Suse vs others

English Open Chat
1

I recently tried another Linux distribution. I do this frequently out of curiosity and to confirm what I hear from others. I love Suse dearly but if someone would ask me to recommend a Linux distribution (and that’s a big if as it hasn’t happened yet) it would not be my first choice for a beginner coming off WinDoze. Anyway I tried this new product and immediately ran into problems. It didn’t recognize my video and monitor and I got stuck in 800 x 600 mode that I couldn’t change. I asked for help on the forum and after two weeks of no response I posted that I was giving it up for my unnamed distribution that worked. I immediately got a scathing reply about a chip set that was too old, 800 x 600 is normal for a five year old computer, an attitude that was too negative, lack of 3D acceleration (which had nothing to do with the question) and that I shouldn’t complain because the O.S. is free.

I’ve been using Suse since 9.3 and currently use 11.2 on five different computers. Suse is not perfect. Nothing is. But I realize that the main reason I am still with it is the great help I have received from the wonderful people of this forum. I won’t mention names as I might miss someone. But you know who you are and I want you to know you are appreciated.

By the way, I did get that other distribution working. I copied my Suse xorg.conf over to it. It’s actually a good distribution that does work out of the box. No media restrictions like we have. But I won’t be recommending to anyone on account of lack of support.

Thanks for everything.

2

I fully agree with you.
I have never tried another distro, so I can’t say that you don’t have from other people the support you find in opensuse. But I agree that here you are really welcome and helped.
Thanks to everybody.

3

Well just say the name of the distribution then, even if its Ubuntu and that word is unholy here.
I discovered all distros are imperfect in the end, there is always something going on that is not right.
I can pick out at least three major flaws of my favorite distros:

Ubuntu:
6 Month releases
Buggy software (though most of it is fine)
Instability in some releases

openSUSE:
Unpredictable releases
Limited default repository
Multimedia can be rough to set up if you have no idea what to do

Mepis:
Unpredictable releases
Software updates come whenever the developers feel like it
Uncertain future

Mandriva:
See Mepis

Arch:
Complicated to set up
Breakage seems to be very common in it
If it goes down its a pain to recover

Slackware:
Antiquated package management
Difficult set up
All hardcore users consider users of other distros to be sub human

Debian:
Antiquated initial setup
Multimedia set up is quite difficult
Takes HOURS to set up if you dont choose the multi CD option, while the newer Debian is far easier to set up now and its very reminiscent of its younger upstart Ubuntu the issue comes when downloading everything if you choose not to use multiple CD’s, debian would be much simpler if it had a live CD.
Now I know you would probably quote the phrase “Ubuntu is the African word for I am too stupid to set up debian” but its more like “Ubuntu is the African word for I am too lazy to wait 300 hours for debian to download its files onto my computer and I am too cheap to have 500 blank CD’s laying around”

4

Unpredictable releases: How so? The new releases are announced many months in advance, along with details, a roadmap, and milestone snapshots for testing. The cycle is about 8 months between releases, IIRC.

5

That’s correct.

6

Yeh it is about 8 months but its not exactly something to set a clock by, being two months more then Ubuntu’s 6 months is good as more bugs can be fixed but the advantage of 6 months is that one comes out in april and one in october, opensuse is not as predictable as you cant say the month it will come out by heart.
There are advangages and disadvantages with opensuses release cycle, even with a roadmap you can still get lost.

7

A clockwork regime may be necessary for ubuntu weenies, but openSUSE users can cope with seasonal changes.

8

Why use only one? Some are better suited to some uses than others. I have been playing around with various distros that I could use as a LiveCD for online banking and nothing else. Still experimenting but think I may end up using Puppy, because it’s small, light weight, and boots fairly quickly.

9

IMHO thats never a good approach to get help.

If there is no response to one’s question, just reply to one’s own post with a “bump” post. Do that a few times over the course of a couple of weeks or less, and that often will generate a response in most forums.

Stating one is "giving up for … " is only likely to irritate and accomplish little.

As a moderator, I’ve seen this countless times.

A simple “bump” goes a LOT further.

As for trying other distributions, with the popularity of liveCDs, I no longer typically install other Linux distributions on my PC. The last non-SuSE distribution I installed was an older Fedora version (I happen to really like Fedora).

But having stated that, I have been known to frequent the forum of other distributions, typically to try and help users of other distributions on distribution generic issues (in the few cases I may know something useful). After all, Linux is Linux.

10

That sounds like good advice. I’ll try it next time.

11

Yeh but I do like the predictability of Ubuntu releases, one comes out in April and the other in October.
The advantage to it is when to know to beta test, thats why personally I like the release cycle of Ubuntu it runs like clockwork so I know when to try the beta.
Maybe a more seasonal approach would be good, Mandriva does a release in the spring and fall, its not quite 6 months but its still near predictable.

12

TaraIkeda,

I’ve seen in most of your post in different threads you advocate Ubuntu which is fine, its really a personal choice but when you say something about other distros without knowing the fact then that’s bad.

