Why not openSUSE...?

[mmarif4u]

Hi all,
This post is just to say "Thank you openSUSE crew,developers,all for such a gr8 distro".

3 months ago, i installed Mandriva on my office PC, i used it and the conclusion is it is super slow.
Then installed Ubuntu, the conclusion is it is simply not my taste...KDE sucks there.
B4 all these, i used openSUSE 11.0 on that PC...it was fast, without any problem...KDE was amazingly stable.
Even i m using openSUSE 11.1 on my laptop.

So i decided to install 11.0 again on that PC for production use.
Love Zypper than others...YaST is working like a charm in every case i use it. KDE implementation is simply superb than Mandriva.
Gnome implementation put Ubuntu to shame.
What i am confused is, why people ran after ubuntu,debian,fedora... what is special in all that distros...is it just apt. If this is case, then my vote is for Zypper.
Is it stability...openSUSE is stable enough for both use desktop/server. I used it compare to ubuntu,fedora on servers.

This is just to share my thoughts, not hitting other distros.
But for me, i will never use other distros for production/personal use for long term...till openSUSE exists.

THANKS TO openSUSE AGAIN...and KDE too.

[microchip8]

Ubuntu - got its fame due to excellent marketing, not so much due to technical superiority. That's all

Debian(-based) - got its fame due to superior package management in the past where RPM sucked a lot compared to it, more precisely the front-ends did. Also, Debian is very fanatic about pure open source and application stability, hence their "stable" branch throws you back in the stone age

openSUSE - technically very advanced and stable (same as Debian), superior RPM front-end manager (zypper) compared to other RPM-based distros, had/has bad PR due to mother company being faggy and striking deals/patent covenants with the devil which gave bad taste in a lot of people's mouth, especially the fanatics' mouths. Still suffers from disorganization and sometimes lack of vision (ie, is virtually never the first to incorporate ground-breaking new stuff. Often Fedora does it first, then openSUSE follows)

Also, still a lot of people believe the myth that even today, RPM is inferior to Deb which is not really true but they believe it due to historical reasons and current misinformation that's still kept alive

[GofBorg]

> sometimes lack of vision (ie, is never the first to incorporate
> ground-breaking new stuff. Often Fedora does it first, then openSUSE
> follows)

Well I'm rather glad at this fact.
Fedora can be an awful mess at times.
OpenSuSE keeps that stuff mostly in testing where it belongs.
I'm perfectly happy to let Fedora beta test on its users.

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

Let Fedora users become the guinea pigs and then let openSUSE team incorporate what is working well and throw away what is working bad

From all rpm based distributions i just love openSUSE for YaST and OBS. Also many people from KDE work for Novell so this way we get one of the best if not best KDE implementation

Hail openSUSE!!!!

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by BenderBendingRodriguez

Let Fedora users become the guinea pigs and then let openSUSE team incorporate what is working well and throw away what is working bad

Well, they didn't throw away yet pulseaudio which is a major PITA

From all rpm based distributions i just love openSUSE for YaST and OBS. Also many people from KDE work for Novell so this way we get one of the best if not best KDE implementation

Hail openSUSE!!!!

Yup

as for Gof's reply, it depends. Ground-breaking new stuff doesn't necessarily mean it won't work correctly or is not stable yet. When I say "ground-breaking" I mean it technologically and not adding stuff that just came out of alpha and saw the light as beta. Also, it could be done (the ground-breaking stuff) in openSUSE easily. Add it in the milestones and test it during the 8 months cycle, then release it as stable and fixed in the final GM version

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

Red hat also has good developers. And they are innovative. They constantly try to improve things with each release while openSUSE just picks up what's been done/tested. I respect Red Hat developers for that.

[dragonbite]

Ubuntu does more than marketing, they add tweaks to make regular things done easier, dare say easy enough for some not-so-technical people to do what they need to.

For example, and I have to admit I am not sure how openSUSE handles this, but a while back I was trying to install Java on my Fedora installation (soon to be overwritten with openSUSE Milestone 3, but that's another story).

When I finally was able to find a person's personal blog on the subject it took installing 2 programs/libraries, followed by downloading the .sh from Sun and then running a few commands to connect-the-dots between Java and Firefox.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, not only comes up with the "Missing Plugins" bar along the top of the page but when you click the "Install Plugin" button it gives you a list of 3 Java choices (OpenJDK, Java 5 and Java 6). Pick what you want, enter your (sudo) password and it does the rest for you, including the pop-up license agreement. Same thing with Adobe Flash.

That method is closest to (I think, it's been a while) how easy it is to get this running in Windows

So tweaks like that make Ubuntu that much more appealing. Plus I think there is quite a bit of the "comfort" level with picking the "popular" distro so there are more people who use it and better chance to get some answers, whether true or not.

