Comments on: openSUSE 11.0RC1 gets high marks on ZDNet

By: Beineri

Beineri — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:43:37 +0000

This comparison is lacking – I don’t think that Ubuntu has a good portion of German engineering inside.

By: Kevin Dupuy

Kevin Dupuy — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:52:45 +0000

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

By: PeterPac

PeterPac — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:04:59 +0000

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.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:19:15 +0000

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.