Look Like the bloods in the water for 11.2

English Soapbox
1

It seems that the open source news is beginning to call time of death for the 11.2 release. Its clear that we have a massive driver failure issues combined with installer issues mainly centered around the auto configuration features. Such as the grub installing itself to extended drives which are just containers for logical drives. You can also choose to install the grub to two different partitions at the same time. Think this won’t happen an old linux pro that I know did a quick edit to the grub and missed that he had double selected. Fresh install for him after he finished a hour long setup. There seems to be a common pattern emerging, what with the black screens of death that Ati users are experiencing, add failures to even finish half the install and the just plain buggy hardware support. It looks like this is just going to be another ubuntu 7.10 full of promise and great new features put crippled by massive bugs.

distrowatch.com reviewed 11.2 and here are there thoughts. Remember even with the harsh reviews people are loving what they find. I hope we can find fixes before they move on to other distributions.

Conclusions

While SUSE has never been my favorite I have always found it to be a solid distribution in the past. Sadly, at least on my hardware, that simply isn’t true of openSUSE 11.2. Installation on my netbook, which is extremely well supported by a half a dozen other distributions I’ve tried, was exceptionally challenging with openSUSE. While installation on the old Toshiba was less problematic it still didn’t “just work.” Once installed the KDE desktop environment was pretty enough and performance was very good. Stability, however, was a major concern. Within an hour or two I would run into an application crash or even a hard system lockup (no, not just X) which is simply unacceptable in a modern operating system. GNOME and Xfce are considerably better so a user who has little interest in KDE or KDE applications would likely be able to use openSUSE 11.2 without many problems once installation and configuration were complete.

Some of SUSE’s traditional strengths, including a fantastic suite of graphical administration tools and rather good internationalization and localization support, are still present and do offer some compelling reasons to consider openSUSE. The front ends to RPM package management (zypper at the command line and the YaST2 GUI package manager) are the best I’ve seen. The forums show clearly that openSUSE has a very large user community and I found answers to all my issues without having to ask any questions. Some documentation (i.e.: for the network installer) proved to be somewhat dated but was still adequate for me to figure things out.

I must say I found openSUSE 11.2 to be a major disappointment. I’ve come to expect better, much better, from Novell. If it weren’t for the stability issues with KDE and relatively poor netbook support this distribution would have been a keeper for me. There really is a lot to like. Perhaps the results will be different for people with different hardware. For me, though, openSUSE 11.2 just doesn’t compare favorably to the other major distributions and I can’t recommend it at this time.

2

Different people will have different experience due to their setup / machine. So far 11.2 is still the best openSUSE on my machine. I can say it’s even better than 10.3 now. Again, one’s experience with 11.2 will be very hardware specific and some hardware will simply works better than the others.

Overall, I see positive feedback with 11.2 so far. But definitely there are some annoying bugs that should be fixed before the release. We’ll see how it goes when the first batch of bugfixes arrive. (For now I’ve less problem with bugs, compared to 11.0 and 11.1)

3

There will always be the nay sayers. There will always be exceptions to the rule. There will always be those on whom the OS doesn’t work for. The question is why. What is the cause? Now if it’s some patch that openSUSE applied that caused this, sure, fix it. But rule number one with debugging, is it reproducible?

4

I’m still playing with 11.2. I’ve installed it on 4 PCs. There are some hiccups that I am trying to come to grip with, but at this stage I can not say the one’s I have encountered are specific to 11.2, nor if there is something else at cause. None of the hiccup’s that I have encountered personally wrt openSUSE-11.2 are (yet) blocking on use of 11.2.

Mostly, 11.2 has been signifcantly superior to 11.1 on those 4 PCs: (1) Snappier performance (2) Significantly superior desktop features (3) easier scanner configuration (4) easier network printer configuration (5) superior sound configuration.

With respect to all drivers, and not just ATI drivers, unfortunately, it is very common for ALL distributions, and NOT just openSUSE, that for the first couple of weeks after a new release, there are not always proprietary drivers available for even the most common hardware. Often there are only opensource drivers.

That is particulary true for ATI graphic hardware.

Add to that ATI’s decision to STOP supporting legacy graphic hardware for kernel releases after 2.6.27. Note this affects all distributions and NOT just openSUSE.

In the case of 11.2, there is the added problem that the open source radeon/radeonhd drivers, have some hiccups that are impacting openSUSE-11.2. My assumption is that these will be fixed in the near future (within a month or less).

Hence some (DEFINITELY not all) ATI graphic hardware users are having a rough time getting the performance out of the ATI hardware that they would like. Some are having difficult even getting X to run.

