Hi all

As a Many years user of SUSE I find the latest incarnation of SUSE 11.1 so unusable now I really am thinking of quitting Linux altogether and swaitching to Windows 7 which seems to have got reasonable reviews.

1) There's SO much BLOAT in 11.1

2) I can't get any decent multi-media to work -- even as Root my CD / DVD devices aren't recognized.

3) The only SOUND I get is at LOGOFF time so I know the sound card works but to get ANY multimedia at all just doesn't work

4) The new menu layout etc is horrible and confusing -- If I want Windows I can always use the "Real Thing". With the current menu I can't find anything and it's going to take "Serious Re-arranging" to get the desktop to be "seriously" useable.

5) If I'm logged on as Root why do I keep getting prompted for password to use YAST

6) I tried both GNOME and KDE versions .

The only thing I can say is that Internet etc worked fine so did SAMBA for sharing.

Now at THIS stage of the game I shouldn't be having to mess around with these sort of things especially when you can't really customize the install.

I mean also in 2009 should I really be having problems in getting DVD's to even be recognised by my machine and getting SOUND (at least) to work -- both these problems were essentially solved back at Release 8 I would imagine.

I'll probably try another distro before finally deciding (I've got Windows 7 as a dual boot and there's NO problems with Multi-media -- even recognizes my Digital TV tuner from Windows Media Center without any 3rd party app.)

However and as a LONG time SUSE user I never thought I'd sya this but Windows 7 is looking awfully tempting at the moment.

Of ALL things a DVD / CD device should be recognized -- especillly when you are logged on as root.


Now this could be due to KDE 4.1 but I'm getting fed up fiddling around with this sort of stuff which REALLY should work straight out of the box.

I can understand if there's kernel module problems or if I have to compile stuff but the BASICS after all these years really should work.


Sorry for the Rant -- but the lack of CD / DVD access really is a major irritant.

All in all 11.1 NOT A NICE EXPERIENCE SO FAR.

Cheers
-K

Please feel free to just start using Windows :-) I think you will realize how much worth it is to use Linux and may Consider using a True linux like Ubuntu and not one which is influenced indirectly by Microsoft trough Novell.

Hi there
nice answer -- but the OLD builds of SUSE were really good.

I might try ubuntu as it seems to have a LOT of users these days -- still it's a shame having to fire up a BRAND NEW distro when you've been quite satisified with the one you've been using all these years.

I'll try a Live CD first -- probably the best way to try it.

Actually Windows 7 isn't too horrible -- I really need Windows for running Photoshop CS4 -- pity WINE doesn't yet run CS4. I use Windows 7 (build 7057 downloaded from the small nova !! ) as a Virtual Machine using VMSERVER from vmware (Free). That's the only Windows MUST HAVE app I need (and some corporate ERP system - SAP R3 Enterprise) which needs a windows GUI to connect to it.

You can "vLite" Windows to get most of the "CRUD" out of it -- but that's for another forum.

Cheers

-K

When 11.1 was released back in Dec, there was a bug in hal that caused the dvd/cd drive not to be recognized as normal user. At least in my experience, root didn't have any problems accessing the drive.

FYI, the latest version of hal that I have installed is 0.5.12-39.1 and the bug was fixed about a week after the release.

But it sounds like there are serious things wrong with your installation. I don't have any of the problems you are having. If I'm root, YaST runs without a password. Sound works. Are you using a third party pci sound card? If you're hearing a shutdown sound, then sound is working, it's your multimedia apps that are having problems.

You could have a bad install or you're missing codecs that make your apps work properly. Best to tackle these problems one at a time.

Or you could go ahead and switch to Windows. Whatever works.

Sometimes you see this on bugzilla. Something about openSUSE doesn't work right for you so you submit a bug report and the developers respond with "Works for Me."

I see you're having problems, but Linux works for me.

And the comment above about "True Linux like Ubuntu"...

Bullshit.

In my opinion SUSE all together is not for me, considering I am about mile from there headquarters. And if your concerned about multimedia and overall out of box functionality, try distro's like Mint, or Sabayon. There out of box functionality and hardware support seems acceptable and there's no YAST system to deal with.

I'm partial to not liking binary distro's. If feeling adventurous, try Gentoo. Sure its alot harder to going at first, but in the end the results is an easily maintained linux OS, that is highly configurable.

OpenSUSE is not my favorite example of the best Linux distro, but it worked quite well for me.

There are MANY other really good choices--eg Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLOS_2009.

Have you tried Photoshop with CrossOver?---sometimes they support thing that WINE does not.
Have you tried GIMP?

If you really prefer Windows, then you know what to do.........

Oddly enough, I installed 11.1 for the first time today, and after some tinkering, I really like it. The unusual thing is that the poster complains about everything except samba, and I have been pulling my hair out all day because I cannot get it working to save my life. Unfortunately if I can't get it working tonite I have to ditch suse because samba server is very important on this machine. But in my limited experience with the distro, I think it is pretty okay.

Thanks for the replies everyone

I tried Ubunbtu which I've got as a "Triple Boot" SUSE 11.1, UBUNTU, WINDOWS 7
It did work but the "Debian" type of package manager is a bit confusing if you've never used it before. I didn't really like it (i'm getting too old to learn a whole different way of doing things)

I went back to SUSE 11.1 with a LIVE CD install instead of the DVD and that seemed to be a lot better maybe the DVD install has some problems in it with the packages selected at install time. Perhaps I should just have taken the default options.

The Live CD obviously installs far less packages and its quite possible I had some combination of packages in the previous DVD install that the system didn't like.

