Mrk. Review on opensuse 13.1, please!

I have finally managed to get OpenSUSE 13.1 installed along Windows XP and Windows 7.
The OS behaves ok ,i was able to add Packman as repository and install afterwards XBMC and Audacious just fine.
Tomorrow i will continue with the rest.
I can t say nothing negative about this OS yet regarding the usage of it as a desktop.
Network connectivity for the wired connection worked just fine via Yast manager.

 

Almost success with OpenSUSE 13.1

So i have installed Steam via one click install from the OpenSUSE website ,the latest experimental one .Then followed the onscreen and accepted the repository and in the end i had a nice Steam interface.Installed Day of Defeat Source that worked on a previous machine with OpenSUSE 12.2.

Starting the game gave me a texture error so i ended up installing the AMD proprietary driver as well.
So downloaded the Catalyst 13.11 beta unziped it ,gave it read execute ,runned it as a Windows executable, it installed the driver and OpenGL acceleration is as it should be for the game to run.

Day of Defeat Source runs good on 5600K i would say ,but there is a problem ,no in game sound for the moment.2 sound cards installed (3 in fact with the APU one) and this may be an issue for the game.
Had this strange bug with OpenSUSE 12.2 same game ,but Steam updated itself re-downloaded the game patched it and it worked at that time.

So performance wise AMD driver has enhanced with OpenSUSE 13.1 over OpenSUSE 12.2

If anyone uses this proprietary AMD drivers be informed that some kernel updates may brake OpenGL acceleration so think twice before updating from now on.

I gave this OS a 9 out of 10.I run music movies and now games just fine.
Excellent for normal PC users.
64 bit installed here ,32 bit may behave better overall.

 

Does 1click install work for proprietary drivers work yet?

 

Re: openSUSE 13.1 - It could have been awesome

Aaaahhhh...

You missed out on this awesome feature that takes advantage of btrfs snapshots.
It's called snapper and it offers rollback functionality. (Rollback from OpenSUSE 13.1 to Fedora 20!)

Check out the videos: http://snapper.io/

Anyway, I think that btrfs is great, the end of partitioning drama (too small / wasted space / no spare partition available, etc) nightmare.
And UEFI already ended MBR booting drama, enjoy drama free computing!

 

I did not, i had two tutorials on btrfs and snapper a year back
Mrk

 

@Mrkvonic Nice review. Did you experience any crashes after installation? I tried openSUSE years ago and always had problems finding codecs for it, so I gave up.
Been using Slackware here for about 6 or 7 years and it never crashes and the codecs are easy to find.
When I use Debian on my other computer I never have any have crashes either.
They are both very stable systems.

 

No crashes since ... the test box has been reinstalled, though.
In a vm, it's all stable so far.
Mrk

 

Thank you.

 

I am using OpenSUSE 13.1 as a Gateway/NAT+Multimedia machine for some time now.
Using it alternately with Ubuntu LTS +Zentyal.

Practically this AMD FM2 5300(one module/2 cores) based machine does in same time Firewalling/NAT + multimedia (music+movies in any format except BD discs).
So yo can watch a .mkv file while your family is doing websurf/PC gaming or whatever on a different PC.
If needed one can add some servers to use ,no need to use a stupid SOHO Router.

Compared to the Ubuntu+Zentyal combination seems to a be a little more steady.Zentyal has the habbit to drop logging for some reason from time to time.Zentyal has the advantage of easy remote config as on any soho router though ,but most of the free packages are quite buggy or limited.

Compared to the OpenSuse 12.2 the network configuring was a little strange ,as what i was doing in 12.2 ,to make it forward packets, did not worked identically to 13.1.
Some strange bugs were crashing configuring from Yast.Nevertheless untill the end when the "right order" was identified it worked ,with the DSL config made first ,then updating and making the network adjustments for the 3 network cards.

Overall it seems a little more speedy network wise.Add to this the fact that the desktop runs just fine ,Compiz efects like desktop cube switching or the gelatinoid window behavior.
This efects are not activated by default so you will need to cofigure the effects for yourself.The default driver runs them just fine.

A great free OS that gets the job done 24/7 ,only minus is the lack of BlueRay playing as the needed codecs are yet to be found ,neither vlc, neither xine or kaffeine played my original discs ,so for multimedia this is the only drawback.
For music i recommend Audacious and not amarok ,this is the Foobar of linux it seems

If you want to game keep in mind that updates may brake the proprietary drivers so make a back up before or uninstall and reinstall after updates.The worst would be the OS not loading desktop in this case.

So if you want a really nice desktop for free get it ,install it ,play with it.It s over windows 8 in my opinion and the desktop efects are the best i ve seen in an OS.

Runs along Windows just fine as described in some other thread.

I am running it in a real environment for weeks with minor issues.

So install it ;select the right/needed components to install ;configure the external network interface ; update ;configure network gateway if used (firewall ,dhcp ,dns, ntp ,samba servers) ;switch to packman via Yast ;install vlc audacious, xine ,xbmc ,etc ;add the dvdcss repository for DVD playback ;then configure desktop effects ,mouse and so on and enjoy the result.

No crash yet in days of usage.

 

I thought I would comment in here. I've been running openSUSE for about a month now and while I find Mrk's reviews usually fairly accurate I don't think it was the case with this distro. After installation of all updates, I got a very stable, fast and reliable Linux. I've have had no crashes and no freezes. And with Mrk's pimping guide, i was able to run anything that I throw at it.
Also Skype is now working out of the box. No need to tweak anything.

So what I think this distro needs is a grade before and after updates.

 

New updates arrived in big waves in the last few weeks ,still running steady on the HTPC.
The Compiz effects run much better after this updates.
Great free OS.