But that does not apply to all. All the people who I personally know (ie I can physically see/chat with verbally and are not internet acquaintences ) who have ATI graphic hardware on their pc and have installed openSUSE-11.2 on their PCs had no problems with X running, as long as they did not select special desktop effects.

When looking at the posts on a forum such as ours, one typically will see things thru a filter that most of the posts are bad (ie support requests). So one must take things with a grain of salt, and where possible go “beyond” the negative posts in a forum, to try to get the real story. YES the problems MUST be solved, but one needs to be careful not to draw inappropriate conclusions.

5

Jonathan R wrote:

>
> There will always be the nay sayers. There will always be exceptions to
> the rule. There will always be those on whom the OS doesn’t work for.
> The question is why. What is the cause? Now if it’s some patch that
> openSUSE applied that caused this, sure, fix it. But rule number one
> with debugging, is it reproducible?
>
>

WRT the ATI Radeon HD bug, it was fixed ten days ago but it hasn’t yet been
put on general release. As to the other Radeon driver problems, I’ve no
info.

Your dismissal of complainers as “nay-sayers” and “exceptions to the rule”
is insulting to the users who have legitimate complaints about this release.
Are you saying users of ATI graphics cards are a minority that can be
blithely ignored?

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”

6

Putting my moderator hat on, I see nothing dismissive in the post. Rather a note that efforts must be made to reproduce the problems and solve them.

Lets keep this thread on an even keel . Thankyou.

7

Join date Nov 17, first post “It’s the end!”.

http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/_files_troll_2.jpg

8

ATI has always dragged their feet getting new drivers out to the openSUSE community. This is an ATI problem and not a Linux or openSUSE problem. That is why we have always told Linux users to buy nVidia cards.

That said, my notebook has ATI and I am waiting patiently for the drivers to hit the repo. I am not running around yelling that the sky is falling.

So far, the only issue I have had is knetworkmanager. However, I can easily get around that with ifup.

Go troll somewhere else.

9

On the MS Windows side, people have been using XP for 7 years, but on the Linux side people seem tohave an inclination to try new kernels/versions every few months. If you are truly serious about linux, why not stick with one good supported version for > 1 year? On the Novell side I would go with their Enterprise Desktop version 11; It does cost $50 per year but I bet most college kids spend that much in beer every month.

10

Sorry. You misspelled night.rotfl!

11

Indeed. Every new release seems to attract those who take a special thrill on raining on some one else’s parade, for reasons one can only guess at.

Where I work, we all use different OS. The marjority winXP. Many Vista. Some Windows7. Some MacIntosh. Some different Linux distributions (sidux, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE … etc …). When we talk about computers we talk about the neat things we can do. We share tips and tricks, as much as practical, given our tremendous diversity. We enjoy listening to each other’s experience and we try to be constructive. We have fun with each other and enjoy our chats.

Negative people are not wanted where I work, as they typically will not build things, they only take relish in destroying. So when I see a user make only two posts, with one like the one above, Chrystine’s patented detector of a certain character rings bells on my cpu as well.

We are a support forum, not a developers forum. If we can provide support to help users with problems, please post in a separate thread, and we have many users who will try hard to help.

Best wishes to all in their operating system’s experience on their PCs.

12

>> It does cost $50 per year but I bet most college kids spend that much in
>> beer every NIGHT.
>
> Sorry. You misspelled night.rotfl!

exactly…i was wondering what college town he knows where beer is
still 25 cents a can/glass?? (which would almost allow four per weekend)

–
palladium

13

In this striking new pair of streamlined red swimming trunks. Only £29.95. This offer is NOT AVAILABLE IN THE SHOPS.

Bloods - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

14

Further to this, if one keeps following some of the ATI/Radeon threads, it is now coming clear that many of the users with the problems were NOT precisely following the instructions to the letter, and they had done extra things (or deviated) which caused their problems, and non-perfect work arounds were in fact available for a number of them. For example, this thread: ATI Radeon Proprietary Driver Isnt work in OpenSuSE 11.2 - openSUSE Forums

Now this ATI driver situation is clearly NOT user friendly enough (obviously) , and it DOES obviously have problems, but reports of “blood in the water for 11.2” are clearly greatly exaggerated. The blood, in fact, appears to be the mistakes of the users in some cases.

Which supports why my friends with openSUSE and ATI devices were NOT having problems with 11.2. They were able to clearly follow the directions, and they did NOT try a bunch of silly things first that messed up their configuration so bad that the proper work around commands no longer worked.

15

I’ve been using SuSE since 6.1, never strayed to any other distro for my main working and I have to say that I’ve found 11.2 to be a bit annoying.

I’m prepared to accept that that I might be using the least friendly machine in the world.

I’ve just acquired an MSI S271, it’s x86_64, (first time) it’s got radeon graphics (first time) and an RT61 wireless card (first time).

