A Couple of questions about opensuse, moving from Arch

[devnullv2]

I've been on Arch all year and I've loved it, up until this week. I've been a big fan of openbox and playing with tiling window managers, lots of CLI apps and such for a while.

But i've grown tired of endless keybindings and text files, so I installed KDE4.3 onto arch and it's been one nightmare after another. I hear good things about 4.3 in OpenSuse though so, I figured to distro hop back to OpenSuse.

But here's my questions:

1. Is Yast any faster since 9 and 10? I remember yast being a huge pain
2. should i do 11.1 and use the kde4.3 repos, then upgrade to 11.2, install the 11.2 beta and just upgrade to stable, or just do 11.1 with kde4.3 and when 11.2 comes out do a clean install? Arch did rolling releases and its made my life easier i've found. Is upgrading from one version to another in suse difficult?
3. are there any major kde4 bugs that plague suse's implementation that i should be aware of before hand?
4. I remember really disliking opensuse's firewall.. it's not too difficult to just uninstall it and go to straight IP tables right?

[deano_ferrari]

# Is Yast any faster since 9 and 10? I remember yast being a huge pain

Yes, it is.

I remember really disliking opensuse's firewall.. it's not too difficult to just uninstall it and go to straight IP tables right?

I can't see the point (as default works for me), but AFAIK you can disable SuSEfirewall2 (via YaST) and use iptables commands instead.

man iptables
man iptables-restore

[john_hudson]

Originally Posted by devnullv2

should i do 11.1 and use the kde4.3 repos, then upgrade to 11.2, install the 11.2 beta and just upgrade to stable, or just do 11.1 with kde4.3 and when 11.2 comes out do a clean install?

Just use the KDE4 Live CD from KDE/KDE4 - openSUSE for now and then upgrade to 11.2 when it comes out. 11.2 will complete openSUSE's shift from KDE3 to KDE4 but there will still be KDE3 applications which have yet to be rewritten for KDE4.

As the openSUSE installer creates a separate /home partition, you will only need to install/upgrade the root partition for 11.2.

Originally Posted by devnullv2

are there any major kde4 bugs that plague suse's implementation that i should be aware of before hand?

openSUSE is heavily involved in KDE development and KDE uses the openSUSE Build Service; so problem bugs are few - I haven't encountered any since KDE4.2. Just be aware that KDE4 is still under heavy development and not all applications are as feature full as their predecessors in KDE3 (for example, I still find KPDF is better than Okular in several areas). A lot depends on what your needs are.

[devnullv2]

Originally Posted by john_hudson

openSUSE is heavily involved in KDE development and KDE uses the openSUSE Build Service; so problem bugs are few - I haven't encountered any since KDE4.2. Just be aware that KDE4 is still under heavy development and not all applications are as feature full as their predecessors in KDE3 (for example, I still find KPDF is better than Okular in several areas). A lot depends on what your needs are.

Is there an install option with 4.3? or is that only the 11.2 beta?

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by devnullv2

Is there an install option with 4.3? or is that only the 11.2 beta?

There are various live CDs packaged for openSUSE. A couple packaged by Novell/SuSE-GmbH, and a number of ones with newer/different desktop versions packaged by the community. Take a look here: Live CD - openSUSE
All of these live CDs are "installable".


As john_hudson pointed out, there is an excellent openSUSE-11.2 KDE-4.3 liveCD packaged by the community that one can install KDE-4.3 from.

[oldcpu]

While you are not a new Linux user, you are new to openSUSE, so its possible one or two of the points in our Installation stickie may be of interest to you:
NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums

[Akoellh]

You can also install openSUSE (like nearly any other distro) "the Arch way".

Choose the minimal install with or without X (with X will give you IceWM as preliminary window manager), then add the Repos for KDE 4.3 and build up your desired desktop environment.

You won't get KDE 4.3 directly from DVD or OSS repo, openSUSE has no rolling release but a lot of extra repos in OBS which give you a lot of bleeding edge software if you want.

[john_hudson]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

As john_hudson pointed out, there is an excellent openSUSE-11.2 KDE-4.3 liveCD packaged by the community that one can install KDE-4.3 from.

Sorry for the confusion but I was trying to point out the 11.1 KDE4.3 Live CD which I have installed. At least, that's what I thought I had installed!

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by john_hudson

Sorry for the confusion but I was trying to point out the 11.1 KDE4.3 Live CD which I have installed. At least, that's what I thought I had installed!

I'm bad. I meant to say openSUSE-11.1 KDE4.3 live CD. Live CD - openSUSE and here: http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/

[Knurpht]

Even better:
Index of /repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso

Pick the Reloaded iso for your architecture.
BTW about yast being faster? It will knock your socks off.