So, I've been using SuSE now for a few months (Just recently switched to a real distribution after using a frankenstiened LFS 2.x that I maintained all the way till 2004/2005) and I've come to really like it. Apt system is amazing, the setup is clean, and things are pretty good all and all.

However, I've noticed a few things that I don't like about it, and am wondering if any users have ways around these issues.

#1 - I have ssh server up. I only want certain IPs to be able to use it. However, the SuSE firewall config was so convoluted and non-intuitive that I wrote my own init script to add the appropriate entries to iptables. This poses problems when...say...I update packages with synaptic and it re-executes SuSE.Firewall-config (or whatever that bloody package is called). This blows away my scripts run order from S99 to S21. Is there anyway of cleanly adding this to the suse firewall script once and for all?

#2 - Sometimes, the apt repositories are really hosed. And by really hosed, I mean I get updates and then my system stops functioning correctly, and I have to manually modify some config files. I'm fine with doing this, but the whole point of moving to a distribution rather than keeping with with my hand-rolled distro was to aviod maintaining things by had as much as possible. Do others notice this problem, and if so, how do they fix it?

#3 - I'm a Software developer, and in my spare time I like to work on interesting neat projects. Currently I'm working with PC Engines wrap board. The problem is I can't get kernel 2.4.29 to compile correctly enough to support modules (depmod for 2.6 is incompatible, and the modules generated are junk). I'm developing for the pebble FS. Anyone else in this boat? Tips, tricks, etc?

#4 - I've noticed that when starting X and gnome, I lose a ton of memory. While I expect this with gnome, I'm losing more than just a few hundred meg. I'm going from around 480 meg free, to 3 meg free. And it starts eating into swap. I never noticed this under my old system. Is this a function of SuSE, or the 2.6.x series kernel?

Thanks,
Aaron

I can only really comment on 1. and I'm using Suse 9.3 with the normal Yast update type. I turned off Suse firewall completely and run my own iptables script placing the appropriate scripts into /etc/sysconfig/network/if-up.d and /etc/sysconfig/network/if-down.d Any files placed in these directories are run whenever an interface goes up or down. I use this rather than runlevel scripts. Can't remember if Suse 9.2 uses the same setup but guessing that it probably does. Never had any problems doing it this way after updating and Suse-Firewall.config is run.