When I started testing on RC1, it was a challenge in many ways.
With RC2 and recent updates, things have gotten a lot better.
I can make these constructive observations as of the latest updates today:
The login screen continues to have a problem dropping the second entered character in the password. This has happened for weeks.
The boot time, and application launch times, have all improved.
That process packagekit or the like, causes high cpu use and apparently will not shut down politely except with a kill. I am vague on what is going on here.
In my virtualized environment, I run Fedora 16, Zorin and Suse 12.1 RC2. I’ve noticed that each of these other distros offer much faster boot times, and much snappier application launch times. Each of these using the same configuration as Suse.
I must say that once the Guest Additions are installed, 12.1 displays very nicely, as do the others.
I really like the KDE environment SUSE offers, and look forward to a non-VM install when SUSE goes golden.
I notice that one character is dropped. I didn’t try checking which.
I see this when using kdm. It only happens if I type in the password very soon after the login screen appears. If I delay 10-20 seconds, I don’t seem to have that problem. I switch to gdm (for testing purposes). I don’t have the same problem with gdm. But that might be due to gdm requiring extra actions before the password prompt appears, thereby slowing me down.
The high cpu usage appears to be by the packagekit daemon (the one running as root). It is started by “apper”. You can prevent “apper” from automatically starting in “Personal Settings” –> “Startup and Shutdown” –> “Service Manager”.
It was my impression that the high cpu usage began when loaded the install DVD. I think it is building an inventory list of what is on that DVD. It was a bit annoying, because I had loaded the DVD so as to install some additional software, but Yast software management would not allow me to do anything because packagekitd was running (and wouldn’t stop when asked).
I think this is a one-time affair. Once it has completed (as it eventually does), you can probably set the DVD as non-refreshable in your repo list. And hopefully, the scanning will then not need repeating.
One thing that bugs me with 12.1 is the extremely slow startup.
I did not know how this slowness compared to other distros, so I tested them.
My virtual environment is VirtualBox, all running with acceleration, 1 processor, and 1GB RAM allocation. All distros are out of the box installs, no “tweaking”. All were Gnome except SUSE (KDE).
My tests were:
Startup - Time from starting the VirtualBox VM to login screen
First Desktop - Time from logging in to first appearance of usable desktop
35 seconds from the time I hit enter on the grub menu, until the login screen appeared.
Then another 20 seconds from hitting enter on the login menu, until everything was up on my KDE desktop. I measure “everything is up” by the touchpad being turned off - that seems to be about the last thing to happen.
Those times are with 12.1 rc2 (32 bit) on a Dell inspiron N5010 laptop. The speed will depend on the hardware. It is probably slower if I boot up 64 bit (installed on the same system), mainly because my 64 bit install uses an encrypted LVM. I should remember to try that sometime, to evaluate the cost of encryption. Maybe I should mention that the 32 bit uses encrypted swap, so that “mkswap” has to be done on each boot - I’m not sure of the cost of “mkswap” for an encrypted partition.
I assume your times are for an “actual” install, which must account for the great differences compared to my VM times. I am not using encrypted anything on my distros, and everything is 64 bit.
I will just write my bad times off to the VM environment, because I plan on installing 12.1 “for real” when it goes GM.
For me it took ages until the kde desktop was ready for work. I think it was because the pulsaudio server was started two times - after removing the the files in “/etc/xdg/autostart/” referring to pulsaudio everything got nice and fast at boot time.
That problem with multiple startup files for the pulsaudio-server have been there for a while and those files sometimes comes back when one updates.
(this is only a problem when you cold boot or reboot not when you logout and in again - then the pulsaudio server isn’t globally started again)
It was 7 seconds from hitting enter on the grub menu, until I was prompted for the encryption key.
Another 22 seconds from hitting enter on the encryption key prompt, until the login screen showed.
I’m impressed. That’s faster than the 32 bit without encryption. In this case, it did not have to do a “mkswap” since it is using already formatted swap from within the encrypted LVM. But startup does load a lot of code from the root partition, which is all encrypted. The timing indicates that the crypto cost is quite small, compared with other costs involved in the I/O operations.
I’m new to SUSE, so bear with me. I thought the GM was done, so that the 12.1 RC2 should be equal to the GM. Correct? I have not seen zypper dup updating in 24 hours or so.
If so, does that mean the pulse audio issue is in the GM?
I’m not sure about if the dual pulsaudio-thingy is present if you do a clean GM install, it was present in rc2 but I don’t remember if I removed those files after ‘zypper dup’ to GM (I updated/upgraded so many times now so I routinely remove 'em when I notice a slow start of the desktop).
I use SSD disks so those extra files are the only thing I notice that effect my boot times, if I don’t remove them my boot time doubles, from ca. 13 sec to almost 30 sec.
But as I said this only effect the boot time from Grub to a fully functional kde desktop.
I thought I would update this thread for the improvements I noticed in the 12.1 GM vs the last RC2 (after all dups were made).
