General intro/advice

Alright, after some periods of torturous distro-hopping, OpenSUSE 11.4 seems to be the perfect balance for my current goals and experience level. My work involves intensive use of Oracle & Greenplum databases, but not much with any type of hardware or system admin stuff.

I’m a fairly novice Linux user but not a complete newb, and want to use a distro that encourages me to continue learning. So more specifics on the balance I was looking for…
— Some have seemed like hand-holding and catering to the non-techie recent converts from Windows. Examples - Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva
— Others have left you out there on your own and require you to build from source and create packages for something as routine as font installs (Fedora).

Am I off on these interpretations?

I cut my teeth on Ubuntu 10.10/11.04 Gnome for a couple of months, and actually learned quite a bit about installing the OS. A little about partitioning, a lot about wireless drivers, specifically Broadcom b4311. And I did install MySQL, PHP & Apache from scratch using a SitePoint book as my guide. But beyond that I wasn’t learning much else about the core of how Linux works.

So in general, any advice for a new OpenSUSE convert? This isn’t any specific support question, but for example - what do I need to be aware of concerning the difference between RPM based packages & Debian based? YaST seems to make the transition fairly painless so far. And what about installing databases & web servers? I’m guessing the general libraries can be used rather than RPM’s, and I’m about to find out.

11.4 seems like a great KDE distro so far! I’m glad I decided to give it a shot.

Alright, after some periods of torturous distro-hopping, OpenSUSE 11.4 seems to be the perfect balance for my current goals and experience level. My work involves intensive use of Oracle & Greenplum databases, but not much with any type of hardware or system admin stuff.

I’m a fairly novice Linux user but not a complete newb, and want to use a distro that encourages me to continue learning. So more specifics on the balance I was looking for…
— Some have seemed like hand-holding and catering to the non-techie recent converts from Windows. Examples - Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva
— Others have left you out there on your own and require you to build from source and create packages for something as routine as font installs (Fedora).

Am I off on these interpretations?

I cut my teeth on Ubuntu 10.10/11.04 Gnome for a couple of months, and actually learned quite a bit about installing the OS. A little about partitioning, a lot about wireless drivers, specifically Broadcom b4311. And I did install MySQL, PHP & Apache from scratch using a SitePoint book as my guide. But beyond that I wasn’t learning much else about the core of how Linux works.

So in general, any advice for a new OpenSUSE convert? This isn’t any specific support question, but for example - what do I need to be aware of concerning the difference between RPM based packages & Debian based? YaST seems to make the transition fairly painless so far. And what about installing databases & web servers? I’m guessing the general libraries can be used rather than RPM’s, and I’m about to find out.

11.4 seems like a great KDE distro so far! I’m glad I decided to give it a shot.

So, I am no expert on using Oracle & Greenplum databases in openSUSE, but I still think I would go straight to this section and read a lot more about using openSUSE:

New User How To/FAQ (read only)

Then asking specific questions in the correct forum area can provide a lot more feedback I think. Good luck and welcome to the openSUSE forums.

Thank You,

Welcome to openSUSE.
As to the difference between rpm and deb, see this RPM vs DEB on technical merits alone. [LWN.net]
Try not to mix compiling and rpm. It can lead to problems.
Take your time to learn. Don’t rush.

Thanks for the responses & links.

Just to clarify the point about my work with databases… that’s my actual profession (done on XP), and was just to provide a little personal background about my technical level.

On Linux I use MySQL. I created an SMF forum with MySQL, so it comes in handy for that. In fact I tried to get version 5.5 up a little earlier, but had the same problem as before on other OS’s. Next step is the fallback to 5.1.

Well the problems with any distribution is that if You want the latest and greatest of something like MySQL the safest way is to compile it from source on your own but that is not always as straight forward as it would seem. The question is if You really need the latest and greatest because if not it’s easiest to stick with what is in the standard distro repositories.

Best regards,
Greg

In fact I tried to get version 5.5 up a little earlier, but had the same problem as before on other OS’s. Next step is the fallback to 5.1.

the newest of the new can be “fun” at times . Building from source for that is the only way to go .
BUT
that can be difficult at times .I am running 11.3 ( and 11.3 will still be supported for some time yet ) but if i want to install the current source for Gimp ( or the dev-build) i also need to build a new and different glib and gtk .
things like that can be done , it depends on what YOU want to do right at this moment . Me i do not want to build a second build chain . It is easy BUT a pain in the rear end .

This handy
Reference

And
openSUSE 11.4 | SUSE Linux | Beginner’s guide to multimedia codecs MP3 DVD 3D nvidia ati wireless wi-fi netbook

Yeah, I’ve always been able to slog my way through manually building from source on MySQL, PHP, & Apache. It’s worth the effort and always a good learning experience. But having to build a package for fonts? That sounds fairly inefficient to me.

