What does openSUSE have...

English Open Chat
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that Fedora doesn’t? What does Fedora have that openSUSE doesn’t?

I went through the process of installing Fedora on my system, making it a triple boot machine! Woohoo!

Now though, I’m wondering why. I’m much more at home with openSUSE, and KDE. I have Gnome installed on openSUSE and use it once in a while. I seem to have all the applications I need and even want.

I poked around in Fedora and although it’s nice, I didn’t notice anything that would make it a “must have”.

Someone here said they have Fedora in addition to openSUSE, and said there was a reason, but didn’t say what it was, and I even forget who it was.

I would have to say that if I could have only one or the other, knowing that I would need some help with something sooner or later, and have to use the forums, openSUSE definitely has a more friendly group of people.

So, should I keep Fedora? Or, format the partitions and mount them as /home/stuff ?

2

Ok. You installed it I haven’t (never thus far). Fedora is reputed to be more on the bleeding edge. Some users want it for that, and early H/W support I guess. Did you notice any instability? Have you added/used your favourite (KDE) applications to find out?

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> So, should I keep Fedora? Or, format the partitions and mount them as
> /home/stuff ?

isn’t that kinda like asking: Should i have breakfast at Star Seeds or
Red River Cafe??

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

4

rotfl!

They don’t have DenverD and me on their Forums. That is a big difference.
Don’t know if that is a + or a - and also not for which of them.
rotfl!

5

On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 11:06 +0000, montana suse user wrote:
> that Fedora doesn’t? What does Fedora have that openSUSE doesn’t?

There are many, many, many package differenes… same commands but
different source code between Fedora and openSUSE. I usually prefer the
openSUSE packages as they take into account that we still need to
integrate with other OS’s (and I’m just talking other *ix).

So, IMHO, Fedora’s configuration and package choices tend to be more
useful to an ALL Linux distro world… if not an all Red Hat or all
Fedora world. Fedora also takes more risks… you have to understand
that the Red Hat employees are still the primary developers of the Linux
kernel and many of the applications… sometimes to their detriment.
Red Hat (and we’ll say Fedora as well) tends to be unpredictable… you
know… things like… “we hate Java”, “Java is evil”… becoming, “use
JBoss”, “Java is wonderful”, “Hate Xen”, “Xen is horrible”… to “Use
Xen”, “We wrote most of Xen”… to “Xen is garbage”, “Use RHEV”, “RHEV
is KVM”… “it’s our own private flavor of KVM”… etc…

For me, it’s a LOT easier to setup complex networking infrastructure
scenarios using openSUSE… but in all fairness, in the corporate world,
I’m going to be using SLES. I do like openSUSE for the corporate
desktop though.

I find SLES to be more focused on meeting the needs of a multi-OS
corporation… and so I tend to prefer openSUSE as well.

But I DO have to use Red Hat. A lot of my friends use Fedora and I’m
constantly having to fix their machines using workarounds.

6

Overview - FedoraProject

“We believe software patents are harmful, a hindrance to innovation in software development, and are inconsistent with the values of free and open source software”

That is one reason why many people like RedHat / Fedora. They are Committed to free open source software.

And when you do a deal with MS over software patents, one has to question whether you have the same level of commitment to FOSS.

This is why opensuse will never gain the popularity it deserves.

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suse works on my pc, others dont, thats a + in my book. some hardwear just likes opensuse better.

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I don’t remember openSUSE or Novell to release software for management of their virtual solutions which run only under MS Windows, RedHat did :wink: But, yea, RedHat like big words(very often with contradictions) and Fedora kinda follows that principles, alto IMHO Debian is much bigger in following open source principles, and is pretty much bone to bones community distro. Anyhow…
For me the biggest difference between openSUSE and Fedora is that the former has much better administrative toolset then the latter. And of course

rotfl! keep it going

hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
When somebody asks you where you are, you tell them in which chat room.

9

I drop fedora before its burn. A lot of years ago, since redhat 6.2, it was horrible thing, buggy, it never shows well the gnome on my desktop, switched to debian, more complicated but likes me because its forums and I learned a lot on those days. Then switched to Mandrake, and Suse Pro 8 after that, really like it!

I droped suse on 9 release, the ugliest thing for me (SuSE just acquired from Novell, adaptation I guess, this kind of things happen), switched to ubuntu, and then two years of windows (because the work), then back to opensuse 11.2 and now 11.3, and yes, I really love it.

I tried twice fedora on vm’s just to know it, but it feels like the old rh 6.2, scary.

I don’t know if is better or not, the rh/fedora community is really important, I know, there is a lot of package come from, but simply, I don’t see any special from they to switch to fedora’s world.

Just my opinion.

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On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 16:06 +0000, FizzyFanta wrote:
> ‘Overview - FedoraProject’ (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview)
>
> “We believe software patents are harmful, a hindrance to innovation in
> software development, and are inconsistent with the values of free and
> open source software”

But it leaves out the following addendum…

“This means that our distribution only works with software that is free
of software patents and therefore probably will not integrate well with
your environment until you convert everything over to us. Obviously, we
prefer corporate clients to use our award winning Red Hat Enterprise
Linux which comes in two flavors, arbitrarily crippled, to be cost
competitive with unrestricted enterprise Linux from another vendor, and
our complete unrestricted version that lacks key pieces of enterprise
software for which you will need extra purchased subscriptions.”

I wonder why they leave that out?

>
> That is one reason why many people like RedHat / Fedora. They are
> Committed to free open source software.

