While openSUSE is my preferred distribution for server installations, my desktop use of it has been somewhat more sporadic. However, while reformatting my laptop from Mint to a Windows 7-Linux dual boot, I decided to give 11.3 a try. Here is a short post about my experience and impressions:
Network Installation
I have tried this in the past and have generally gotten poor results. However, I really like the concept of network installations, so I thought I would see if any improvements were made with 11.3. Alas, my experience was similar to how it was with previous releases. The first attempt failed entirely, so I tried it again. The second network installation finished, but I could only boot in failsafe mode after it was done. It seems that some packages get corrupted or don’t install at all. With this kind of success rate, it still just isn’t robust enough for real world use. Onto a different installation method…
LiveUSB
Long story short, this was a fantastic experience. I downloaded the LiveCD image, installed the imagewriter utility, and it all worked as advertised. I was really impressed with how simple of a process this actually turned out to be. As an added bonus, the installation went about 1 1/2 times faster than it would have with a LiveCD.
KDE Desktop
While I am personally more of a Gnome user, I am really starting to enjoy what the latest in KDE has to offer. In addition, the openSUSE developers have done a great job of polishing the distribution’s presentation. The GRUB menu, splash screen, login window, and desktop look unified and generally very good. I made a couple of desktop tweaks to fit my preferences, and the customizing experience was much better than with previous KDE versions. The only problem is that the power manager does not recognize changes in my AC adapter status. This is a known and filed bug, so I hope this gets fixed sometime in the near future.
Overall Impression
Even in the short couple of years that I have been using openSUSE, I have seen it come a long way. Network installation still has issues, it took a little while to find information on installing the Broadcom wireless driver, and the power manager could use a little work. Other than those details, I would have to say that this release is really solid and provides a really clean user interface. Keep up the good work, openSUSE!
How good is it on a netbook? I’ve never tried OpenSuse but will give it a spin if there are distinctive advantages over other distros suited for netbooks – speed, power saving and the like.
Nice short review.
I have never tried it on a netbook (mine is more like a low end laptop), but here are a couple of things that might help:
Battery Life- openSUSE cleans Ubuntu/Mint’s clock on this one. For some reason, Ubuntu decided in more recent versions to disable some important power saving settings, and it is not an easy process to turn them on completely. UNR is probably better than regular Ubuntu, but I have read conflicting reviews on that. I can tell you that on my laptop, openSUSE gets about 75% better battery life when compared to desktop Mint. Keep in mind that if you run into the same bug as me, you will have to turn on the power save mode manually when disconnecting the charger.
Performance- I can’t make a definitive statement on how good the performance would be on a netbook, but it works very well on a low end laptop. For a netbook, I would probably recommend running GNOME or LXDE rather than KDE. Traditionally, GNOME has been a little bit less resource intensive and its user interface lends itself to lower resolution displays. I never tried LXDE, but it’s supposed to beat GNOME and KDE on both counts. In all likelihood, you are probably going to get the best performance of all from a netbook specific distribution, like UNR.
MeeGo- 11.3 has some initial support for MeeGo, but it’s still in beta stage. I have the feeling that when it goes live, it is going to be a really strong competitor to UNR. I personally can’t wait to get my hands on it.
I have to agree with you. OpenSUSE has got this one right. The two old deal breakers for me,package management and Nvidia setup have been completely fixed. The distro is polished from top to bottom and a real pleasure to use. The two things that have made it my new default are GRUB legacy.and an excellent control center that is now better than that of Mandriva and PCLinux. With 12 OSes to setup OpenSUSE is the only one that can do the job and keep your boot settings the way they should be.
what kind of problems do you have with network install? I’m regularly installing this way and never had problems so I’m curious.
Usually the same kind of problems that I mentioned above, especially on booting issues. It usually becomes apparent either during the install or immediately after. I have gotten them to work, but it seems like I succeed only about half the time. Perhaps I just have bad luck!
That kind of corruption should not happen – there are md5sums etc. Could you file a bug against the installation component and attach the YaST log files (see bugs.opensuse.org for Details), please?
You know, it’s funny… I have filed bugs against SUSE before, but I never thought to file this issue as a bug. I guess I have always thought of it as just some interesting option to tinker around with. Unfortunately, I reformatted my root partition while doing the LiveUSB installation. However, I’m going to set up openSUSE for a family member in the next couple of weeks. I’ll try the network installer and remember to file a bug if it fails.
About the network installation, the only case I’ve never encounter is broken (or non refreshed mirror).
I do all my installations, also on customers sites with net installation, also remote net installation (those one you take yast installer by ssh) and never have a major event
( 11.2 & 11.3 )
Try to check the list of mirror on the wiki, find one that is near to your location. and start the install with it ( you can indicate the location at the boot time with net install cd )
Try to see if things are going better.
It’s hard to identify, but the redirector used by download.opensuse.org has sometimes glitches … Also some week-end the entire structure is down for maintenance (Bad saturday to try to do install or update/upgrade )
As Andreas mention it, try to keep the log in /root and /var/log to report a broken install issue.
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openSUSE 11.3 Gnome installed into the HP 110 netbook, everything just sweet except for broadcom wireless driver but it can be download from packman repo. However I am failed to run Smeegol even after the successful installation from the 1 click install from suse.