Like many newbie of Linux, I spent lots of time reading reviews and comments to compare different distros of Linux. I have used a lot of Windows (from Win 98 to Win 8.1) and Mac (since 2011) but not Linux, so many of my computer experience is based on GUI oriented OS. Switching to Linux is quite a challenge to me, although there are more and more customizable desktop environment.
I first tried Ubuntu (14.04 LTS) on my ThinkPad (T450s) for its very large user-base and community. Its huge set of Debian packages was also very attractive. But it turned out to be very disappointing after several days of usage. The graphics driver crashes the GUI all the time and was totally a disaster (My laptop has a Nvidia graphic card : 940M). Battery was used up very quickly. The audio driver sucks, no matter it’s the default driver or the one I later installed by myself. The system can’t remember my screen brightness settings that it was always set to be the highest level everytime the system boots.(There are ways to solve this problem. I had tried two methods provided by the community before it finally worked.) There are lots of problems, although can be solved by an array of means, were very annoying and time-consuming deal with. Many of the troubles were related to drivers and was totally game-breaking.
Another issue ,irony, is that the community of Ubuntu is too large that there are too many posts and tutorials. I could hardly choose or find the posts which can actually solve my problem and resulted in multiple trials before things finally worked.
There are, of course, things that were impressive about Ubuntu. It has the shortest boot/shutdown time I have ever seen. Its Unity GUI is beautiful. Installation of OS is simple and straight forward.
So I later tried openSUSE Leap, another one of the most popular distro. Honestly, I have never thought that it can be that much better.
I followed a tutorial of installing Nvidia driver on openSUSE and it surprisingly works. It can remember my brightness settings. The most amazing thing I have never expected it that the default (or pre-installed) audio driver is so good! It’s even better than the driver comes with the laptop (for Windows). Basically everything just works after the installation and is totally a time-saver. I once got problem with the media codec support and network manager but I was able to resolve them very quickly. I have so far experienced no serious problem with openSUSE Leap and is very satisfied with it. I hope the system can include more power saving options in the future since the battery life is not as good as when I used Windows.
I have to give thanks to the SUSE team for their exceptional work. lol!