No. It might be why a home user chooses it… because they don’t mind
futzing with the pieces that Red Hat/Fedora disallow… but companies
need something that doesn’t try to insert ideologies ahead of
functionality. Ideology change (FOSS) is important, but IT CANNOT BE
DONE BY FORCE.

>
> And when you do a deal with MS over software patents, one has to
> question whether you have the same level of commitment to FOSS.

Novell was strictly thinking about what is needed for a business to be
successful without trying to change a company’s charter or board of
directors. Certainly, forcing corporate change is an approach and I’ve
attended many a FOSS bird-of-a-feather session where the leader
basically SAID that grass roots will NEVER work. One of those people,
believe it or not, was ESR (well, maybe that’s not a surprise).

>
> This is why opensuse will never gain the popularity it deserves.
>
>

openSUSE is VERY popular and AFAIK, more popular than Fedora.

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I disagree with your opinion underlined.

As for the first part, i think opensuse is a good distribution but will never get the recognition it deserves hence, increased popularity due to the MS/Novell deal.

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A drive by comment: I do a lot of text editor changes to system files, and I run the command line a lot… I can’t do that CLI and kwrite stuff so easily in Fedora because it kicks about security violations, treats me like a viral infection.

But it’s interesting why ppl end up with a favourite distro, often quite by chance. I discovered Linux only about 5 yrs ago. Tried to install Red hat – it hung. Tried Mandriva, and found you had to pay subscriptions for forum help – more expensive than windows in those days. Tried Debian and could only boot to a console, took me days to discover the command “startx”, amazingly ignorant 5 yrs ago. Then I tried Suse 10.0 and it installed and worked fine – just lucky I guess – and I never left.

I think a a key thing in favour of openSUSE is the quality of the advice on these here forums, and the friendly attitude. Some of those other forums have responders who are so far up themselves that they echo.

13

I told you so! It is DenverD and me. Or DenverD or me. Or some of us others.
In any case we are friendly and swerdna said it, so it must be true.

Hurray for us the openSUSE forums members. :good:

(sorry, I am in a holliday mood)

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Me too, yesterday I flew for 90 mins to this little spot for the weekend, what a jewel: Bowen’s Beaches at Tourism Bowen

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Not bad. Whish you a nice hoolliday. And use the beach to relax, not the computer.

It is a bit far for me. We are off to Wales in a few days.

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swerdna wrote:
> (http://www.tourismbowen.com.au/cms/?page_id=10)

looks GREAT! careful where you step (do NOT step on a nesting turtle!)

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

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So, I guess the general consensus is that I should do whatever it is that pleases me. lol! Now why does not not surprise me? There’s a very high level of tolerance here.

@cjcox, I think what you describe is what I sort of feel in the package. I feels just a little, I don’t know, rough.

@swerdna, Actually, thats how I started with Suse. Looking for a replacement for OS/2. An acquantence gave me a copy of RH something. I could get it installed but couldn’t do anything with it. Startx, ok, now what? So, I tried mostly all the others with more or less success, then ordered a boxed set of Suse 8.1 figuring I could use the professional help. I didn’t need it! As of 9 something, I’ve always had Suse on my machine although I still needed Windows for some things. That’s all gone now and so the only reason Windows is still here is because of my wife, and I’ll bet I don’t need to explain that.

Thanks all for your input.

(Don’t step on nesting turtles?) :? ??

Bart

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On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 20:06 +0000, FizzyFanta wrote:
> cjcox;2202513 Wrote:
> > On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 16:06 +0000, FizzyFanta wrote:
> > openSUSE is VERY popular and AFAIK, more_popular_than_Fedora.
>
> I disagree with your opinion underlined.

Then prove it. :slight_smile:

>
> As for the first part, i think opensuse is a good distribution but will
> never get the recognition it deserves hence, increased popularity due to
> the MS/Novell deal.
>

The only people concerned about Novell’s attempt to protect their
enterprise customer base from Microsoft (as an enemy) are people who
want to politicize this in order to make “their” distribution look
better. Sorry… but that’s the truth…

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cjcox, if we go with distrowatch, then openSUSE is running a consistent 4th place. Ubuntu is 1st and Fedora is 2nd. DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

For the most part, Linux is Linux. So it comes down to taste. One of the things I enjoyed early on with Red Hat 6.x was linuxconf. Gnome-Linuxconf Interface Then with Mandrake it was the Mandrake Control Center, a.k.a. drakconf. Mandriva Control Center - Mandriva Community Wiki But when urpmi burned me badly, then it wasn’t just about nice control centers, but also good package management. Before zypper it was just YaST and rpm, and that worked fairly nicely. But now with zypper…it rocks.

See Fedora has yum, which is written in python, and has a lot of modules. It has a lot of commands and options, of which not a lot are published. Smart package manager beats out yum in at least 2 ways. 1) better package handling. 2) Faster. Now, enter zypper. Zypper in a lot of ways is like smart, except it’s written in C++. Zypper and smart are about the same in speed, and handle packages about the same. Smart may offer a few commands over zypper, but then unless your doing specialized work, zypper is perfect.

20

montana suse user wrote:
> (Don’t step on nesting turtles?) :? ??

first, you had to be able to see i replied directly to swerdna, a fact
you can’t easily see in the web interface (but can easily see in nntp)
and

second, you have to have followed the link in his post that i replied
to: http://www.tourismbowen.com.au/cms/?page_id=10 and

third: you have to have scrolled down in that link, and

finally: you “get it”!

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]