That is compared to when I was trying to get my home network recognizing everybody else and in openSUSE had to go an manually edit the firewall settings. What's up with THAT?! Don't know if (hope it isn't) is still the case.

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

I know that openSUSE by default accepts broadcast from internal network so shares etc. should be seen with no problems. Ubuntu's way is good in that it is easy for beginners. Look at partitioners complexity. You can't do much in ubuntu's partitioner while in openSUSE's you can do all sorts of things

I started with Ubuntu and ended up with openSUSE because it is the most professional distro i know. Ubuntu has one upperhand, they have a BIG community but as i recall people were making pranks like rm / -R etc. (i tested it myself on a VM )

So for me openSUSE is the best.

[CloudLion_ca]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Ubuntu - got its fame due to excellent marketing, not so much due to technical superiority. That's all

....bad PR due to mother company being faggy and striking deals/patent covenants with the devil which gave bad taste in a lot of people's mouth, especially the fanatics' mouths. Still suffers from disorganization and sometimes lack of vision (ie, is virtually never the first to incorporate ground-breaking new stuff. Often Fedora does it first, then openSUSE follows)

The deal with Microsloth (Microsoft) turned an immediate page in Novell's management history and injected a significant and vital financial return into Novell's balance sheet. The agreement also put off a potential legal conflagration which would have added a large chunk of liability to Novell's balance sheet at a dangerous time when Novell needed a shield and not a sword.

That "faggy" company saved SuSE from the fate Mandrake/Mandriva seems to be facing on a quarterly basis. That "faggy" company also has been a driving force in promoting a large number of initiatives in the Open Source world which have benefited everyone in the Linux world. The One exception might be Richard Stallman who has taken Novell off his May-Day card list. I assume Novell still sends Richard a Christmas card; which I'd bet will be returned unopened.

As for corporate wars against Microsoft. The war against Microsoft and Novell has been going on long before SuSE entered the scene. The war goes on and Novell is fighting it everyday. Novell and Microsoft are mixed up in a number of legal tangles and those fights will continue for years. If you want details on those ask the Groklaw pin-up chick for all the details. Send her a snail mail requesting a signed swimsuit shot in a court room: Include a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope and 7.50 USD for shipping and handling. I don't see any altruistic OpenSuSE proponents or Linux advocates offering to organize an effort get us all to send Novell 10.00 USD contributions to assist Novell in paying for the SCO battle or to help it
battle Microsoft. Eventually some of us assume Novell will end up on the same side as IBM, Red Hat, and the other Linux distributions when we end up facing off against Microsoft, Apple, and Berkeley. I'm sure the count down will begin once SCO is dead and gone. Then all the real fun begins.

Due to the state of chaos and confusion caused by the United States patents, intellectual property rights, and controls system we're stuck in a nasty period of uncertainty waiting for the day when Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, or Computer Associates pull the right trigger. I love to make analogies: we'll compare the SCO case to the Spanish Civil War and I'm sure there will be lawyers, historians, and politicians building careers out of researching the causes, effects, and results of Patentgeddon (World War IV). Not only is the United States Patent system in a state of kerfuffle; the entire Intellectual protection mechanism globally is in a state of chaos. Not just in North America it is an issue all over. Patentgeddon will spill all over the place. The results will bring into question the state of a number of business agreements, business relationships, and partnerships many companies have with others on a global scale. Patentgeddon will also kill off a number of organizations and I'm sure it will bring us to another period of corporate evolution, amalgamation, and streamlining of the IT industry as companies merge, some die off, and others get fragmented.

If the OpenSuSE 11.2 experience is as fun as the 11.1 experience; all of the above it will be academic because the distribution will continue to shave off it's own market share and Novell will simply become a foot note in the history of the evolution of networking and UNIX. This isn't something I'm looking forward to seeing come to fruition.

Call me one of the fanatics of hope encouraging Novell to get it's act together and push forward into battle carrying our OpenSuSE/SuSE standard to triumph!

[consused]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Ubuntu - got its fame due to excellent marketing, not so much due to technical superiority. That's all ...

Not quite all... (k)ubuntu also got there by supporting more drivers (e.g. video) in distro, and more stuff works ootb. openSUSE may be technically superior in many ways, but it burns far too much processor e.g. on multimedia such as streaming video (and unstable). That's ok for those fanboys with big video cards, but excludes many users with onboard chips. Any distro can look good on powerful H/W, but it takes more engineering skill to achieve good results on modest H/W. Kubuntu (and other smaller distros) has achieved just that. If distros with fewer resources can manage to support those users, it doesn't say much for the technical prowess of openSUSE. A mainstream distro needs to cater for a very wide range of hardware (as Microsoft did).

As you said, PulseAudio (WTF), when ALSA had achieved so much (finally caught up with Win95). So much for technical judgement. I don't see real music distros, such as 64Studio, bothering with P/A. I can only think the push for it came from Novell and their microsoft interoperability requirement.