Linux.com

Of course, to open the root folder you have to become root... does he even slightly know what he's talking about.

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No, he doesn't - that's obviously a link to the root folder, which you'd need super user rights for - also, that menu he was looking at is a SUSE thing, not KDE 4 (at the very least, it was built for SUSE 10.something ... I'm not certain if KDE has adopted it or not - it is awful to use, but you can get back to the standard menu pretty quickly). Also, the single-click to launch programs has been a KDE default (as far as I know) since 3.something ... I bet he uses GNOME ...

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please help me

i want to know how to open the command screen in the open suse 11.0 desktop

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I really don't think this guy knows what he's talking about, and I don't think he knows anything about what's under the GUI he seems to praise so highly.

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Well, he does a nice video to just give a taste of a distro, as it is said in the text. :) To be honest, I don`t know much about what`s under the GUI of a distro, either, but I use one all the time. We all have come as far as we have come on the Linux path. I enjoy his video`s alot. Would love to do review or testrun videos myself.

Good luck to us all. :)

(By the way, I will soon have all the parts for my quad core/4gb ram/ATI4850 machine... And I will certainly run 64bit Linux on it!!!)

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I have to agree this wasn't much in the way of a well organized tour. And very little of KDE 4 was being demonstrated. Pretty much this same demo could have been done with the OpenSUSE 10.3 I have running on my machine currently using the older KDE 3.x series..

One thing that could have been mentioned as part of the "experience" - because it's THE worst part of the openSUSE experience - is the time it takes to install software due to the automatic refreshing of repositories EVERY TIME you open the "Install Software" application. If you have a lot of repositories like I have, to give yourself the widest range of available software, refreshing those repositories can take five minutes. And if you just did it ten minutes ago and suddenly decide to install something else, guess what? You do it all over again. Anybody using this system to install software more than once should have realized that the repository refresh should have been optional for the user. Can you say "bad design"? I knew you could. There isn't a single Linux distro that gets package management right yet and openSUSE is no exception.

Generally speaking, however, I've found openSUSE to be quite stable (I have rarely crashed the X Window system, although Firefox has managed it a couple times, courtesy of Mozilla's poor QA), generally free from bizarre bugs (unlike Kubuntu in the past) and VERY complete in the software selection you get out of the box. By the way, you can also switch off that lousy dumbed down menu system they have which Rob was demonstrating and return to the old classic KDE menu system which is much easier to work with. All in all, I rank openSUSE considerably higher than the (x)buntus as one of the top distros available.

And before all the wailing about Novell's deal with Microsoft starts - I said that was a non-issue when it happened and that's exactly what it has proven to be. Nyah, nyah!

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Hi Gentleman,

Do you know any other package management utility running faster than the duo Zypper and YaST2? There none. You certainly know that there is no package installation without resolution of all dependencies. If you do not want YaST2 to parse the configuration file of all repositories, you can disable the one with less incidence for the system update. There is a YaST2 module for that purpose.

open(SuSE) is unbreakable.

Have a lot of fun...

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In OpenSuse 11, the paketmanagement is *much* faster.

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In OpenSuse 11, the paketmanagement is *much* faster.

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Yes, they should be separate as in Debian.
sudo aptitude update.
Then just do "sudo aptitude install foo".

Curious, on the command line do you get the "automatic refresh", or is it just in a gui frontend?

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Hi Gentleman,

they are indeed.

Have you ever tried:

zypper refresh and then zypper -r install foo? Note the swich -r , which tells zypper to solve all dependencies as rug would do before processing the installation.

I already said and I repeat it: open(SuSE) is unbreakable.

Have a lot of fun

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I don't want to diss the reviewer, but 10 mins..he could have done a bit more in that time..he wasted a lot of time just looking at the start menu and reading the applications listed. Why not show more about KDE 4 and the internals of SUSE 11? Otherwise, not a bad video, if it's intended for beginners.

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I tried SuSE at home recently and chose KDE 4 as well. I cried tears of pain when I saw the start menu and the convoluted, awful way it worked. Even I was lost finding things, shuffling back and forth between 'screens' within the start menu. Why should a veteran computer user feel like they have to learn things all over again? Truly awful. I lasted not even 10 minutes before I hit the reset button on that abomination. I'll try it with KDE 3 next time.

