Ubuntu vs OpenSUSE

English Open Chat
1

This is a post I made on the Ubuntu forums so I’m posting it here too:

I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE GNOME & OpenSUSE KDE and I’ve chosen for OpenSUSE GNOME, I

prefer OpenSUSE KDE but the current KDE 4.1 is in my opinion way too unstable for daily use.

Kubuntu is way too much neglected by Canonical and therefor stands no chance against

the other three. It’s way more unstable than OpenSUSE KDE, has less features and almost

nothing seems to work in it… Especially Wireless internet… I’m not even bothering

checking out the newer releases of Kubuntu.

Ubuntu is a nice and simple OS and that’s the main reason why it’s so popular but in

my opinion it’s way too simple and there it has too few configuration options… Most

configurations still need to be done via the terminal if you want it to work correctly. And

applications in Ubuntu work when they want to, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.

God knows for what reason… That’s typical Linux behavior but Ubuntu has way too much of it.

What I do like about Ubuntu was the GUI for proprietary driver, I have no idea how this

works in OpenSUSE because I hadn’t had to install any yet.

OpenSUSE KDE is a very nice OS but unfortunately KDE 4.1 is still too unstable for me

to use it for daily use. I’m still waiting for the day I’ll be able to use it. It looks

nice, has great features and it’s fun to work in. KDE has always been my first choice but

the common crashes are way too annoying.

OpenSUSE GNOME is my favorite for now, more and more worked out-of-the-box compared

to Ubuntu (see below for more info). Like Ubuntu it has a very nice look and is fun to work

in. There are a lot of software packages available for OpenSUSE, perhaps not as many as for

Ubuntu but still plenty. Dependencies are automatically installed every time, the 1-click

install is a very nice feature.

Ubuntu problems I had right after a fresh installation:

  • Wireless didn’t work out-of-the-box and the usual ndiswrapper had to be used to get it

partially working, yes partially because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t… It

worked out-of-the-box for a PHILIPS USB adapter for one of my sisters but recently it

stopped working completely with our own PHILIPS router, though I think this may be caused by

the router

  • Screen resolution: man this was a pain to get it working as it should, after searching the

web and Ubuntu forums I found a way to configure it (the terminal way) but it still didn’t

work 100%

  • Keyboard numlock: this never worked for me in Ubuntu (last one I tried was 8.04), the

numlock light was always on but the numeric keys weren’t working so I had to press the

numlock button twice every time I started the computer and logged in Ubuntu

  • The UI oftenly stopped working for newly started applications so a system reboot was

necessary every time it happened

  • My two sisters seemed to have a lot of problems with DVD playback while it worked nicely

for me in the past if I remember correctly

  • Network manager was one hell of a buggy application on one of my sisters computer so I had

to install Wicd instead

OpenSUSE problems I had right after a fresh installation:

  • Wireless seemed to work much better than in Ubuntu, mostly it worked out-of-the-box but I

still have the issue where the Wireless connection just won’t work periodically after

starting the computer but as mentioned in the Ubuntu part this may be caused by my router

  • Sound playback & configuration wasn’t working very well at the beginning using PulseAudio.

It was still buggy as hell when it was included in the 11.0 beta release

  • Music playback doesn’t always work with OpenSUSE GNOME 11.0, I guess this is still because

of the buggy Pulse Audio, media players used were Banshee & Songbird. And Banshee sometimes

doesn’t quit completely and prevents me from being able to start it again.

Summary of Ubuntu & OpenSUSE GNOME:

  • Sound: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 75%
  • Wireless: Ubuntu: 55%, OpenSUSE: 75%
  • Screen resolution: Ubuntu: 85%, OpenSUSE: 95%
  • Numlock on PC start: Ubuntu: 0%, OpenSUSE: 100%
  • Video playback: Ubuntu: 65%, OpenSUSE: 90%
  • Performance: Ubuntu: 95%, OpenSUSE: 90%
  • Software installation/removal: Ubuntu: 99%, OpenSUSE: 99%
  • OS configuration: Ubuntu: 60%, OpenSUSE: 95%
  • Look & Feel: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 100%

I started out with Fedora, tried Ubuntu after a while and switched to Ubuntu completely

because I found Ubuntu to be more user-friendly. Then I tried OpenSUSE and it became my main

and favorite Linux OS.

2

As a big KDE fan I tried kubuntu intrepid a couple of days back, i didn’t like it at all.

I totally agree with you that kubuntu is way too much neglected by canonical.

