N00b here paying his respects to the community

English Open Chat
1

Hello everyone! First of all I wish you a nice day, then please allow me to introduce myself.

I am a man of no wealth and disputable taste who happened to start tinkering with computers at a later age than most, so please be kind if I am a little obtuse. I happened to need a multiboot install with both Windows 7 and some Linux distro on my computer. I have had previous experiences with Linux, especially the typical noob distro of choice, Ubuntu. Anyway they were before the change to Unity, afterwards I switched to Linux Mint on my old desktop computer, a clunky Pentium 4 that still runs great. But before that I had tried Kubuntu and loved KDE. Seriously, for someone who was introduced to computers with Windows 98 it is what a desktop environment has always meant to be (and more often than not, fallen short of the mark).

So for my laptop I got some advice on teh intarwebz and made a sensible decision: had an 8GB USB drive sitting idle, a decent net connection and a semi-functional brain, so I burnt a multiboot drive to test some distros. I don’t know if my laptop is very exotic (it has one of the earliest APUs), but Debian and Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint, elementaryOS) were an unmitigated disaster. Drivers for my WiFi card were obviously subpar, since I couldn’t connect to my work network, which uses a TTLS encoding. So I tried Manjaro too, which I liked but was wary of its declared beta nature.

Which brings me to openSUSE 13.1, the one distro that worked flawlessly out-of the box. I liked its polished interface, the integration of KDE, the software that came bundled with it and the performance. Apart from that the multiboot screen on startup is just the icing on the cake. It looks and feels like an OS “made in Germany”. :wink:

I am no IT expert, so I had some trouble getting acquainted with YaST, but from the start I realised the fact that it’s a powerful tool, actually one of the best IMO. Any trouble I had was of the PEBKAC variety, so the forums and the community were a priceless resource for help. For all this I thank you. I have discussed with other Linux users the fact that Ubuntu may have a bigger base, but that a bigger proportion of the openSUSE community are experts or power users, so it’s easier for newbies to be heard and have a satisfactory solution for their problems. The support of a big company like Novell for the enterprise version can’t hurt either.

So for anyone who has bothered to read up to here, thank you for your attention. See you soon!

2

Hi, and welcome to the green corner of the internet. You and I share pretty much similar views on the geeko realm, so let me say welcome once again, and i hope you join the discussions.

3

Thanks! I will, but not too often since there are so many things I don’t know. Yet, I hope.

4

Your post witch I agree upon on most but not all.

“It looks and feels like an OS “made in Germany”.” It was from the beginning.
Does that also include the purchase of Chrysler by Daimler-Bens when car buyers was disappointed. “made in Germany” hit a new low mark. Or…

Never mind.

I read and understand German, had a wife and father in law that was German. I’m Swedish and I write welcome! Please from time to another write something fun as well.

And Novell is not any longer the main… It is Attachmate (Tejas) US. :slight_smile:

Regards

5

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 20:16:01 +0000, jonte1 wrote:

> And Novell is not any longer the main… It is Attachmate (Tejas) US. :slight_smile:

And Attachmate lets SUSE operate as an independent business - they don’t
(to my knowledge) have their fingers in SUSE’s day-to-day operations.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

6

Yes, that was the “animus iocandi” of the comment. I can also understand and speak a bit of German, or maybe I should say “perpetrate”, since I am not a native speaker of any Germanic language. I don’t mind the organisational layout of SUSE, I think that product comes first, and openSUSE is an outstanding one.

I have requested some help concerning a small problem, I posted it on Multimedia, let’s see what’s going on.

I like that approach: don’t micromanage a successful operation.

7

lol!You did read what I wrote I hope… About German company’s bought by US ones and the quality goes down.

I agree upon Jim comments and I haven’t seen any dip in SUSE sins Novell left and Attachmate went in,

Regards.

8

If you are referring to Daimler-Chrysler (I think you were, but I am too lazy to scroll back for another look), then if you excuse me, I will correct you:

Daimler-Benz (German) bought Chrysler (American) and the quality went down.

So, Daimler had to sell Chrysler to someone else.

9

You are right! That was what I tried to write. Sorry for my lousy English in combination to try to “pull a leg”. Daimler sold Chrysler to FIAT in Italy.

There is also US company’s buy Europe company’s and what happens with the quality then? In suse’s case (first Novel and then Attachmate)?

Thanks.
Regards

10

Actually Daimler sold Chrysler to the Cerberus Group, your typical “strip-and-slash” corporate vultures. They then got rid of Daimler after having tried to squeeze every last penny they could, the US government had to step in and then sold Chrysler to FIAT for a pittance.

The car business is a very different world, very regionalised and more local. IT is more homogeneous worldwide in my opinion.

11

Yikes! :confused:

As long as my car starts and goes…

Affording gas (or petrol?), however, is another story.