cies' blog
This is the web-log (blog) of Cies Breijs. You can find his homepage here: http://cies.com (not)2007-01-31
openSUSE 10.2 to kubuntu 6.10
i went to suse when they where in their 8.x or 9.x releases. i loved it, i came from gentoo, suse just helped me to get the work done. strangely suse also felt a lot snappier than my tweaked-n-tuned on-the-edge gentoo install.
but since the 10.x releases suse had lost me bit by bit. they sure made everything look more sexy: their latest boot splash it just gorgeous. but they didn't do those two things right that keep my hooked on linux and freesoftware in general:
1) package management
2) transperancy
package management
YAST sucks more with every release. i once loved it so much, but it seems like it is never improved. calculating dependencies, adding sources, retrieving updates -- it all takes way too long, give me bad feedback of what it is doing and is not really untuitive. at some point i was waiting for over 15 minutes to get a simple (<1MB) package installed! i know there is something like SMART and apt4rpm, but i think package management is what a distro is basically all about: if it can't do that right out of the box, i'm not using it.
transperancy
to be honest i did not understand what my openSUSE 10.2 was doing anymore! sometimes my PC was just busy doing something, and when i run 'top' (on the command line), it showed process names i never heard about. maybe i'm getting old. i disabled beagle (seems to slow down everyting), but it seemed to still be running.
i also found another package installer, some updater-thingy. i made my system slow as a brick sometimes. why do i need that thingy?
resolution
so i go for kubuntu, here is what i noticed:
installing:
i like:
- browsing while installing
- installing for a live cd (i can figure somethings out during the install)
- installing a basic system and using the package manager later to finish of my installation
i dislike:
- partitioning; slow and gives bad indication of what it is doing (from an install to a laptop that i did
so kubuntu seems to do the installing process quite to my likings, simplicity rules again. after the system is installed i can go on configuring, i never saw the reason for configuring allmost everything at install time.
using:
i like:
- simple and fast
- adept is nice, aptitude is nice, all so fast compared to YAST! (maybe rpm just sucks?)
- it beeing KDE centric
i dislike:
- the pink color in the default theme looks horrible (tip: go dark blue)
- the bootsplash hides my startup info and i can not unhide it
so basically all i dislike is 'cosmetics' that i can easily change to suit my likings.
conclusion
i don't want to draw a conclusion like "suse is bad". i liked suse a lot. they where clearly a desktop leader for some years -- they pushed the envelope of what a free desktop can do. now i just seem to like kubuntu more.
but since the 10.x releases suse had lost me bit by bit. they sure made everything look more sexy: their latest boot splash it just gorgeous. but they didn't do those two things right that keep my hooked on linux and freesoftware in general:
1) package management
2) transperancy
package management
YAST sucks more with every release. i once loved it so much, but it seems like it is never improved. calculating dependencies, adding sources, retrieving updates -- it all takes way too long, give me bad feedback of what it is doing and is not really untuitive. at some point i was waiting for over 15 minutes to get a simple (<1MB) package installed! i know there is something like SMART and apt4rpm, but i think package management is what a distro is basically all about: if it can't do that right out of the box, i'm not using it.
transperancy
to be honest i did not understand what my openSUSE 10.2 was doing anymore! sometimes my PC was just busy doing something, and when i run 'top' (on the command line), it showed process names i never heard about. maybe i'm getting old. i disabled beagle (seems to slow down everyting), but it seemed to still be running.
i also found another package installer, some updater-thingy. i made my system slow as a brick sometimes. why do i need that thingy?
resolution
so i go for kubuntu, here is what i noticed:
installing:
i like:
- browsing while installing
- installing for a live cd (i can figure somethings out during the install)
- installing a basic system and using the package manager later to finish of my installation
i dislike:
- partitioning; slow and gives bad indication of what it is doing (from an install to a laptop that i did
so kubuntu seems to do the installing process quite to my likings, simplicity rules again. after the system is installed i can go on configuring, i never saw the reason for configuring allmost everything at install time.
using:
i like:
- simple and fast
- adept is nice, aptitude is nice, all so fast compared to YAST! (maybe rpm just sucks?)
