OpenSuse, An alternative to Ubuntu.

Rich43 · 22 Oct 2007 at 23:41

I think this is a really nice well polished distro, Nvidia drivers were a breeze to install.. All I did was download a simple xml file from their website and double click.. wham bam and its installed! Compiz runs real smooth, it uses XGL and doesnt have the slow window resizing problems of Ubuntu.

The installer is more complex/comprehensive than Ubuntu's (good thing imho), You can set up a software raid on your drives if your not happy with your motherboard's.

Theres a good variety of software/packages, I havn't had to touch the terminal (So many GUI tools that you never need it!).

It installs Macromedia Flash and Sun Java during the installation process, so that just works out the box.

I could go on...

And now for screen shot and link.

Get it at:
http://software.opensuse.org/

Live CD/DVD and Install CD/DVD is available, I have not tried the Live CD/DVD yet.

Rich43 · 22 Oct 2007 at 23:48

Package Management software was developed in house by novell and it is very good and user friendly!

Theres one big third party repo called PackMan and it recently merged with another 3rd party repo, so its even bigger! OpenSuse 10.3 should have all the Linux apps you need. You can enable it with a GUI tool (Titled: Community Repositorys) that comes with OpenSuse in its control center.

I've only been using it for a few hours but I am very impressed!, I have a 600GB linux software raid set up too! It nips along very quickly!

Rich43 · 28 Oct 2007 at 20:06

I have a problem with Ubuntu.. In 7.10, the installer has poor support for RAID/Linux Software mdadm raid. OpenSuse did it easy with its installer. I am planning to test debian's testing release. Fedora is very strict about being free, so nvidia drivers and other things are a pain on it.

OpenSuse 10.3 should fix a lot of your previous problems with suse.

Rich43 · 28 Oct 2007 at 20:23

Rainmaker said:
Rich, if you enable the Livna repo for Fedora 7 you only need to do:

Code:

yum -y install kmod-nvidia

Or just search for kmod-nvidia in Pirut or Yumex or whatever GUI you use. Livna's packaged drivers are awesome and include a "buffer" app (display configuration tool) bewteen the driver and the kernel to avoid any boo-boos happening. Easy peasy

I had problems with that, some new kernel updates clashed with the old version of the module. Isnt it better to have a distribution that more officially supports the drivers?
I guess I would have had to wait for the 3rd party repo guys to catch up.