The minimum space reserved for each of bottom icons of kickoff menu (favorites, applications, computer etc) are so big that in small non-widescreen monitors the kickoff menu takes up more than 60% screen width. No need to say it’s very ugly.

The “Kubuntu|KDE” logo at top of kickoff menu is just yuck (compared to opensuse’s ;)).

And Adept-2, no other package manager has such a horrible and least functional interface.

The hardware support was quiet inferior for me in kubuntu compared to opensuse. My viewsonic widescreen monitor didn’t get detected and there’s no tool in ubuntu comparable to opensuse’s sax2. All i had to do was get my hands dirty and edit xorg.conf.

Also I used to have this problem in hardy heron where X was freezing often when i play video…there was no fix for this and it didn’t get fixed in intrepid as well.

I have no comments on ubuntu cos i just cant stand gnome, sorry.

P.S.- APT is less headache than RPM but one doesn’t end up installing new softwares all the time.

3

EarthMind wrote:

> I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE GNOME & OpenSUSE KDE and I’ve chosen
> for OpenSUSE GNOME, I
>
> prefer OpenSUSE KDE but the current KDE 4.1 is in my opinion way too
> unstable for daily use.

I you prefer KDE to Gnome but can’t abide 4.1, why not use 3.5 instead?

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy

4

You will find that everyones experience differs, largely because so does their hardware. The beauty of LINUX is the choice. You could easily find yourself, at some point in the future, using a different distro.

Yes. SUSE is really great and I have been with it for many years now, even when it didn’t perform too brilliantly. It would need to be some major kind of issue to have me move.

KDE3 is without question the way for less experienced users, it’s solid.
Though I am now finding KDE4.1.3 excellent - We seem to have crossed the threshold here now. Though I will still be installing kde3 in OS11.1

5

I’ll be doing the same. Tried installing both KDE 3 & 4 but found kicker was messy and a lot of apps had to be installed twice. Only have 3.5 at the moment and all is well. Might upgrade to 11.1 when it comes out but my last change from 10.3 to 11.0 did not go as smooth as planned. I’ll try the RC on a test partition and see.

To get back on topic, I have not tried Kubuntu but I heard from friends it’s not as polished as OpenSUSE. So I won’t waste my bandwith :slight_smile:

I’m happy with what I have so why tempt faith and change :wink:

6

EarthMind wrote:
> This is a post I made on the Ubuntu forums so I’m posting it here too:

Ubuntu forums… you might as well stick dynamite in your ears and light
em. It’s fun for awhile… then everything blows up…

>
> I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE GNOME & OpenSUSE KDE and I’ve chosen
> for OpenSUSE GNOME, I
>
> prefer OpenSUSE KDE but the current KDE 4.1 is in my opinion way too
> unstable for daily use.

I can agree with that.

>
>
> KUBUNTU IS WAY TOO MUCH NEGLECTED BY CANONICAL AND THEREFOR STANDS
> NO CHANCE AGAINST

Ouch… you’re YELLING!!!

>
> THE OTHER THREE. IT’S WAY MORE UNSTABLE THAN OPENSUSE KDE, HAS LESS
> FEATURES AND ALMOST

I do believe Kubuntu is a step child. In fact, many choose regular
Ubuntu and install KDE (why not?).

>
> NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK IN IT… ESPECIALLY WIRELESS INTERNET… I’M NOT
> EVEN BOTHERING
>
> CHECKING OUT THE NEWER RELEASES OF KUBUNTU.

Feel free… but Ubuntu is a tier 2 distro (not a tier 1 like
openSUSE, Fedora, Debian), and Kubuntu is a tier 3 distro. I think
if you’re going to go the Ubuntu route, you’re better off getting
as close to something supported as possible…

>
>
> UBUNTU IS A NICE AND SIMPLE OS AND THAT’S THE MAIN REASON WHY IT’S SO
> POPULAR BUT IN

Hmmm… I don’t think it’s popular for that reason. It actually
owes quite a bit to Debian and in particular their packaging and
breadth of software available in their package format.

>
> MY OPINION IT’S WAY TOO SIMPLE AND THERE IT HAS TOO FEW CONFIGURATION
> OPTIONS… MOST

I can agree with that to some extent…

>
> CONFIGURATIONS STILL NEED TO BE DONE VIA THE TERMINAL IF YOU WANT IT TO
> WORK CORRECTLY. AND

Even worse, Synaptic tends to install and START packages (services) that
really NEED to be configured first (VERY bad security).

