Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

9Dec/0613

Novel SuSe Linux: Most Laptop Friendly Distro!

I have years of experience in Linux, and have used countless distributions in the past. Slackware has been my all time favorite. Over the years I have finetuned it for my PCs that they exhibit performance which I could never dream of in Windows. The thing I really love about Slackware is that because it is raw, the amount you learn about GNU/Linux is enormous. So In desktops at least in my place Slackware rules. However I would not say that Slackware is for the Desktop, it is a raw distro, which requires a lot of expertise and time to fine-tune and get everything working. I initially used to pitch it to newbies, but they always ended up being disgusted with linux due to the amount configuration they had to do.

Recently I got myself a Dell Inspiron 6400 Notebook, and installing Slackware on it, was pleasant at first, but than soon I realized many things where not working, after extensive configuration messing with the xorg.conf, countless kernel recompilations and others I got everything to work and enjoyed Slackware on my Laptop.

Today, I thought for a change I'll try out OpenSuSe 10.1 from Novell out. And it has been a blast! From the first glimpses of the installer I said to myself "hmm.. 32 bit!" (slackware has DOS-like installer, I know its not the only one with a 32bit installer, I've used Redhat's anaconda, its good, but the SuSe one is impressive). Soon I was in for surprises, everything went well during the installation: At first my external mouse and the touchpad automagically worked! Even the scroll wheel did :) . Then as the installation proceeded, my sound card got detected (with which I had problems in Slackware, although I had compileed SND_HD_INTEL into the kernel, it still wouldnt work) , the graphics card (glxgears shows close to 900, thats 800 more than Slackware default :) ), along with the appropriate resolution (1280x800). Bluetooth, WiFi, firewire, everything was picked up by the installer automatically. This is how I expect a Linux installaton to be! SuSe really sets the standard here.

In Slackware, we have the very raw pkgtools package management system, which is simple and easy. But sometimes one runs into version conflicts, just as in Federo with "RPM-Hell". SuSe has perhaps one of the best package management system built into YaST. It handles dependencies transparently, and downloads and installs them without any special intervention.

So OpenSuSe is here to stay in my laptop! I know there are some political arguements against Novell for having struck a deal with Microsoft, and some are going as far as proposing a boycott of all Novell code. But the fact is Novell has made SuSe an extremely user-friendly distribution which really rocks on laptops! I'm sure it has the same performance on Desktops. So with OpenSuse and some other distros like Ubuntu etc. Linux is finally ready to enter mainstream desktop computing.

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Filed under: internet, linux, microsoft, open source, operating systems, software Leave a comment
  • nekohayo

    Well, you know, pretty much every distro out there does all that nowadays… ubuntu, fedora, mandriva, the mainstream ones, are expected to work out of the box like this, so OpenSuSE sure does it :) it all depends if you really like to learn inside out (like Slackware/gentoo) or if you want it to be done in 15 minutes.

  • JN

    I am one of those Li-noobs that want everything to work out of the box..
    And PCLinuxOS detected everything on my old Inspiron 3800, including the usb wifi adapter. The liveCD worked great and so did the installation, and great control panel (no sudo…). The only thing I didn´t like was the partitioning CLI utility, tedious and could get it to do what I wanted.
    Much easier to use a GPartEd liveCD for that. Meanwhile I couldn´t get the Ubuntu liveCD to work properly, very very slow, CD always seeking and no usb wifi detection …

  • http://linux.wordpress.com/ E@zyVG

    Go for openSUSE 10.2, a newer version released couple days ago. It will be definitely a better experience, and it has some more mobile friendly features with bug fixes.

  • http://irfanhabib.wordpress.com/ irfanhab

    Is there a way I can upgrade my Suse 10.1 installation to 10.2?

  • http://csshyamsundar.wordpress.com/ CS Shyam Sundar

    Dude! I Completely agree with you! Not only friendly for Laptops., but it turns out to be the easiest distro that helped me to complete the final thesis. [ I was doing something in bluetooth., the bluez stack would hand the kernel in FC4., Suse was awesome and performed well; I was able to complete on time ]

  • http://fzone.wordpress.com/ zonel

    A friend me, expert in Linux advises me to use Suse. It seems the best Linux distribution for the moment. Personnally; I use RedHat 9.0 and I am trying Ubuntu (looks good). Cygwin on windows look good too.

  • http://linux.wordpress.com/ E@zyVG

    Surely you can. At least you can give it a try. But my personal recommendation has always being a clean install. I never go for update for system releases.

  • boywonder

    newbi with linux but have been trying all sorts of installs in the last 3 weeks. The one I liked most up until yesterday was Ubuntu (6.10). Seemed to work great until I got a message on reboot that said i had an internal clock failure. This wouldn’t even let me boot up into grub. I later read I had to actually remove the cmos battery to get teh BIOS to reset in order to do anything. Couldn’t believe it. So now I am downloading SUSe 10.2. i’ve been told that the Ubuntu Feisty should fix this issue but I don’t want to start chancing it.

  • Withheld

    >Is there a way I can upgrade my Suse 10.1 installation to 10.2?

    yes – There are a few ways to do it. If you want to do it via online methods see http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16592.html .

    Also – although I haven’t tried it – I believe you can just put in the 10.2 disk, boot with it, and select “upgrade.”

  • bentider

    I’m in the process of downloading Suse 10.2 as I write this. I have an HP laptop – dv8000, just upgraded to Vista, and have never been more disappointed with a distro in my entire life. Heck, windows 3.1 ran better than this, and i did a clean install, as the upgrade technique crashed awfully!

    I had dual booted this laptop in early 2006, with Linux Mandriva. It ran ok, but the screen resolution was off, so I went back to XP. I also installed Ubuntu, but frankly don’t care for eart tones on my laptop, so out it went, although it uinstalled well. I’ve also messed with Red Hat, tried Knoppix, but issues with bot. I had used Suse 9.3 in 2005, and remeber it being ok, but seems I recall having problems talking to some external devices, and just didn’t have the patience to sort it out.

    I have Suse 10.1 – and ran it from the DVD, and I got to tell you, I was impressed – I would think 10.2 would be even better.

    Gosh, nothing can be as disappointing as Vista, except maybe a Doberman with a handgun!

    Later.

    Gary

  • serya_di

    Well…..I have tried Mandriva free,Mandriva one,Gentoo,Ubuntu,Fedora Core 6…….and my conclusion that openSuse 10.2/10.3 Alpha are the best ever.
    I had them on different PCs….dell laptop,custom PCs….and what I really liked it was that it’s completely adjustable….most things are working out of box….the rest….openSuSe forums and wikis and you have everything working properly,as long as you do step by step without skipping and of them.

  • cliff

    I have been using ubuntu 6.10 for a while and still experience mouse detection issues. 6.06 ran very nice and sometimes I regret having upgraded – although some portions run better – such as my vpn install.

    Is there an easy way to change distros without losing all of the applications and your user directories?

  • neo

    Dude, SuSE 10 is there on my compaq presario notebook since a year! And it seems the best Linux distro for the notebook! Supports almost all the notebook hardware features including Wi-Fi.

    Neo

  • http://irfanhabib.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/my-blog-is-100-days-old/ My Blog is 100 days Old! « Irfan’s /root on the Web

    [...] allowed me to purchase my first Notebook. Another thing which happened in the last 100 days was the openSuse 10.2 was released [...]

« SuSe takes over my Desktop! Eric Sink vs Joel Spolsky vs Paul Graham »

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