Comments on: Distro Comparison: openSUSE 10.3 – Day 3

By: hq197

hq197 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:36:42 +0000

The extra clicks in the “one click install” are all related to giving the user the freedom to choose, aren’t they? The truth is this is arguably the biggest advance in installation convenience since red hat’s RPMs. Admittedly, some people still dislike RPMs as well. In my opinion, SUSE 10.3 provides the perfect balance between ease of use without removing the power of choice. Of course, one can always use the konsole ( terminal) in any distro, but SUSE puts the power of Linux into a GUI, making a migration from the usual consumer popular OS’s to Linux, a great learning curve. I learned a lot by using SUSE (my first ever Linux was SUSE 10.1), and only recently been dabbling with Ubuntu , Mandriva 2008 and Fedora 8.

It seems you don’t like the qt flavor of YAST – perhaps give the gtk GUI a shot from the GNOME desktop. It is possible to enable the gtk flavor to run instead from inside KDE, but you may have to install some or other GNOME package first. Personally, I find the Fedora “Add/Remove software” a lot more like windows and in fact, it would have been better had Fedora 8 just gone with synaptic or smart as default instead. I DO liek Fedora 8 anyhow and I will enjoy fiddling around with Mandriva as well. But SUSE remains my main OS precisely for the YAST and ONE CLICK install features.

Thanks for the interesting article.

By: Avi Alkalay

Avi Alkalay — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:19:42 +0000

I think this kind of tests are excelent and should be encouraged.

I am testing KUbuntu at home for a while and I’m enjoying. But as you, I am still not sure it is the distro for me. Of course, after 9 years using a specific Linux flavor (Red Hat/Fedora in my case) nothing else seems familiar.

By: apokryphos

apokryphos — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:22:24 +0000

> I know about the fingerprint reader software, indeed this is how I did it in Fedora. My problem is that if I were wanting to enable it in openSUSE, this is the only location and its confusing.

Did you have a problem when following those instructions I gave you?

> As far as zypper goes, your example above points out the name of the package, but not the version, which is part of my concern.

Enabling such a verbose option by default would not be a good idea. Your complaint however was that it “doesn’t show depends”, when it clearly does. You can enable version number of the package with options (see the man page)

> The other part is it doesn’t tell where it will install it from, in other words, which repository the packages are being installed.

This is again the standard procedure for basic installation on a CLI client. I install packages with zypper and have used other tools in the past for years, and I have *very* rarely needed to do this. Hence, it’s counter-intuitive to have it on by default. If you want that stuff, use the extra options available.

> YaST locks me into its way of thinking. I’m not unimpressed by the improvements, however. And I disagree as to its flexibility and greatness you mention compared to the system-config-* tools in Fedora.

You can disagree, but they have been both justified here and by the open research available to you discussing user experiences by usability experts. You cannot please everyone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a right decision.

By: Iznogood

Iznogood — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:16:27 +0000

I was sure the “-v” was the default “give more info switch” for all linux commands. Or have I misunderstood your question.

embla:~ # zypper -v in gnome-desktop-devel
Verbosity: 1
Non-option program arguments: ‘gnome-desktop-devel’
Initializing Target
Checking whether to refresh metadata for Packman
Checking whether to refresh metadata for nvidia
Checking whether to refresh metadata for gnome:com
Checking whether to refresh metadata for Update
* Reading repository ‘Packman’ cache
(4610 resolvables found)
* Reading repository ‘nvidia’ cache
(6 resolvables found)
* Reading repository ‘gnome:com’ cache
(131 resolvables found)
* Reading repository ‘Main’ cache
(6457 resolvables found)
* Reading repository ‘Update’ cache
(2859 resolvables found)
* Reading repository ‘Non-oss’ cache
(83 resolvables found)
* Reading installed packages [100%]
(2194 resolvables)
0 items locked
Establishing status of aggregates
Resolving dependencies…

