openSUSE 11.3 RCx - What is there to Like?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

OK, we will see lots of threads about problems or issues that you may or may not have while installing a pre-release version of openSUSE 11.3. This is good and as it should be. However, tell me what you like about openSUSE 11.3, the good stuff that you see.

For me, I want to get all of my required applications working, so I have loaded it on the most advanced machine that I have and all is functioning perfectly, even my Creative X-Fi sound card works. It looks great and is working very fast. I have got MP3 working, DVD’s playing, Samba is loaded, UPS monitoring is going, HP Printers are printing. Everything you could want is working like a champ. My Linux Kernel is now at 2.6.34-9-desktop x86_64 and KDE is at 4.4.4 (we think for KDE this will be true).

Things are looking up for the openSUSE 11.3 final release…

Thank You,

2

Well, for the first time ever, I see the “2x days to go” icon on the forum front page and I feel - absolutely nothing :(.

From what I’ve seen so far there is nothing new, no amazing (or even mediocre) improvements, or anything of any real interest.

The inclusion of the newblow driver casts a sad shadow on the whole thing, backed up by the continuance of Novell’s “head in the sand” approach to necessary non-oss drivers and codecs.

Topped off with the puzzling disappearance of a USB stick friendly iso file, and the whole thing is a sad no-event for me :(.

My server hums along happily with 11.1, and I’ve switched both of my everyday use machines to other distros which suit my desktop needs better.

Sad sad sad :(.

3

You know growbag, why are you raining on my parade? I was asking for positives about openSUSE 11.3 and not disappointments. You could start your own thread about what there is to dislike about openSUSE 11.3, somewhere else. I think the version number 11.3 says it all. It is a refresh, an update for the kernel, the desktops and a chance to make fixes to the overall package. Perhaps version 13 will provide more that you are looking for next year.

I am not normally so direct about my feelings, but I just drank one strong beer and am feeling the best I have all day. So, poo poo somewhere else… >:)

Thank You,

4

Relative to earlier openSUSE releases, openSUSE 11.3 will IMHO likely have superior radeon driver performance to previous radeon driver versions. That specific driver won’t be better for all graphic cards, but in general IMHO it will be superior.

I also believe alsa will be superior. Note I am NOT talking about pulse. I am talking about alsa, and IMHO alsa is superior in general in 11.3.

LXDE is IMHO a big PLUS/bonus for 11.3.

5

I’ve been finding that 11.3 RC1 is nicer to my hardware.

I’ve had plenty of issues with this netbook over time (w/ OpenSUSE 11.2, Debian Testing, and even the latest Ubuntu). These have included problems w/ keyboard, touchpad, wireless, suspend, and lid close. Everything that matters in a netbook, really…

11.3 is the first distro where everything seems to be working.

I dd’ed the RC1 iso to a usb and it booted and installed fine.

6

Thanks for your comments jverissimo and oldcpu. And forgive me growbag for my silly comments in my second message here. Never drive or respond to forum messages while under the influence.

Thank You,

7

I like the SLED look and feel of 11.3
LXDE as an option is a good move
They just nudged kde to 4.4.4
It’s still by far the best OS on the planet.:slight_smile:

8

Well, given the issues with some of the earlier milestones, I am just pleased to see that openSUSE is back on track for a solid, if not remarkable, release. I don’t know that I would completely go along with the “best OS on the planet” assertion, but the group of major distros that would have a reasonable basis for making a collective claim to such a distinction would be very much poorer without the efforts of the openSUSE developers and community.

The issue with the KDE LiveCD is now well and truly at centre stage for fixing in RC2 - that’s what release candidates are for. I’ve been concentrating on the Gnome version, which is working very well.

9

lol, no need to apologise, my skin is already fireproof and you were quite right, I probably shouldn’t have “rained on your parade”.

I’m just really sad and upset at the direction openSUSE, and indeed the Forum, seems to be taking lately, it’s like losing an old friend.

But hey, if it works great for some people, then go for it and enjoy :).

10

Something else about 11.3 RCx that I did not mention is the kernel is significantly superior over 11.1 and 11.2’s kernel for the Intel PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN that is in my Dell Studio 1537 laptop. Again, a BIG positive improvement.

In fact with the Radeon driver improvements, alsa sound driver improvements, KDE improvements, and the Wireless driver improvements, I find 11.3 is MUCH better than 11.1 and 11.2 on this Hardware. They (11.1 and 11.2) are simply not as good. Based on the milestone releases and RC1, I note 11.3 promises to work MUCH better on this hardware (64-bit Dell Studio 1537, Intel P8400 w/4GB, w/ATI Radeon 3450HD graphics) !

11

I have installed from the Live CD and from the DVD and I would generally agree with your assessment. However I will wait until the final release to pass judgement. My opinion stems from being cursed with owning seven different computers, two users, four different keyboards, five languages and two countries of residence. “New and improved” frequently turns out to be less useful than “old and lousy.” For me what actually works is the best answer.

12

I’ve installed from the liveCD and from the DVD and I do NOT agree with that assessment.

I also want to say lets not lose the ball here on this thread. It was asking users to post what they like. Users who do not like anything are asked to post on other threads, and if they can not find other threads then start their own.

How can we have a good forum community if our membership takes enjoyment on trolling and raining on everyone else’s parade? Shall we leave it up to the moderators to have to delete troll posts when some one starts a thread asking NOT what one hates, but rather what one LIKES ? What sort of community do we have when we have trolls who refuse to let a positive thread go by without putting in their negative input, when the thread was specifically structured such that we did NOT want the trolls in the thread?

