I have only installed this so far on my Samsung NF310 netbook, but there were no problems or surprises with that installation. Keep in mind that this is a pre-release (Beta) distribution, and should not be installed on any production systems, as it is still quite rough around the edges. But if you are interested in seeing how openSuSE 12.1 is coming along, and perhaps getting a quick look at Gnome 3, this is a good opportunity.
The Gnome 3 Application menus, accessed by clicking "Activities" in the upper left corner, or by moving the mouse cursor to the extreme upper left corner, or by simply pressing the "Windows" key (or whatever the "politically correct" name for that key is) looks like this:
If you are familiar with Gnome 3 already, please forgive my repeating the description of this menu. The column at the right side of the screen contains the "categories" of menus, roughly the same as what used to be on the top panel of Gnome 2. The bar at the left side of the screen is a quick-launch area, roughly the same as panel icons in Gnome 2. Menu items can be added to (or removed from) the favorites bar by right-clicking the item in the menu list. So depending on how you look at it, this is not all that different from the Gnome 2 menu system, other than the way you initially access it.
The other major control screen in Gnome 3 is "Windows" (and desktops/workspaces):
When there are no open windows (applications), there will be only one workspace; as soon as at least one window is open, Gnome 3 will create another empty workspace. You can select between the workspaces by clicking them on the right side of the screen, and any windows assigned to those workspaces will show up on this screen then (including minimized windows). You can then select the window you want by clicking it here.
One other small note about Gnome 3 functionality, concerning removable media such as USB sticks. They have moved in a direction that is similar to what KDE does with this; when you connect a removable device, an info/action bar comes up at the bottom of the screen where you can open a File Manager on the new device:
Once that bar is gone, there is a new little icon at the bottom left of the screen - although it seems to auto-hide when I move my cursor away from it - which you can click to get an "eject" option for the removable device:
That seems like a reasonably clean and useful implementation to me.
So, if you are curious about the upcoming openSuSE release, or about Gnome 3, now is a good time to download the beta release and give it a try.
jw 3/10/2011
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Jamie, I haven't really looked at openSUSE since 11.2. At the time it didn't stand out too much from the distributions that I usually prefer. What features would you think differentiate it from Fedora (on the GNOME 3 side), or Linux Mint? I'm going to be looking at several major distributions during the next two months but hadn't planned on openSUSE being one of them. If it's improved a lot, I'll check it out.
Fedora 16 beta just came out, and when that hits RC I was going to use it until Mint 12 is released. Right now I'm (finally) giving Mageia 1.0 a try.
@Thomas Gellhaus - To be honest, until recently I had felt pretty much the same way about openSuSE - nothing that really stood out to make me interested in it, and a few significant problems/difficulties that ended up just making it a bit more trouble than it was worth to try to use it on a daily basis. But then I found that they were the first - and still the only - distribution to get the Synaptic ClickPad on my HP dm1 netbook completely right, so I started using openSuSE on that more regularly. What I have seen since then is that they really are doing a good job of integrating the latest developments and cleaning up a lot of residual issues that had put me off.
Ah, here is a good example. I just loaded the Fedora Beta on my Samsung NF310 netbook. openSuSE has had the Broadcom brcm80211 in their 11.4 distribution for a VERY long time, they were one of the first to include it, and they have the newer brcmsmac driver in the 12.1 distribution. That means it works without problem on all of my netbooks (the Samsung NF310, Lenovo S10-3s and Samsung N150 Plus all depend on this). For some reason, Fedora has been very, VERY slow in picking up this driver. I just tried their new Beta release, and it is STILL not there! This makes the choice easy for me.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
I'll have to remember to mention the touchpad in my reviews. I have a Synaptic one as well (HP dv7 Pavillion) and just as you say, have yet to find a Linux distro that really gets it right. Control Centers don't usually even have an option to turn it off, I think I have to install a repository file to fix it, and I tend to just double click the little light above it from white to red every time I use it. Minor but annoying.
I'll probably take a look at it in December, after I review Mint 12.
