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SUSE / openSUSE This Forum is for the discussion of Suse Linux.

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View Poll Results: What have your experiences with the new SUSE 10.1 release been like?
Very strong release. Well worth the wait. 3 5.00%
Some issues present. Still worth the upgrade from 10.0. 25 41.67%
No better or worse than 10.0. No major noticable differences in any department. 7 11.67%
Worse than 10.0. I'm dissapointed and feel I wasted time waiting and installing. 22 36.67%
Very poor release. Problems so overwhelming I never should have upgraded from 10.0. 3 5.00%
Voters: 60. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 05-20-2006, 01:15 PM   #1
peter_89
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Registered: Jan 2006
Distribution: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2; Slackware Linux 10.2
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General Opinion Poll On SUSE 10.1


I know that many have voiced their opinion on the new release of SUSE, but there is no formal poll yet that I know of regarding this. The general response that I have heard has been disappointing and underwhelming, so I just thought I'd ask the community here.
Please feel free to voice your constructive, non-flaming views and experiences with the release in this thread.

Last edited by peter_89; 05-20-2006 at 01:20 PM.
 
Old 05-20-2006, 02:31 PM   #2
pdeman2
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Registered: Jul 2005
Location: Maine, USA
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At first, I was very disappointed. SUSE cut support for some wireless cards, but that was an easy fix. The only problem I have now is the package management system, but you can use APT as an alternative and it works great. There still are a number of disappointing bugs, but after a while, 10.1 started to grow on me.

The biggest advantages of this new version is that most of the packages are updated to the latest major versions and there are a number of new features in 10.1 that were not available in 10.0. If SUSE could just get rid of the bugs and have better hardware support, SUSE 10.1 would probably be the best operating system I've ever used.
 
Old 05-20-2006, 06:49 PM   #3
shame
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Registered: Apr 2006
Location: England
Distribution: Debian Sidux - openSUSE
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To me it feels exactly like running 10.0.
The issues I've had with 10.1 are to do with yast, sax and gnome and I had identical issues with 10.0.
Yast was slow in 10.0 but in 10.1 it is ridiculously slow and since you can no longer use installation_sources -a on the command line to add sources you have to do it all through that nasty yast configuration.
I try to use the package tools that come with distros but in suse 10.0 I ended up using apt/synaptic and in 10.1, since I can't get synaptic I'm using apt and mainly smart and liking it.
Also I don't like the new artwork, it feels too appley. It was much nicer in 10.0.
 
Old 05-20-2006, 07:38 PM   #4
fragos
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Registered: May 2004
Location: Fresno CA USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.10
Posts: 1,466

Rep: Reputation: 51
Overall, I like what I see compared too the last 4 SuSE releases I've used. The install/update stuff is a little strange but will obviously be an overall improvement after a few tweaks. Everything I had working on the prior release is up and running. I had heard that the ivtv driver for PVR cards would be supported in this release -- unfortunately this isn't true so the new PVR I bought will have to wait for a while. The concept of the addon 6th disk is a good one. I got my system up with the 6 CD's but am downloading an DVD ISO for the convenience. I was disappointed that after almost two days of ktorrent download the process permanently stalled with only 4 chunks to go. Ktorrent wouldn't recover when restarted so I aimed my fat pipe at a mirror iso which will download in a little over an hour. No more bit-torrent for me.
 
Old 05-31-2006, 11:33 PM   #5
Ninurta
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Jan 2004
Location: Grand Rapids, MI USA
Distribution: SuSE 9.1 Professional; Mandrake 10; FreeBSD; Red Hat; Resala; Kazait; Shabdix; Toplogilinux; etc....
Posts: 14

Rep: Reputation: 0
Unhappy

After waiting something like 9 months for the upgrade, it was a disappointment. Many of my favorite apps were removed. I could not add the installation sources to YaST for DVD and media playback, because the installation updater was broken (A documented bug to be fixed soon: thye shipped it that way). It ran at half the speed of 10.0. I finally prevailed in getting DVD playback to work, only to find that I could not update the software online. I had to download every single package I installed as a separate RPM, manually. Until Vaughan-Nichols published his article, npbody believed when I said YaST was broken. However, with those caveats, there are some pluses. 10.1 is a much better desktop than 10.0. More of the apps you find you will need for most things are installed by default.All of them worked nicely right out of the box. It seems to have been really well thought out, except for the broken update package manager. However, if you have a previous version of SUSE, I recommend you do an upgrade instead of a clean install. When I did that, in spite of package manager blues, my internet connection worked fine. When I did a clean install I couldn't connect to the internet at all. I downgraded back to 10.0 when that happened--just because it works! I will probably install 10.1 again, but this time I'm waiting until I know they've fixed that darned update manager.
 