I hope distros keep shipping with KDE 3 for some time yet. The Linux community seems to want to copy Microsofts mistakes with great zeal, which is really, really sad. There is nothing wrong with keeping certain UI elements static. Not everything has to be revamped every few years. Car manufacturers don't look at cars and think "wheels are old, why are we still using wheels when they were used 50 years ago. Lets put a hexxagon instead, the suspension is good enough". Sometimes a simple solution is the best one, and the simple start menu was such a solution, like a steering wheel.

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right click on the big K(or openSUSE icon) and press "switch to classic menu"

problem solved

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Ahh, thanks. I'll try changing to the "classic" menu. It was the inability to find the KDE Control Panel which was frustrating (or more that I had high hopes in installing this for a family members PC and simply could not imagine them navigating through this menu easily without getting utterly and completely lost).


Luckily SuSE comes with XFCE4, which in my opinion has come out on top as a desktop environment. The first basic rule, is the ease of use comes with consistency, and the more the environment stays the same, the easier it becomes over time. Redesigns, even smallish ones which change the functions of the program, should be as forked, seperate projects rather than just as a new version. As a desktop environment provides a means for starting software and managing the windows these programs display in, a change in it's operation (such as changing the way that programs are launched throught the "start" menu) effectively makes it a difference piece of software. MS does this because they know their users have no choice, Linux should be different, be able to provide consistency and predictability so "KDE" or "GNOME" mean something very specific and portable. Software developers constantly shoot themselves in the foot by changing the usage parameters to try and by more user friendly, when all that most users (non techies, non developers) want is familiarity and consistency.

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84.110.236.145:

You are right.
pwnt.

This is Linux people, if you don't like it you aren't stuck with it like a Windows or Mac user!

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Indeed. But people prefer to be stuck with what they know than have the freedom to chose from options they are unfamiliar with. People are funny that way, which is why MS or Apple don't need to provide alternatives, because thier UI is branded and familiar to their users.
The fact that you can't change the UI in Windows doesn't bother people, precisely because they know how to use the UI, and therefore don't see a need to change. They can buy a book on how to use Windows and what is in the book looks like what is on the screen.

But you should be the one who chooses to change the UI, the UI shouldn't be the one that decided to change on you. And while a start menu might seem trivial, to the vast majority of potential users, they won't see past these small things.

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None of the answers provided about openSUSE's package management are relevant to my point. The actual package processing may be fast, there may be an actual need for resolving the repositories in advance of installation, there may be command line or GUI ways to separate these tasks. None of that is relevant.

First, I use openSUSE because it has a GUI for all this, so the command line is irrelevant. The GUI is there to do the job instead of the command line. If it can't without slowing the process, get rid of it or fix it.

Second, if the repositories have been dealt with once in the last five minutes, why do it again (again, from the GUI?) Why not ask if the repositories need to be refreshed - or determine whether they need to be without having to go out on the Net for another five minutes and do it again? The system could be set to simply get some sort of signal from the repositories that they need refreshing again. In any event, the process should be user optional. It's about CHOICE, remember? Having the system go ahead and do time consuming things in the foreground without permission is the way Microsoft works - not Linux.

Third, the bottom line is: the process is slow. When I was running Kubuntu, I ran Synaptic. You load up the program, find your package and install it. No waiting! And I never had a dependency problem with Synaptic either.

The process is allegedly faster in openSUSE 11.0 than it is in 10.3, which I am still running. I'll see it they've sped it up enough to satisfy me when I install 11.0 on my new machine in a few weeks.

As for openSUSE being unbreakable, I've seen the entire X Window system crash several times in the last month or so. The desktop is easily restored by the usual method, unlike Microsoft Windows, of course. But nothing is "unbreakable" - not Linux, not Mac, and definitely not Windows. (Not Oracle, either, by all accounts.)

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This is pathetic, this guy obvous don't eaven know what he is talking about..*sigh*.
One-click i standard in all KDE GUI's. Watch as he only click at the arrows, that is realy anoying somehow..

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Gggggaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

It's "openSooSee" not "openSooSah"

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Went back to 10.3 for numerous reason. Mostly compatibility with software packages. I had to hunt for too many modules that 10.3 had on two packages I run. Plus had problems with installation on SCSI drive that 10.3 took to with no problems.

Think I'll wait on 11.1.

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Hum,

I don't think all the bashing was necessary, I personally appreciate what Mr. Miller did by producing the video. The world needs more people willing to take the time, to at least, try to help other folks out.

I applaud your efforts Mr. Miller!

JWarren

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Great Video Helped a lot

Martijn Kouwenhoven from Holland

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