Open SUSE

[dedanna1029]

Bingo.

I just like the distro (whatever it is) to be solidly stable, and I've found that in Arch. I've found it can do the heavyweight work, and still be able to do the every day stuff too.

What I was saying, was I wasn't going to take sides either way between you and icy, because I probably don't use the things you guys do, and when it comes to tools, I got one, that's it, and it's not any of the GUI ones.

I was considering Suse because I hadn't tried it in literally years, since Suse 9.3 Pro I guess it was; have been interested to see what it can do now. No better time than now to do it; I have a borked secondary hdd right now from trying out a project (and borked a lot of things doing it). A fresh reformat of the whole drive and I should be good. It was Fedora actually, that borked me, or I borked it. Not sure which way that one went. lol. What I was doing, was seeing which distro had the best CLI online upgrade system, and it fubarred. lol.

[viking60]

Ha ha - got it. Well go for the Suse installation. You cannot have an opinion of it before you have tried it - that is true.

[dedanna1029]

Sorry, but I think I'm going to go full Arch. I'll format the secondary hdd so it would be install-ready for another distro, but I've decided that I love Arch too much. Been dying to get back to it ever since I borked it with the project that I went on to. I mean, I really, really love it; and I think that's the point. When we find something that we really like, and love even, then I think that's the one for us.

I think what I may do however, is try Chakra on the second hard drive. I think AnshulJain was on to something with it.

Suse for another time, I guess.

[samwise_gamgee]

I highly recommend you try Chakra. I've really really enjoyed my usage of it, and I really like where they are taking it.

[dedanna1029]

That's what Anshul said, too. I'm seriously debating it.

I'm having an issue with Arch (a slight one, otherwise it's beautiful!) that I didn't have before. I'll post it to a new thread.

Oh wait, just thought of something...

[viking60]

Well I have tried Open Suse 11.2 in my virtualbox again. Everybody is euforic about it so I had too see - and it still sux. KDE4 implementation has been highly praised and it looks nice. But I use Gnome. It can be changed so that is not a big point. but the control panel and the Yasts and zyppers of it are anoying. The jungle of repositories is frustrating, almost one repo per program and auto adding does not work so I have to add a zillion repos manually to get what I want.
Sure - it is working but it takes time and is frustrating. The control panel is detailed but just to much information, the overview is lost. Compared to Mandriva it is a lot worse. And I just don't like yast and zypper.

I admit that is often a habit - but I don't want to test Suse long enough for it to become one. I have tested Fedora a bit (not more than Suse) and I immediately liked Yum. It is hard to explain, but there it is.
Open Suse just cannot charm me at all. "To much" is the main impression; to much navigation, to much searching, to many repositories, to many details in the control panel.
I guess I will have to wait for 11.3. Version 11.2 could not convince me.

[dedanna1029]

This is why I try to tell people not to just go for the eye candy. The important thing is if it works.

[viking60]

OK we have left Suse behind and forgotten about it for some time now. We have covered the "Microsoft Linux" angel on several occasions. But if you can use reiserfs you sure can use Suse.
Time to check it out again so I installed 11.4 in VB.
I chose the net install Gnome version.
The installer:
It is intuitive and really just a matter of clicking next. Language and screen size are easily set up. and it just works. One of the best installers out there when it comes to ease of use.!

Logging in to Gnome to and everything looks good but I was a bit surprised that after a net-install I had to install updates. But I did install them and had to log out and back in for them to take effect.
And then I got another 133 updates! Waiting for that to finish now....
And I get a horrible long list where I have to accept replacement of stuff and I did not answer fast enough so the update did not go through. So now I am waiting for the second attempt to update to finish.......
And finished.
The installer is easy to use but involves two restarts of Suse.
The desktop:
Gnome looks like it always has and Firefox is in version 6. Going for libre office writer and.....
I get an error message that Java is broken
The reference to the menu where I can supposedly fix it is impossible to find. So I went to the yast installer and found that there were still 3 important updates pending.
Okydoky installed them (and did not even have to restart ) and Libreoffice writer popped up nicely.....
The rest looks good and feels ok so now it seems to work.
Now leeme se if I can make a roling release of this Suse stuff. I have never understood the Suse repo handling and found it confusing. But by adding the Tumbleweed repos Suse will become a stable roling release with more up to date software. That's what they say.
So how did we add repos in Suse again......
reading up in the documentation:

Libzypp is openSUSE implementation of such a package management system and provides YaST Software Management as graphical user interface and Zypper as a command line interface.

