Thoughts on openSUSE 11.3

English Open Chat
1

I’m not sure where to submit this, but I thought I’d let you guys know about my first impressions on openSUSE 11.3 (64-bit, KDE).

I’ve been playing around with Linux distributions in dual boot for at least five years, but 95% of the time I use Windows for a number of reasons. Although most of my Linux experience comes from using Ubuntu, I do not enjoy using Ubuntu as much as I want to. I’ve also worked with SUSE Linux 6/9, openSUSE 10/11, Fedora Core 4/5/6/12, Mandrake/Mandriva, Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

This morning, I decided to give Ubuntu the boot and give openSUSE another spin. Here’s a list of observations I made. Hopefully this information can help spark ideas to improve openSUSE.

Things I’ve enjoyed
[ul]
[li]The brand, graphics and artwork - Although this is primarily about marketing, it makes openSUSE more fun to work with. I can’t explain why, but to me the openSUSE brand looks more appealing than any major distribution’s brand. This is a huge advantage when you’re trying to attract people who are new to Linux.[/li]
[li]GRUB appearance and customizability - Ubuntu uses a generic black GRUB bootloader with no quick way to configure the boot order, default option and skin. openSUSE on the other hand installs a version of GRUB that comes with a good-looking skin along with some useful tweaks.[/li][li]WiFi support seems to have improved significantly - This is the first version of openSUSE I’ve tried that detected my WiFi card after installation. In the early days of WiFi, not a single Linux distro I’ve worked with recognized any of the WiFi cards I tried using. (Tried both internal WiFi and a USB dongle.) Ubuntu was the first distro to detect most WiFi cards automatically. I’m glad that openSUSE seems to have caught up.[/li][/ul]

Things that annoy me
[ul]
[li]Numlock isn’t on at login - If your password happens to contain numbers (which is likely if you’re using a secure password) and you don’t use a QWERTY layout, you have to manually enable the numlock at startup. This is an issue in many Linux distros, so is there a reason why it is switched off by default?[/li][li]The unmutable computer beep - This little guy scares the heck outta me whenever it creeps up, especially when my computer’s sound is muted. I think it should be off by default unless no sound card is available. Else, the sound card should play a comparable sound.[/li][li]WiFi can’t autoconnect because it needs KWallet credentials - This is probably more of a KDE issue than anything else, but maybe openSUSE can work around it. Since the network manager stores my WiFi key in KWallet, I have to enter the KWallet password before my WiFi connection can be established. Although this is more secure than storing the key outside KWallet, it’s a usability issue.[/li][li]Can’t adjust my screen brightness - I’m a laptop user, so I can usually adjust the screen brightness on my keyboard. In my specific case, I can press Fn+F9 to lower brightness and Fn+F10 to raise it. Under Ubuntu this works fine, but openSUSE doesn’t respond to these keystrokes.[/li]
I don’t think it’s a driver issue because everything else works fine and I wasn’t forced to use an unusually low resolution or anything. (My video card identifies itself in Windows as ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series, by the way.)

If a bad driver does lay at the root of the problem, ideally openSUSE should be able to match my video card with a proprietary driver and prompt to install it like Ubuntu already does.
[/ul]

I realize that most of these things can be dealt with by tweaking the OS, but it would be better if they worked out of the box.

Things that could scare away new users
[ul]
[li]The installer still requires a lot of technical knowledge - Since SUSE Linux 9, the graphical installer hasn’t changed all that much. While openSUSE’s partitioning suggestions are usually good, it still requires that the user knows how partitioning works. The paritioning part of install could be simplified by offering three options:[/li]
[list][li]Install alongside current OS[/li][li]Use entire hard drive[/li][li]Custom partitioning[/ul][/li]
The “Install alongside current OS” option could show something like this:

Instead of showing the partition table in detail, the user can just drag the slider to tell the installer how much space should be preserved for the current OS and how much should be allocated to openSUSE’s partitions. Mount points, swap partitions and other partitioning terms are never mentioned. The latest version of Ubuntu’s installer already incorporates this idea.

