At first I had terrible problems with 10.1, mainly screen freezes, slowness, much the same as everyone else. Then I removed as many programs as I could, leaving only the ones I knew I'd use, disabled unnecessary services and now it seems to run fine.

I think the best tip I could give anyone installing it for the first time is to go through the software selection with a fine toothcomb, selecting only those items that you will definitely use, or are a dependancy for something you will use. If it turns out you need something you didn't select, it only takes a few minutes to install it later. With the multimedia stuff it's better to install it later anyway, as the suse packages are crippled in some cases.

I think the main problem with suse is that there is a temptation to 'select the lot' when installing. There really is no need for you to have 5 window managers, 8 text editors, 6 video players, etc.

[/QUOTE]
I have used slackware (9.0 > 10.2), mandrake power+ 10.0, opensuse 10.1 and now sled 10.0.
Always in a dualboot configuration with winXP.

These are my experiences:

-windowsXP has no driverproblems at all, but if you want a little bit security the bootproces becomes very slow, due to all sort of necessary scans.
The registry is the dark side of windows that acts as a flavour of big brother.

-Slackware is very fast, free of cost (free download), very stable but hard to configure. It is the most standard linux without al that difficult to understand add-on modules that makes configuration-life --sometimes-- easier. Yet, I found it very time-consuming to configure properly on three different computer types, especially with new hardware, since 2.4 is still the standard kernel in the latest distribution.

-Mandrake linux 10.0 power+ was priced for ca. 200 euro. Not all my hardware was configured properly. I have a cordless kit (mouse and keyboard) on my HP Pavilion t550. I couldn't reach anything on the screen due to a misconfig of my mouse and keyboard. So I had to install other peripherals to make everything run smoothly.
In my opinion Mandrake thinks very commercial with all sorts of (mostly non free) memberships and services.

-Then I installed OpenSuse 10.1 and everything worked perfect. It feels like a good made autobus in comparison with the Slackware-Porsche. (But if something goes wrong with that Slack-Porsche and you need a new piece, keep quiet and keep your time!!!!).

-Then I changed to SLED 10.0 in the hope of the greatest possible stability.

Greetings from Belgium

I have actually in the last 3 - 4 years had the complete opposite experiences

More recent hardware is becoming easier to use in Linux than Windows.

For example
SuSe 10.1 finds and installs all my below hardware

SATA Controllers
Onboard Sound
Onboard Network
Digital HD TV Tuner
SoundBlaster Audigy
Brookwell 878TV TV Tuner
(Note this TV Tuner isnt even supported in windows 200 since no drivers after than 98 were even made)

Windows XP SP2 or Even Media Centre Edition
cannot install any these without asking for each driver disk individually.
Many of which are extremely unreliable and inconvenient.
Example if i need to install Windows on a SATA drive or Bios Raid array i need to find a floppy disk and put the drivers on it during install (i dont even own a floppy drive any more).

Another Example Leadtek (/me *Cringes*) made my Digital TV Tuner and there drivers are disgraceful
Poorly written and broken this&that
It took me 3 hours to install them even then Australia wasnt supported properly. So most feature such as channel scanning didnt work 100%.


Windows XP on first boot can't do much, my favourite was
"Your hardware has changed you must Register online Now"
I couldnt login to actually connect using a Modem or the DSL PPP Login lol. So i couldnt i had to reinstall

Hi there
Thank you both for your replies. I quite agree with hardware detection in Suse in general but Ubuntu also seems to be right up there with Suse, especially the latest releases which support Broadcom Wireless cards. (Suse does not but I believe that it will be supported in upcoming releases). However, I think it will be nice to have a distribution that can be seamlessly upgraded from one version to the next without having to burn CDs or DVDs for each new release and Suse does not seem to be a good candidate for this. Also, one cannot easily install Suse over the internet only even though this is being offered as an option, in practice this never seems to work very well.

