| SuSE Linux 8.0: Good software, poor distro |
by Arend van Beelen jr.
Those of you who have read my posts at the DesktopLinux.com discussion forum may have noticed I'm a fan of SuSE's distribution. You might even be shocked by the title of this article. But don't get me wrong, I love SuSE Linux 8.0, even though I've been disappointed by some elements of it. But let's start at the beginning . . .
The installation
One last time, I booted into my KDE 2.2 desktop. I made a backup of my entire home directory, said goodbye to SuSE Linux 7.3 and turned off my computer.
After it rebooted from the SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional CD, I was presented with some options: - Installation
- Installation -- Safe Settings
- Installation -- APIC Enabled
- Manual Installation
- Rescue System
- Memory Test
- Boot Installed OS
I simply choose "Installation", and the system started detecting some hardware after which YaST2 came up and asked me my language. After I chose Nederlands (Dutch), all of the text on my screen immediately changed to Dutch, and I continued.
Going to the next part, YaST2 reported that it had detected an already installed Linux system and asked me what to do. Because I wanted to get rid of my ext2fs partitions, I choose a New Installation. After that, I was presented with a nice screen which showed default settings, according to the following topics: - Mode
- Keyboard Layout
- Mouse
- Partitioning
- Software
- Booting
- Time Zone
- Language
For Mode, it said New Installation, which was what I had just selected. But for Keyboard Layout it had chosen Dutch Layout, which is quite strange since at least 95% of the Dutch people use keyboards with a US layout; anyway it was easy to change this. The Mouse it had selected was just fine.
Now, YaST2 wanted to use the unpartitioned space on my second HD to install SuSE, which isn't a bad option, but I wanted to wipe out my existing SuSE Linux 7.3 installation, so I had to repartition my drives. I made a small boot partition with ext2fs, a swap partition, and the rest would be one big ReiserFS (SuSE's default journaling filesystem) partition.
After doing that I took a short look at the software that was going to be installed and decided I would leave it the way it was by default. Concerning Booting, YaST2 had selected to install LILO on the MBR, which was exactly what I wanted. Time Zone and Language were also fine. I was happily surprised by the ease of the topics and the fact I had to change so little.
I clicked Accept, and after a warning saying this would erase the previous data on my hard drive, the real installation took off. I was presented with some commercial information from SuSE while the files were copied.
After all needed files from the first CD had been copied, the system rebooted and, from time to time, prompted me to change a CD -- which showed me that life could have been so much easier if I a DVD drive and could have taken advantage of the included DVD disk which contains everything that's on the seven CD's.
Configuration
When everything had been copied, YaST2 asked me for a root password and it wanted me to create at least one new user. Also, it allowed me to do some additional group and user administration.
Then it lead me through the configuration of my hardware. First, it found my graphics card and informed me that I would have to download the original drivers from NVidia (I have a GeForce 2) using YaST Online Update (YOU), after which I would be able to use it with 3D software. I specified the resolution for my monitor, after which YaST was satisfied, and continued.
Now it was time for some additional hardware detection. It found my HP DeskJet 695C printer, which was configured without a hassle. The same happened with my Ethernet adapter -- I just had to enter my IP number, DNS, and gateway and that was it.
The first login(s)
The entire installation had been finished by now and the graphical login prompt was waiting for me. I logged in as user 'junior' and the KDE startup screen appeared.
After a few seconds, I was staring at my new KDE 3.0 desktop. The icons on my desktop were a bit messy so I decided to order them. Immediately I noted something strange: I had a floppy icon with the text 'Floppy', a zip icon with the text 'ZIP', and a zip icon with the text 'Floppy 2'. This last one absolutely made no sense, so I just deleted it.
After arranging my icons, I began configuring some other stuff in the Control Center. Here I found the Font Installer, which advised me to run it as super user. Because I wanted to do some other stuff also as super user, I logged out and logged in again, now as root. I installed some True Type Fonts from my FAT32 partition. I installed some RPM's which I couldn't do as a normal user, and when I was ready I logged out again and came back as junior.
Immediately, I noticed the positions of my icons were back at their original position, my fonts had been reset and the KAlarm daemon was started (I had disabled it the first time I logged in). A bit surprised I put everything back like I had done the first time. Then I tried the CD-ROM icon while there was an Audio CD in my drive, unfortunately it only said it couldn't determine the file system and didn't launch the Audio CD Browser. I took a short look and saw it referred to the /dev/cdrom device, which on its turn was a link to /dev/hdc. This was completely useless because /dev/hdc wasn't used anymore since SuSE had enabled IDE-SCSI emulation, due to it being a CD-R drive. /dev/cdrecorder did point to the correct device, /dev/sr0, but in my case both /dev/cdrom and /dev/cdrecorder should point to that place.
Because I knew I had to do some other things also for which I had to be super user again, I logged in for the third time and again entered my root account. I fixed the CD-ROM problem and also set up the KDE Login Manager so that my system would automatically login into my junior account without having to enter a password. I did some other small things and went back to my junior account, again (I know, it wasn't that efficient, but I didn't cared about that).
And what could have more surprising to me than the fact that my settings were lost again! Fonts were messed up again, the KAlarm daemon was proudly present in my panel, and all my icon positions had again been reset. Ahhh!
I decided that perhaps the best thing to do was to run the Online Update. I still had to download the NVidia drivers, so it would make sense anyway. YaST2 started downloading the patch descriptions and, indeed, there was a KDE patch available which solved a problem that caused settings to be lost between sessions. I had just bought a new distribution (all right, my boss had paid for it) and one of the first things I had to do was install a patch! It reminded me of a company from Redmond whose name shouldn't be pronounced.
Disappointed, but happy with the expectation that this would solve the problem, I began downloading the patches and the NVidia drivers . . .
Now everything works fine
From that point my system started behaving like expected, and I really started to like it now. I installed StarOffice 6.0, Quake III Arena, Opera 6.0B2 (beta 1 is shipped with SuSE), Liquid Theme Manager, and I put back all my data from the backup of my home directory.
I had some trouble putting back my old mail, because the default way KMail handles its mail now differs from the previous version, but after changing this setting from type 'maildir' to 'mbox', everything was how I wanted it to be.
My desktop looks cool now using the Liquid Theme, StarOffice and Opera work like they always did, and Quake III Arena even works better, because the sound server doesn't crash anymore.
So, after all, I'm now a happy user of SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional. I did notice some other small things that weren't the way they're supposed to be -- but all the good stuff has made me forget that easily.
Conclusion
In looking at this entire distribution from SuSE, the installation went so easily that even my father could do it. The software that's shipped with this version is good -- sorry, very good!
But the bugs that still showed up in this distro made me feel somewhat disappointed. I hope SuSE spends its time well to remove these bugs, so that version 8.1 will be the ultimate distribution! To everyone who wants to buy SuSE 8.0 Pro, it's definitely worth the 80 euros, but make sure you either have an available Internet connection or already have a copy of the patch before you start.
By the way, the system I used was as follows: - Pentium 3 1GHz
- Intel D815EEA2 motherboard
- 256 MB RAM
- GeForce 2 MX graphics adapter
- onboard sound
- 3Com 3c900 Combo Ethernet adapter
- 2 removable IBM HD's, 20GB each
- Plextor 16/10/40 CD burner
- Iomega Zip 250 drive
- Floppy drive
About the author: Arend van Beelen is a young Dutch student who would like to see Linux become more popular as a desktop operating system. He uses Linux as his desktop OS. The Linux programs he uses most are KDE (Konqueror, KMail), Opera, StarOffice, Licq, and bash.
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