The bootloader configuration is another place where the user is confronted with too much technical stuff. It offers great flexibility, but this can be confusing even to people with some previous Linux experience. Additionally, settings that aren’t changed very often make the decision process needlessly complicated. For example, while there might be situations where it is useful to use LILO instead of GRUB, the average user doesn’t need to be confronted with the option to use LILO because he probably prefers a fancy easy-to-use bootloader over LILO’s DOS-like boot prompt.

openSUSE’s installer could take away some hurdles for new users by offering a “simple” install as well as the “expert” install that it currently offers. The target for the simple install is to ask a minimum of questions while still letting the user make key decisions such as the OS language, the keyboard layout, the default window manager and the amount of space that will be used for openSUSE and where that space will be taken from.
[li]The control panel is too technical - I realize that Linux users like to tweak their system a lot, but this increases the number of control panel applets as well as the number of knobs and buttons in every applet.[/li]
Perhaps it could be useful to show a simplified version of the control panel by default that hides things that new users usually don’t need. Here’s a list of applets that I think are most important:

[ul]
[li]Desktop - Screen resolution, wallpaper[/li][li]Keyboard - Keyboard layout, sensitivity, etc.[/li][li]Network Connections - Lists LAN and WiFi connections[/li][li]Mouse - Sensitivity, scroll speed, etc.[/li][li]Power Settings - Laptop behavior when using battery/AC adapter[/li][li]Regional settings - Language, locale[/li][li]Software - Remove installed software and find new software in an App Store-like environment. It doesn’t list libraries to keeps things simple but they can still be found in the package manager, which is hidden in the simplified version of the control panel.[/li][li]System Info - Displays important software and hardware information that is needed frequently by people who post questions on the forums.[/li][li]Updates - Update check frequency, enable/disable automatic install[/li][/ul]
[/list]

So there you go… those are my initial observations. I might dig a little deeper into openSUSE later, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time.

I just wanted to get this out there because I’m convinced that openSUSE is a good brand and that some tweaks can be made to deal with little annoyances, increase its overall user-friendliness and become more appealing to new Linux users in general. I hope that you (the openSUSE community) will take this as constructive feedback and can use it in some way to improve the user experience.

2

Welcome to openSUSE and welcome to our forum.

Glad to read you took the time to check out openSUSE.

I recommend next time you ask on our forum for assistance in areas which give you problems. Its quicker than surfing and can sometimes prevent an inaccurate conclusion.

I have a laptop that runs openSUSE-11.3 KDE4.4. Wireless automatically connects and I do not have the behaviour you describe. That leads me to believe the configuration you noted should have been and could have been improved.

Reference the Control panel ? Do you mean YaST ? I confess I completely disagree with your assessment. I would not like it if your view was adopted. But each to their own.

My view is users who are “drive by shooters” and stay 95% with another operating system, never really learn openSUSE. And it colours their perspective and causes inaccuracy in some of their perspective. But thats my view.

Best wishes in your computer/operating system efforts, and have a Happy New year.

3

Welcome and thanks for the interesting feedback. Like @oldcpu, I question your Control Panel reference - YaST or KDE?

4

Numlock issue: Interesting. I never noticed that. I guess I’m not using the numeric keypad for the digits in my password.

WiFi: Yes, I have that problem. It seems to be a restriction of the current version of Network Manager. If you only use the system with one network, then switching your WiFi card to use “ifup” will probably solve that problem.

Screen Brightness: There are some brightness controls in kde settings. They are grayed for me in my older laptop, but seem to work in a newer system.

Partitioning: Most inexperience users start with a Windows box, and Windows is using the entire disk. So you need complicated partitioning to shrink the Windows partition. I don’t see an easy alternative.

5

Thanks for the feedback.

WiFi: WiFi automatically connects for me and works fine

Like @oldcpu and @confused asked is the control panel you are talking about YaST or the KDE settings?

6

On 12/31/2010 04:06 PM, ah7013 wrote:
>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> WiFi: WiFi automatically connects for me and works fine

If you do not want to enter the kwallet password, you have two options: (1)
Create a wallet with no password and use it only for NM, or (2) Open the
Connection Manager and select the “Other” icon on the right-hand side, then
choose “Connection Secrets” and allow then to be stored unencrypted.

7

Happy New Year everyone! And thanks for all your replies. It’s nice seeing that you’re all eager to help.

I’ll try address the issues I’m experiencing on the forums and, if it turns out to be necessary, openFATE or Bugzilla.

It was in fact a mistake configuration. When the network manager asked me if KWallet should remember my password, I opted into that not realizing that it would require me to enter my KWallet password every time on startup.

