Anyone tried it? How does it compare to Ubuntu in ease of use a
compatability, plus does it have as a huge repos as Ubuntu?

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On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:34:48 -0800, ChrisC wrote:

> Anyone tried it? How does it compare to Ubuntu in ease of use a
> compatability, plus does it have as a huge repos as Ubuntu?

I prefer the deb package management system - it seems that setting up the
proper repositories for suse can be a PITA and YAST seems exceedingly slow
to do anything.

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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:40:01 -0700, ray wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:34:48 -0800, ChrisC wrote:
> 

The repos are comparable.  Why, how many apps do you need?
[vbcol=seagreen]
> I prefer the deb package management system - it seems that setting up the
> proper repositories for suse can be a PITA and YAST seems exceedingly slow
> to do anything.

I prefer Debian and its package management myself, BUT: knocking on the
Suse repositories and Yast is offbeam.  Yast is not noticeably slower than
Synaptic**, and setting up repositories in openSuse 10.3 is a matter of one
click per repository.

Mark

**Running on the same machine as multiboot.
--
Signature has vanished completely.

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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:19:50 +0100, Mark South wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:40:01 -0700, ray wrote:
> 
>
> The repos are comparable.  Why, how many apps do you need?
> 
>
> I prefer Debian and its package management myself, BUT: knocking on the
> Suse repositories and Yast is offbeam.  Yast is not noticeably slower than
> Synaptic**, and setting up repositories in openSuse 10.3 is a matter of on
e
> click per repository.

I've not tried 10.3 - but the last time I did a suse install it was not
easy to set up the repositories - you had to know where they were in order
to enter them - it was not a simple one-click operation.

>
> Mark
>
> **Running on the same machine as multiboot.

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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:34:26 -0700, ray wrote:
 
>
> I've not tried 10.3 - but the last time I did a suse install it was not
> easy to set up the repositories - you had to know where they were in order
> to enter them - it was not a simple one-click operation.

Then, my dear sir, you are behind the times :-)

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On Nov 14, 12:34 am, ChrisC <chrisp...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Anyone tried it? How does it compare to Ubuntu in ease of use a
> compatability, plus does it have as a huge repos as Ubuntu?


I'm using opensuse 10.2.  I would rather be running kubuntu again, but
I couldn't get it to work on my Sun Ultra 40 workstation.  Probably
the biggest thing to remember is NOT to let the default install
include the zen package manager.  Absolute nightmare.  I believe zen
is gone in opensuse 10.3, but not 100% sure.

>From the command line, I actually prefer rpm's for the simple fact
that I'm more familiar with how to do what I want.  (I had started to
create a little reference slash translation table for package commands
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Co..._Commands_Table to help
with this.)  So it's mostly that I'm better at installing things from
src rpms and working my way out of dependency hell.  That said, the
reason I probably never got very familiar with the nuts and bolts of
deb package management is simply because I never had to bother.  I
don't think I ever found myself in dependency hell in ubuntu.  It's
just better at handling those sorts of things.

As far as repositories in opensuse go, they're easy to add.  Just go
to the Installation Source yast control panel and add more
repositories by pasting url's.  However, the more repositories you
have, the slower yast goes.  Doing a repository update in ubuntu was a
very fast, even when I had a bunch of different repositories.  In
opensuse, with about a dozen repositories configured, it takes
literally two full minutes to open up the Install Software yast
control panel because it downloads and parses the repodata from every
repository every time.  Very annoying.  The package availability in
both is excellent, though, but ubuntu wins.  If I can't find something
in my opensuse repositories, I can often find it over at the
http://software.opensuse.org/search website.  After that I'm usually
resorting to google.  I had to do this less in ubuntu.

Aside from that, I find opensuse very easy to use.  Visually, it looks
better than kubuntu.  I love the default kicker in opensuse.  (You can
install that kicker applet for kubuntu also, but it's still not quite
as nice.)  Even text mode is far better looking.  Opensuse is
excellent at detecting the optimal vga setting to use for text mode.
I played with changing this manually in kubuntu, but it definitely
wasn't as elegant and it skewed the kubuntu splash screen badly.

Oh, and my personal pet peeve...  I *hate* that opensuse (and most
every other rpm based distro) forcibly breaks vim into separate gui
and non-gui packages.  I make use of vim modelines, for example, and
this unnecessary forced separation breaks that functionality.  There's
absolutely no need for splitting it up and it is NOT the default
behavior of vim.  ::grumble::   Ubuntu, of course, allows you simply
install the vim-full package with no complications.

So, bottom line is that I'd rather be running kubuntu again, but
opensuse has not been difficult to run at all.

--
Andy

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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:50:17 +0100, Mark South wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:34:26 -0700, ray wrote:
> 
>
> Then, my dear sir, you are behind the times :-)

Not terribly - everything I have is up to date - I'll be trying OpenSuse
10.3 when my next issue of Linux Pro comes - I understand that is to be
the featured DVD this month. I did try SLED a few months ago when that
came up and was quite unimpressed.

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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:26:35 -0700, ray wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:50:17 +0100, Mark South wrote:
> 
>
> Not terribly - everything I have is up to date - I'll be trying OpenSuse
> 10.3 when my next issue of Linux Pro comes - I understand that is to be
> the featured DVD this month. I did try SLED a few months ago when that
> came up and was quite unimpressed.

I only installed it to check it out (put Mandriva 2008 on that machine at
the same time).  I mainly use Debian and Slackware now, but I have friends
who prefer something a little more approachable.

It's doubtful that 10.3 *qua Linux* will impress a hardened Debian user,
but the ease-of-use Suse and Mandriva have engineered in is quite
impressive.

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