Ok so this is very late for a openSUSE 10.2 review but it kinda still is guna be a review.
In the past I have been very critical of Novell. This mostly has been fueled by the whole Novell and Microsoft deal. Now though from what I’m hearing this deal is working out more to the benefit of the GNU/Linux community then it is in the favor of Microsoft (really all they got is some FUD to which now instead of just empty threats they recommend SUSE). As to the deal between them on the shared lab I am now more interested in seeing what results come from it. So in my attempt to try new things I gave openSUSE 10.2 a chance. Last install of it was what I could best call a horrific experience. At this point though I had installed it, in my own words, “to figure out what sucks about openSUSE.” In the process I ended up getting horribly confused and not figured out YasT which is essential.
The second time I installed (the last day of school I was bored and had viewed this ad made by Novell). To say the least I went into this install with a much more open mind. I was also hoping that I would get a better KDE/QT development environment out of it (more on this later). And so the review!
Install: This is one part which I still have yet to decide if its good or bad. It uses the standard “for install only” method (no LiveCD). This is a tried and true method and YasT does a good job. From this partitioning is a snap (as easy if not easier then with K/Ubuntu). The install is self explanatory and I found it easy to do (with the non-oss disc you can even install all the important non-oss apps you need right away). The hardest part was most likely getting it to only have the packages I want. Now this is really not very hard unless you have no clue what you are doing.
Resolution/Graphics: This was by far the most user friendly part. The nividia drivers are easy to install once you add the yast repository for it (doesn’t take long at all and its rather straight forward). OpenSUSE recognized my resolution by default something Ubuntu has failed numerous times. My favorite part was getting dual head to work. Now in Kubuntu I spent about 30 minutes (had tried to configure before so i knew what i was doing) and got it but it made Kubuntu unusable and crashed the display module of the Control Panel. OpenSUSE configured it perfectly fine after installing the Nvidia drivers. I have yet to have a problem with the dual monitors and everything is perfectly stable.
Artwork: Ok I know not the most important section but I still feel it needs to be discussed. The one major gripe I have here is the mouse cursor. It is by far the most ugly mouse cursor I have seen. This though is not too big of a deal as it can be changed easy enough. I found the chameleon for a kmenu to be cool and that fact that the eyes move impressed me (really they do!). Also there is the redesigned kmenu not really a art thing but the redesign makes it much more usable. At first I was confused but after using it a bit it was actually just as easy if not easier with the search feature then the standard kmenu for KDE.
Administration/Install of software: This is an interesting spot. Most of this is YasT things. And I find YasT now to be a rather good system. My major gripes though have to be the fact that if you are like me and want more bleeding edge kde stuff you will be adding alot of YasT repos. This is actually really easy once you find the lists on the wiki and also figure out how to work the YasT tools. YasT though frightening at first is not a bad system. The fact that it uses a GUI by default is a blessing for new users too.
Drivers: This surprised even me. On my laptop not only did my wireless work but it defaulted to the radeon driver for graphics. I have in the past always had to go back and manually change this in order to get 3d support for my 9600PRO.
Development tools: By far this surprised me the most. For QT4 on Kubuntu I got what I would call a completely broken set with absolutely no QT4 tools showing up in the development section of the menu (I eventually got one and was told that was all). Now I got more then this by manually installing in Windows (done months ago) and know there is 4 or so tools for this. OpenSUSE did this all when I installed the QT4 development stuff. I have to say for C++/QT openSUSE is definitely much better off then Kubuntu.
Bonus: It has a mascot. I know this seems unfair but hell Ubuntu doesn’t have one and neither does Windows.
There are more things I could talk about but that would probably just get boring so without further adeu the score:
8.5/10