>
> APPLICATIONS IN UBUNTU WORK WHEN THEY WANT TO, SOMETIMES THEY WORK AND
> SOMETIMES THEY DON’T.

Same can be said about almost any distro though.

…more yelling, some info and a lot of repeated info snipped…

> Summary of Ubuntu & OpenSUSE GNOME:
>
> - Sound: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 75%
> - Wireless: Ubuntu: 55%, OpenSUSE: 75%
> - Screen resolution: Ubuntu: 85%, OpenSUSE: 95%
> - Numlock on PC start: Ubuntu: 0%, OpenSUSE: 100%
> - Video playback: Ubuntu: 65%, OpenSUSE: 90%
> - Performance: Ubuntu: 95%, OpenSUSE: 90%
> - Software installation/removal: Ubuntu: 99%, OpenSUSE: 99%
> - OS configuration: Ubuntu: 60%, OpenSUSE: 95%
> - Look & Feel: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 100%

Most of these will vary across distros and across hardware.
So at best you can say for YOUR particular hardware configuration
this might hold true…

>
> I started out with Fedora, tried Ubuntu after a while and switched to
> Ubuntu completely

Fedora takes some pretty large risks in their distro. Sometimes
you pay the price for that…

>
> because I found Ubuntu to be more user-friendly. Then I tried OpenSUSE
> and it became my main
>
> and favorite Linux OS.

I choose openSUSE because… it’s Novell, and we have SLES and SLED.
Also, I find that the SUSE folks actually think about some of the
more interesting and complex enterprise scenarios (SANs, clustering,
HA, LVM, etc). SUSE engineers seem to understand something about
Unix (unlike Red Hat).

7

On 11/14/2008 cjcox wrote:
> …more yelling

Actually in most cases it is the NNTP gateway. If you post through the web interface and change the color of text, the gateway turns it into uppercase.

Just a side note.

Uwe

8

I started out with Linux over a year ago with Ubuntu 7.04 then 7.10. I had it fully configured on my T60 in a dual boot setup.
For my Linux+ cert I switch over to Fedora 7. I had a issue with my microphone for about a week but got it fixed.
I’m using OpenSUSE 11 for two main reasons. One is that is works and two because if I wanted to use a Linux OS that could be implemented within an office environment. Sure Ubuntu or Fedora could be but as a IT professional (trained on M$) I wanted the tools the SUSE offers for the network -Zenworks the virtualization and edirectory. Ubuntu and Fedora fall short here in my opinion.
I think KDE4 is nice but just glamor. The earlier versions of KDE look very blocky and old.
Gnome is my preferred style.

Only bad thing I can say about Novell is I’m unable to get a green chameleon plush toy-****.

9

Right now, I’m running 11.0 with KDE 4.1.3. I think it’s alright as far as stability goes. Not as stable as 3.x, but it’s doing ok so far. I’ve been tempted to go to gnome, but I really like the qt version of yast. I know you can use the QT version, or at least could in 10.3, but that doesn’t fix all the links to parts of YAST in the Gnome Control Panel. I want to like gnome, I just don’t that much, because I loved Ubuntu’s implementation of gnome. Just throw a nice looking YAST into it and it would be terrific. I debated back and forth about 3.x and 4.x for Suse, and ended up with 4.x why? I have no idea. But here I am…

Honestly, the huge thing for me is YAST. I love it. It’s more than just a centralized setup tool that I love, because Mandriva has that too, and theirs is very good as well. However, I spend more time away from home than I do at home unfortunately as of late, and I love having the ncurses version of YAST that has full functionality built into the ncurses interface. Mandriva has an interface, but for some reason it doesn’t (at least in the most recent version), have all the features that it would if running via X11. Either way, I love Suse, and wonder why I chose 4.1.3? :smiley:

10

>
> Only bad thing I can say about Novell is I’m unable to get a green
> chameleon plush toy-****.
>

Just attend a Novell seminar near you…they chuck them out for free.
T-shirts too.

11

On Fri, 2008-11-14 at 08:53 +0000, Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:
> On 11/14/2008 cjcox wrote:
> > …more yelling
>
> Actually in most cases it is the NNTP gateway. If you post through the web interface and change the color of text, the gateway turns it into uppercase.
>
> Just a side note.

:slight_smile:

Rats… it’s more interesting when people are yelling…

12

On Fri, 2008-11-14 at 17:55 +0000, GofBorg wrote:
> >
> > Only bad thing I can say about Novell is I’m unable to get a green
> > chameleon plush toy-****.
> >
>
> Just attend a Novell seminar near you…they chuck them out for free.
> T-shirts too.