I understand that a source-based distribution like Gentoo, also Arch Linux and Sorcerer Linux (another source-based distribution) all offer the possibility of seamless upgrades with a single command. I have not had much luck though, with installing Gentoo or Arch on my AMD 64 laptop, partly due to my lack of sufficient experience in Linux, no doubt! Does anybody have any thoughts on other distributions that can be upgraded seamlessly and offer long term stablility without compromising on latest software and features?
Thanks
preeth26

I have found BLAG to be an excellent distro. It installs from a single CD and can be upgraded to new versions easily through the command line. It's only available in a 32 bit version, but it's faster and more stable than 64 bit SUSE 10.1 on my AMD 64 laptop (and at least as fast as 64 bit Ubuntu 6.06, as far as I can tell). BLAG is a small time operation, but the developers are very active and always ready to help out on their forums. They try to keep it as current as possible. Also, since it's Fedora-based, the Fedora FAQs and forums are quite helpful as well. There's no live CD, so you have to install if you want to try it out. I made myself a small partition to test it, then ended up switching from SUSE and Ubuntu altogether.

I haven't gotten my broadcom 4318 wireless card to work with BLAG yet, but I haven't tried very hard since I rarely use wireless (endless hours trying and failing to get my wireless to work with SUSE and Ubuntu have sort of put me off of fiddling with that). Like you, I figure it'll get solved soon enough, and for now I boot into my windows partition on the rare occasions when I do need to use wireless.

I haven't tried to get my ATI 200M xpress card working with BLAG, again because of hours of fruitless labor in SUSE and Ubuntu. Now I figure I don't use 3D for anything but games anyway, and if I want to play those I'll use windows.

Though I'll be the first to whine and moan about an OS going bad, I feel I must put in a defense of 10.1 here. I've seen a lot of bitching about some vague software "not working" under 10.1 and that 9.3 is somehow better.

To the OP and others here - tell us specifically what doesn't work or STFU.


There, now I feel better.

I've been running SUSE since 9.1 and feel that 10.1 is the best I've seen. Yeah, Novell (and SUSE) fscked up with the premature release of Zen, which causes all sorts of havoc with upates. That is very easily solved by installing SMART. (I'm running it right now.)

As I mentioned on the offical SUSE email lists:

• WiFi for WEP and WPA encrypted networks now "just work" without a ton of fiddling around.
• Mounting flash and USB drives is a painless operation. In addition the sync problems with 9.3 and 10.0 are gone. Transfer speeds are now what they should be.
• Boot times are far and away faster than under 9.x and 10.0
• GLMatrix Screen Saver
• Load times for applicaitons are as expected.
• SAMBA integraiton just works
• AppArmor

I think I may have mentioned something about Planet Penguin Racer as well. I'm not sure.

In any case, I've got 10.1 loaded on three machines. I'll be upgrading a fourth from 9.2 in the near future. It just works. In fact, I see no compelling reason - at this moment - to upgrade to 10.2 next month.

If I open a browser window (any one), I get a kernel panic and need to hard reboot...otherwise it's ok.

That's surely not standard behaviour of suse linux. There is a misconfig in your soft or hardware. In my opinion the first thing to bug out is your network configuration. Do other network-related applications run smoothly?

Hi everyone,
My complaint about Suse 10.1 is that it freezes completely during normal use for no apparent reason. This is extremely frustrating because this problem seems specific to my AMD 64 HP Pavilion laptop. Some others on this thread also seem to have the same problem on their particular hardware as well, as can be seen from earlier posts and some have also been kind enough to venture some suggestions to fix the problem. Unfortunately none of these fixes have worked. My problem is quite specific and makes the entire distribution pretty much unusable for me unless I know how to fix it. I never had a problem with Suse 10.0 and I do not have problem with Novell SLED. My only option now is to wait for Suse 10.2 since I do not have the expertise nor the time to fix this problem.

Thanks for the suggestion about Blag Linux, will definitely give it a try.
Regards
preeth26

That's because you have your home page set to whitehouse.com


Seriously, does SUSE even load on an iBook? I thought you'd be forced to use YellowDog on such a hardware.

Maybe if you right-click on the mouse pad when you start....


...oh, wait...

..you don't have a right mouse button.



Nevermind.

I had that problem a little while back on my below PC
i dont know why its disappeared either
My PC locked up every 1-4 hours, i figured the Video Card was faulty but i guess it wasnt.

Only thing that has changed is I dont use Helix Engine in Amarok any more.

