Random comments of openSUSE 10.3 on Slashdot
I’m using it, and yes, its fixed. It’s cached, and at each package manager startup it checks the cache versus the online version, and even if it needs update the cache update is an order of magnitude faster than a normal startup of the package manager used to be.
It’s quite useable now; time from clicking “software manager” to a usable interface is similar to using SMART.
Speed s ems to be one of the primary focuses of this release; from the package manager to the boot sequence.
I’ve just installed a new OpenSUSE. All these little bugs from previous releases are gone. Yast software installer finally works with a good speed. Desktop responsiveness is amazing - KDE 3.7 works faster than GUI of Windows 2000. The default green artwork is very nice and gives a distinct feeling to this distro. Hardware detection is very good. My graphic card - nvidia 7600 and audio card - Creative Audigy 2 were working out of the box. Even installation of ADSL modem was a breeze - it is a cheap Sagem modem, used by the all telcos controlled by France Telecom, and most linux distros has problems with it.
What is especially important to people in countries with stupid law (read USA) - OpenSUSE gives you mp3 playback out of box, due to legal fluendo gstreamer plugins. In addition, there are provided Flash 9, newest Java runtimes, RealPlayer and seamless Wi-Fi support.
In the last year I’ve tried quite a few linux distros - Fedora, Ubuntu, Sabayon, Mint, Mandriva… nothing even come close to the OpenSUSE. Quality of Deutsch engineering.
I installed it last night……..it’s beautiful. Definitely worth checking out :).
YaST was borked for 10.1 and 10.2. It made sense to try and use an alternative package manager.
As 10.2 matured, YaST started to work properly, but was slow.
In 10.3, YaST is quite speedy, very capable, and runs very solidly. Plus, the one-click-install thing works really well.
Fast YaST, it was about time! that was one of the main reason for me to drop SUSE in favour of Kubuntu at home (2 PCs). I still have SUSE 10.0 on my laptop (did not upgrade to 10.1 and 10.2), I will try to go for 10.3 on my laptop later this month.
Nicola Di Nisio
5 Oct 07 at 4:03 am
After pondering endlessly over why my Windows XP Pro. home PC continued to crash without warning, and adamantly refusing to make a move to one of the too-many choices of Windows Vista, I installed linux as the main OS without even a dual-boot to Windows XP as I had in the past. I have been a linux distro whore for over a year, continuously testing the latest of Fedora/openSuSE, Mepis, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, VectorLinux and Arch, and am happy to have settled on openSUSE 10.3 as my final choice. They finally got it right this time. I intend to disable some of the unnecessary to pick up some more speed, but it is smooth and all that I ask for to work with. Graphics are nice, YaST works like a charm, with codecs being the only thing left to add to make a complete system.
Jean T Ockert
8 Oct 07 at 11:13 am