I know I was not alone in feeling uneasy, to see the RC2 testing close, with so many functional and performance issues still evidently unfixed. I guess I shouldn’t have worried, because they seem to be fixed in the GM.
At about 7am CST, I started my torrent for the 64bit DVD iso, which took many hours to complete.
I proceeded to install the GM into a new VirtualBox VM with the same config I gave the RC2. Here are my observations during install and first usage:
My install lasted around 20 minutes, including the config reboot, and completed without any glitches. I essentially used the default partition scheme offered. I was lucky that RC2 installed well also, though it was a net install, taking hours though.
The first reboot after install completed took 30 seconds, from grub to login to chime. This was a HUGE improvement over RC2 (even after all updates were made).
KDE appears functional and quite snappy as well. Networking was functional also.
Applications, like Firefox, and Dolphin, execute very quickly. These took way too long in RC2.
Now, as before, launching zypper causes a dialog about packagekit running, for which zypper can not stop. I kill -9 it.
RC2 ran very slowly in VirtualBox, however the 12.1 GM runs very nicely up to now. VirtualBox indicated very high cpu usage under RC2, but the GM is running with 1/10th the cpu load! Nice. I want to see how VMWare runs Suse now, however my prelim experience has been that VB runs Linux better than VMWare does.
I want to install 12.1 along side my other distros, however, since they use the new grub, I am hesitant to install a legacy grub distro like Suse. (Yes, I know the new grub is an option in 12.1).
As this was my first foray into RC testing, I am confused about one point: How can the GM be so different (better) than the last RC2 update? I somehow expect that the last RC2 iteration, available publicly, would become the GM. However, the GM is so much better than the last RC2 iteration, it leaves me wondering. I am not complaining, just curious.
My thanks to the Suse developers and testers for their great effort in getting 12.1 out.
>
> I have installed on two systems today. Those installs were as smooth
> as any I have seen, and better than I had expected they would be.
>
>
I’m guessing you don’t have nVidia graphics. My install on this machine
last night still made me glad I have a reset button when, as expected,
it stalled on faux reboot.
This morning, the first boot into 12.1 stalled but reboot was OK.
Thought is was a Systemd thing but noticed last night that I’ve been
using that on 11.4 without any bother - at least not yet - but don’t
know when that started.
–
Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.3; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306
I do have nvidia on the one machine where I have not yet installed 12.1. Actually, it’s my desktop system, the one that I use most. The delay is because there are some things that simply must be available. Until I have tested my laptop, to make sure that latex is fully working with 12.1, I’ll hold up moving my desktop to 12.1. Come to think of it, 11.4 just upgraded firefox to version 8.0, so I probably should wait till 12.1 does the same to avoid going backward with firefox versions.
Having experimented on the desktop with the rc version, I know that the nvidia will work, if you can call that working. There will be screen break up (or corrupted screen, whatever you call it) from time to time with nouveau. So I will either have to go with the nvidia drivers or put up with that screen corruption. I’m leaning toward the latter.
> Having experimented on the desktop with the rc version, I know that the
> nvidia will work, if you can call that working. There will be screen
> break up (or corrupted screen, whatever you call it) from time to time
> with nouveau. So I will either have to go with the nvidia drivers or
> put up with that screen corruption. I’m leaning toward the latter.
strange, for me 12.1 is the first release where i don’t need to use the
prop. nvidia driver. after reading that there was improvement in regards
to nuveau performance with the new 3.x kernels, i started using nuveau and
so far everything works great. i don’t have heavy-duty 3D games, but
desktop effects, flash, video, even foobillard works w/o problem or screen
break-up. might depend on the nvidia model, of course; mine is GeForce
7900 GS.
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:36:02 +0530, nrickert
> <nrickert@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> > Having experimented on the desktop with the rc version, I know that
> > the nvidia will work, if you can call that working. There will be
> > screen break up (or corrupted screen, whatever you call it) from
> > time to time with nouveau. So I will either have to go with the
> > nvidia drivers or put up with that screen corruption. I’m leaning
> > toward the latter.
>
> strange, for me 12.1 is the first release where i don’t need to use
> the prop. nvidia driver. after reading that there was improvement in
> regards to nuveau performance with the new 3.x kernels, i started
> using nuveau and so far everything works great. i don’t have
> heavy-duty 3D games, but desktop effects, flash, video, even
> foobillard works w/o problem or screen break-up. might depend on the
> nvidia model, of course; mine is GeForce 7900 GS.
>
Yes, nouveau seems to work for me, it’s just during the installation
that it freezes with symptoms similar to the old problem that required
nomodeset to get the display working post-installation.
I can’t use 12.1 much because of several apps not working.
–
Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.3; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306
This is an older system. The nvidia is 6150 LE. It works very well with opensuse 11.4 under nouveau, but with 12.1 I see a broken screen when I select “leave” from the mouse right button menu in KDE. Sometimes the panel shows some breakup, too.
Incidentally, I see the same kind of breakup on an older system with ATI graphics and the open source driver.