I have a real love/hate relationship with the ClickPad in my HP dm1 netbook - although it is a lot more hate than love... With every Linux distribution I have tried EXCEPT openSuSE 11.4, the ClickPad doesn't work properly. Symptoms range from the right button not working, to click-and-drag being totally erratic, to neither button working at all. But on openSuSE 11.4 it works perfectly, not only both buttons and click-and-drag, but also multi-finger scrolling and the like, and the touchpad is automatically disabled when I type, with the orange LED in the corner of the touchpad illuminating to indicate this. It really is quite nice, and I could live with the ClickPad like this quite happily. The odd thing is that not even openSuSE 12.1 gets it right. I have asked in the openSuSE forums about this, and gotten nothing but silence.
jw
@Everyone who doesn't see any differences in OpenSUSE :-)
(Part I)
OpenSUSE has plenty to distinguish itself. Regarding Fedora and Mint - Fedora is bleeding edge alpha quality; Mint is based on Debian now I believe which is often behind the curve. OpenSUSE stays in the middle "just right" area :-) with the latest stable versions of packages.
In fact, with SUSE, you can really have it any way you like. You could choose optimum stability and upgrade every eight months. Or... you could use the Factory repository and be bleeding edge (why anyone would do this other than testing I have no idea). There is also the "Tumbleweed" repository, which contains the latest STABLE releases of programs. So if you use that it's rolling, but cutting edge, not bleeding edge. Finally, with repositories for all of the major software (Mozilla, KDE, Kernel, Banshee, LibreOffice, Gnome, etc.) you can leave your core OS files on the current version and only upgrade selected software packages to the newest versions! With OpenSUSE you can be like Sabayon, Arch, or Debian stable if you like. :-)
OpenSUSE supports KDE, Gnome, XFCE and LXDE out of the box (er, disk), with no desktop an afterthought. You can also install a minimum install with no desktop. No need for Mint's different "editions" here, Ubuntu "server" or "netbook" versions, etc. - you can use one version of OpenSUSE any way you like.
Speaking of which, the DVD install is the best installer of any I've ever used for any OS. It's graphical - although there's also a ncurses option with the exact same functionality! - with help available for every step. It's *completely* customizable, with disk partitioning options ranging from automatic to being able to create multiple LVM partitions and use LUKS encryption! You can choose to remove any package from installation and install any of the probably hundreds of programs on the DVD. You can change how the system boots - bootloader in MBR, flagging a boot partition, etc., arrange the grub boot menu, even choose the default OS and how many seconds it takes to time out! You can choose to open or close the SSH port and the firewall is automatically configured along with it!
Part 2
The installer keeps you updated with everything it's doing and everything it plans on doing - you can review every step/option of the installation before it begins. OpenSUSE uses technology so that it doesn't need to reboot during install! All of the account creation, hardware configuration - and you can adjust audio volume, pick a preferred sound card, turn on/off pulse audio support, configure tv tuners, etc. during install - takes place before you enter the desktop. OpenSUSE also allows you to apply all patches BEFORE entering the desktop, so you enter with the most stable and secure experience available. If the kernel wasn't patched/updated you again enter the desktop from update without rebooting. All of your options you chose during install (including partitions if desired) can be saved and used during other installs. Not only that, AutoYaST allows you to run it on an existing system and build a list of installed software, options, etc. to then use on another install to recreate that system!
Ok, this is getting very long and that's just the install differences. :-) YaST gives you a one-stop shop to control almost everything on the system from the boot menu, date/time, partitioning, setting up NFS or Samba, controlling users, changing firewall or AppArmor settings, and many many more options through a helpful gui interface.
The package manager, Zypper, employs technology called a SAT solver so that if it's possible to install a package, it will find a solution (apt fails at this 1-2% of the time). Zypper can download compressed repo information, pull parts of files from multiple servers at once, etc. to make it very fast as well as accurate. Zypper can also be used to upgrade from one version of OpenSUSE to another without issues. Zypper allows you to configure/add/remove/enable/disable repositories from the command line. Zypper offers "one-click install" so that you can click on a link on properly configured websites and zypper will add the required repositories and install programs (with root permission, of course) with just a click.
