Switching from Ubuntu to OpenSuse
Yes, I just switched my desktop computer from Ubuntu to OpenSuse.
I am sure that some people won’t believe it or think that I am stupid or that I work for Microsoft, but here are the reasons of this choice.
The first reason why I did it was a number of bugs with the latest release, Feisty. I mean, not just simple bugs. At every new release, there are new bugs (I have been using Ubuntu since Breezy) : this is quite understanding and I can deal with it.
What make me fustrated is when some of these bugs are regression bugs. And especially when you already reported them months ago and see that they were not taken into account.
You will tell me that this must happen because making a new release is not an easy thing. Ok, but a release is supposed to be stable, and particulary on pretty standard hardware.
The bugs that I experienced with my pretty standard laptop hardware (and not only me, though there were several topics on the forums or bug reports) :
- The synaptic touchpad had random messing the interfaces of my applications. It was dramatic and frequent enough to make it unusable.
- I could never get the touchpad to work.
- Trying to use a 686 kernel made the computer increadibly slow. Ok, let’s fall back to i386… better but not great !
- I could not get main-menu to work (slab port to Ubuntu). And I was convinced neither by the messy gnome menu nor by the USP development.
- After any hibernation, the acpi module of the kernel became extrimely unresponsive. For instance, after pressing to adjust the screen brightness, it took 20 seconds to be effective !
I may forgot some but that is enough. And yes, all of these are regression bugs… It means it worked fine with Edgy ! I really wonder if the developpers did test on centrino laptops…
The second reason why I decided to leave Ubuntu is that I was just tired and wanted to see something else. Everyone is talking about this distribution as if it was an Eldorado. I (still) like it but it is far from it and there are many other good distribution. I generally don’t like when something become so popular that its popularity takes over its real qualities.
So, changing, but for what ? I immediatly thought about three distribution : Debian, OpenSuse, Gentoo. There are all also very popular and each has a particular flavour.
I decided not to use Debian, because I use Debian on many other machines, including servers. That would not have been really a change.
On the other hand, I never tried Gentoo. I am sure that this is a great distribution, but I also know that it requires some investment in time. Recently, I really haven’t had much time… So I will give a try soon, but not now…
So let’s go for Suse ! Note that a few years ago, I already tried this distribution but so many things must have changed !
So how did it become since then ?
The installation was smooth (the graphical installation process is rather easy but functionnal) and I got a nice Gnome desktop pretty quickly. I won’t make a long review but I like :
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The very clean and polished desktop, with a nice theme (so much better than the human theme, sorry). I was always tweacking something in my Ubuntu, trying to have an organised desktop. Here Slab and Application Browser both do a pretty good job and the default theme is coherent and smooth.
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The speed : I was shocked, I did not realize that my Ubuntu was so slow… I think that this is one of the kernel issue I had with Ubuntu. The feeling I have is that the OpenSuse developpers did a great job optimizing the kernel. Ubuntu just keep the advantage for the startup time.
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With Powernow, true power management works out of the box : no need to set up laptop-mode, cpufreq, sony_acpi, etc.
I don’t like :
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The rpm package system ! On this point, I was not expecting that it would compete with Deb packaging. It is not that bad, but deb packages with apt are definitely superior ! It won’t protect yourself against your own mistakes, as it happened to me a few times. Fixing a mistake might also ask you some more work… Talking about package management, it is worth using Smart instead of Yast to set up new packages. It is almost as powerful as Synaptics (just don’t trust as much the dependencies) and is even much faster. It dowloads simultanously all the packages during set-up and can manage a number of repositories : APT, RPM, Yast, etc. This tool is great !
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Yast is still good for hardware management, but it is becoming old and needs to be refreshed.
So, globally, I am extremely satisfied with this OpenSuse and will certainly keep it for a while.
It is polished, light and fast. You feel you have a professional and user friendly OS, compared to Ubuntu where you need to spend more time for tweaking.
I recommand you to give it a try ! OpenSuse deserves to become as popular as Ubuntu for desktops and laptops.
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It’s over two years after this article, during that time i was trying to find a better solution than openSUSE. I tried Windows XP, after two weeks my computer was unusable, i demanded too much from this system.
Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 lasted for 3 – 4 months, after which i installed the KDE 4.2.x they provided (it was a month or so ago). This terrible experience brought me to the idea of going back to openSUSE. I did and installed KDE 4.3.0 straight away. Now this rocks like back 1 year ago with KDE 3.5.X!
Herewith i confirm, the usability of KDE 4.3.X has exceeded the 3.5.X series.
Now the reasons (not in order of importance):
1. Gwenview + kipi plugins v6, great, highly customizable, very fast and useful foto management, has let me manage all my picture mess (~50GB of 5MB pictures from EOS400D) – in 2 – 3 hours all was resized, organized, bad pictures deleted, no hassle, after that the 50GB shrinked to ~1GB, just left a few huge pictures of “artistic” sort for zooming, rest shrinked to 1200 x shorter side).
2. Shortly: kmail, ktorrent, dolphin, konqueror, compiz-fusion, emerald, all file management, desktop art, plasma working like a charm and very smooth!
3. Amarok 1.4.X still there (the 2.x.x series is unusable for me)
4. “just in case” KDE 3.5.X repositories, well supplied!
5. great YAST! And finally Qt4 port of the main window.
6. very precise and fast Software Management in YAST – no competition in other distros, can use Software Managenet, zypper in cli or even smart. I choose YAST S.M. as it is ripe, polished and very handy
7. Build Service and the repository system + webpin / Software Search – lets me have psi v0.13, nexuiz 2.5.1.1, all newest patched KDE 4.3.X stuff and almost all software i can think of for GNU/Linux from the Build Service! in 3 mouseclicks.
8. Adding repositories from within the Software Management, with live refreshing of the “possible” software.
9. Great dependency handling in YaST Software Management.
10. YaST in ncurses
11. Network Management – ifup and the YaST Network Management, far better than ubuntu imo. Internet access configured easy and GUI if you prefer.
12. Sound problems gone away (Skype, Renoise Tracker, Jack – all works for music creation)
13. (my personal preference) – WinUAE – available from Build Service, running in wine, well configured and packed – THE Amiga emulator (the UAE is just a touch of the Windows WinUAE virtual Amiga, with 10000000 options and ability to play every Amiga game
S 
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So… summing up this 13 points – openSUSE roxx… on this machine:
Petium IV HT 2.8 GHz; 1GB DDR RAM; ATI Radeon 9200 SE; Phase 22 soundboard; Creative SB Live! soundboard;
Not my dream- computer, but i get my work done best on openSUSE 11.1.
cheers
You have to try “zypper” – it’s quite similar to “apt” and works really well!
Also, you’ll be surprising but Yast/zypper are managing much better dependency problems rather Debian – it was very fun to discover!
Rgds,
-Dimitri