As for Photoshop CS4 -- it doesn't work under WINE or Crossover. Some earlier releses do but with the camera gear I'm using and the nature of the work there isn't any other choice (on an Intel box) other than to use Windows for this (even as a Virtual Machine would be OK).

The Gimp is fine for a lot of things but even currently it still doesn't do half the things I need from photoshop -- including a lot of 3rd party add ins.

I'll have another go -- believe me I don't normally give up easily but as I said DVD/CD recognition really shouldn't occur on a publicly released STABLE distro.

And PLEASE isn't about time we told those stupid Lawyers to "Go and make a sexual move with a Duck" -- who these days never watches a DVD on a laptop etc.

It's 2009 now -- proper Multi-Media (including DVD AND BLU RAY) should be available as one of the CORE components of a workstation -- on a server I don't mind having no multimedia but on a laptop !!.

(That's not SUSE's problem I know and the fact that all the components are easily available just makes the whole thing even more rediculous).

I'd just say "SUE AND BE DA_'__ED" and then send in the "Albanian Fixers" after any scumbag lawyer who even thought about taking the case to court.

cheers
-K

My first distro was Suse Linux 6.2, back in 1999.
I quite liked it. It came with Kernel 2.2.10 and KDE 1.1, and other stuff which probably most of today's Linux-users have never seen.

I stayed with this a long time, as I compiled everything I installed by myself. I guess I may have been the only person running Suse 6.2 with KDE 3.
At the time I didn't upgrade to a newer Suse because I was happy with what I had, and Suse was pretty expensive in the day, I payed a 100DM (roughly 50 Euro, for those who don't know the value of the old German currency).
Also I had seen where Suse went after 6.2. From what I remember they introduced Yast2 in 6.4, and I didn't like it.

Ever since I have stayed away from Suse as "my system" (I do have a OpenSuse 11.1 in a VM), trying out Slackware, Linux from Scratch (which I both used for several years) and now, for the last 1.5-2 years I use Fedora.

Long story short: Yes, the direction Suse is going may not appeal to everybody. As said, I started disliking Suse already some years back, but there's so much choice, so why go (back) to Windows?

It sounds to me like you have had a bad install. Worth trying a fresh install and updating to kde 4.2.1

http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...openSUSE_11.1/

and adding the packman multi-media bits

http://packman.links2linux.org/

plus libdvdcss

http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.1/

I have not had any problems with 11.1 and find it quicker and easier to use than earlier versions. If you don't like the start menu - just right click and select the kde menu option.

Agree with you about Ubuntu - I don't like the look of it and all that apt seems really confusing when you are used to rpm.

Quite like Windows 7 too.

When Osuse released their 11.0 version I could hardly wait ... what a huge disappointment ... I therfore started to distro hop till I found sabayon ... its gentoo based and rock solid ... everything worked ootb even sound on my HP laptop!! I'd recommend the live dvd and if that works, install ... I haven't looked back yet !!!! .. Micro$haft can have suse!!

You're never too old to learn a whole different way of doing things.

With that being said, as somewhat of a linux novice still, I've done a lot of distro hopping. I started with mandriva, I used Kubuntu for a while, I've tried suse here and there, puppy, but in the end I came back to kubuntu, because it seemed to be the easiest to learn and I like kde. And all of these different packaging systems that the distros use is extremely confusing to someone like myself who is just now becoming functional with the system. That was the biggest turn off to me about suse, I hadn't dealt with its yast thing and what a pain in the butt.

Many of the issues I had with SuSE 11.1 had to do with KDE 4. I added the openSUSE BuildService - KDE:Backports repository and those issues seemed to clear up.

Another problem was with the ath9k kernel module. I think updates have cleared up these issues, but often I'm just not using it. This problem isn't SuSE specific.

Pulse audio does give me problems now and then. Most multimedia programs allow you to use alsa instead of pulse.

One thing to try is to run "sudo zypper update". It may install a number of non-security related bug fix patches.
IMHO, when the SuSE distro goes from KDE 4.1 to KDE 4.2, it will be much more usable.

I still prefer it over Vista on my laptop.

1.Do install Windows 7.

2. After some time getting some carnal knowledge with windows install a VM, VirtualBox is really good now, play around with a good 5-10 linux distros over a few weeks, find one that seems like home and you can use on a day to day basis. Install on another computer or partition to get the real linux effect.

3. Profit

Just remeber to ignore those that would knock you for wanting to try Windows 7, real geeks love to try new things all the time. But also remember that SuSE is not the end all/be all of distros, using SuSE does not mean you have used Linux in its true forum, its just a bloated distro, and there are many more distros out there and many of them that will not want to make you pull your hair out like SuSE.

As a Many years user of Microsoft Windows (95/98/ME/NT 3.51/NT 4.0/2000/XP) I find the latest incarnation of Windows Vista so unusable now I really am thinking of quitting Windows altogether and switching to Slackware 12.2 which seems to have got reasonable reviews.

Let me add: Once you go slack, you never look back.

But honest: OpenSuSE used to be the only distro that I liked quite as much as Slackware. Only because OpenSuSE doesn't support encryption of the root file system in the installer makes me think to migrate my last machine to Slackware or Slamd64. Otherwise OpenSuSE 11.1 works flawlessly, here, and getting the multimedia support I need was a breeze.
BTW, OpenSuSE is one of not so many major distros with a well-supported 64-bits release. Other distros offer 64-bit, too, but the support is sometimes not worth mentioning....

gargamel