- it beeing KDE centric
i dislike:
- the pink color in the default theme looks horrible (tip: go dark blue)
- the bootsplash hides my startup info and i can not unhide it
so basically all i dislike is 'cosmetics' that i can easily change to suit my likings.
conclusion
i don't want to draw a conclusion like "suse is bad". i liked suse a lot. they where clearly a desktop leader for some years -- they pushed the envelope of what a free desktop can do. now i just seem to like kubuntu more.
posted by cies # 00:07 
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you forget to write that kubuntu have a lot of problem
i not able to use it, too more bug in kde who don't exist in mandriva or suse
in kde bug, a lot of bug don't exist on other distribution
another lack in a management tool similar to mandriva or suse
i not able to use it, too more bug in kde who don't exist in mandriva or suse
in kde bug, a lot of bug don't exist on other distribution
another lack in a management tool similar to mandriva or suse
If you want to disable boot splash go to /boot/grub/menu.lst and delete "splash" from kernel option list
You have some good points here. I agree package management is a core feature and SUSE it loosing it's selling points there.
My openSUSE 10.2 system also got slow with beagle and zmd-**update stuff. Those two are both Mono applications. I've seen loads of 4.0 on a plain desktop when ZMD and beagle fired up.
During the upgrade I lost DMA for my disks. This caused all Mono apps to run slow. See this thread: http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=28937
I'm not into Ubuntu yet, I'd miss the various panels YaST provides. But for me it's also the "next big thing". When Ubuntu has it's admin panels sorted out, I'm ready to make a switch as well. In the meantime I hope SuSE improves. :)
My openSUSE 10.2 system also got slow with beagle and zmd-**update stuff. Those two are both Mono applications. I've seen loads of 4.0 on a plain desktop when ZMD and beagle fired up.
During the upgrade I lost DMA for my disks. This caused all Mono apps to run slow. See this thread: http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=28937
I'm not into Ubuntu yet, I'd miss the various panels YaST provides. But for me it's also the "next big thing". When Ubuntu has it's admin panels sorted out, I'm ready to make a switch as well. In the meantime I hope SuSE improves. :)
Package Management in 10.2 is excellent as long as you disable ZMD and use the openSUSE Software Management pattern. All your package management woes would most probably have been solved by reading http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources
> i disabled beagle (seems to slow down everyting), but it seemed to still be running.
I'm sorry, but then evidently you didn't disable it properly. Curious to think that this somehow impacts on transparency.
> i disabled beagle (seems to slow down everyting), but it seemed to still be running.
I'm sorry, but then evidently you didn't disable it properly. Curious to think that this somehow impacts on transparency.
I also just switched from SUSE Linux 10.0 to Kubuntu 6.10. I liked SUSE's package manager, but I admit that I used DAG's apt-get repository mostly. I also liked the configurability of SUSE: just about everything is in one place. Such as firewall setup, Xen configuration, even a DHCP server. YaST had been pretty bad in the past, but I thought 10.0 did a reasonable job.
After installing Kubuntu about 24 hours ago (I got a new laptop drive and that prompted the change) my impressions are: the installer needs polish (partitioning is weird, can't select LVM2/EVMS, no place to indicate that hardware clock is local instead of GMT, etc), I agree about the splash screen (I have removed "quiet" and "splash", since I like to see the progress), and I don't like the use of UUID instead of fs labels for entries in /etc/fstab.
One other feature that KDE badly needs is something like Windows' (argh! I said the word!) File and Settings Transfer Wizard. I had to go through the ~/.kde directory and pull out the pieces I wanted. I got almost everything right (address book entries, bookmarks, even digital signature files), but Kontact uses slightly different shortcuts than Akregator, so I had to set CTRL+R. Plus, I copied my akregatorrc file, but I seem to have lost all feeds except the default KDE ones.
Oh, and the nVidia drivers are build8776 and I need the newer ones in order for TwinView to work properly. (But I won't buy another laptop with nVidia video, so this won't happen again.)
After installing Kubuntu about 24 hours ago (I got a new laptop drive and that prompted the change) my impressions are: the installer needs polish (partitioning is weird, can't select LVM2/EVMS, no place to indicate that hardware clock is local instead of GMT, etc), I agree about the splash screen (I have removed "quiet" and "splash", since I like to see the progress), and I don't like the use of UUID instead of fs labels for entries in /etc/fstab.
