OpenSuse, An alternative to Ubuntu.

I used openSUSE for a few months but returned to Ubuntu in the end. Can't stand YAST package management and had to add so many extra repos.

Having said that it is a very nice distro, but I've been using Ubuntu for the best part of 2 years now, so it's a nice familiar place to be.
 
We have openSUSE on the lab PCs. We used to have Fedora but we've now changed to openSUSE for some reason. Its OK but I think I'd prefer Ubuntu. Perhaps its just the stupidly low resolution really annoys me! Grr. :D
 
brummie said:
I didnt say you was bashing anything. i did say you gave up on Suse and ubuntu because you couldnt get software to work. Its not their fault and i was trying to make that point and that point only. i was trying help and see if we could have identified the problem rather than we give up on things. :rolleyes:
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Fair play mate, I wasn't having a go either. I went through a few weeks of troubleshooting with various "gurus" (their term, not mine - hence the quotes) on the OpenSUSE forum and Ubuntu etc.

It's just that for every genuinely helpful person (like yourself) who helped me try to discover the cause (for Bugzilla) I got at least one other giving me the "Ubuntu/Suse/Debian/Obscuredistroyouneverheardof 0.1 is awesome, you're just stupid" speech. Seeing as I've been Windows free for a long while now, and I know my way around *nix, it just wound me up. Those types of folks (distro kiddies) just don't seem to 'get' that Linux is Linux is Linux - who cares what distro/GUI you use so long as it's what works for you?

I'm maybe a bit defensive after that experience mate, so - sorry :)

It's been a couple of months since I fdisked the hdd and added F7 so I don't have *buntu or OpenSUSE to go through any trouble shooting any more. The best "we" (me, OpenSUSE devs, Ubuntu devs) could come up with was a conflict between the in-built ALSA modules and the gfx modules. Once Flash loaded (a la YouTube) the card kicked up and boom - bye bye Firefox.

Oh well. As I said I'm still looking forward to trying 10.3 once a live DVD is out, and have already installed Gutsy on my brother's PC (my baby sister is a PITA for collecting malware - every time I visit home I spend more hours fixing their PC than visiting family!). It was nothing against the distros, just that I couldn't get it working for me, and the bits that were broke were fairly "mission critical" in our house :D

Cheers.
 
Not sure mate. I've been keeping an eye on OpenSUSE's download page but nothing's up yet. I know you can modify the install disc to make it live-bootable, but meh - I'm not in that much of a rush :D I think the live images are usually a month or so behind the install discs, so shouldn't be too long now.
 
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.
 
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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 :D
 
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 :D
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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.
 
It's not a case of clashing or having to catch up, but rather of being prepared :) If they (Livna - or any other repo come to that) made available the updated kernel BEFORE the gfx module was available in the repo, everyone would end up with a new kernel and no GUI. It's a safety mechanism to make sure all updated modules (gfx, wifi etc) are propagated across the mirrors before the new kernel comes out.

You can add a yum plugin to ignore these "orphaned" modules until the kernel is available to go with it. Just do:

Code: 
yum -y install yum-skip-broken yum-fedorakmod yum-kernel-module

Now you'll only ever see updates which can actually be installed (i.e. you'll never see the "broken/incomplete" updates, but they'll appear again when the matching kernel comes out). Sorted :D
 
Yup just found the live images a couple of days ago. Nice release, but I didn't get on with it as well as I do with Fedora and Mint. F8 is out today - waiting!...
 
I just tried that and the mandriva one for a client and both have problems dealing with unpartitioned space for some reason :(
 
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