You said “openSUSE release Unpredictable” well its well predicted all the time and this is the first time openSUSE team decided to change release cycle from 6 months to the 8 months. I think its really fair, you get a stable OS at the end. I’ve tried each and every version of ubuntu and because of this 6 months strict cycle they come up with silly bug. Just for an example if you install NVIDIA driver to Ubuntu 10.04 your splash screen (startup/shutdown) goes ugly, well its not a high priority bug but still it is. So far my experience with openSUSE compare to any other distro is very pleasant, it never broke update/upgrade, I have similar number of repositories as Ubuntu. I have a special repository that Ubuntu doesn’t that is FACTORY, if I like to use bleeding age and dont care about stability.

Also, Ubuntu is based on Debian’s SID branch which is unstable branch so you can never expect Ubuntu to be stable whereas openSUSE is the original distro which is not based on any other disto or neither its a testing playground for anyother distro like the Fedora is RedHat’s.

Well there are N number of point that I can tell that makes openSUSE special but I dont want, I simply want to tell people that dont speak about something that they dont have experience of. People simply pick ubuntu because its well marketed distro and the minus point that openSUSE has is the poor marketing. Please make me correct if I’m wrong anywhere

13

In my point of view, the title is wrong. There is no “SuSE vs. others”, there is “SuSE and others”. All the distros profit from work done by the others. FOSS, you know.

14

I like that view point ! :good:

15

That’s more like it.

16

Well like I said even Ubuntu’s 6 month cycle is a bad thing too, sure its good for a beta tester like me as you know when to expect the betas to come out.
There are flaws to both really, I think it should be a yearly cycle for each major release but maybe throw in a more updated version with newer kernels and software in there too like what PCLinux does.

Also, Ubuntu is based on Debian’s SID branch which is unstable branch so you can never expect Ubuntu to be stable whereas openSUSE is the original distro which is not based on any other disto or neither its a testing playground for anyother distro like the Fedora is RedHat’s.

Yes being based on debian sid is a major disadvantage when concerning stability, but the advantage comes in having huge repositories as debian has the most packages out there compared to most others other then slack and source code based distros.
Debian based distros always seem to have huge repos, it makes life simpler not to have over 10 different repositories enabled to get the software you want.
In Ubuntu I only need maybe 3 outside repositories to get the software I want/need.
Medibuntu for restricted codecs
Getdeb for extra packages not in the default repository
and Playdeb for games

For anything else there is the PPA’s PPA’s are like the Ubuntu version of Factory.

In openSUSE I needed about 6 repos to get the same result.
First is the multimedia repo
then there is the VLC repo
Then there is the emulator repo
Then packman
then wine
then the community KDE repos

I needed to enable more repos in openSUSE to get what I wanted/needed.

But openSUSE is indeed more stable I wont deny that part, but openSUSE can be a pain to work with when enabling all those repos.
Hey I might like Ubuntu but I never said its perfect, I only use it because it has a lot of packages in its repos, its hardly given me any mission critical issues, it also makes great use of Gnome my main reason for supporting it… KDE 4 has never worked out for me.

17

For new users (and NOT for TaraIkeda), my recommendation, for any new users who may read this post, is not to follow the above approach for TaraIkeda.

1st - vlc : Having both packman and vlc repos enabled at the same time causes most new users major problems in audio applications not working together. Hence I recommend do NOT enable vlc. Instead enable packman.

2nd - Wine: Wine is relatively harmless if you don’t mind using release candidate versions of wine, that on occasion are broken. IMHO one who NEEDS stability in a MS-Windows app running under wine, should NOT update wine from the wine (nor the emulator) repository. Disable both repos.

3rd - KDE community repos - these are mostly cutting edge with next to NO TESTING in many cases. NONE. New users who want stability should IMHO never keep these repos enabled. I long since lost count of the problems (dozens and dozens) new users have had over the year when updating from these repos.

Instead I am on record dozens and dozens of times of recommending only 4 repos for openSUSE: OSS, Non-OSS, Update, and Packman. Just those 4. No others. None. NONE. If one MUST get an application from a 5th repos, one can add the repos, install the app, and remove the 5th repos. It is this simple:

zypper ar <URL of repos> <some-name-for-repos>
zypper install <some-application>
zypper rr <some-name-for-repos>

where “ar” stands for “add repository” and “rr” stands for “remove repository”. Its that simple.

And one can get the repositories from the search engines:

Again, its simple to use the search engines.

I won’t deny having many repositories may work for TaraIkeda and advanced users, but I recommend new users avoid that noted approach. Stick with the 4 I recommend.

18

Well, if it helps- I’m running 11.2 with integrated geforce 8200, nvidia 195 drivers , and kwin graphics are smooth.

19

I wont deny I am a major package hog as I like playing with new apps and testing them.
But playing cutting edge does have its disadvantages.

20

Yep, and these disadvantages are the choice of the user, never an indication of the quality of the distro used.