I think I have the oldie one and the new one…

They usually don’t bring that many… ASK a question and that
can usually get you one.

13

caf4926 wrote:

>
> You will find that everyones experience differs, largely because so does
> their hardware. The beauty of LINUX is the choice. You could easily find
> yourself, at some point in the future, using a different distro.
>
> Yes. SUSE is really great and I have been with it for many years now,
> even when it didn’t perform too brilliantly. It would need to be some
> major kind of issue to have me move.
>
> KDE3 is without question the way for less experienced users, it’s
> solid.
> Though I am now finding KDE4.1.3 excellent - We seem to have crossed
> the threshold here now. Though I will still be installing kde3 in OS11.1
>
>

When KDE4 manages to pick up my KDE3 information for Kmail, Knode, and
Calendar, I might consider a switch-over. I can put up with other problems
but this is a deal-breaker.

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy

14

On 11/15/2008 Graham P Davis wrote:
> When KDE4 manages to pick up my KDE3 information for Kmail, Knode,
> and Calendar, I might consider a switch-over. I can put up with other
> problems but this is a deal-breaker.

Actually that was the easy part, I simply copied over some files.

Uwe

15

I debated back and forth about 3.x and 4.x for Suse, and ended up with 4.x why? I have no idea. But here I am…

Gosh, I must have been sailing with EarthMind.

I see some random crashes, but so far it’s been after I close a KDE 4 program. No BSOD like in some other OS.

I did have to switch to Kopete 3.5 from 4.x. Got to see those avatars of my friends.

16

Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:

> On 11/15/2008 Graham P Davis wrote:
>> When KDE4 manages to pick up my KDE3 information for Kmail, Knode,
>> and Calendar, I might consider a switch-over. I can put up with other
>> problems but this is a deal-breaker.
>
> Actually that was the easy part, I simply copied over some files.
>

I’ve had to copy files over for kmail, knode, etc., on several occasions
after a new release of the software and I’m fed up with it. This should
happen automatically. What is also a pain is that the kmail importer
doesn’t display hidden files - which is where the kmail files are stored.
Clever!

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy

17

Just like caf4926 said…beauty of the Linux is the choice… and Yes for now Open Suse 11 Gnome is my Fav too… well …we never when a geek among us might try something crazy and we might go mad about it…So for now i would Open suse 11 Gnome is best and i woould rate it 95% overall…Thanks to the community for providing me with such a great distro…:wink:

18

I started with Ubuntu when I first started messing with Linux!! I am going to have to say once I got done wasting my first week just running terminal commands to get everything to work correctly I did enjoy it. I have been wanting to try OpenSUSE for years now, but have been stopped due to not wanting to have to pay for it, just to give it a try. I recently got a free copy of OpenSuse 11, and I threw it on my laptop to give it a try. On the same laptop that I spent days trying to get everything working in Ubuntu the only thing I had to do with it to get it to work perfectly was to configure the touchpad as I had issues getting it to work… Other than that I haven’t had to configure anything other than all the toys that I want to play with and setting up everything the way I want it… not just to make it work!! I have to say as of right now I like OpenSUSE a whole lot better than I do Ubuntu!! I haven’t tried the KDE as I have only used Gnome since I started with Linux, but I will have to give it a try one day!!

19

I recently got a free copy of OpenSuse 11

I hope you are aware that openSUSE is always free, and yours for the download at software.opensuse.org. If you want to help out the project (and get some nice branded installation media) you can buy a boxed copy, but you never have to.

I tried the latest version of Ubuntu on a Dell Latitude D531 (AMD64 Turion x2). Snappy, polished, great hardware detection. Screen resolution, sound, wifi, and even all my networked printers (one of which is a wireless HP Deskjet) were auto-detected. However, most of the good things about Ubuntu’s latest release are not Ubuntu specific; hardware support in the linux kernel (and othr linux specific projects, such as ALSA, CUPS and Samba) is growing by leaps and bounds, so every new generation of distros gets a leg up on it’s predecessors by default. Ubuntu 8.10 supports much more hardware than openSUSE 11.0; the same will not be true for openSUSE 11.1.

20

the most important reason for me to choose opensuse over others distro is YAST .

sorry to say , I don’t want to go back to dark ages where doing changes on configuration files.>:(

ubuntu remind me of back to the day when I still using red hat 6, life is so hard