I did a review of openSUSE 11.2 and put it up on my blog. I hope you find it fair and relatively impartial. Blogs | The Complete Computer Resource
I thing I really like about Yast is it has ncurses interface. So even if X fail to start you can still get a working package manager and other tools to fix stuff.
Anyway how is boot time since you leave /home as ext3? I guess there’s not much different. Just to confirm.
It’s faster than 11.1 was. I could probably make it faster by slimming down the services that start at boot time, but it’s fast. I haven’t timed it though.
Having ncurses, or a cli, is definitely a life saver. There have been times I have broken X and had to edit xorg.conf from the command line and having a text browser to surf and a cli irc client is nice to.
Many times text version of Yast saved me when I had to remotely manage some servers where no GUI is available.
you wrote “The saying “it just works”, for the most part is fairly
accurate.”
and, i wonder who you were quoting?
that is, who was it that said that openSUSE “just works”??
i ask because i keep hearing people say that openSUSE advertises
that…but i can’t find one single actual example of it.
maybe you can provide a URL pointer where any PR claimed such as
either a fact or a goal…
–
palladium
It’s not anything openSUSE claims. You and I both have seen and dealt with threads here where people have used that expression.
Pardon me for my ignorance, as a new comer. May I find out the difference between Open Suse and plain Suse. My HP mini says its loaded with SLED10. 
In a nutshell;
SLED = Enterprise Desktop, usually based on older openSUSE versions than those out right now, less packages and less bleeding edge. 10 is pretty old, I would look at getting 11 or switching to openSUSE.
openSUSE = Community version, bleeding edge packages available, usually the ‘latest and greatest’ SuSE offering.
The best advertisement for any product is it’s happy users, so when users claim that their box ‘just worked’ it’s perceived by others as an affirmative from the vendor openSUSE. Just as a resounding ‘doesn’t just work’ flips the other way to say users of this product have trouble with it.
mhismail wrote:
> Pardon me for my ignorance, as a new comer. May I find out the
> difference between Open Suse and plain Suse. My HP mini says its loaded
> with SLED10.
sure! but, while ignorant you are not stupid…you proved that by
asking!! AND, you were smart enough to buy a HP product born with
Linux on board…that put you light years ahead of the
masses…congratulations, and welcome…however:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) or Server (SLES) is a commercial
(ie: liscened/purchased) product made, sold, serviced and supported by
Novell…it is (as the name says) an industrial/enterprise class tool
which can be counted on to be stable and dependable…
openSUSE is the product of the “openSUSE Community” who is mostly
volunteers but a few (relatively) Novell paid professional coders, etc
who squash bugs and support a ‘community’ of folks who like to be on
the bleeding edge…
every so often the good folks at Novell polish up the openSUSE code
base and produce a new version…today they are supporting versions
10 and 11…
if you need support for your SLED 10 you should hop over to
forums.novell.com
most folks here have never run SLED…so, while the advice you get
here might work, it might not…anyway, a LOT of the details of 11.2
do not apply to your 10…
–
palladium
Thanks Chrysantine,
You gave me some insight into open source. While I can figure out the meaning of “community version”, I need some layman’s understanding of “bleeding edge packages available”.
Have a great day.