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http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04507

 

Give it a whirl, great distro and OS.

 

Use this page for your favourite download method:

 

http://software.opensuse.org/

 

Edit: I recommend the 32 bit version to everybody. There are various reason for this choice.

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I first used SuSE many years ago, back before they distributed it on DVD even, it came on many CDs (4 or 5?) and haven't used many versions since then. To be honest, I find all the mainstream distros bloated these days, Fedora is the worst!

 

Even Ubuntu isn't that lightweight (though at least Ubuntu with core apps is still a single CD-job). I expect 2-3GB disk usage for a Windows install, but Linux should be more lightweight than that!

 

Anyway, the reason I like Ubuntu is that their restricted modules manager means that on fairly standard hardware, everything works out of the box with no hastle, like a proper OS. Power management works well on laptops, right down to speedstep wooking from the get-go and integration of things like Network Manager mean using 802.11 under Linux isn't like being cast back to the stonage, and WPA, RADIUS, etc are no problem. 7.10 isn't even in release candidate, yet it's already the most stable, featurecomplete distro I've used to date. I've never had such an easy time with other distros, which is why I used to go for Gentoo; I figured if I was going to have to go half way, I may as well do it all...

 

Edit: By the way, is SuSE still anti-Gnome, because I can't stand KDE? It's too much like Windows and too slooooow!

Edit: By the way, is SuSE still anti-Gnome, because I can't stand KDE? It's too much like Windows and too slooooow!

 

No. YaST has now a native GTK interface, and SLED 10 has Gnome as default DE.

However their KDE is arguably still the most polished.

 

I first used SuSE many years ago, back before they distributed it on DVD even, it came on many CDs (4 or 5?)

 

7 CDs (for instance SuSE 7.2)

Ugh... How can you like KDE... It's like Windows, only even slower and less logical!

 

The only thing I find Illogical about KDE is how a lot of times you will have a KDE control center and a control center provided by your distribution.

I just don't like it... Going from Vista to OS X or Gnome on my Ubuntu install on this machine is always a breath of fresh air; so much more responsive, even with Compiz running with full effects. Opening apps just happens, and I don't feel like I'm waiting for the computer. KDE, on the other hand, feels just as stuck in the mud (I'd describe it as 'laggy') as Vista :P

 

Plus, it seems to have a similar logic to the construction of the interface to Windows. Gnome, in my mind at least, 'feels' more like Classic Mac OS. I know some of you shudder at that thought, but I prefer it to Windows or KDE in every way. Ubuntu gutsy is my main OS on this machine. It would probably be OS X but for the lack of X3100 drivers. Windows only gets started when I need to do something with my iPod (which is bizarrely unreliable in Linux; I think it's a kernel USB bug as others have reported similar experiences, and those who had the option fixed it by switching to 1394. Unfortunately, I have a 5G so that's not an option :D)

  • 2 weeks later...
I really don't see whats so ugly about Windows....Sure its buggy and stuff but the GUI isn't bad.

 

Well, I must honestly admit that the Windows GUI is one of the best. Everything makes sense.

What is bad about Windows is the Kernel, the Registry, the DLL Hell...

And KDE is a clear improvement over the Windows GUI.

I've installed it, and it looked very "ready". It was consistent, nice, but needed accomodation, especially YaST. Evrey piece of hardware worked flawlessly, the KDE desktop looked well, nice, however, as pcwiz said its interface was not the best i've seen. I'm a GNOME guy, maybe others like it.

Installation was SLOW. Its advanced options are hidden, some menu items are confusing. This is a flaw I observed at Yast as well. No Live-CD mode at the single KDE CD version. Nice hi-res bootscreen, subtle verbose mode, cosistent interface all over the OS. The wizard-based approach is easy to use, but slow and the window size is big while the window itself carrying a lot of blank space. Package management is slow and many times unresponsive. Had to add repository to install nvidia drivers. It was a nice touch to incude the oxygen icon theme.

Dual booting is problematic. I found dual booting with Windows Vista Ultimate impossible, as suse's GRUB f***ed up my master boot record, Vista bootup halted and demanded the installation DVD to repair itself. After inserting the DVD and getting to the "Repair Computer" section, the setup wizard found no(!) operating systems installed on my PC. Unbeliavable. I didn't give up. Went through reinstalling openSUSE. Same problem. Reinstall GRUB. Same. Use LILO as boot manager. No Vista. WINLOAD.EXE corrupted. No OS recognized, so coudn't repair computer.

Well in Linux, community always has an answer. Not this time, as after googlin' I found out that many people had the same problem, however, nobody pointed to the right direction. SUSE forums demanded me to registrate to use the forum search. Didn't registrate, instead used Googe Advanced Search wich showed up one single topic about it (believe me, I tried several quieries, but showing this result only) but without having a solution.

After hours of hopeless searching, I've decided to reinstall my distro which has always been there and saved several of my windows installs: Ubuntu, in this case 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Formatted my openSUSE partitions and installed it on them. Reboot. Good ol' black'n'white GRUB showed up. I've selected Vista. Demanded to insert setup DVD. Now it found my Vista installation and repaired my computer in no time. Ubuntu brought my Vista and all my settings back. I was lucky: I had an important InDesign project to complete due to the next day. But it was pure luck. I found no useable Support section, and no community help either.

OpenSUSE was a nice experience tho and looked nice too. Too bad it's resource-heavy, slow and unusable for dual-boot. Too bad for such a professional distro. Now I use Ubuntu. It has nice little touches and it paches usability holes found in openSUSE like driver instalation, startup application managing and so on. I will try again with openSUSE sometimes next week, when I don't have to use Windows that much. Maybe. openSUSE was nice. It lasted one night on my PC.

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