Ok enough for me I just do a zypper tumbleweed in the terminal then.....
Would you belive it? I cannot find the terminal....
Googled it and discovered that I am not alone. So I right click on the desktop and start a terminal from there.
And of course I could not add tumbleweed like that. But gimme credit I have a working terminal!
Now let us read up on those repos.......

[viking60]

Ah found it!

Code: Select all

zypper ar --refresh \
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tumbleweed/standard/ \
Tumbleweed

It doesn't get any easier than that so here we go.....

Code: Select all

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: The connection is closed)
GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: The connection is closed)
GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: The connection is closed)
Laster pakkebrønndata...
Leser installerte pakker...

Følgende pakkeoppdateringer vil IKKE bli installert (The following packages will not be updated):
  acl alsa aqbanking attr banshee-1 banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer
  banshee-1-backend-io-gio banshee-1-backend-platform-gnome
  banshee-1-backend-platform-unix banshee-1-client-classic banshee-1-core
  banshee-1-dmp banshee-1-dmp-apple-devices banshee-1-dmp-mtp
  banshee-1-extensions-default bash bash-doc bootsplash-branding-openSUSE
  cifs-utils elfutils ethtool file filesystem gio-sharp gpg2 gpgme
  gstreamer-0_10 gstreamer-0_10-plugin-gnomevfs gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad
  gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good
  gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-lang gstreamer-0_10-utils gstreamer-utils
  gtk-sharp-beans insserv iproute2 iptables kernel-desktop libacl libacl-32bit
  libakonadi4 libakonadiprotocolinternals1 libao4 libao-plugin4-esd
  libao-plugins4 libasm1 libasound2 libasound2-32bit libassuan0 libattr
  libattr-32bit libdbusmenu-qt2 libdw1 libebl1 libelf1 libgpgme11 libgpod4
  libgpod-sharp libgpod-tools libgstapp-0_10-0 libgstbasecamerabinsrc-0_10-0
  libgstbasevideo-0_10-0 libgstinterfaces-0_10-0 libgstphotography-0_10-0
  libgstreamer-0_10-0 libgstreamer-0_10-0-32bit libgstsignalprocessor-0_10-0
  libgstvdp-0_10-0 libgudev-1_0-0 libjack0 libkde4 libkdecore4 libkdepimlibs4
  libksuseinstall1 libplist1 libpolkit0 libpulse0 libpulse0-32bit
  libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libqca2 libqt4 libqt4-qt3support libqt4-sql
  libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-x11 libQtWebKit4 libreadline6 libreoffice
  libreoffice-base libreoffice-base-extensions libreoffice-branding-openSUSE
  libreoffice-calc libreoffice-calc-extensions libreoffice-components
  libreoffice-converter libreoffice-draw libreoffice-draw-extensions
  libreoffice-filters libreoffice-filters-optional libreoffice-gnome
  libreoffice-help-en-US libreoffice-hyphen libreoffice-icon-theme-galaxy
  libreoffice-icon-theme-hicontrast libreoffice-icon-theme-tango
  libreoffice-impress libreoffice-impress-extensions libreoffice-l10n-extras
  libreoffice-l10n-nb libreoffice-libs-core libreoffice-libs-extern
  libreoffice-libs-gui libreoffice-mailmerge libreoffice-math libreoffice-pyuno
  libreoffice-templates-en libreoffice-templates-labels-a4
  libreoffice-templates-labels-letter
  libreoffice-templates-presentation-layouts libreoffice-thesaurus-nb
  libreoffice-ure libreoffice-writer libreoffice-writer-extensions
  libsmbclient0 libsmbclient0-32bit libsndfile libsndfile-32bit libtalloc2
  libtdb1 libtevent0 libudev0 libupower-glib1 libusbmuxd1 libvpx0 libwbclient0
  libwbclient0-32bit mkinitrd nfs-client nfsidmap openvpn polkit
  polkit-default-privs preload preload-kmp-desktop procps pulseaudio
  pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-gconf
  pulseaudio-module-lirc pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf
  pulseaudio-utils python-kde4 python-qt4 python-sip readline-doc samba
  samba-client samba-client-32bit screen systemtap systemtap-runtime taglib
  udev upower usbmuxd usbutils vim vim-base vim-data vorbis-tools ypbind
  aaa_base aaa_base-extras