As it turns out the problem with building the latest version of MySQL was caused by some existing libraries from one of my updates. Removing those and rerunning the script worked like a charm, which it never did in Ubuntu. Falling back to 5.1 would have been fine, but it’s always my practice to try the latest stable release first. And now that’s done… I’ll get Apache up tomorrow and will be in bidness.

After getting the chance to play around with some things today, I’m still really liking this distro.

Yep it’s a great distro but for what something You are doing I think Arch, Gentoo or Slackware would be better. Other than that, have You heard about tumbleweed ? It’s a rolling release of openSUSE that is supposed to be built of latest stable software. I’m still not eager to try it out but I think it is something that might appeal to You. Have a read about it if You haven’t already :
Portal:Tumbleweed - openSUSE

There is also a special forum for this flavor of openSUSE :
Tumbleweed

Best regards,
Greg

On Sun, 07 Aug 2011 11:06:02 +0530, glistwan
<glistwan@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> Yep it’s a great distro but for what something You are doing I think
> Arch, Gentoo or Slackware would be better.

i don’t have much experience with arch or gentoo, but i’m shying from the
idea to have to compile every package i need from source. it probably
gives the most fine-grained control over what’s happning on your machine,
but it’s a bit inconvenient, especially if you like to try out different
options once in a while, like switching between KDE versions or desktop
environments altogether.

i found it easy & convenient to compile & use non-standard packages under
openSUSE, usually leaving the standard ones in place and compiling to a
different prefix for the non-standard versions. i’m often using different
versions of apache2, PHP, or MySQL, and using regularly compile GIMP from
it’s GIT source. once the initial dependencies are in place (also within
the custom --prefix), things are smooth & easy.


phani.

You certainly don’t have to compile everything on Slack and Arch. There are a lot of packages to use. I’ve never used Gentoo but I’ve heard that firefox packages exist :slight_smile:

Anyway I totally agree with You. OpenSUSE is very convenient to use and gives the ability to control everything non standard the way You like. (AFAIK)

Best regards,
Greg

The only thing missing is good support for SELinux .There is some but …

But AppArmor is supported :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Greg

I agree with your opinion about Arch and similar flavors. Every little tweak shouldn’t have to be a project in itself.

Ultimately there is probably very little added benefit to custom-building everything. It seems like I’ve actually read about people ditching Arch when they found no pay-off to that much “control.” Personally I’ve never tried it, and probably won’t for years - if ever.

You’re ahead of me in terms of compiling different versions with different prefixes, understanding dependencies, etc. But that’s exactly what my goal is - to get there.

On 08/07/2011 06:46 AM, Riddlah wrote:
> After getting the chance to play around with some things today, I’m
> still really liking this distro.

in addition to the previous pointers to helpful bread crumbs to follow
from Ubuntu to openSUSE, see: http://tinyurl.com/ubuntu-to-openSUSE

and, please look though the new-to-openSUSE how-tos referenced
previously (because i think maybe you are doing a LOT of compiling you
don’t need to do…well, in my case if i need software i look for it in
these places, and in this order:

  1. YaST (with the “correct” repos for the task enabled: i interpret that
    as following the paragraph beginning with “IMPORTANT” here:
    http://tinyurl.com/33qc9vu)

  2. zypper is tied with the above, if you prefer CLI, (see man zypper)

  3. openSUSE Package Search here http://software.opensuse.org/search
    (CAREFUL! don’t download/install anything from any repo with any of
    these words in their name: factory, playground, or unstable. and
    CAUTION: if you use the “1-Click Install” either do not choose to retain
    the repo, or use YaST > Software Repositories afterwards to disable all
    but the four in the above referenced “IMPORTANT” paragraph)

  4. using those three you will most often find packages pre-compiled and
    ready to roll…but, if not then you can ask if one of the packagers
    can/will build what you need…or you can use the openSUSE Build
    Service to do it yourself, see http://tinyurl.com/64xoegy

  5. or you can just compile from source to your hearts content like you
    have been doing…

welcome to post-Ubuntu mega-freedom (of choice)!

and, of course if willing to trouble shoot and self-solve the problems
made by ignoring the important info/cautions above, then the world is
your oyster!

-=WELCOME=- new convert…


DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

The only things I’ve consistently wanted to compile are the server environments, allowing for more tailoring to specific needs, and as stated to actually learn what I’m dealing with. In general I don’t have the desire to build everything because there’s no benefit to that, which is why I’ll probably never go to Arch or Slackware.

welcome to post-Ubuntu mega-freedom (of choice)!

-=WELCOME=- new convert…

Thanks.