Part 3
If the package you're looking for isn't in the main OpenSUSE repositories, there's the Open Build Service, a web service where users can upload code and set up packages and the system will compile it, distribute it, automatically rebuild software when newer versions of dependencies are released, etc. You can search it for software (using user's home directories or just official OpenSUSE repositories), find what you're looking for, click the one-click install link (or download the package if you like) and install it!
There's also SUSE Studio, which is again (like so many things again and again and again for OpenSUSE) the best DIY distro builder available. You can start with base OpenSUSE, JeOS (Just enough OS), the enterprise version of SUSE, etc. and then add any official package, add repositories and packages, upload your own packages, etc. and create your own distro or appliance. You can even activate a virtual machine that runs on SUSE's servers and you control right from your browser to configure things in the distro (say, change wallpaper, configure Apache, etc.) with SUSE Studio saving all of the changes and incorporating them as an overlay on the new distro/appliance! Finally, it's put together on SUSE's servers and you can receive your creation as an installable live ISO, a virtual machine image, or a raw USB disk image! Your creation is saved so that you can add to or update it later (including updating it to a new SUSE version). Don't like the web interface? Do all the work on, say, a VirtualBox machine, use the AutoYAST tool mentioned earlier, upload its output to SUSE Studio and it can build the image from the configuration file AutoYaST generates!
Part 4
As J. A. Watson noted, OpenSUSE also has an amazing amount of polish (unlike, say, Fedora). There's an amazing amount of effort put into making things just work (including a semi-automatic test system that takes screen snapshots to see if changes produce something other than the expected output on a test system). OpenSUSE values stability over cutting edge - for instance, there were issues with KDE 4.6's KMail importing older versions' mail and other bugs, so OpenSUSE 11.4 shipped with KDE 4.6 but KMail/Kontact 4.4 (contrast this with Fedora's explanation that they used Gnome 3 because they don't deviate from upstream). They also customize things like LibreOffice and Firefox so they look as good in KDE as in Gnome, use the system's file dialogs, etc. They also provide several PDF manuals that get installed with the system totalling several hundred pages of documentation, from quick install and get started guides, LibreOffice guide, to a 200+ guide just on Linux system security, passwords, IPTables, AppArmor, etc.!
OpenSUSE 12.1 will be including a revival of an old GUI tool, SaX, that can help users generate xorg.conf files (if they need to, and most don't nowadays) without manual editing of xorg.conf. It will have snapshot ability with BtrFS (and SUPPOSEDLY with Ext4, according to a Google Summer Of Code project) to offer the ability to snapshots before each update or software installation and/or at regular intervals, with the ability to reach back and pull individual files out of the snapshots! There'll be a bug reporter, systemd, and a lot of other additions as well.
Ok, that's basically just *off the top of my head* what's special about OpenSUSE, and I've only been using it (and Linux) for 15 months!
Part 5
Really, it gets nowhere near the love it deserves given the amazing amount of innovation it offers. It pains me to read people saying that they saw nothing in OpenSUSE to differentiate it from the Great Zombie Hordes of 'Buntu Clones. On a personal level (and I'm sure all the OpenSUSE bigwigs would disagree with me) what also stands out for me as different is OpenSUSE seems to do a lot for the whole Linux Community and rarely gets anything back. They changed what was the OpenSUSE Build Service to the Open Build Service to allow other distros to build packages with it too and even hosted the MeeGo folks and their ARM builds (meanwhile, there isn't even an ARM version of OpenSUSE - yet). They spent a Google Summer of Code project allocation taking their YaST libraries and decoupling them from OpenSUSE so any distro could more easily use them. What other distro did anything like that?!? Meanwhile, OpenSUSE folks are working on porting Unity over - why didn't Canonical use a GSoC project to make THAT more easily ported? Don't even get me started on the Banshee fiasco. OpenSUSE's last conference had a theme of reaching out across communities and they invited people from other distros to see how they could all work together. Again, this drumbeat of cooperation doesn't seem to drive other distros like it does OpenSUSE (not that other distros, like Debian, don't in reality support many other distros through their work). OpenSUSE is also working on some type of universal app store backend thingie combining the best front and back end technology from different distros in this regard, and a system that integrates app building with software release announcements to social media and uploading info to various distros' package services (Project Bretzn). Their forums are some of the most knowledgeable and helpful (right behind Arch (best Wiki in Linux) and Sabayon) and they've painstakingly helped out other distros' users when they couldn't get any help from their own forums (*cough*Ubuntu*cough*) and even gained some new users as a result (particularly from Ubuntu WUBI installs gone bad).
