openSUSE 11.4 rocks despite missing GNOME openSUSE 11.4 brings a host of KDE and GNOME updates, the first release of OpenOffice fork LibreOffice, and numerous speed improvements. Perhaps the biggest news, though, is what's not included. That would be GNOME 3.0. Unfortunately for openSUSE fans, the distro's release schedule just didn't quite mesh with GNOME's, so …
The choice of KDE and GNOME versions is set only by our timed release policy, every 8 months, not our default desktop. Since the desktops have a 6 month cycle this means that sometimes we miss one of their releases - for 11.3 we missed KDE 4.5.0 by a small margin. The next openSUSE will feature GNOME 3.2. Since people value stability, we don't ship betas of entire desktops (insert KDE 4.0 joke here if you must, but we shipped 3.5 too in that release).
Since the official demo live media for both GNOME 3 (http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html) and KDE (http://home.kde.org/~kdelive/) are based on openSUSE, a lot of people are getting the latest desktops along with a dose of SUSE.
'Go' because if you poke yourself in the eye, it looks like a SUSE logo.
Like Mandriva, SuSE chooses to release often and broken. This massive myriad of Linux distros in general is not improving quality. I stick to the RHEL dervied distros, its not perfect, but its way more stable - doesnt crash, and the ABI/kABI remain stable over time.
SuSE and Ubuntu LTS and most other distros are like the wild-west bazaar paradigm - chaos.
SuSE 11.3 actually BRICKED on of the motherboards I ran it on.
Sorry, I might have a few niggles about openSUSE 11.3 but bricking PCs isn't one of them. I'll admit that the majority of my systems are at 11.2 but the one netbook I own ran 11.3 all last year and apart from a niggle with the mousepad and NetworkManager, it worked fine. I have one particular system that regular runs for days on end under 11.2 and its predecessor ran similar overnight work on 11.1. In fact I can trace my use of SuSE back to 6.1 and it has never killed any system I used.
I suspect that if anything bricked your motherboard, it was a clear case of PEBCAK.
I have to Stand Up and say, metaphorically speaking, metaphorically, that it would be A big Benefit to other El Reg readers if the Linux users could keep their preferences Under Wraps instead of us having to read their Passion Play out in the comments every time there's a review (and This Was a good one). Don't you all get tired of distro War, children?
Pirate, because even though I'm a penguin it's the closest I get here to a Crest of a Knave, a Broadsword and a Beast.
I was beginning to think that my 8yr old 32bit Athlon 3200 nvidia 6200 system was running out of juice with 11.3 and KDE 4.4
Nope, 11.4, 4.6.1 using nouveau and everything is singing. Deferred a 64 bit upgrade yet again.
Solid, apart from some personal stupidity with a networked HP printer, completely smooth upgrade.
Repositories now blistering speed (not that I actually cared, but a nice to have).
Aside from the obvious software improvements this feels like the best project iteration since I started using 6.3
I shall be using my disused 11.1 machine as an upgrade test before I go into any depth with the live system which is on 11.2. It's a rather outdated single core Celeron. My biggest objection to KDE4 to this point has been its resource hunger which kills the performance on any system I have previously tried it on (at which point I load up the "unsupported" KDE3 repository and load up that which, on 11.2 and 11.3, works well with only a single niggle, that being the NetworkManager system when trying to run a wireless NIC which I normally resolve by switching that side off and dropping back to ifup). If KDE4.6 is as good as you imply, I may finally have loaded my last KDE3!
KDE 4.x: Use a proper central MySQL server for akonadi (absolute must if you have $HOME on NFS) or disable it completely, disable the bloody indexer and it will happily run even on a dead badger as long as the dead badger has a working video card. I had it running acceptably on a 1GHz/1GB G4 PPC (with $HOME ecryptfs encrypted) and a 1.3GHz PentiumM/512MB. Compared to these an Athlon 3200+ is like comparing a Backfire to a lancaster bomber (or even a sopwith camel).
That is my biggest gripe with KDE4 - it tickles every possible bug that there is in the radeon drivers and works quite badly on systems where video is not accelerated (your typical xterm). I ended up switching to xfce4 after 7 years of using KDE as a result. Not happy :(
On the overall - I can see the grand plan with KDE4, I am just not willing to suffer from being a test subject towards it.
It's basically the only problem I seem to have.
I start typing something and suddenly, the focus will be removed from the window I type in, basically going nowhere.
I've got to click in the window again.
Sort of totally ruins the experience....
Also, having the 3d-effects enabled by default is not a good idea on systems that are too weak to handle them.
"openSUSE 11.4 rocks despite missing GNOME"
It's not missing GNOME. GNOME is included.
"Perhaps another reason for GNOME 3's absence is that KDE is the default openSUSE desktop. "
Speculative comments like this seem unnecessary given that there's a very obvious and simple reason why GNOME 3 isn't included. GNOME 3 isn't yet released.
I have tested OpenSuse 11.4 with the KDE desktop. Looks nice but I had some problem with Yast2. It krashed. And I was not able to find "aMSN" there. So you must look for repo sources where it is.
If I want to use a distribution that include Firefox 4 and LibreOffice I must say PARDUS 2011 is the best avaible choice at the moment for a ordinary home user if I want to use a single operating system installed in the hardrive.
But maybe "Linux power users" prefeer OpenSuse.
I do understand that Fedora jumped the gun on KDE4 several years ago, and the KDE4 devs protested that they did not consider their new desktop ready for prime time.
Still I am glad that 4.6 is available in a mainstream distro... 4.4 is perhaps 60% of the way to matching the customizability of 3.5.x, I expect 4.6 closes the gap more.
I seriously doubt an OS can brick a mobo. Perhaps you do not understand what 'brick' means?
As for OpenSuSE, have used it since 9.1 and the only problem I have ever had was in 10.1 where g++ was a bit flakey under certain circumstances. But that was fixed in short order by an OpenSuSE update.
Google 'OpenSUSE NVIDIA repository".
If you use ATI or NV proprietary driver then every kernel upgrade needs upgraded/rebuilt graphics kernel module. THat's just the nature of Linux. But the above google will find you explanation of how to set up a repo that will update your NV driver at the same time as the kernel.
If I wanted a kitchen sink bloated windows manager I would use M$ windows. Only killer app imho from KDE is K3B but even its not worth 100 meg plus of libraries just to use. Many true geeks consider gnome bloated (xfce is a very tolerable windows manager under OpenBSD on usb stick fyi) but my god KDE is an order of magnitude worse than that.
Please, can we think of a more misleading title? Gnome was there in the Live SUSE 11.4 I downloaded and tested. Just an earlier version, that's all. But you got my attention.
I'd like to make a one sentence rant about all the childish K-names in KDE? I'm sure the developers are proud of their work, but Konquerer, KMail, Konsole, KWord and KSpread are very much off-putting. Sorry, but I cannot take KDE seriously, no matter how wonderful it might be. This is the sort of software-naming nonsense that inhibits Linux distros from being more generally accepted for use in business. The plethora of distros does not help either. Too damned many egos, I guess. And too many revenue streams damaged if the number of distros was cut down... Ben
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