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openSUSE 11.0RC1 gets high marks on ZDNet
(8 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Over on ZDNet, Jason Perlow says that openSUSE 11.0 is the “Mercedes-Benz to Ubuntu’s Volkswagen.”
The first thing you’ll notice about OpenSUSE 11 is the completely renovated installer program. In fact, I’d have to say that next to Mac, this is probably the most beautiful installer program I have ever seen. Beauty isn’t just skin deep, however — a lot of time and work has been invested to make the SUSE installer faster and easier to use. A complete install, with everything, including GNOME, KDE, XFCE and the development and server packages — sans the multilingual documentation selected on my ThinkPad T60, with a 32-bit 1.8Ghz Core Duo and 2GB of RAM took approximately 40 minutes. That ain’t too shabby for a full DVD worth of stuff.
I am also quite impressed with how fast the package repository management works in the RC1 release. In 10.3, the initial repository setup could take up to a half an hour, and would frequently bomb out. Not with 11.0 — a dozen repos, which include the vast user-contributed PACKMAN in Germany as well as the newly launched OpenSUSE build service, only took a few minutes to set up. The new software update utility is also significantly faster and much more stable. For those of you who prefer a command line, the “zypper” utility will provide a similar experience to “yum” or “apt-get” on Fedora/Red Hat and Ubuntu/Debian, respectively.
The review is very positive, but I do disagree with Perlow’s assessment that “at this point in the distro’s evolution, it is not the Linux for the masses or even for the people. It remains true to its roots, which was and still is for power users with systems that can fully take advantage of everything it has to offer.”
Yes, openSUSE 11.0 will still be good for power users and that openSUSE 11.0 is true to its roots — but I think 11.0 will be one of the very best distros for those new to Linux as well. Not necessarily those new to computers but I think Windows defectors will have a relatively easy time of it using openSUSE 11.0.
I’m going to be inflicting 11.0 rc 1 proving that theory over the next few days with my friends and family. What better test subjects than the ones you love? 
Converting a ordinary person to Linux (regardless of the distribution) is far from ready. Why? Applications, that’s why! Sure, there’s OpenOffice but it’s really only starting to get interesting, and then there’s the Gimp, but that too is not for the faint of heart (as feature rich as it is). But ordinary uses use other applications like Microsoft Money – and purleeeeese don’t sell me on GnuCash!. Ordinary users want to send photos to their laptop via bluetooth from their phone (yes, it’s possible with openSUSE but it’s still far from straightforward)
I use openSUSE 11 and my boys (4.5 and 5.5) do too, but my application needs (and theirs) are specialised and/or limited.
Novell did a survey an age back on application “wants” from its community – interesting stats, limited action – you should check it out. When it reaches the point were I can convert my Father-In-Law to Linux, I’ll know that the penguin has arrived.
I have been doing some hard testing of the KDE 4 desktop with 11.0 out of the gate. While there is not much we can do until the KDE crew further develop KDE 4 I have been starting to believe placing KDE 4 option in 11.0 is a mistake. I have been in discussion with some from KDE about why the big push to look like Windows Vista and staying with the Konqueror file system and push Firefox Browser instead of what they are currently doing. I know they are trying to attract window users but why Vista theme? KDE 4 just has way to many problems as of yet. Reboot crashes, taskbar, making changes are just some of the areas that need lots of work.
A new user not knowing might just select 4.0 because they would think it is improved and better than 3.5 just because of the version, plus they do not heed warnings very well. Have to think like a Windows user here during the choice on install. This could become a big issue and the user saying well this is not what I expected. Giving them a very stable install should be our goal. Once KDE 4 stables we can update SuSe 11.
As you probably know, there was much discussion on the mailinglists about this topic. It was decided to go with KDE 4.0 because it was believed to be feature-full and stable enough for most users. Now, what I don’t understand is what do you mean by “big push to look like Windows Vista”? It sounds like you’re talking about the look and feel, neither of which look like Vista to me.
You also mentioned updating openSUSE 11.0. Whenever bugs get fixed or security updates are fixed, just like every version before it, openSUSE 11.0 and it’s KDE 4 will get updated. But it’s not like they could have kept KDE 3.5 and then update 11.0 with 4.0
This comparison is lacking – I don’t think that Ubuntu has a good portion of German engineering inside.