OpenSUSE: First impressions

[RigorMortis]

Hi guys,

Have been using OpenSUSE for about one day now, and wanted to share some thoughts. If you are not intrested in a somewhat meaningless post, stop reading now

My background
I used GNU/Linux for the first time 12-13 years ago. I was a "tech savvy" kid, and wanted to try something new. The following years I lost track of how many distributions I tried. I wanted to be "cool" and at one point I even used OpenBSD with ratpoison as window manager on my desktop computer. Around 2002-2003 something happened. My home server died, and I never took the time to fix it. I also started using Windows on my desktop to make my school life easier. And from there, it was only Windows once again.

What I was looking for
At last I decided to once again switch back to the world of GNU/Linux. This time I wanted something that just worked, and was visually appealing. I realized that coolness doesn't mean usability, and I decided to try something that I before ranted for being "bloated".

First impressions
Got to say that so far I'm satisfied. The stability, reliability and hardware support in the world of Linux has improved a lot since I was gone. Installation was a blast, KDE is visually appealing (even though we don't agree on everything yet). I spent some time playing with CompizFusion just for the fun, after I with almost no problem at all got my ATI card running (I remember using ATI back in the days. The framerate didn't compare at all with nvidia) (and another note: the ATI how-to on the wiki needs updating). OpenOffice.org and Firefox was stuff I already used in the windows world, and I even got my favourite Windows game running in no time.


I don't really know what I wanted to say with this post. Just that OpenSUSE seems promising. Even for a former minimalist fanatic like me.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by RigorMortis

First impressions
Got to say that so far I'm satisfied. The stability, reliability and hardware support in the world of Linux has improved a lot since I was gone. Installation was a blast, KDE is visually appealing (even though we don't agree on everything yet). I spent some time playing with CompizFusion just for the fun, after I with almost no problem at all got my ATI card running (I remember using ATI back in the days. The framerate didn't compare at all with nvidia) (and another note: the ATI how-to on the wiki needs updating). OpenOffice.org and Firefox was stuff I already used in the windows world, and I even got my favourite Windows game running in no time.


I don't really know what I wanted to say with this post. Just that OpenSUSE seems promising. Even for a former minimalist fanatic like me.

Glad to read you have a good feeling about openSUSE.

Needless to say, I'm an openSUSE fan, having used it for a number of years. But I do note openSUSE's policy and implementation wrt not including proprietary drivers, nor proprietary codecs, and its willingness to install the latest desktops, together with a lot of FUD about openSUSE's software package management (where most of the critic's software management views are wrong/out of date) has given some users who have tried openSUSE second thought.

I happen to agree with the approach wrt free open source software (without getting into debating the reasons why the approch is in place), but I do note not everyone understands, nor likes, the approach.

I have no problem with openSUSE's proprietary driver approach, nor the codec approach, nor indeed do I have softare package management problems, but to some extent my lack of problems is because I am reasonably familiar with the implementation in openSUSE.

I find openSUSE a distribution that the more I use, the more I like. And the more I use, the more willing I am to contribute to the development process with the milestone/Release-Candidate testing, to ensure the features that I want either work properly, or have bug reports written against anomalous functionality.

Anyway, ... WELCOME to our forum, and WELCOME to openSUSE.

[RigorMortis]

Thanks for the welcoming.

I agree with your pov on the propietary driver approach. And I haven't run onto something that I couldn't fix in one way or another.

Been using OpenSUSE for one day more now, and, as you said, the more I use the more I like it.

Have to add that SaX2 makes my life a lot easier as well

[Confuseling]

If you want your minimalism fix, a few WM's are available in the build service search portal thingy.

Software.openSUSE.org

Personally, I love xmonad for its configurability and speed. It's really great for a netbook, and can be run as part of a full fledged desktop environment, or as an alternative selected at log in when you want to run something resource intensive.

Give it a try - not just for the cool kids.

[RigorMortis]

Originally Posted by Confuseling

If you want your minimalism fix, a few WM's are available in the build service search portal thingy.

Software.openSUSE.org

Personally, I love xmonad for its configurability and speed. It's really great for a netbook, and can be run as part of a full fledged desktop environment, or as an alternative selected at log in when you want to run something resource intensive.

Give it a try - not just for the cool kids.

Oh, thanks for the tip. I will surely give it a try... someday. Right now I'm satisfied with having everything running (almost) out of the box. And I'm getting more used to KDE 4.3, heh.