything going, there is not much difference between distributions, there is nothing that differentiates one distribution from another. While many people seem to take an idealogical stance, I believe that the only big plus for openSUSE is better MS Office compatibility. I do not care if Novell made a deal with M$, as long as it works for me as an end user.

Now, if openSUSE really wants to compete with Ubuntu in the user-friendliness field, if I may be so bold as to make a few suggestions, then here is a short list.

1. Multimedia should work with every application. You cannot say that simply because you don't like totem you never tested it, and in the restricted multimedia package you deselected all the Gstreamer packages required for totem.

2. Bring back the msttcore fonts, either via packman or somehow else. Running a script written for 10.3 simply does not cut it. Plus, adding those Bitstream Vera fonts would be really nice. I tried the liberation fonts, and still would like to see those bitstream fonts.

3. Until there is a fix, make the instructions more directly available. Perhaps as a warning message once you enable "desktop effects". The warning should say something like: "Please be warned that by enabling desktop effects you may not be able to use Xv and you may have to switch to X11 as a video output in Media Players".

Having said this, I have managed to setup my PC with many helpful advices on this forum, but I am sure many of my friends who would like to try linux simply wouldn't bother to go through this process.

[RedDwarf]

Originally Posted by ivom66

As many people have already said on the web, one you get everything going, there is not much difference between distributions

Pretty true :-)

Originally Posted by ivom66

1. Multimedia should work with every application. You cannot say that simply because you don't like totem you never tested it, and in the restricted multimedia package you deselected all the Gstreamer packages required for totem.

Looking at the 1-Click link in detail you see:

       <item>
	       <name>totem</name>
	       <summary>Totem packages, for DiVX/Xvid, etc</summary>
	       <description>Totem packages, for DiVX/Xvid, etc</description>
     	       <!-- commented out until the totem-xine vs totem conflict is fixed (maintained by Riggwelter), guru@opensuse.org, 2008-06-20
	       <name>totem-xine</name>
	       <summary>Totem XINE packages, for DiVX/Xvid, etc</summary>
	       <description>Totem XINE packages, for DiVX/Xvid, etc</description>
	       -->
       </item>

openSUSE has compiled totem using gstreamer since some time ago, but Packman has always used xine. Probably gstreamer where not "recommended" because "everything" was using xine. Recently looks like there has been some kind of problem between Packman and openSUSE Totem packages and they commented totem-xine... without recommending gstreamer.
Email Pascal Bleser (guru) about it.
It's one of these problems that nobody sees just because there are fewer Gnome users (and the ones that see it install the packages manually, and since the problem is already fixed for them they never report it)...

Originally Posted by ivom66

2. Bring back the msttcore fonts, either via packman or somehow else. Running a script written for 10.3 simply does not cut it. Plus, adding those Bitstream Vera fonts would be really nice. I tried the liberation fonts, and still would like to see those bitstream fonts.

I never used the 10.3 update, I just copied them from the Windows partition. But has always been something I didn't understand.
a) Why a script and not a RPM package?
b) Why only from online-update and not on the DVD/CD?
c) Why isn't for 11.0?
If you want an answer you will need to ask on the mailing list.

About Bitstream Vera, do you mean to install/use it by default? I'm not really a fonts expert. If you think some other fonts would be a better default open a bug report about it.

Originally Posted by ivom66

3. Until there is a fix, make the instructions more directly available. Perhaps as a warning message once you enable "desktop effects". The warning should say something like: "Please be warned that by enabling desktop effects you may not be able to use Xv and you may have to switch to X11 as a video output in Media Players".

I don't think any developer knows about the intel driver issue at all. Someone *must* open a bug report about it!!! (without an intel graphic chip myself to test I'm not going to do so).

A distro is so good like the bug reports from his users...

[ivom66]

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

A distro is so good like the bug reports from his users...

Well, while I like and almost exclusively use linux at work and at home, based on NetApps, linux represents less than 1% of the OS market share. Maybe this number does not accurately represent the market share, maybe it is ~2%, but still, I believe that people from Novell, RedHat, Canonical, etc, should try to make an extra effort now that linux has some momentum, and try to get a larger percentage.

So, instead of relaying on end users to dutifully report bugs, and having them to prove that it is a bug indeed and not their ineptitude, somebody from Novel/RedHat/... should read these forums, find the most common problems, and then assign them to developers who will try to fix them. Each problem in isolation may look as a minor thing, and very different from a bigger picture. And the bigger picture here is that multimedia (both audio and video) does not work well unless you are very lucky.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by ivom66

Wsomebody from Novel/RedHat/... should read these forums, find the most common problems, and then assign them to developers who will try to fix them.

IMHO thats a good suggestion. There was a presentation given by various Novell/SuSE-GmbH distribution developers in Berlin a few months back, and that was the exact process they described they were doing.