I note that I tested 11.3 RC1 on 6 different PCs. It is better than 11.2 on 4 of the 6 PCs. I posted above some of the things I like.

13

Oh, so I’m a troll now?

After my original post was not in any way offensive, and I did indeed apologise for posting inappropriately?

I find that remark highly unfair and uncalled for.

Nice to feel a part of this “friendly community” isn’t it?

14

because this forum is technically for Help, and testing related issues. Soapbox it isn’t. Enough said.

Pleased to have the opportunity.

In spite of the KDE liveCD/HAL issue, I liked the very smooth installation process, with all the basics e.g language, time, keyboard, monitor, usable graphics (fbdev), sound, and that vital internet connection, all correctly installed. :slight_smile:

Given the limitation of CD size, there was a further phase (on mine that is) with a large number of applications in Installation Summary to download. I was delighted to see a working unichrome graphics driver automatically placed in this list and installed with DRM/DRI working (a first with openSUSE on my h/w). The driver was automatically loaded and configured by X (no xorg.conf needed).

On adding a packman repo, many essential multimedia apps were added to Installation Summary awaiting my decision to install or not. That’s helpful to have the important apps pre-selected.

KDE on 11.3 appears to perform better (snappier and faster) than KDE on 11.2. Many improved KDE 4 apps, e.g. Amarok has a much improved GUI (at 2.3.0), and digiKam. Dolphin seems very quick now. Overall a big improvement over the earlier milestones that had some seriously buggy apps. No doubt the improvements are due to devs efforts over the last lap.

The availability of 11.3 LXDE pattern in YaST makes installation easier.

Although not tested yet, I understand that the 2.6.32 kernel is a prereq for using some features of my relatively new Lenovo notebook. It’s ok on 11.2, but with some annoying little issues.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that useful facilities available in 11.2 are still there and working well in 11.3, such as SSH and VNC.

I suspect the innovation and hard work is tucked away under the hood where it belongs. Performance is everything, and there is plenty of it in 11.3.

15

Perhaps that comment was aimed at me for supporting your opinion. If it was, then I sincerely apologize to all involved, especially since I have received much needed and appreciated help on this forum. Since English is not my native language you will have to excuse my mis-interpreting what I took to be an open question. In the future I will try to refrain from negative leaning comments to such questions.

16

What to like:-

1 - having the latest version of kde 4

2 - like the artwork

3 - installation (on my intel 2 core) is much quicker

4 - 11.3 rc1 is in a more advanced state than previous versions (11.1 & 11.2) were at the early r/c stages

That said no big jump really from a system with 11.2 - which has been updated to the latest version of kde.

17

I just want everyone to know that I appreciate your input and comments. Please keep them coming.

I have been using openSUSE 11.3 RC1 since its release for all of my tasks and it has continued to work like a champ. I did manage to update KDE to 4.5 beta, which I will undo on RC2. KDE 4.5 works OK, but I get a KDE crash ever so often, though all still keeps running. I want to stick with KDE 4.4.4 for now as I am trying to test openSUSE and not the very latest KDE version.

I have only one requests right now and that is for more software repositories to support 11.3 to show up for use.

Thank You,

18

I’m looking forward to the updated kernel and intel graphics drivers, I have some glitches with my Dell e6400 under 11.2 when it is docked that I’m hoping will be fixed under 11.3. Otherwise not too much any changes that will affect me personally.

19

Great thread because I was wondering the same thing. Usually it’s the flashy GUI stuff that people want to see when a new release is put out. I generally update KDE when a new version is released so don’t expect to see anything new wrt to gui.

I’ve only installed 11.3 RC1 in a VM as I don’t want to risk dual booting it on my production laptop and don’t have another spare PC to play with. Obviously in a VM you cannot check or get a feel of the drivers or speed of the OS so I’m encouraged to hear that KDE runs better on 11.3 than it does on 11.2 and that there are driver updates.

Hopefully the docking / undocking situation will be sorted out for me with 11.3 and the auto configuring of the monitors which didn’t work in 11.2 forcing me to use sax2 to set it up properly.

I do like the 11.3 artwork better than 11.2 which looked a little drab. I always liked the smart black and green corporate look of SLED (which suits the corporate look of my Thinkpad).

20

suse_tpx60s, you could always consider loading openSUSE 11.3 on an external USB hard drive, that’s what I have done and it leaves the internal system untouched. Of course, first you need to have such a hard drive which has 40 GB of free space to use for the install. You need to understand that by default, openSUSE is wanting to install the grub menu into the MBR of that original boot drive. So, to install openSUSE on an external USB hard drive, you need to do the following:

  1. Tell your computer BIOS to boot from your external USB (or eSATA) hard drive.
  2. Install openSUSE & its SWAP on primary partitions on the external hard drive.
  3. Install Grub onto the openSUSE partition and not the MBR.
  4. Install Generic MBR on external hard drive.
  5. Inform Grub that the external hard drive is the first boot drive (it can not guess this since you did not boot from it in the first place).
  6. Designate the openSUSE partition as the Active or booting partition.
  7. Make sure that nothing is installing on the internal hard drive.

That is it. Do this a couple of times and loading openSUSE on an external USB hard drive will be as natural as riding a bicycle. I use this method so I can test openSUSE on any computer that I want, including computers I have no intention on using openSUSE after the testing is done.

Thank You,