Re: Suse vs OpenSuse

From: David Wright (david_c_wright_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/18/05 

Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:43:30 +0200

Michel Catudal wrote:

<snip>
> It all depends what is important for you. If you enjoy having suseplugger
> crash at almost every boot then SuSE 9.3 would be considered better
> otherwise you would consider SuSE 10 to be better

Never had SuSEPlugger crash on 9.3, so sounds like it is something specific
to your configuration...

> So far the only reason I am using version 9.3 over 10 is that version 10
> has some issues compiling some of the programs I need and I found that
> just installing packman files was an easier approach. The drawback is
> that I have to do a kill on the gnome desktop and then kill dcopserver,
> kdeinit and erase .DCOP* and then reload gnome. If that doesn't do the
> trick I have to do it all over again. Another work around is not to
> reboot the machine.

I've never needed to compile anything with SuSE - apart from the ATi
drivers, but they didn't work anyway. And I've never had a problem with the
Gnome desktop locking up either (or having to be killed), the only thing
I've noticed is that the "taskbar" items appear in windows instead of on
the taskbar occassionally, but apart from that it behaves itself.

> If I didn't have that problem I would say that Version 10 is much better
> than version 9.3
> I am looking forward to the release of version 10 which seems to deal
> with a lot of problems that were introduced in version 9.3

Apart from the ATi driver problem (graphics chip was only on the market for
about a month when I tried to install SuSE on te laptop, so the drivers
didn't cover it), I haven't seen any problems with 9.3. 10.0 does however
have some nice touches and the default colour scheme looks more
professional than 9.3 IMHO.
 
> There are few outstanding bugs though that are not likely be be fixed
> in version 10.
>
> 1-When choosing French as the language during installation it defaults
> to the AZERTY keyboard whether or not you have choosen an AZERTY keyboard.
> Choosing a US Keyboard goes around the problem. It is very annoying
> to have a keyboard where you have no clue where some important keys are.

Same with German, I would guess with other languages as well. If you select
a different language, I guess it will assume that you will also be using
the keyboard for that language, for probably 95% of users it saves them the
step of changing the keyboard from the default US to the default for the
language they've chosen. As I've never owned a PC with a US keyboard, I
would feel it very egotistical if, upon changing language the keyboard
didn't change for that language as well, but as SuSE is a European based
distribution, I guess it has a better world view than some ;-)

> 2-By default the gnome install doesn't allow going to the console with
> ctrl alt F2 (or other function keys). This is extremely infuriating.
> Whoever made the decision for that default should be shot.

I don't use Gnome that much and the console even less frequently, although I
have found that certain keyboards (newer Microsoft keyboards) and certain
KVM's (E.g. Belkin) don't support the switching to the consoles.

> 3-The cursors keys on the right of the keyboard don't work in most
> applications. The numbers are entered no matter what the status of Num is.
> It works correctly in some applications but doesn't in most. The keyboard
> driver should obey the status of the Num key and not act as an obnoxious
> *** by overridding the choices of the owner of the computer.

Currently running under KDE and the KDE and Gnome applications here obey the
num lock status. Not going to switch whilst typing this message, so can't
answer about Gnome. As the first thing I do with a PC is switch on the num
lock and use the cursor pad for moving the cursor (using the num pad
reminds me too much of the bad old IBM PC days ;-) ) I haven't tried it
before now, so can't really comment on this issue.

> 4-An upgrade blows the MBR, there is no option to keep that from happening
> and a boot on PC Dos and fdisk /mbr is needed to restore the sanity of the
> computer after an upgrade to any SuSE version.
<snip>

I don't have any dual boot machines, so I can't comment on this. (Well the
only dual boot machine has swappable boot disks.)

> 5-The permissions aren't set correctly for video and audio access. The
> PC is basically crippled until you fix that. Running under root or not
> using the sound or video are not acceptable options.
>

Again, never touched video and audio settings, but currently listening to
streaming Radio 7 and often watch videos or DVD's with a standard user. The
default settings seem perfectly adequate.

Most of the problems you've mentioned have never cropped up here (5
different machines, 2x Athlon, 1x AMD64, 1x P-III and 1x P4-M, each with
different BIOS's and support chips).

It sounds more like there are some problems with your installation or
configuration in particular as opposed to 9.3 or 10.0 in particular. I'm
not saying that there aren't any problems with SuSE or Linux (ATi drivers
are a complete pain in the neck still for example), but most of the issues
you've raised either don't exist on a "normal" comfiguration, or are aimed
at making life easier for international users...

Dave