Yes, I did mean YaST. Looking back at it now my idea seems a little outta whack. There are some applets that could be improved for user-friendliness though, such as the Sudo configuration.


I used su back in the day and switched to the more secure sudo when Ubuntu came along. I know that user accounts can be authorized to use sudo, but looking at this applet I do not really know what I can do with it. Reading the help information does take away some confusion, but I do think that the applet does have a potential for improvement.

If I had seen a list of users with an “Allow sudo” checkbox next to every account, I had known what to do with the applet. I know that sudo permissions are a lot more complicated and flexible than that, but advanced settings could still be accessed using an “Advanced Options” button. I don’t know.

Because of your location, I assume you’re a QWERTY user. You have the digits on top of your keyboard. I’m an AZERTY user (Belgian keyboard), so I have to hold Shift to access the digits on top which is why I prefer using the numpad most of the time.

Thanks for the tip. I found it under Power Settings. I do miss using the brightness hotkeys to adjust it though.

788×589 54.2 KB

That’s not what I meant - I’m not saying dualboot should be abolished. Have a look at this video (skip to 2:33). Notice how the user can use a slider to adjust how much space is preserved for Windows and how much space can be taken by Ubuntu? By using this method the user doesn’t need to learn how hard drive partitioning works. Advanced partioning is still available as an option for advanced users.

In other news: I noticed that my computer freezes completely a few seconds after launching the Hardware Information applet. I’ll have to investigate that.

8

Interesting. I was not aware of that problem. And, yes, I can see how having to use Shift to access digits would cause one to develop different habits (such as preferring the numeric keypad).

9

On 2011-01-01 14:06, nrickert wrote:

> different habits (such as preferring the numeric keypad).

/etc/sysconfig/keyboard:KBD_NUMLOCK=“yes”

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

10

I already replied to the screen brightness issue in your other thread on it. From what I read here, you will need the ATI driver + the proper keyboard model choice for your laptop.

11

Thanks - I figured out how to use the sysconfig editor to enable numlock.

Still, this is one of these little things that I’d like to be sorted out during install. It’s not a user-friendly way of dealing with it. I’ve filed a feature request at openFATE. I’ll be watching what happens.

12

On 2011-01-01 21:06, pdedecker wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2272492 Wrote:
>> /etc/sysconfig/keyboard:KBD_NUMLOCK=“yes”
> Thanks - I figured out how to use the sysconfig editor to enable
> numlock.

There are several ways. I use a plain text editor, and then run SuSEconfig.

> Still, this is one of these little things that I’d like to be sorted
> out during install. It’s not a user-friendly way of dealing with it.

You can not ask everything during install. Only the important things are
asked during install.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

13

pdedecker, I just had to throw my 2 cents in here. I don’t know what you do for a living (can’t tell much from your profile, you might consider adding a little more), but from the looks of your first message, perhaps you need to be a document creator of some sort. Regardless of the actual worthiness of the content, it looks beautiful. Much of what you talk about does have a lot to do with the Desktop selected and how it works and really, much of your impression on that distro is based on the Desktop used. But, there is more going on than meets the eye in openSUSE. To really get a distribution to do your bidding, you need to get under the hood, so to speak. The YaST package Manager is on the top of the list of worthy things in my opinion. I have been very much into scripting myself lately and have tried to parlay that into something that can make openSUSE better and easier to use for everyone. Not sure of my success so far, but I am trying. If I could write documents like you, I would try to find something here that you can use that for, like writing for the openSUSE news or some other out front stuff. Anyway, just wanted to say hello and I hope you stick it out and learn openSUSE. Version 11.4 is on its way…

Thank You,

14

I’m a 19-year-old computer sciences student. :slight_smile: I have been writing articles for a tech site sporadically and I’ve recently started working on a programming-related site of mine that will probably never launch. Search engines are blocked for now to prevent the site from being indexed. I just consider it to be an exercise in summarizing knowledge which I presume is a useful skill to have for whatever my job will be five years from now. If I ever manage to get the site ready for launch and people like it, even better.

Anyway, back on topic. I noticed that openSUSE isn’t able to show the Tahoma font. Can I import it from my Windows installation? Not having those widely used fonts on Linux has been one of my annoyances with Linux in general, although I know that they can’t ship them for copyright reasons.