OpenSUSE to me is both a great distro and a great community.
@alcalde - Thanks very much for a very informative comment. Well, a bit long for a comment (or even for five comments), but the information provided made it all worthwhile, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment. I have a few random thoughts that came to mind as I read through your dissertation:
- openSuSE vs. Ubuntu: I think this is very well illustrated by my own experience: first, with the distributions themselves - I started out determined to use and stick with Ubuntu, and now I have reached the point where I am essentially uninterested in it, and I only load it because I feel obligated to, whereas I never made a conscious commitment to openSuSE, but I have always loaded it, on everything I own, and I find myself using it more and more. Also, with support, forums and wikis, I don't even bother with Ubuntu's Launchpad any more, I figure I can say nothing at all and be ignored rather than take the time to report a bug and be ignored. Finally, I have been a fan of the Build Service since I got my first HP 2133 Mini-Note and used to have to go there to get the openchrome driver for it.
I find your comments about the tumbleweed repos very interesting, I wasn't aware of that. I will be looking into that in more detail, thanks.
Also, the simple fact that openSuSE has persevered, quietly and steadily, through all of the turmoil with Novell and SuSE is really very impressive.
I agree with you, openSuSE doesn't get the recognition and respect that they deserve.
Thanks very much for reading and commenting (extensively).
jw
For me, openSuSE scores heavily on 2 counts:
1. It is the best KDE distro around, but not exclusively so; the main PC at home has KDE for me and LXDE for my wife, coexisting quite happily.
2. Yast is the best config tool I have seen.
In addition the hardware compatibility is very gratifying, particularly with netbooks, wireless cards etc. I just hope it has a future post-Novell.
It's worth mentioning that the relevant Packman/SuSe/ OpenSuSe...... repositories *do* need to be added in order to obtain certain software and drivers not apparently in SuSe's own repositories. Somewhat confusing if you don't already know that, and particularly for newbies.
SuSe was the first Linux distro I ever used and OpenSuSE is still the Linux distro I would choose over all others.
The fact it doesn't stand out 'from the crowd' is it's main strength. It does what you expect and can be as whatever edge you want it to be or a solid everyday reliable operating system.
@alcade (Part 1)
For information: Linux Mint is still based on Ubuntu as the main distribution. There is a Linux Mint Debian Edition which is a rolling (Gnome 2/XFCE) distribution, in the same vein as Tumbleweed from OpenSuSE. This gets monthly security and other updates from a mint repository, loosely based on Debian Testing - so it is pretty much up to date with everything (eg Kernel 3.0 is in the repo). There are also variants with other desktops, some of which are rolling and others are time based.
regards
Maritn
The latest information on the direction of the main package is on the Mint blog:
"Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” will be released in November this year with continued support for Gnome 2 but also with the introduction of Gnome 3. The radical changes introduced by the Gnome project split the community. At the time of releasing Linux Mint 11 we decided it was too early to adopt Gnome 3. This time around, the decision isn’t as simple. Gnome 3.2 is more mature and we can see the potential of this new desktop and use it to implement something that can look and behave better than anything based on Gnome 2. Of course, we’re starting from scratch and this process will take time and span across multiple releases. Until then, it’s important we continue to support the traditional Gnome 2 desktop. We’re likely to release two separate editions, one for Gnome 2.32 and one for Gnome 3.2. We’re also working in cooperation with the MATE project (which is a fork of Gnome 2) at the moment to see if we can make both desktops compatible in an effort to let you run both Gnome 2 (or MATE) and Gnome 3 on the same system, either in Linux Mint 12, or for the future. "