One other feature that KDE badly needs is something like Windows' (argh! I said the word!) File and Settings Transfer Wizard. I had to go through the ~/.kde directory and pull out the pieces I wanted. I got almost everything right (address book entries, bookmarks, even digital signature files), but Kontact uses slightly different shortcuts than Akregator, so I had to set CTRL+R. Plus, I copied my akregatorrc file, but I seem to have lost all feeds except the default KDE ones.
Oh, and the nVidia drivers are build8776 and I need the newer ones in order for TwinView to work properly. (But I won't buy another laptop with nVidia video, so this won't happen again.)
If you want the splash and still have the boot test edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the quiet option.
I do find it annoying that to have a working SUSE I need to disable things in the default install - the zmd package manager and everything beagle related. Actually, I find it easier just to disable mono as this zaps all the others through dependencies and I don't use any of the other mono apps (I do quite like f-spot but prefer digikam, amarok/banshee is no contest).
Yast still rocks for hardware configuration, but the package management, even with the opensuse stack is still a bit wobbly. Ok, it is relatively new, but I don't see advantages of the new system over yast/susewatcher in 9.x, only problems
Yast still rocks for hardware configuration, but the package management, even with the opensuse stack is still a bit wobbly. Ok, it is relatively new, but I don't see advantages of the new system over yast/susewatcher in 9.x, only problems
You are correct, RPM does just suck.
It's too bad that package management is such a general mess in Linux, and that every major distro is so closely tied to their method. Rewriting a whole new infrastructure might be a pain, but that one time pain would result in long term benefits for all Linux users and for application packagers.
It's too bad that package management is such a general mess in Linux, and that every major distro is so closely tied to their method. Rewriting a whole new infrastructure might be a pain, but that one time pain would result in long term benefits for all Linux users and for application packagers.
Hm, beagle is a problem in SUSE? And an updater-thingy keeps popping up in "top"? It does the same things here in Kubuntu Edgy - at least on my configuration. Any other options?
I wrote an extensive commentary on Suse 10.2 problems and how to work around them in case that you are interested. It's available
here
here
my replies, in order...
marc: i found no bugs in kubuntu edgy's kde -- and up to now i dont mis a management tool (package management is apparently all i need)
karolus: i know... i was only whining about defaults setting -- blocking boot info by default is not very nice IMHO.
diederik: did you also experience YAST crawling (more than 10 minutes for a single package) when you have a few extra sources enabled?
francis: i expect some things to work reasonably well by default. i dont need some big corp pushing policies for crap software running by default in the OS i use to get work done.
frank: i understand what you mean, you name issues that are no issues to me. the UUID thing is a bit strange, but it cannot bother me. don't get me wrong: for servers i use (and have always used) debian (nobunutu on my servers).
mark: thanks! (this i didn't know!)
lefty crupps: ...and kde and gnome should unite... sorry dude; think again (one tip, it has something to do with choice).
roman: indeed roman... choice!
porcel: good work -- very faithful. i had some more problems than i found in your list, i just dont want to bash suse here. all i rant about is some sane defaults.
thanks for replying guys!
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marc: i found no bugs in kubuntu edgy's kde -- and up to now i dont mis a management tool (package management is apparently all i need)
karolus: i know... i was only whining about defaults setting -- blocking boot info by default is not very nice IMHO.
diederik: did you also experience YAST crawling (more than 10 minutes for a single package) when you have a few extra sources enabled?
francis: i expect some things to work reasonably well by default. i dont need some big corp pushing policies for crap software running by default in the OS i use to get work done.
frank: i understand what you mean, you name issues that are no issues to me. the UUID thing is a bit strange, but it cannot bother me. don't get me wrong: for servers i use (and have always used) debian (nobunutu on my servers).
mark: thanks! (this i didn't know!)
lefty crupps: ...and kde and gnome should unite... sorry dude; think again (one tip, it has something to do with choice).
roman: indeed roman... choice!
porcel: good work -- very faithful. i had some more problems than i found in your list, i just dont want to bash suse here. all i rant about is some sane defaults.
thanks for replying guys!
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