Uh Did I mention that I never have been comfortable with those Suse repos?

Reading on and there is an explaination:

Allow vendor change for Tumbleweed repository. This has to be done in order to get updates for existing packages from Tumbleweed.

Yup allowing vendor change - how hard can it be?
A simple

Code: Select all

zypper dup

should do it,
I am getting a sh..load of Gconf and dbus error messages but it seems to update libreoffice now...
Oh I am such an idiot I did the zypper dup before I had done the vendor change and zypper dup was not the answer.
I had to make a file called Tumbleweed.conf in /etc/zypp/vendors.d/ swo I happily did a:

Code: Select all

 nano /etc/zypp/vendors.d/Tumbleweed.conf

Uh I could not save that - because the vendors.d directory did not exist. So I did a sudo mkdir vendors.d and created the file.
And put this content into it:

Code: Select all

[main]

vendors = suse,opensuse,obs://build.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Tumbleweed

It really is easy.....
So finising up in Virtualbox and just reading the final instructions:

Special Concerns

Virtual Machines

openSUSE 11.4 supports VirtualBox. Due to it not being in the mainline kernel and Tumbleweed routinely receiving kernel updates, it has been decided not to support VirtualBox in the main Tumbleweed repo.

Tumbleweed does support the vmware and hyper-v virtual machine architectures.

This is because they are in the main upstream kernel and require no significant extra resources to make available with each kernel update.

I have come to far to quit now so I don't give a dam this better work!
I do the one command I have not tried yet:

Code: Select all

zypper dup --from Tumbleweed

And I get the option to keep the older VB-kernel packages so I guess It is fine.....

[rolf]

Hanging with 2010.2 looks better and better.

[viking60]

Yes you are really right on that one. Many people consider Opensuse their home. I guess a broken home is a home too. The tumbleweed does not work in VB but the old kernel is kept so I can log in to the traditional Suse.
Handling those repos is not my favorite cup of tea I have to be honest about that. But Suse delivers a fairly decent desktop apart from that.
It has way to many options and control panels (badly organized) You have the Control Centre and Yast. and a lot of tools that I guess you will get to depend on if you take the time with Suse.
It probably has a lot under the hood too. But to say that I am charmed by Suse or even convinced by Suse would be a major overstatement.
But Suse always gets good reviews so this is only a look at it from a Berserks point of view. Video coming up.....
While we are waiting for the video I tried out the webpin package search. It will find any software in any Suse repo according to the "commercial".
I typed in "opera" and it found: Nothing
It is probably me being an idiot again for overlooking a real easy command or config file again - but there it is.
Edit:
It seems it does not work:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get- ... 1-4-a.html
The sollution is to use something else.
Have I mentioned that I really dislike handlig Suse repos?

Conclusion:
Opensuse 11.4 is not convincing. My background with Suse goes way back to one of the first live cd's ever made for Linux. I picked it up in Germany and hat a lot of fun with it during my holiday -ages ago.
Then many years later I started with Mandriva and I have always looked in on Opensuse. As I have done now, and the conclusion is the same:
I just don't like it. I cannot feel comfortable with it and I do not understand how Suse can have such a big business market share.
Functions that would have come to my rescue in the Suse repo jungle, like Webpin, just don't work.
I obviously am missing something.
But this is not a distro I would consider installing on any of my boxes.

[dedanna1029]

Dbus, Gconf, and Dconf errors - reset the dbus folder in /home, reboot - remember the issues I was having with that. Just reset the folders in /home, reboot, and go on wid yer bad self.