I’ve been running openSUSE 11.2 x86_64 with KDE4, XFCE and Gnome since it’s out now, on various machines, various hardware, though all linux compatible hardware.
I lost something, the extra bits: the warm feeling of belief in open source, strong faith in the future of linux, that helped me struggling through my first driver compilation, made me take the time to understand the desktop and the application programs. It’s like those extra bits have become obsolete, but
I found: from being convinced, having something like an opinion, a good feeling, a pretty , a good work environment, openSUSE 11.2 brought me to pure knowledge. Belief and faith imply small parts of doubt; and that is what’s gone. It’s beyond belief and faith.
openSUSE 11.2 - NO DOUBT- SURE? YES !
Dear all @opensuse.org, @the community, thank you, thank you, thank you, for this state-of-the-art piece of work. Glad to be with all this.
I’m right there beside you. Best I have seen so far. If it keeps getting better, I won’t be able to stand it.
Granted there are a number of users who are having some issues. However, MOST FOLKS SHOULD wait a few weeks to make sure all the bugs have been exterminated. I was very satisfied with RC2, so I expected the Gold Master to be good. I was not disappointed. I don’t understand why everyone thinks they have to install on release day, and complain, but they do.
Newbie. Has never installed a Linux distribution before. Starts with openSUSE on the release date. Has not checked his hardware for compatibility. Posts on the board that his webcam doesn’t work. Claims SUSE SUCKS! Somehow manages to post it in the Announcements section by replying to any thread that happens to be there.
Distro Hopper. Claims he has installed 39,785 different Linux distributions. Knows it all and can prove it. Wipes out his other partitions. Has not backed up his data. Blames everyone on the forums for his pain and suffering. Claims SUSE SUCKS! Manages to post it in the Announcements section by replying to any thread that is there.
Windows Expert. Thinks he can install anything without reading any instructions. Has never needed to read instructions before. Installs openSUSE on the Domain Controller at work. Brings down the whole corporate network. Blames you, me, and everyone on the forum. Claims LINUX SUCKS! Manages to post it in the Announcements section by replying to any thread that is there. rotfl!
I think Linux as a whole has come a very long ways the past 5 or 6 years. I remember when I used to have to write my own Xfree86.conf (we use X.org now) just to get X windows to work. Then it was off to install a sound daemon.
Now things are so easy I plugged up my HP printer the other day, thinking I would have to at least run a quick setup. But it seen my printer and had it setup for me before I had time to set down… WOW… Kids got it SO easy these days… rotfl!
rotfl! I split a gut over this one. Thanks for putting me in a good mood at the start of the day.
Indeed this is so true.
I was pondering the other day, what are some of the major aspects that really need to be fixed in Linux, but because of the architecture/structure, is very difficult to sort. The two areas I came up with are rather different from what I have many other’s read, but I think they are both fundamental to why many have problems:
documentation of EASY hardware compatibility
note the “easy” in caps. My experience with Linux is if one researches properly, hardware “just works”. ie it can work even better than one gets in Windoze. I know darn well every one of my Mac friends check the label on the hardware packaging for mac compatibility. If it ain’t there, they don’t buy it. Show me a Mac user who never checks first for hardware compatibility before buying, and I’ll show one an unhappy Mac user. The problem with Linux, despite the efforts of volunteers to document hardware compatibility, is it is NOT well documented, and it even varies from distribution to distribution. And even when it is documented (as being Linux compatible) it is not documented as being easy or difficult. One might spend hours tuning, or it may just plug in and work.
I spend a lot of time researching for Linux (indeed more specific for openSUSE) compatibility BEFORE I buy my hardware, and as a consequence my hardware tends to “just work”. In the most part, I do NOT spent a lot of time tuning.
Where I do spend time tuning is where my wife went out and bought hardware on the spur of the moment (as she will occasionally do).
The linux community need to improve here.
…
The directory file structure is not consistent enough between distributions
. The policy as to where files are stored is too different between distributions. IMHO the Linux community would gain so much more if this were identical. There would be a higher probability that package-a packaged for distribution-a would run on distribution-b. That in turn would allow the packagers for each distribution to package more packages, as there would be less duplication of effort.
But the very nature of open source free software, with the capability to fork at the slightest dissatisfaction of a way of doing things, while possibly one of its main strengths, also means it is very difficult to produce and maintain, a common way of doing things.
So having said the above, my hardware just worked in 11.2 on 4 PCs. It was not a surprise, as I tested all 4 with the Live CDs before installing.
Our Dell Studio 1537 laptop is running 11.1. I am waiting a month or two before I put 11.2 on that because of some reasons (wife wants XP to replace Vista which will clobber grub, and I have important business meetings come up in mid-Dec and I want laptop in its current state for that, and I noted an aspects wrt 11.2 on the laptop (with the liveCD) that I want addressed before installing 11.2).
But the desktops that “just worked” for me with 11.2 were:
Uniform directory structure across distributions for applications and configuration data.
This alone will help to solve so many problems. Also, more hardware vendors will feel like testing their stuff in Linux too.
If we look at the “desktop” part of Linux (KDE, Gnome etc.), most distributions follow the directory structures for the configuration data and its core applications. So, nobody ask questions like “how to configure KDE4 panel in openSUSE and how it do it on Kubuntu” etc.
Actually, if you take just the core “kernel” part, again, things are in pretty good shape now in terms of the directory structures.