It’s my second foray into laptop/netbook and my AAO with Linpus is a joy to behold by comparison, graphics or wireless. It just seems weird to be having a dual core 64 bit thingy using a real distro to be shown up by a £150 netbook

I’m getting rubbish artifacts on a Radeon XPRESS 200M 5975, I’m using the radeon OSS driver, and I’m struggling to work out what to do in order to improve things, or even whether they are improvable.

All help gratefully received.

16

There have been varying degree of success using the ati proprietary drivers. Can you find your driver here:
Graphics Drivers & Software

… and then see if the work around in post#13 allows you to install it
ATI Radeon Proprietary Driver Isnt work in OpenSuSE 11.2 - openSUSE Forums

Note you need kernel-source, kernel-sym, linux-kernel-headers (and baseline development) before trying to run the ati installer. And it should be run from run level 3, and not from a terminal.

… as to whether that will work now, I don’t know.

17

Dismissal?!?! You’re kidding right?

Fact. There ARE always nay sayers. There are always those who will say negative things and never have a positive thing to say. If you looked through my posts, you would have found that I have defended Ubuntu as well.

Considering that ATI and nVidia are the top two graphics manufacturers, then answer is no, I don’t consider ATI a minority. I used to have a via card using openchrome. Took 3 years before that card worked like it was supposed to (3d and all). Did I blame openSUSE? No! It wasn’t their problem. I did go to the openchrome wiki and forums to.

There is a difference between nay sayers and those with valid complaints. I do not knock those with valid complaints. Ofcourse you missed that part. Here I quote myself

There will always be those on whom the OS doesn’t work for. The question is why. What is the cause? Now if it’s some patch that openSUSE applied that caused this, sure, fix it. But rule number one with debugging, is it reproducible?

You took what I said out of context. So when you put it all together, as I originally said it, it makes sense.

So next time, before you go getting high and mighty, do your research. Get the facts.

18

I have no need to defend my statements and as far as defending my quotation of Distrowatch.com its a quot.

The sky is falling quip while amusing deflects from the seriousness of this releases sort comings. We have a confidence braiker on our hands, everyone here knows how hard it is to convert even one business over to Linux. I have done several such conversions and Opensuse/suse has been the obvious flagship of choice for over five years. My test environment of five pc’s two laptop has as you have said showed mixed results. But the mix has been over 50% bad, when I can only justify a 10% issue rate to my customers. This is the very reason I left ubuntu and its child distro’s behind. The Business world doesn’t put up with this kind of thing, especially when they’re trained to love MS based products from birth.

In defense of Opensuse ATI has given us a Vista like hardware compatibility issue of our very own to deal with. I would like to hear if there is any movement to ask them to help us support legacy cards better in the new kernels. I will join any petition to this effect.

All this don’t change the fact that we have what is shaping up to be another ubuntu 7.10. For those of you that are to young to remember that beautiful example of trying to add to many new features at one time. Just refer back to mint release date for 7.10 based copy of mint, they released their fixed version just a few weeks before 8.04 came out and then they turned around and release their 8.04 base copy in just a few days from its ubuntu role out. To be purfectly clear Mint doesn’t release until its issues are fixed, so 7.10 only saw the light of day after almost six months. I drawing this comparison for just two reason only, one as you have said this will be a wait for the fix release, two ubuntu lost a lot of respect because of that release. I love and respect Opensuse and this release will not drive me away from using it. However the same can’t be said for other users and new adopters. I know that several friends a have been considering using Opensuse because of my constant praises and several other have come over from ubuntu. I also know that this release will see some of them very unhappy, so forgive me if I feel a little responsible for their troubles.

Not everyone knows how to follow the right directions in the right order as old cpu pointed out. And that Ati forum post is a real fun one to follow if you don’t already know what your doing.

Now how about some of you experts (oldcpu, and the wise one with the troll picture use you powers to release a unified and clear howto that is posted in a new thread under hardware so that a person that doesn’t have to have a **** in linux** and PH’d in forum have chance of get the right order of operations the first time.

Why? Because for none linux hardliners like myself, most will just simply give up and move on.

I will say I am sorry I should be more active in helping on the forums. I know that oldcpu and others have helped me greatly over the year and I should be doing the same.

I also want to make it clear that I hid this post in this forum away from the eye of those that are cry out for help for the reason that I don’t want them to give up. But I did want to hear what people like oldcpu and others had to say about the future of this release.

19

That thread suggests 11.1 is a better bet for this graphics card, so I think I’ll try that. Thank you for your help

20

It’s possible to compile the 11.1 Xorg radeon driver vs the new Xorg that should produce a better working driver - however whether that’s true or not I can’t say, mainly because I have no ATis left to test.