Well with the new release of openSUSE on the horizon I think its time to chime in on my opinions on making openSUSE 42.2 a great release.
1: make it easier to install third party software again!
The fact that you have to bend over backwards to install 3rd party software in openSUSE 42.1 is the main reason why I left it in the dust bin.
When apper became deprecated and no longer included it maade third party software installation a chore unless you used command line.
Now I dont have an issue with command line but a new user certainly will.
There needs to be a gui for installing packages period and not just YAST!
2: Make my printer work again!
Wireless printing in openSUSE is a total disaster as of 42.1
What i can so easily do in Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and even arch is a chore under openSUSE
3: Bring back live images!
I mean come on this isnt 1997, live images allow you to see if the system is compatible with your computer!
4: Easy upgrade option from 42.1
This one I dont think will be as much of an issue but it can be a hurdle
Well, the YaST software manager is the GUI provided for installing RPMs. What else do you have in mind? Are you referring to the process installing single RPM packages?
2: Make my printer work again!
Wireless printing in openSUSE is a total disaster as of 42.1
What i can so easily do in Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and even arch is a chore under openSUSE
Really? I’ve never had a problem here. Maybe you just need to disable the firewall while discovering/configuring?
4: Easy upgrade option from 42.1
This one I dont think will be as much of an issue but it can be a hurdle
I don’t anticipate that there will be any issues here. Upgrades from one version to the next are normally supported, provided that you take the time to read release notes first.
Perhaps the OP means one-clicks? For RPM I just set the RPM folder as a local repo in yast. Works like a charm, and gives me way more control than apper - not that I don’t use it, works OK too, just gives less info on the packages (13.2 was better at this).
Like the others I think you must explain what you mean by this. You are seemingly frustrated by something, but that does not mean that others are, or even without further explanation know what you are talking about.
Also you seem to assume that (most) people used Apper to install software. If I am correct that Apper is/was a KDE feature, that will at the most be true for KDE users. Also many people will never have used/use it for software installation, but always use zypper/YaST. Thus an explanation about what is so nice with Apper might be imminent.
IMHO third party software can come in may guises, like
the third party provides a YaST/zypper compatible repository (like Packman does), easy to add using YaST/zypper and to use then like your standard repos (only difference, they will have no Update repo with patches, but publish never versions in the repo itself);
The third party provides an RPM, easy to install: download and install using zypper/YaST, which will install the dependancies (hopefully the RPM is build correct and the deps are available), or install using rpm, which will not install dependancies.
The third party provides a “tarball”, unpack and read the documentation (README), a hardly standardized process (many use a “make config, make, make install” sequence of some sort, but by no means all do), results can range from immediate sucess to disaster.
any other way of downloading/installing.
Problems encountered in any of the above are IMHO due to the third party and not to openSUSE and can thus hardly be solved by Leap 42.2, but you may come to a different conclusion.
I agree with the first point you make (with one minor modification):
On 2016-10-14, MadmanRB <MadmanRB@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> 1: make it easier to install third party software again!
> <SNIP>
> There needs to be a gui for installing packages period and not just
> YAST!
A GUI to install 3rd party packages is sorely missing and IMO the reason why openSUSE will always have limited appeal
but YaST is by far the best place to put it. I’ve long-suggested a Ruby package in YaST to provide a suitable front end
to software.opensuse.org as an elegant solution to this but no-one seems interested (and my Ruby is far worse than my
Python).
> 2: Make my printer work again!
> Wireless printing in openSUSE is a total disaster as of 42.1
That’s not my experience. I had plenty of other disasters with 42.1 but wireless printing wasn’t one of them.
Fortunately most of issues have gradually been ironed out which makes me more hopeful for 42.2.
> 3: Bring back live images!
> I mean come on this isnt 1997, live images allow you to see if the
> system is compatible with your computer!
I believe you need a better reason than that! Just because a live image runs fine, that doesn’t guarantee compability
especially with ATi/Nvidia hardware with proprietary drivers. I think a better reason is out there is for GNU/Linux
newcomers so can they can try out different desktop environments from Live images before committing to hard drive. But
IMO openSUSE make little/no effort to appeal to GNU/Linux newcomers (e.g. who’d be scared off by the BTRFS default
filing system), so there’s not much point.
> 4: Easy upgrade option from 42.1
> This one I dont think will be as much of an issue but it can be a hurdle
This will be the first inter-Leap upgrade so I look forward to seeing how smoothly the upgrade proceeds!
If you mean that a package should be installed automatically if you open it, that will again be the case in 42.2.
RPM files will again have YaST associated as default application to open them in KDE, like it was in 13.1 and before.
Actually YaST supported that all the way, it was just disabled for KDE (by the YaST team) because we had Apper anyway.
3: Bring back live images!
I mean come on this isnt 1997, live images allow you to see if the system is compatible with your computer!
They have been removed because nobody cared for them, and there were problems (e.g. with the installer that basically just copied all files from the LiveCD to the hard disk).
Meanwhile the LiveCDs have been completely reworked though, and do a “real” installation.
Official LiveCDs are available for Tumbleweed (and I think they always were).
And there’s also the Argon LiveCD since a few months, which is based on 42.1 (with the latest unstable KDE packages though).
Of course everybody can build a LiveCD on SUSEstudio too.
I don’t know whether there will be “official” LiveCDs for 42.2 though.
Yeah as of openSUSE 42.2 beta 3 installing third party rpms works as it should.
So one of my issues is solved now, hurray!
And yes sometimes I do want to install apps not in the repos, I use google chrome as my main browser and yes I know chromium is in the repos but I watch netflix and hulu and DRM isnt supported by chromium without hassle.
I did try openSUSE 42.2 in virtualbox recently to see how it was going, I may even try it on my main machine.
Sure its a beta and I understand the risks of doing that but I do want to give the beta a spin on my main hardware to see how openSUSE corrected itself.
I plan on installing the beta later on to see if some of my other gripes were fixed like the printer.
I just didnt like openSUSE 42.1, it was not a good experience for me.
openSUSE 13.2 and 13.1 worked quite well so I was disappointed in leap
Well looks like most of my issues with 42.1 are solved as of 42.2 beta 3.
Sure Beta 3 is a little sluggish (then again its a beta) but most of my issues seem solved now.
Well 7 days until the final.
Currently though I think openSUSE has a uphill battle with making sure it stands out again as the premiere KDE distro.
I am currently on Manjaro KDE and its like butter so is newcomer Maui linux which i have also tried.
openSUSE has in my opinion lost its title as best KDE distro but that doesnt mean it cant be good again.
On 2016-11-08, MadmanRB <MadmanRB@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> Currently though I think openSUSE has a uphill battle with making sure
> it stands out again as the premiere KDE distro.
For me at least, it still does, particularly in comparison to Debian derivatives.
On 2016-11-08, MadmanRB <MadmanRB@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> openSUSE has in my opinion lost its title as best KDE distro but that
> doesnt mean it cant be good again.
Define `best’. A distro is much more than its desktop. I believe openSUSE’s package manager is second to none among
binary distributions whatever your choice of desktop. In my opinion the package manager is much more defining feature of
a distribution than its desktop customisations. Where I would probably agree with you concerning KDE is that openSUSE’s
Breeze theme default is absolutely vile.