breaker of stuff, destroyer of things

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I’ve been on opensuse for about 3-4 days and all i can say is awesome. simply put its the best linux I’ve ever used desktop wise.

Fyi - this is an opinion post, no stats, facts, etc.

Look

From jump opensuse has ubuntu beat look and feel wise, yes even mint linux. I use gnome and seriously its just sexy. From the installer to the taskbar opensuse 11 just looks good, better than windows imho.

package management

The hardest part of the transition is yast. Yast is the package manager / do everything on openSuse. My biggest complain with yast is how slow it is when first adding repos and how slow it is in general. While it maybe slow I find yast much more user friendly that Synaptic.

Also you can modify the /etc/zypp/zypp.conf to only update every 24 hours. I have a cron that runs while i sleep to handle this via zypper (like apt for opensuse). The only thing i miss from ubuntu is apt’s speed.

Software, software, hell yeah

All I can say is holy F* the software on opensuse is SO much better. yes you could prob compile most of it oon ubuntu or find a repo that has it… but why? I have only the basic repos installed on opensuse and its all i need.

Dual screen - the right way

On ubuntu dual screens work. I figured it was a linux related fact that dual screens on ubuntu wasn’t that great: I was wrong. openSuse was just a bit less work, and a hell of alot better than vista, xp, or ubuntu in terms of dual screens. my workspace functions as one workspace across both desktops. In ubuntu they were treated as seperate and my secondary screen was treated like ubuntu had a grude against it.

same application / better features

openSuse has better applications hands down. the same application in ubuntu had less eye candy, a fewer tweaks. In some cases ubuntu didn’t even mention or include certain packages at all. main point: Wine doors. Why this package wasn’t reccommended when I installed wine is beyond me.

isn’t opensuse for power users?

Most of the time when you read about opensuse on the web the word power users appears somewhere. I can’t imagine why people would say opensuse is more for power users. Yes the inital yast setup maybe a bit confusing to a new user, or hell and old one migrating, but seriously? opensuse is completely user friendly. I’m barely in a terminal other than for installing here and there, ssh, and just because i’m stupid like that.

If i were to give a new user an os I’d have to pick opensuse hands down.

Stability

Ubuntu is unstable - there i said it. if anyone feels different then tell me why a linux system would literally go to crap the way i’ve expreinced ubuntu to do on two occasions. I honestly went back to vista because i needed stability - pun intended.

Its only been a few days and a couple of reboots, so time will tell how stable opensuse remains, but I doubt it could beat ubuntu’s nose dives.

This is what I remember

I’ll admit that previous to switching to ubuntu I hadn’t used a desktop linux since 02-04. Alots changed since then. openSuse feels more like what I remembered. I’m sure that, and the majority of this rant, seems pretty vague. but when I opened a terminal I auomaticly remembered sitting on an old dell trying out different versions of linux. It just feels right is the best way to put it.

so yeah the point is I like openSuse. I’m glad I tried ubuntu, but it just doesn’t seem mature enough yet.

Sid out