Hi, I am a developer desperate in need of a good working Linux Desktop solution after my recent Ubuntu Linux disaster... Since I use AMD Radeon Video card it may be that OpenSuse might be the right choice for me. However, I am not too keen about using the Yast (Centralized Administration Tool).

I was wondering if its possible to do everything in Yast straight from the command line and also noticed that OpenSuse unlike Ubuntu / Fedora have some great OFFICIAL Repo Support. This is very attractive to me because the other 2 did a bad job with implementing 3rd party repos.

What is the main purpose of Yast? What does it really do that can't be done in other Linux systems? Its pretty much the only thing holding me back from switching to OpenSuse. Also I am not too sure about the repo integration. How well do the "Official Repos" work together?

I have OpenSuse in a VM. YaST is roughly equivalent to the Mageia Control Center--nothing more or less than a configuration management/control panel (you will pardon the expression) tool.

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:YaST

The Wikipedia article has a nice screenshot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaST

It is very nicely designed, highly developed, and easy to use, but it doesn't do anything that you can't do in other ways in other distros.

I can't speak to the "repos" part of your question.

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Thanks, I see you are coming from a slackware background. That was my other option of a setup. But the problem is that I would like to spend less time administrating and more time Developing. However, because some distros make it easy on the outside the internals are a mess and things break apart (Ubuntu is a perfect example to this horrible implementation and buggy distro). So in such a case I would prefer to administer then to constantly fix distro related problems. Ubuntu and Fedora have both given me a hard time in the past with the above mentioned complaint. So as far as "Reliability" goes if OpenSuse is a truly "reliable distro" I might just settle with it. But if not I am gonna have to install Slackware... Lets see how things go...

I'm currently debating between the 2. i have some previous Slackware Experience but not much of OpenSuse experience. I also prefer KDE which both distros use as the default. Another 2 distros I am thinking of is (Debian or Crunchbang) but as far as I know I think Slackware is easier to administrate then Debian.

Install it and try...

openSUSE is recommended for being generally reliable, well built and smooth running, with the best KDE around, and YaST in the background doing its job.

Only you can know if it is the linux for you.

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I tried it last night and I agree its stable, very smooth and reliable. But I could not stand the Yast Configuration to such a degree that I had to ditch the entire system. It pretty much goes totally against KISS model of Slackware. Its like a GUI'fied Linux Distro trying to act like Windows except far more complex and hard to understand / configure. Believe it or not I think Slackware might be easier to administrate then OpenSuse. I have absolutely no idea why they created YaST if it is not integrated with all the other tools? At least Red Hat has better integration. But Network Manager and YaST are 2 alienated programs that have not much to do with each other. After trying to set things up I really couldn't stand it and logged off.

In every distro there is always some things you love and some things you hate. I loved the polished look of OpenSuse more then any other. But I find it as a distro that is OVERLY COMPLEX and too busy trying to hide the internals with its YaST manager that I hated using. I really really hated using YaST.

If yast was to complicated there was always the terminal with either


logged in as user: sudo zypper up

or logged in as root: zypper up


BTW my NON-Technical brain enjoys watching what is happening :-)

Yea but what about my Wireless Network Card?

ifconfig gives nada
iwconfig gives nada

But when you set it up in Yast (which sucks) it works.
Then after you are connected Network Manager is not configured to work with Yast so I didn't even know I was connected to run iwconfig again to see wallaaa my USB adapter is connected!

Yast is very disconnected from the tools. Its like they only added it to be different and call themselves "OpenSuse". The same is not true with Centos where all the Gui Administration tools work in sync with the underlying CLI tools. Everything works together.

Also KDE Apper didn't work either. Everything is BROKEN in between YaST and other tools. I really can't understand these German Developers sometimes. No offense but seriously, they do things that make absolutely no sense.

What is the chipset on the wireless card?

Try running lspci in a terminal to find out, then post the output regarding the wireless here, being sure to surround it with "code" tags, which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button to the right of the "Post Quick Reply" button at the bottom of the reply window.

Once we know the chipset (not the brand of the card), we should be able to help you.

I plugged in different wireless adapters all supported by linux. So its really not the wireless adapter fault it even works on centos but my main card is "rt5572". I got it to work but the way I got it to work was just plain idiotic to be honest. I was unable to pull it up in ifconfig / iwconfig. Since its a wireless usb lspci won't work lsusb gives that information you are talking about.

So to summarize my experience with OpenSuse. It is the most polished distro I have used next to CentOS. But at the same time it has the most complex config that is all done via GUI and really is a pain in the a** for me. Yasts Horrible integration with KDE and even with basic CLI tools. YaST is like its own alienated island. But that is my experience. If OpenSuse decided to kill YaST I will probably make it my main distro. But until that day no OpenSuse for me. My suspicions were more then correct as I watched the youtube reviews.

On the bright side I have 1 less distro to think about. Now my options are left with Debian based distros, CentOS and Slackware. But I am most likely going to end up with CentOS again even though I rejected it last time. I think if I can config it right it will be my best longterm option. I love its slooowwww release cycles. Nothing to break nothing to worry about!
...slackware is another option ofcourse (but the slow security updates kinda turned me away)

As soon as I am done with my Netbeans Java Project I am going to reinstall it tonight! This time I will install some of my required drivers / programs from source and see if that turns out better then using the alternative repos.

Hi there
OPensuse is fine - apart from the YAST thing which I really don't like - but zipper works roughly as apt get install in other debian based distros. Once you've set up your system you don't need to do a lot to it -- very stable.

If you like KDE then IMO OPensuse is the best distro around as it leans very much in favour of KDE. (LXDE isn't bad either). It's stable as it has great support from the Enterprise server group. Linux Mint is another good one but with some of these other distros you never know when Politics is going to get in the way as can be seen with the shenanigans going on with Ubuntu - and that horrible Unity mess of a dogs dinner.

Fedora could be another possibility - Redhat (another large organisation) supports that effort but IMO opensuse is more stable as it is new without being TOO Leading edge - and unless testing in a lab you want a STABLE desktop environment.

I don't think the issue of whether a package is .DEB or .RPM makes a huge difference -- these are just wrappers anyway and if you are working with source code you can package the stuff how you like. There's loads of tool anyway to create RPM or DEB packages.

I rarely boot into Windows now --I have opensuse as my main desktop with Windows 8.1 as a Virtual machine with VMware workstation (vmplayer is OK too and that's FREE).

I mainly use Windows for Ms Office (EXCEL is still streets ahead of Libre Office's version), Photoshop CS6 (Gimp is fine but doesn't have what I need), access to some SAP systems via a Windows SAP GUI).

Excel 2010 and Photoshop CS6 don't run under Wine properly, if at all otherwise I could probably ditch Windows completely. I can get the SAP GUI via a Browser if I had to so even that I could avoid Windows.

Cheers