True. But I didn’t make these observations from the standpoint of a hardcore Linux user, but from that of an adventurous Windows user who is used to having many things work out of the box and working in an environment that has undergone serious usability testing. I don’t mind enabling the numlock with the sysconfig editor, but people who are new to Linux and don’t like editing vital configuration files would.

So basically it comes down to this: does openSUSE want to appeal to the mainstream crowd of computer users or just the computer hobbyists? In the second case, I would use different standards. But if openSUSE want to appeal to a wider audience, it has some polishing to do.

15

Update:

Got it… http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:TrueType

16

pdedecker wrote:
> But if openSUSE want to appeal to a wider audience, it has some
> polishing to do.

as far as i can tell the openSUSE community has no intention of
exactly mimicking ms-windows…

that has already been done:
http://www.ylmf.org/en/index.html
http://www.osxzz.com/soft/downcopy.asp?id=2596

and there are other examples, like ‘Lindows’ which was sued by Redmond
who bought the name and Lindows became Linspire which became Freespire
which was rolled bought by Xandros
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandros> (which is no longer included on
DistroWatch)…

it had been a primary goal of each of those to do all that “polishing”
you speak of to make it “appeal to a wider audience” and ‘easy’ for
windows users to transition…

all who have tried eventually learn it is very difficult (to
impossible) to mirror a less capable system and provide the
stability and security inherit in the *nix-like systems…

personally, i can’t see a good use your helpful advice on the need to
make openSUSE seem to be more like the system you are more used to…

on the other hand, Win7 is the most Linux-like system Redmond has ever
made <http://www.zdnet.com.au/is-it-windows-7-or-kde-4-339294810.htm>
eventually they might catch up with us…but, i doubt it…

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]
Programming: a race between software engineers building bigger/better
idiot-proof programs, and the universe building bigger/better idiots.
So far, the universe is winning. Rick Cook

17

[quote="“pdedecker,post:15,topic:60299”]
Update:

Got it… SDB:TrueType - openSUSE[/QUOTE]

Glad you found the Tahoma fonts and I hope you like the appearance on your openSUSE.

I confess I’ve been on Linux too long, and I simply prefer the Serif and SansSerif that I obtain after installing the proprietary nVidia graphic driver (as a graphic driver install will impact the font appearance). Its been a while since I last looked at the Tahoma, so I did so earlier today, and I have to confess I do not prefer it over the Serif nor SansSerif. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I dislike the font look in MS-Windows. I think that goes to show how subjective this FONT assessment is, … although with my having typed that, it would not surprise me if users who migrate to Linux from MS-Windows might prefer something on Linux with which they are more familiar in MS-Windows (ie Tahoma fonts).

Linux to a certain extent is about the freedom of choice, and its good to read you were able to find a Font that you will like better.

18

All you have to do is to add the fullpath of a picture in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme as in the example below. Then it can look pretty nice (depending of your picture).

--- /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme.orig    2010-11-02 02:49:30.000000000 -0700
+++ /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme 2010-11-02 02:49:30.000000000 -0700
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
 else
   WALLPAPER="/usr/share/images/desktop-base/moreblue-orbit-grub.png"
   COLOR_NORMAL="black/black"
-  COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="magenta/black"
+  COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="white/black"
 fi
 
 set_mono_theme()
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
 use_bg=false
 for output in ${GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT}; do
   if  "$output" = "gfxterm" ] ; then
-    for i in /boot/grub/`basename ${WALLPAPER}` ${WALLPAPER} ; do
+    for i in /usr/local/share/images/splash.jpg /boot/grub/`basename ${WALLPAPER}` ${WALLPAPER} ; do
       if is_path_readable_by_grub $i ; then 
         bg=$i
         case ${bg} in
19

They don’t look exactly like they used to, but since I have an ATI video card I might need to install some additional drivers.

While I personally prefer the Windows way of displaying fonts, maybe I just need some time to adjust to the Linux way of displaying fonts. But as you said…

20

Indeed it will.

Its been a while since I last looked at the Tahoma, so I did so earlier today, and I have to confess I do not prefer it over the Serif nor SansSerif.

The size of font being used is also relevant. Tahoma font was very good at small font sizes (e.g. 6-8), say for icon text, when display resolutions were commonly at 1024x768 and below. There were better subjective choices at larger font sizes.