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
libopenssl-devel-0.9.8e-45.5.i586 (Update)
libgnomeui-devel-2.20.0-3.2.i586 (Update)
libbonobo-devel-2.20.0-5.2.i586 (Update)
libgnomecanvas-devel-2.20.0-4.2.i586 (Update)
dbus-1-devel-1.0.2-59.2.i586 (Update)
libuuid-devel-1.40.2-20.2.i586 (Update)
libcom_err-devel-1.40.2-20.2.i586 (Update)
libext2fs-devel-1.40.2-20.2.i586 (Update)
libblkid-devel-1.40.2-20.2.i586 (Update)
alsa-devel-1.0.14-31.2.i586 (Update)
audiofile-devel-0.2.6-77.i586 (Main)
avahi-devel-0.6.20-40.i586 (Main)
dbus-1-glib-devel-0.74-25.i586 (Main)
esound-devel-0.2.38-17.i586 (Main)
gail-devel-1.20.0-4.i586 (Main)
gconf2-devel-2.20.0-4.i586 (Main)
gnome-desktop-devel-2.20.0-3.i586 (Main)
gnome-keyring-devel-2.20-4.i586 (Main)
gnome-vfs2-devel-2.20.0-3.i586 (Main)
hal-devel-0.5.9_git20070831-13.i586 (Main)
indent-2.2.9-266.i586 (Main)
libart_lgpl-devel-2.3.19-35.i586 (Main)
libbonoboui-devel-2.20.0-4.i586 (Main)
libgnome-devel-2.20.0-7.i586 (Main)
libidl-devel-0.8.9-4.i586 (Main)
libjpeg-devel-6.2.0-78.i586 (Main)
libusb-devel-0.1.12-72.i586 (Main)
libxml2-devel-2.6.30-4.i586 (Main)
ncurses-devel-5.6-41.i586 (Main)
orbit2-devel-2.14.9-5.i586 (Main)
popt-devel-1.7-368.i586 (Main)
readline-devel-5.2-61.i586 (Main)
startup-notification-devel-0.9-15.i586 (Main)
tack-5.6-41.i586 (Main)

Overall download size: 5.1 M. After the operation, additional 21.6 M will be used.
Continue? [yes/no]:

ps. if you want even more info try -vv

By: sontek

sontek — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:26:21 +0000

The man page clearly says ‘-r’ or ‘–repo’ to define what repo you want to install from. I think you need to at least do the bare minimum of glancing at the man page before saying things like “This seems backward if there is no way to do such things.”. Its the very first option under install.

Its easy to find things wrong with something if you don’t spend the time to learn how to use it.

By: Jesse Keating

Jesse Keating — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:43:44 +0000

One thing that seriously bothers me about OpenSuSE is that they call themselves “open” and are supposed to be this community distro, yet only Novell employees can commit to it, or do builds. Sure they have a public build system that lets you do builds and stash them in a 3rd party repository somewhere, but you certainly can’t directly contribute to the OpenSuSE distro.

By: herlo

herlo — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:31:54 +0000

apokryphos,

I know about the fingerprint reader software, indeed this is how I did it in Fedora. My problem is that if I were wanting to enable it in openSUSE, this is the only location and its confusing.

As far as zypper goes, your example above points out the name of the package, but not the version, which is part of my concern. The other part is it doesn’t tell where it will install it from, in other words, which repository the packages are being installed. Another question I have, how does one specify one repo over another? This seems backward if there is no way to do such things.

YaST locks me into its way of thinking. I’m not unimpressed by the improvements, however. And I disagree as to its flexibility and greatness you mention compared to the system-config-* tools in Fedora.

Cheers,

Herlo

By: Livio

Livio — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:05:20 +0000

I also like system-* ones more, but YaST is polished well…
system-* are not.

Also the artwork… I love Tangoish icons, but my favourite distro is going to use such shit like Echo… Fuck.

By: apokryphos

apokryphos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:47:06 +0000

I’m still finding what you’re saying about zypper curious. Like I said though, could you paste an example of where it doesn’t show the depends? I agree it would be incredibly annoying if it didn’t, because this is such a standard feature for any package management (which is why zypper, of course, has it):

opensuse:/home/francis # zypper install wxGTK-gl
* Reading repository ‘Main Repository (NON-OSS)’ cache
* Reading repository ‘KDE 4 development version builds (openSUSE_10.3)’ cache
* Reading repository ‘Packman Repository’ cache
* Reading repository ‘openSUSE BuildService – KDE:Community’ cache
* Reading repository ‘NVIDIA Repository’ cache
* Reading installed packages [100%]

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
unixODBC wxGTK-compat wxGTK-gl

Overall download size: 4.2 M. After the operation, additional 12.0 M will be used.
Continue? [yes/no]:

What is it about YaST that you find unfriendly? Could you give any examples of the modules or the way they behave? That would really help. Even so, YaST is undoubtedly more comprehensive (with more modules) than Fedora’s selection of tools. Some people dislike YaST originally because they’re not as used to a wizard style of configuration, but these are actually really great from a user experience (and usability) perspective for a range of users. It empowers both power users and novices to configure and setup a particular thing. If you’re a new user, just click “Next”; if you’re a power user and want to change things around, then go right ahead.

How long was it that the installer took for you (in minutes)?

Re: fingerprint reader. Follow the instructions like here: http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Fingerprint_Authentication (it is in fact developed by openSUSE developers).

It’s not really intuitive to suggest that the GNOME control center is “like Windows” when it seems to be the way *all* operating systems are going with structuring their control center modules, such as OS X and KDE (systemsettings), as well. That it reminds you of Windows is unfortunate, but we’re not going to pass out on the best idea because Windows might have it as well.