nixCraft

I've been using Linux for many years & used to use SUSE back when it was still exclusively owned by the German company. However, I haven't touched it since until about 5 days ago.

I've used Debian, or some distribution thereof, almost exclusively. But, being a true *nix geek, I thought I would give openSUSE a try. I'm currently writing this on openSUSE 10.3.

It has a beautiful installation procedure! I was truly impressed with the installation scheme. Although I am partial to curses-based installation scripts, I thought openSUSE's was simply designed with enough options to satisfy the average poweruser. It did a nice job of selecting the package dependencies, although feedback was slim, I was able to verify that a the needed dependencies were installed.

It automatically detected my audio, video, wireless & wired cards. Although most distros nowadays will do this, I still appreciate the effort people put in to developing the detection tools. I can wrestle with the particulars (i.e., it detected my monitor as "vesa" when it is really an LG W22), which I don't mind, since it's pretty much fine-tuning a system. In the case of my monitor settings, it worked as detected, although it looked odd.

I liked the GNOME desktop installed. I'm a GNOME fan & have been for years. I haven't tried the KDE yet, but will most likely get it up & running soon. I did not like, however, their menu. After about 5 choices, I had to click on the "more programs" button which would open up a flat-screen choice of icons. I fixed that as soon as I could, it was irritating.

All in all, I am impressed. I'm not sure if this will become my OS of choice... I'll continue to try it out & see what I like & don't like about it. I'm not a fancy GUI-type person, so I'm heading back to a lightweight manager; the nice thing for openSUSE is that it leaves all the great command line options (like chkconfig) that a few distros take out & force you to use the GUI.

Hey spideyak,

Can it use a cam on line?

Thanks!

See the following url:
Linux on Laptops

Select your brand and search for laptop. You will get idea about supported hardware.

__________________
Vivek Gite
Linux Evangelist
Be proud RHEL user, and let the world know about your enterprise choices! Join RedHat user group.
Always use CODE tags for posting system output and commands!
Do you run a Linux? Let's face it, you need help

Says CentOS or SuSe10.1 Italian????????

I used Linux for years as a recovery tool when Windows crashed. First knoppix, then dual boot Fedora but when I saw SuSe 10.3's graphics and easier loading, I stayed with it. It would let me access files on the hard drive when Windows wouldn't even boot up. There was always too much to learn for me to really consider it serious competition for Windows.

All that changed when Windows Genuine Advantage security updates came out and told me that my copies of XP were counterfeit - which was a surprise since I bought them off Microsoft directly! MS Customer relations replaced the key and XP was running again. Then I upgraded my hard drive and it happened again, as well as on three other computers we owned. (because of various upgrades to the systems and you are only allowed 2 loads of XP). MS Customer service wouldn't help so I switched to SuSe 10.3 - very impressive after XP! Next was an upgrade to SuSe 11.0 64 bit.

MS reps approached us and tried to sell us VISTA. Not a chance - we have been completely MS free for exactly one year now. In July we'll be starting our own independent school in Melbourne - the first to run entirely on Linux.
Care to guess what flavour we'll be using?