Old 05-31-2006, 11:51 PM   #6
rshaw
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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Perry, Iowa
Distribution: Mepis , Debian
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i'm a huge suse fan but it's a steaming pile of dung. someone should lose their job for the state of the package manager.
 
Old 06-01-2006, 12:15 AM   #7
fragos
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Registered: May 2004
Location: Fresno CA USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.10
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I managed to get almost everything I wanted working to work. XMLTV was particularly painful. The updater finally got the best of me and deleted YaST's ncurses. Needless to say any chance of installing are now gone. I left it in it partitions and installed Ubuntu 6.0.6 RC. It works and XMLTV installed painlessly. DEB is a different world than RPM. After years of SuSE they have finally made me mad enough to leave them behind. I expected better. That's why I left Windows years ago. Ubuntu may have a new convert even if their 64 bit support isn't as strait forward as SuSE's. Not yet a release but -- Ubuntu works.
 
Old 06-01-2006, 12:59 AM   #8
crazibri
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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Orange County, CA
Distribution: OS X, SuSE, RH, Debian, XP
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I wasnt planning to try it out at all since I was so happy w/ 10.0 but I did anyway.
Pros:
Was able to get WG111v2 USB Wireless card working flawlessly using a native linux driver from prism54.org
KNetworkManager - need I say more?
Xgl worked very easily using instructions from opensuse.org/Xgl - some bugs here w/ KDE though
Install went well except for my special needs (see below)
Only CDs 1-3 needed for basic KDE install
Cons: ZenWorks update sucks - have to go through Yast2, Online Update instead
Local install through unpacking the ISOs onto a local partition failed at first, but found work around
 
Old 06-01-2006, 03:14 AM   #9
TigerLinux
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Registered: Sep 2005
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Distribution: Ubuntu 11.04
Posts: 1,731

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I just installed 10.1 to replace 10.0 in my notebook, I kept the gecko wallpaper of 10.0, it is missing in 10.1
 
Old 06-01-2006, 03:22 AM   #10
1kyle
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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: 'Ol Blighty
Distribution: SLED 10, SUSE 10.3
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SUSE 10.0 (eval DVD) was as near perfect as I've ever had from any Linux Distro -- even my Laptop wireless card worked straight out of the box.
I'm running Windows XP as a VM under Parallels and have had no issues with that either.

DVD playing was easily enabled via Pacman etc. Isn't about time now that DVD playing was included in mainstream distributions since almost everybody who uses a computer wants this - especially on laptops - great when you are sitting in an airport for 3 hours with nothing else to do.

SUSE 10.1 was a big no no for me. First of all if you change something as significant as the mechanism for installing software which doesn't really work or is horribly complicated then that's a backward step whatever else you have in the distro. Installing / updating software has to work CORRECTLY.

I'm also not a big fan of GNOME - preferring KDE and it seems that Novell (perhaps going after the Red Hat corporate market) is now moving towards GNOME rather than KDE -. GNOME or KDE is of course a personal choice - I just prefer KDE especially coming from a Windows background.

I've read on the web lots of ways of getting wireless to work again on 10.1 (it was working fine for me on 10.0) by re-compiling ndiswrapper etc etc but I shouldn't have to do this if it was already working on 10.0

I'm going to sit 10.1 out and wait till 10.2 or even 11.0 and see what transpires.

For the moment 10.0 is 100% stable for me, runs everything I need and does the job.

As an Engineer I really do believe "If it's not broken don't fix it". With SUSE 10.1 they seem to have forgotten this rule.

So for me 10.1 gets a NO vote.

(I'm glad however there are people who take the tiime and trouble to test this stuff out so eventually good stable releases work for the rest of us).
Cheers

-K
 
Old 06-01-2006, 04:20 AM   #11
ChickenFeed
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Registered: May 2004
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
Distribution: openSUSE 11.0, 64 Studio
Posts: 3

Rep: Reputation: 0
Suse 10.1

I have to agree with Crazibri's post I wasn't planning on installing being perfectly happy with SUSE 10.0. Luckily I decided to do a new install in a separate partition leaving my precious 10.0 alone and I'm glad I did.

