openSUSE 11.0 RC First Glance and Initial Review
Today openSUSE 11.0 RC was released, and without a second to spare I downloaded the ISO and started the installation on a Dell D820 with NVIDIA NVS 110M Card and Intel 3945 Wireless Driver (which has been known to have poor support lately).
You can download openSUSE 11.0 fom http://en.opensuse.org/developer. Be sure to seed your torrent when you’re done downloading to help increase the download speeds for everyone else.
The installation screens newly ported to QT4 looked great.
Now onto some issues during installation:
During installation I had configured my Wireless NIC but was unable to use it as an Update Device since the module wasn’t loaded after I configured it, this made it imposible to update during the installation, and caused me to update post installation. This is a minor inconvinience but why ask me to configure the NIC if you know I won’t be able to use it?
I installed initially with only KDE 3.5 (as I would suggest most others to do if this is a work or a required stable machine since I do not quite believe KDE 4.0.4 or KDE 4.1 (a.k.a 4.0.80) is ready for the prime time because of issues mostly with plasma. So after the installation I was presented with a beautiful initial KDE screen
Here are some versions of stuff installed:
libzypp-4.25.0-5
zypper-0.11.5-2
MozillaFirefox-2.9.95-22 (3.0 Beta 5)
mozilla-xulrunner190-1.8.99.5-25 (Possible issue with Lotus Notes 8.0.1, I’ll test at a later time)
kernel-pae-2.6.25.4-8
kde 3.5.9 (This was my option during installation to choose the more mature and stable KDE 3.5 Family), the 3.5.9 Installation does however include many KDE 4.x packages in the games / krdc etc portions, which are considered stable.
koffice-1.6.3-153 ( I prefer openoffice but I went with the default installation of KDE 3.5.9)
NetworkManager-0.7.0.r3685-3
NetworkManager-kde-0.7r812889-2
NetworkManager-gnome-0.7.0.r729-2
yast2-2.16.71-2
Gnome 2.22 (I am not a Gnome person, but I have to admit I was impressed by this version, but would find myself using KDE Applications like KMail, Amarok, KNotes, SuperKaramba and is why I will stay with KDE)
KDE 4.0.4 (if you choose this over KDE 3.5.9)
Picture of YaST Installer (looks the same in KDE 3.5.9 as it did in other versions)
Picture of YaST Software Manager in the Patterns View
Here is a picture of the 3.5.9 KControl, which has 2 generic icons that I guess someone forgot about:
Here is a few screenshots from the GNOME installation post initial installation
Initial screen of GNOME during first login:
Shot of GNOME’s YaST Control Center:
Shot of GNOME’s Control Center:
Heck, lets do a few things with KDE 4
KDE 4 YaST Screenshot
KDE4 Control Center
Some very obvious post installation issues I see users will have:
No NVIDIA Repository listed in Community Repositories which was in 10.3, they should have talked with NVIDIA and have been allowed to at least release the “Beta” version of the driver in that repository.
Zypper is not working correctly, you can run sudo zypper lu -t package and see that packages need to be upgraded, but running sudo zypper up -t package -r “Repo Alias” does not install those packages marked as upgradable by zypper lu, please see the following novell bugzilla report I have created and marked as Urgent / Blocker so hopefully it’ll be fixed by the Final version due out in 20 days.
The iwl3945 driver does not handle the wlan (Wireless LAN) indicator lights on my Dell Latitude D820, the ipw3945 in previous versions did, I will look into the driver to see why it doesn’t if / when I have time.
Setting up the Network Devices for me when I had no network connection threw errors when activating Network Services asking for Curl to be installed. I recieved 4 errors since I had 4 active repo’s. This shouldn’t happen on a new installation with or without Network Connectivity.
Down to some of the nit-picky issues:
The different Wireless KNetworkManager for Wired, Wireless and a third for generic KNetworkManager settings is messy in the system tray, they should be condensed like older versions.
Changing the panel size in KDE 4.x does not resize the icons in the system tray to the matched tiny size.
You can find all the pictures I have taken for openSUSE 11.0 RC in my online gallery
Sorry the quality of the post went downhill towards the end, it’s getting late and I am getting quite tired.
Thank you for all that read it, I will also be updating once the final version comes out with another initial review, and also some installation walkthroughs with VMWare Workstation (6.0.3 or newer (whatever is most recent then), as it will take the vmware any any update).
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7 Comments
i am missing the final resumee
i am really getting tired of all those linux distris getting buggier with every release .
the release cycle concept is plain wrong . why release beta quality software , most essential things don’t work , uograding is a mess . yes i am getting tired …..
I agree, this is still beta quality, not RC quality. I had various issues with Grub correctly detecting another linux install and had to add a chainloader option to get it back.
The updater is workable if you mess around with the update repos in a certain way… not via the software source settings in Yast, but it came up again when I was trying to do something else and then worked. Honestly can’t remember how I got that to happen.
The fonts look terrible in KDE4 on my system. While there is much to like in KDE4, like the speed, I don’t see how it will be ready for real users before late summer. That’s alright, since you have Gnome and KDE3 to choose from anyway.
Furthermore, if Ubuntu could have graphics drivers ready to go way before their release candidate, why can’t openSUSE? There is so much to like about this distro. I am hoping these folks will be able to deliver something truly remarkable by their release date… if anyone can do it, it would be the openSUSE team.
Hi
Thanks for the ‘review’. Unless you completely forgot to mentionn, I do not see any improvement from current 10.3. So I think I just ignore the 11.x distro until kde4 is stable.
Opensuse seems a great community and a very good stable system. But there is 1 thing that pushes me away from Opensuse is the hardware support especially for my video card!
I have an ATI x1950xt and the support is horrible. I tried to install the drivers finding the actually sets to install the drivers and at the end it gives me an error that my card doesn’t support 3D! Oh come on! Ubuntu and many other distros have no problems!
By the way this is for version 10.3 and 11 BETA 3
Continue working harder Novell!
Jerry,
the EM that the driver does not support 3D Acceleration is sometimes wrong. Check hwinfo –gfxcard and see if the Driver info says 3D Support: yes
I tried Beta3 on my Laptop (still downloading RC1) and my ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 worked out of the Box.
The free radeon Driver was installed and had 3D Acceleration Right from the Start and i got even compiz running under KDE4 without installing the proprietary ATI Driver.
The Nvidia Repository is not includes because the proprietary Nvidia Driver is still not compiling coorectly, according to the Most Annoying Bugs. They also mentioning the GRUB issue.
http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs:Most_Annoying_Bugs_11.0_dev
Generally i like the 11.0 because it is blazingly fast compared to 10.3 and earlier versions.
The OPENSUSE-Team did a terrific Job.
And to the Topic KDE4 i use it and i had no major Problems since a while. As soon as the PIM Suite is ready (in 11.0) i will use it as my main DE.
| Hi
), but I don’t see any other real changes either
| Thanks for the ‘review’. Unless you completely forgot to
| mentionn, I do not see any improvement from current 10.3. So I
| think I just ignore the 11.x distro until kde4 is stable.
Zypper’s new speed is a HUGE improvement, it cannot be understated
Other than that though, I know compiz/-fusion is going to use AIGLX instead of XGL by default, (finally
But if you look at other distros, nothing really changes for them either, just software upgrades, (except for fedora9, that has so many (experimental) additions, but it is a bleedy-edge distro)
Forgot to say that!
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