| Curmudgeon deems SUSE 10.1 "really cool and solid" |
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Apr. 19, 2006)
This is one really, really cool and solid distribution. OK, before I go any further I should point out that SUSE 10.1 (code name: Agama Lizard) isn't actually released yet. I've been kicking the tires of the first SUSE 10.1 "Release Candidate."
Novell and its SUSE buddies comes right out and say, "This is an unsupported, open source only, preliminary edition of SUSE Linux that contains bleeding-edge packages and represents the latest development snapshot." In short, do not, we repeat do not, run this on a production system.
Fool that I am, after I spent a day working with SUSE 10.1 on one of my test systems, I started swapping it in on my production SUSE 10 Linux desktop.
Why? Because I really like it, and I, as something of a Linux expert, can steer around problems that may knock most users over. Now if you want to follow in my footsteps, be certain to read the Most Annoying Bugs list. The only one I found troublesome was that the Xen module in YaST2 -- SUSE's management system -- won't let you setup a Xen VM (virtual machine) properly.
Even so, if you know Xen and you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, it's not a deal-breaker.
Let me also just say that while I've had smooth sailing, other expert SUSE users have been having fits with YaST2, the bootloader, and updating the system with new or updated packages. So, I suggest that most users might be better off waiting for the final code.
After all, SUSE 10.1 is due to go final at the end of April, and from what I see, the developers will either hit the date on the nose or be no more than a week or so off.
So, why would you take your computer's life in your hands and give it a try?
Well, for starters, all the important applications and infrastructure programs are at their brand-spanking new stage. While some of the programs are still at the bleeding-edge stage, most of them are the latest and greatest solid releases.
So, for example, instead of OpenOffice 2, you get OpenOffice 2.02. Firefox 1.07 is replace by Firefox 1.501; KDE 3.5.1 replaces KDE 3.4; and so on. Those little updates are more important than their numbers indicate.
For instance, the new release of OpenOffice is noticeably faster than the one that came with SUSE 10. When you spend all day writing, the way I do, all those saved seconds add up. And, Firefox 1.5 simply does everything that a browser should do better than Firefox 1.07, or Internet Explorer, or whatever.
Some of the other new programs are still showing some rough edges, but many of them are a lot smoother than they used to be. Take, if you will, SUSE's master search program: Beagle, Linux's answer to the Windows Google Desktop and the Mac OS Spotlight tools.
When Beagle works, I love it. When it doesn't, I want to take a newspaper to that dog. Early in its development, it was a memory hog. In addition, as a GNOME application, it's had more than its fair share of problems running on my desktop of choice, KDE.
Things have changed for the better. Not only is Beagle much better about letting other processes have access to the system's CPU and memory, there's a new KDE interface, Kerry Beagle, which works well and makes Beagle easy to configure.
That's a good thing, because Beagle can still take more than its fair share of system resources while indexing. But, now you can manage it so that you can get Beagle's search goodness without devoting your entire system to doing nothing but search.
I really appreciate, that since it lets me run the new and improved 3D Xgl-based interface. While for my purposes, as a text-oriented kind of guy, the 3D wonderfulness is largely wasted, I can certainly see how people who live and die by their graphic applications will really appreciate this functionality.
There are also other new programs, such as banshee, a Mono-based music player. Now, there are already many audio players out there for Linux, such as KDE's amaroK and Linspire's Lsongs, but banshee is very good indeed.
Banshee's ability to rip, organize, and burn music has managed to impress me in less than a day. What really got my attention, though, was that with it I can work with my iPod. It's not the equal of iTunes plus an iPod, but it's pretty darn impressive. I'm not taking the Windows version of iTunes off my SUSE box yet, but I can see that day coming.
If you want, you can also get a selection of some of the best proprietary software for Linux such as Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash Player, and Java without having to hunt through file archives scattered hither and yon on the Internet.
I also found the entire Linux desktop, even with Beagle indexing away in the background, to be more responsive and noticeably quicker. Even such non-Linux programs as iTunes and Microsoft Word -- running on WINE 0.9.10 -- were sprightlier.
To install all this and more was more an exercise in shoving CDs into my system's CD drives than anything else. On both of my systems -- one an update from SUSE 10, and the other a new install on a system that previously had Windows XP Home on it -- it took me only a bit more than an hour each.
The system I updated was a generic white-box with a 2.8 GHz Pentium IV, 512 MB of RAM, and an Ultra ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 60 GB hard drive. The PC I blew Windows away on was an older HP a250n with a 2.6 GHz Pentium IV, an NVidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP graphics board with 64MB of DDR memory, and 512MB of dual-channel DDR SDRAM, with a 120 MB Ultra DMA hard drive.
I can honestly report that I had no trouble either installing the operating system or adding other programs in either case.
Let me sum it up to you this way. SUSE 10.1 -- release candidate and all -- is now my primary desktop, and I'll be installing it on my laptop before I head out to the Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego.
You can download your own copy of of SUSE 10.1 Release Candidate 1 here.
In addition to supporting the 32-bit Intel versions I tested, SUSE 10.1 is also available for AMD Athlon 64, Intel EM64T, and IBM PowerPC processors. If you'd rather get it all in a retail edition of SUSE Linux 10.1, which includes a user manual and 90 days of installation support, a retail box edition will be offered at a suggested price of $59.95.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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