I downloaded the DVD the day it was released it took a few hours but that was ok I was asleep at the time. The install went fine as it usually does for me with SUSE except for one thing, the internet connection failed to connect during the install stage however I would not give in and kept clicking the back button and messing with the settings until finally it connected (sorry I can't remember what I actually did to get it to work).SUSE 10.1 looks great the grub boot screen is slick and is the best yet lots of great software as always (haven't tested every thing yet) most of the things you need are there by default except the usual SUSE problem of MP3 support and DVD play back. For someone new to Linux this is a great distribution however for those of us happy with 10.0 you will most likely be a little disappointed.

The new ZenWorks update didn't work if it finds the updates you can't install them you end up having to revert to the Yast Online Update method and this seems slow and don't always work for some reason I haven't figured out yet. An annoying annoying saying the signature could not be verified for my Guru or Packman sources appears all the time even when you tick "Don not show this again"!

I can't get some useful packages to install - Bastille ,KlamAV, LMMS and Parallels VM 2.1 so far there could be more. After reading a few posts on the subject of XGL I have decided to wait for for a while.

SUSE 10.1 biggest test for me will be when I install it on my laptop. I will definitely use Partimage to copy my 10.0 setup first though.
 
Old 06-01-2006, 09:53 AM   #12
anandrajan
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Registered: Jun 2004
Location: Gainesville, FL, US
Distribution: SUSE
Posts: 40

Rep: Reputation: 15
For me, SUSE 10.1 has been a frustrating release. I now have (almost) everything working but I'm baffled by the regressive path that SUSE 10.1 has taken.

1. I had to insmod the Soundblaster driver for it to work. And alsa never remembers any mixer settings or the fact that I've loaded the MIDI fonts. These have to be done by hand.

2. CUPS blew up in my face. I still don't know how I got it to work. And I have an HP LaserJet printer.

3. Updating/installing software is a joke. zmd.exe???? WTF? On the plus side, smart is quite good. I've totally dropped YaST and exclusively use smart now for everything - updates, new software etc.

4. Haven't gotten samba to work yet on my home network.

5. kaffeine has stopped playing dvds - libdvdread throws up gazillion errors. At least mplayer works .

6. The 7174 x86_64 nvidia driver (nvidia) does not work with my Quadro 2 videocard. However, the nv driver works at 1280x1024 with my 17" LCD. I've ordered a new 6600 (or something like that) nvidia card.

7. The onboard Realtek sound does not work at all. I get tons of errors in /var/log/messages. Worked fine in SUSE 9.3 x86_64.

In summary, I do not see any reason to upgrade to 10.1. Even now, after pouring gazillion hours into getting everything to work, I feel like going back (but in my case forward from 9.3) to SUSE 10.0.

Anand
 
Old 06-01-2006, 12:15 PM   #13
scofeld
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Aug 2003
Distribution: SusE 10.0/10.1 / Fedora Core 5 / Knoppix / DSL
Posts: 8

Rep: Reputation: 0
Quote:
Originally Posted by rshaw
... someone should lose their job for the state of the package manager.
The package manager is slow and needs work, but it's hard to complain this harshly about something you don't even pay for. If you know so much, fix it yourself and send us all a version that works. (hence the Open in OpenSuSE)

I don't claim to know how to fix it either, but just remember that it's hard to pay employees when you offer a free product. The retail version is much less buggy (from my minimal exposure to it) and you also will get actual support compared to a post on a forum.

I personally liked 10.0 better, the upgraded features in 10.1 are minimal and everthing worked better in 10.0 from what I saw. But, I'm going to stick out 10.1 and make it work better for me. Remember, new features = growing pains.
 
Old 06-01-2006, 12:25 PM   #14
fragos
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Registered: May 2004
Location: Fresno CA USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.10
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One can accept that some hardware will require a little hacking or that obscure applications require work. Better is good enough for me me. However when the basics required for operation and solving the normal niggles don't work in a "released" version that's another story. 10.1 isn't a releasable package by any stretch of the imagination. This isn't flaky -- its broken!
 
Old 06-01-2006, 12:57 PM   #15
rshaw
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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Perry, Iowa
Distribution: Mepis , Debian
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scofeld
The package manager is slow and needs work, but it's hard to complain this harshly about something you don't even pay for. If you know so much, fix it yourself and send us all a version that works. (hence the Open in OpenSuSE)
you have no way of knowing what i have or haven't payed for, or which or how many projects i am or have been involved with. i have fixed it myself, but i don't expect a new user to have to go to that length.

this libzypp/zen/mono abomination was added after beta4, extremely late in the release cycle by anyones standards, then, no servers were provided to test the update system.it slid right through ,untested, outside of novell/suse. anyone paying attention and certainly the project lead should have recognized the need to exercise the system a bit before calling it done.
 
  


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