Appendment:

Actually when i first used SuSe 10.1 i had ATI Radeon Xpress onboard GFX and it never locked up.
I Later bought an NVIDIA Geforce PCI-e GFX card and it started locking up.
I Have since upgraded the NVIDIA Drivers a few times
Try using the Newest .BIN file from NVIDIA or ATI as opposed to xorg, MESA or Yast included drivers.

...I am very happy with SuSE 10.1. I had some minor issues with my USB Scanner (Epson 1670) that took a bit of research to work out (the solution was simple to execute, but a bit hard to find). I can see how this sort of thing could be frustrating for many people. For example, the scanner worked under 10.0 out of the gate and stopped working upon the upgrade to 10.1. The solution was simple but the search for the simple solution required wading through a fairly deep pile of over-thought techno-babble. I think it is fair to say that some in the Linux community are more interested in perpetuating the myth of their technical superiority than with providing solid and straightforward answers to new users. I don't think that this is generally the case in this forum. The elegant solution is usually out there, wading through the crap along the way can take some time.

I will also say that turning off the zen updater made a big difference for me in terms of satisfaction with the product. I now update using YOU and have no problems whatsoever.

I really like the networking features of 10.1 as well. My desktop doubles as a music server, with SuSE 9.1 and Kubuntu Dapper clients.

One thing I am very pleased with is the fact that I finally was able to fully utilize my TV tuner card. Under all previous releases I had sound or video quality issues. I am in the process of building a Pluto Hybrid and shifting the content server/home automation duties to it, but in the mean time SuSE 10.1 is doing the job quite well.

I think that perhaps some of the anxiety of new users stems from their expectations. I expected to have to tinker with SuSE 10.1 to make it into the OS I wanted it to be. I also expected there to be a few interesting and educational bumps along the way. I wasn't disappointed.

I think that anyone who expects otherwise will be disappointed. I love SuSE 10.1 because it suits my style. It also seems fairly intuitive to me, perhaps because I have used previous versions of SuSE.

That being said, it is not the distro I recommend to my friends or my students. I think Ubuntu (Kubuntu, actually) is the best transition distro for Windows users who are looking to get their feet wet with Linux. I havent tried all of the distros that are available, but who has?

What I love about Linux, and the reason I will never go back to Windoze is the fact that it allows me to control my user experience, albeit with a little bit of effort on my part. I am OK with that. Those who are not may be happier with a different solution, at least for the time being.

I am surprised by he problems people have My original installation is on a brand new Dell and was going to use Red Hat 5 Core but the installation would freeze. So I downloaded Suse 10.1 and installed flawlessly. Then I installed it on my notebook, flawlessly (even recogzing my wireless). I then installed it on another notebook. No problems and I use Suse all the time. It never crashed on me even when some rogue app goes haywire (I just kill it with KSysGuard)

All my machines are fairly new (two years or less), all use Intel and all have at least 512MB RAM. Maybe older machines are problematic.

Also, I use ext3. I dont use LVM.

I posted above, but have recently upgraded my hardware. I'd just like to add that 10.1 installs and runs fine on my new gear (Athlon64 x2) too.

Apart from the easily remedied broken YAST problems, I'm very happy with it.

I am still fairly new to linux, although I am learning more and more. I had started off mainly on mandrake 10.1, then moved up to 2006. While using those, I had then started using Suse 10.1, but could never stay on there for more than a few days.
It looks nice, but I don't know if it's extra buggy than mandriva, or just simply needs a lot more custom work to get things running.
Installing is fine, as long as I enter "16 bit color", if at 24 bit, the screen is all disorted.
Text in "kwrite" is a bit on the small side. I'm aware of the "zoom in", but compared to mandriva, this just seems too tiny at start up. Probably not a bug though. It takes extra steps to get DVD support through kaffeine, which I never got going; again,a noob so I probably did something wrong. some say 3D accelerator is already enabled, but no games will run for me that require it.
It doesn't seem like the RPM installer (Yast?), always work. I get errors a lot from that.
I'm not sure if it really is extra buggy, or I'm just use to mandriva, and this just isn't quite the same as mandriva.
I may try the next version up, 10.2