version 10.3?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am currently using Fedora Linux, and unhappy enough with it that I’m looking for something else. Browsing here, I see reference to OpenSuse version 10.3 being very stable, debugged, in short not likely to take an inordinate amount of hand holding to be a stable, usable OS. While I can appreciate beta testing, I don’t really have time in my current life to be playing with a beta anything.

My principal issues with Fedora, and not coincidentally, the things I’m looking to resolve, perhaps by changing OSes: Firefox cannot be (stably) upgraded to FF3, nor do all of FF2’s plugins work as they should. Documentation to resolve is limited, support in terms of upgrades is no longer supported. Upgrading to a version that DOES support a minimally functional browser essentially means wiping the hard disk and spending many, many days (which I do not have on a regular basis) rebuilding the PC from scratch. It might be possible to upgrade versions and not have to wipe the entire hard drive in the process, but if so the documentation does not exist, so for practical purposes, I’ll have to assume it’s not possible. The sound system crashes for no apparent reason at various times, offtimes locking the entire computer up as it goes. Documentation to resolve is limited, the emphasis seems to be on denying that there’s a sound issue on many different PCs across many different distros.

Having tried Linux a couple of times over the years, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of decent documentation (meaning something comprehensible to a person who does not have a decade or so of programming experience) on fixing various issues. In the absence of the practical availability of said documentation, I’ll settle for a stable OS which does not require me to wipe the hard drive a couple of times per year to get the drivers necessary to maintain minimal functionality.

My question is: is version 10.3 a stable, up to date version which crashes minimally, and which I should not have to reasonably expect to wipe/reinstall before, say, my friend has to wipe her XP install and rebuild from scratch (would 2 years of day to day use before a major reconstruction be asking too much)?

#2

10.3 doesn’t have 2 years of support left, only just over a year estimated.

Install 11.0 with KDE3 and it will be better than 10.3. Most of the gripes about 11.0 are about KDE4. But you don’t have to run KDE4. The installer does not force KDE4 on you, you have to choose. (Though you have to get a different LiveCD for KDE3 if you use the LiveCD to install.)

#3

A pet peeve of mine is sound not working on openSUSE user’s PC’s, and the vast majority of my post account is helping openSUSE users with their sound. Now some sound devices simply are not compatible with Linux, but most work. Some places to look for sound incompatibility: Audio - linux incompatibility

Although the entire incompatibility list can be useful as a flag as to what to avoid: Linux Incompatibility List

There is the openSUSE HCL (hardware compatibility list) although most openSUSE users do not take the time to keep it up to date: Hardware - openSUSE

#4

mistergoodbytes wrote:

> <snip>
> Having tried Linux a couple of times over the years, I’ve pretty much
> given up on the idea of decent documentation (meaning something
> comprehensible to a person who does not have a decade or so of
> programming experience) on fixing various issues.

Curiously, that was my primary gripe about Windows, and the weird part is
that I actually do have 42 years of programming experience! God knows
programmers cannot write decent documentation! That, IHMO, is the reason
why Linux documentation was so incomprehensible for so long. Not to
mention that some documentation, even that which is decent in its original
language, is completely useless because of incredibly bad translation into
English! Even Shakespeare looses something when not read in its original
Klingonese.

It has been my observation that the documentation available for Linux (in
general) and openSuSE (in particular) has improved dramatically over the
last few years. There are various forums and wiki’s available where useful
and comprehensible information can be obtained. Naturally, you have to
separate the wheat from the chaff at times, but the information is there,
and it is not really all that hard to find anymore.

> In the absence of the practical availability of said documentation, I’ll
> settle for a stable OS which does not require me to wipe the hard drive a
> couple of times per year to get the drivers necessary to maintain minimal
> functionality.

I have been running openSuSE since before it was even called that, starting
with SuSE Professional Linux 8.3. In all that time (once I learned to put
things like /home on a separate partition), I have never wiped my hard
drive, and seldom reboot. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. Maybe it’s a
terminology thing; I do not consider reformatting the root partition to
install a major upgrade (such as going from 10.3 to 11.0) “wiping my hard
drive”. I keep non-system stuff, such as /home and /srv, on separate
partitions (LVM) and keep a backup of configuration files I might need to
restore.

> My question is: is version 10.3 a stable, up to date version which
> crashes minimally, and which I should not have to reasonably expect to
> wipe/reinstall before, say, my friend has to wipe her XP install and
> rebuild from scratch (would 2 years of day to day use before a major
> reconstruction be asking too much)?

My answer is mostly YES. It is stable. I ran 10.3 for quite a while and
was very pleased with it. It is not “up to date”, however, because 11.0 is
available and a worthy upgrade.

I did a fresh install (not an upgrade). After a couple of minutes of
re-configuration, essentially everything that worked in 10.3 was working
perfectly in 11.0. For my printer, I had to reinstall the proprietary
driver not included in the SuSE distribution. On my notebook computer, I
had to tweak a bit to get my wireless ethernet PCI card working again,
strangely more tweaking than it took to get it working initially in 10.3!
But I found the right steps to take by doing a search in this forum. On
another computer with a ATI Radeon video card, when installing Linux (OSS
11.0) for the first time, I easily found the steps needed to install its
proprietary driver on the opensuse web site. My only complaint was that it
never told me there even was such a driver, and I thought I was stuck with
the (almost) dysfunctional driver on the distribution disk. Live and
learn!

So I would definitely recommend 11.0 over 10.3. There are some very nice
improvements (in YaST, for example) that I appreciate. OTOH, KDE4 is not
one of those. For now, I personally would recommend avoiding it like the
plague. Maybe it will be ready for prime time in the near future, but not
yet (IMHO). While I have not used it personally, Gnome is clearly a
worthwhile alternative to KDE.

Go for it! OpenSuSE 11.0 is not your father’s Linux!