Mrk. Review on opensuse 13.1, please!

The title says it! I'm pretty sure you'd do this review anyway - But I'm just impatient and excited to read about it.

 

I've installed it and running the x64 XFCE desktop environment since yesterday. Other than a couple little glitches it's been stable and very responsive. It's getting 3 years of Evergreen maintenance, so that's good too. But I fully agree a review from Mrk would be really nice

 

How does this compare to Debian or Ubuntu?

 

Well, it's definitely more of a "serious" or "business-like" distro than those two, especially Ubuntu. It's early so I haven't dug into many of the features available from the Yast panel. Truth be told, I don't know what a lot of them do, LOL! My needs are really simple so I haven't the initiative, at least yet, to research them more. Over time I'll probably check some of them out and see if anything interests me.

 

IMHO, debian based distros have the best package management mechanism. My vote goes to Ubuntu due to its usability and features.

 

Yes Ubuntu is very good. Might use it again.

 

In terms of overall polish, it's pretty good, similar to Ubuntu etc. They also do a really nice KDE, if you like KDE. In general, it's usually pretty well done. As mentioned though, totally different package management system from .deb.

 

A huge draw for me to opensuse is becuase my experience of 12.3 was a professional distro with a KDE thats been very polished. Also, I don't want to feel like i need to check blog posts about the latest ubuntu drama to see if it will affect me. With opensuse it seems as if I can install it, and use linux\suse without worry knowing i have a topnotch backing behind it.

But at the end of the day... I'm a distro hopper. and i hate it! i really gotta settle down on one



EDIT:. P.S. I havent used 13.1, only 12.3

 

I have been bitten by the Gnome bug
I have hopped from LMDE to Ubuntu Gnome to Fedora to Linux Mint 16 and have arrived here at openSUSE 13.1.
I'm now dual booting alongside LMDE, have gotta say I find Gnome much more fun to use and a lot prettier than Cinammon.
Up to now I'm finding openSUSE a pleasure to use

 

has anyone had any luck getting 13.1 onto a USB? i've tried unetbootin and univeral USB installer

 

I often find that opensuse is the most difficult to get on to a USB. Have you tried the opensuse image writer? Sometimes this works although it didn't work for me on the 13.1RC and i had to burn it to a disc in the end.

 

I used the USB writing tool in LMDE, I generally use Unetbootin but for some reason I didn't on this occasion.
http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/usb-creator

hope this helps.

 

Check here

 

I can't understand why openSuse is placing the Grub 2 bootloader on the extended partition when I'm explicitely choosing the MBR (Change-> Booting-> <enable checkbox> Boot from Master Boot Record) during the installation?? Does anyone know why this is happening? Does it seem to be a bug? BTW, if I change the boot flag to the MBR it will still boot fine from the Grub 2 menu. It seems as though suse is installing Grub to both the MBR and extended partition??

 

Yes, it does that - has always done that.
Mrk

 

Oh...ok..so I suppose it's normal? As you can see with this second screenshot I've made the primary ntfs active with the boot flag and as I alluded to previously, it still boots to the same Grub 2 menu as before. It makes no difference to the way this dual-boot setup boots. That seems really odd to me, and why I think the Grub 2 is installed on both partitions.

Oh well, it's not a showstopper at least

 

I haven t experimented to much with 13.1 ,but OpenSUSE is almost flawless in KDE.
OpenSUSE 12.2 router/HTPC machine running for days/weeks with no stability issues on a FM 2 AMD APU.
I would use the KDE environment with it.

 

I didn't get around to trying kde yet. Tried Gnome yesterday, hated it, so went back to xfce which I have imaged. I'll probably give the kde version a try soon. What I like about xfce is it's so fast and stable on my hardware.

 

Here's the latest blogspot review on it...

...this oughta whet Mrk's appetite to review it

 

openSUSE 13.1 - It could have been awesome

Done, reviewed.

I've written a long, mostly negative review of openSUSE 13.1 Bottle 64-bit edition with KDE desktop, tested on a laptop with Nvidia drivers in a dual-boot configuration, covering live session, installation and post-install usage, including a most beautiful desktop, look & feel, notifications, Wireless, Samba, partitioning, customization, updates, community repositories, one-click installation attempts, multimedia playback - MP3 and Flash, applications, resource usage, and many problems like low free space in the live session, numerous crashes, slow network connectivity, no touchpad utility, problems on resume from sleep, missing proprietary drivers in the repositories, inconsistent and unpredictable updates and installations of software, missing codecs, certificate problems, no printing to Windows devices, various other bugs and glitches, and more.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/opensuse-13-1.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Your statement gave me a good laugh...so thanks for that...

Trying out different distros is great fun, but I have found myself rethinking my decision about whether to install this or that version here lately. It's just too much trouble to go to only to be disappointed ultimately. KDE is out and I hate Gnome 3...so any distro I may decide to try has to offer a new approach to the usual Gnome 3 DE. I've downloaded the latest Deepin and plan to try it out one day next week.

I use to think of myself as a "whore of distros" a few years ago when I was distro hopping really bad, but not so much anymore. BTW, don't be surprised if RonJor censors this paragraph for my language used. He did the last time I used it. Well....at least it'll give him something to do. .

Later...

 

Thanks for the review, Mrk!

well I guess this just illustrates how hardware can make either a great distro experience or a terrible one. Maybe the de (desktop environment) has something to do with it too? Honestly, I'm extremely pleased with 'suse 13.1 using the spartan and efficient xfce de on my 2006 hardware. I don't need or want the eye candy like I used to. A result of getting old, I guess

BTW, at idle, cpu sits around 3% with memory use in the single digits!

 

Lol Mark destroyed opensuse. Good review as usual.

 

His name isn't Mark. Only hint: initials are "IL"

 

I will install it on a main machine myself and see how it goes.
I never believe until i do myself.
It can t be that bad ,i did some installs and the desktop was looking good.

Even if it has some bugs now they will be ironed out quite fast ,it will be a long support version ,keep in mind.
The excellent support for AMD APU-s that i own ,that allows me to use directly 1920X1080 resolution with no driver is a great feature in my opinion.

LE:Installed it from a DVD x64 bit with all the needed libraries on a AMD FM2 5600K APU based system with a A75 chipset Gigabyte motherboard.Tomorrow i ll start install some stuff in it and see if Packman repositories are up and running for the goodies( Audacious ,XBMC ,VLC and many others) to work.
Installed it on a dual boot system ,XP and WIndows7 installed prior.Network is working and updates have been installed.
There is theoretically no need for proprietary AMD video drivers with this one as the kernel has patches included to reach a lot of potential.
Suspend exists as many other features related to desktop customizing specific to KDE desktops.

Keep in mind that his OpenSUSE works with X-Fi sound cards by default opposed to other distroes.

After one day or more of playing around i ll post my impressions.If you want full experience install from the DVD ,live discs will not show to much.
But if it s first time ,use a blank HDD play with the partitioning and then go final.
Network worked just fine if set up from within Yast -> Network ,just complete the info needed and enable the firewall for the interface in there.