An In-Depth Look at openSUSE 11.3

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] For about as long as the Linux kernel itself has existed, there's been SUSE (pronounced: soo-sa). That's no exaggeration, either. SUSE development began in 1992, a mere year after Linus Torvalds released the first bit of Linux kernel source code. Called S.u.S.E. at the time, 1.0 came to light in 1994, while the first "proper" release, 4.2, become available in 1996. The reason that 4.2 was considered to be the first "proper" release is a bit varied, but it's likely that the developer team simply saw it as being the first feature-complete version. It was the first to be sold in retail packaging, and also the first to feature YaST (Yet another Setup Tool). Also, unlike 1.0, 4.2 wasn't merely a patch-applied version of Slackware, but rather a unique distro in its own right. That's not to say that 4.2 didn't get a boost with an already-existing distro, though, because it did. That distro was "jurix", and because its lead developer and the S.u.S.E. team worked so close together and fed off each other's work, both could have been considered one and the same. As the tale goes, jurix's developer, Florian La Roche, was brought over to the S.u.S.E. team to continue work on YaST. Those were sure simpler times. There was no such thing as GNOME or KDE, so 4.2 came with XFree86 3.1, a simple X Window System similar to Windows 3.x. Things have sure changed since then! The first time I dabbled with SUSE (then called SuSE... no dots) was with its 7.3 release - about nine years ago. At that time, I was getting a bit fed up with the finicky Caldera OpenLinux 2.4 I had been using, and since SuSE also used KDE (I didn't much care for GNOME back then, either), I decided it'd be worth checking out. I was sure glad I did, too, because compared to what I had been using, SuSE was like a breath of fresh air. It wasn't perfect, but it was better, and made life a bit easier. From then on, I continued to use SuSE as a full-time distro until 9.3, at which point I decided to keep things interesting and moved over to Gentoo, a distro that avails much more overarching control to the user. But later, I did check out 10.1, and also dabbled with SUSE Studio, but since 9.3, I really haven't used SUSE to a great degree except to spend 10 or so minutes with it. But to say that not much has happened since I stopped using the distro, or even since our last proper review in the summer of 2006, would be a wild understatement. In early 2004, Novell completed the purchase of SuSE for a cool $210 million, and though people were worried as to the future of the distro, I think by now all of those fears have been quelled. It seems like things are stronger than ever. In late 2005, Novell decided to make things more "open", and announced the openSUSE Project, a community-driven version of SUSE that would differ only slightly from its retail products (SUSE Enterprise Desktop and Server). Like most distros out there, openSUSE was to be free, includezz cutting-edge software and technologies, and also avail the user with great community support. None of these aspects seems to be amiss with today's openSUSE. The problem, of course, with choosing a Linux distro today is that there are just so many to choose from. Who exactly could benefit from openSUSE? Well, here's a quote directly from the project's website: "openSUSE is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, Laptop or Server. You can surf the web, manage your e-mails and photos, do office work, play videos or music and have a lot of fun!" Judging by that, and previous experience, openSUSE is essentially designed for everyone, regardless of whether you plan to use it on a desktop, notebook, or server. The latest versions include a wide-range of up-to-date software and remain easy to use and configure, and also include good security software to help protect your digital goods. Who wouldn't openSUSE be for? Personally, I wouldn't recommend it if you wanted ultimate control over your system, and I do mean "ultimate", as in kernel hacking, but that's about it. openSUSE is full-featured, and competes nicely with the likes of Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS and others. It's been quite a while since I've done a proper "review" of a Linux distro, so for this one, I decided to figure out a different way of doing things. I came to the conclusion that the only real way to properly understand the perks and downsides to a distro is to install it and use it, so that's what I've done with openSUSE 11.3. The goal is to use it for as long as it takes to gain a proper understanding of that particular distro, and its nuances, which in this case was about a week. Before we continue though, I should mention just what it is that 11.3 brings to the table. According to the press release, the latest version introduces SpiderOak support along with a new audio editor, Rosegarden. Indexing has also been improved with the help of Tracker, and as you'd expect, the latest versions of many popular applications are here, including KDE 4.4.4 and GNOME 2.30 (there's also a 3.0 preview available), along with the 2.6.34 Linux kernel. That all said, read on as we tackle the installation process (which could not be easier or more robust), and then we'll take a look at other aspects of the distro. Since this is our first distro review in a while, we welcome comments and suggestions in our related forum thread. If we missed mention of something you'd wish we didn't, please don't hesitate to bring it to our attention and we'll be sure to include such information in future articles. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Installation][Top Ad] If you're interested in giving openSUSE a go for yourself, you'll need to head on over to the download page and grab a version that best suits you. For the sake of this review, I downloaded the full-blown 4.7GB DVD image (via BitTorrent), but for those who are looking for a slimmer download, there are GNOME and KDE LiveCD's available, each weighing in at around ~700MB. If you want to install openSUSE by way of a thumb drive, it is possible, but it's not something I've had a great deal of success with in the past. But, if you have patience, there are many how-to's found around the Web that will help you get on the right path, including one right on openSUSE's own website. After booting up with whichever method you chose, you will arrive at a typical boot-loader screen. From here, you can test the media for defects (smart thing to do if you haven't used the disc in a while), and also perform a memory test with the help of Memtest86+ 4.0. There's also a "Firmware Test" which scans various parts of your PC to make sure things are in check. The other options are straight-forward. You will be able to boot straight to the hard drive, or even rescue your system in case of something going horribly wrong. After choosing the installation option, you'll soon find yourself at a very clean and simple installer intro screen: The next handful of screens are straight-forward, but I'll explain them briefly. After clicking "Next" on the above screen, openSUSE will probe your computer's hardware, and then you can choose to create a new installation (unless you happen to have an older version of openSUSE installed). The next option is timezone configuration, which couldn't be much easier. You can either select your particular region and timezone from the drop-downs, or click your location on the map. You don't need to stress over being precise, because as you click anywhere on the map, it will zoom in, so that you can easily click your exact location. Finally, before we get into the good stuff, you can choose to make either GNOME or KDE your default desktop. If you're unsure of which to choose, stick with KDE, as it's long been preferred by SUSE users. If you click the "Other" option, you will be able to choose between Xfce, LXDE, Minimal X Window and text mode. One of the biggest fears of Windows users who decide to try Linux, or even Linux users who don't want to overwrite their current distro, is having an installer mess up their entire PC. I've had it happen in the past, and it's not fun. Thankfully, things are much improved today, and after seeing how YaST handles things, I have to say that it looks like all of your installed OSes are in safe hands. From the get-go, you need to choose whether you prefer to have an LVM based system, or a partition-based system, and for the sake of remaining simple, the default option is going to be your best bet. At the top of this first page, you can see the partition layout that YaST proposes. In my particular case, I had an already clean SSD in the system, so it picked up on it immediately and chose to use it. If I had all partitions used, YaST can either resize what looks to be the best and use that, or if you are up to it, you can configure your own. As you can probably tell by the top-right screenshot, YaST's partitioner is impressive to look at and use. When first entering this page, you can see all of the partitions on the system in an easy-to-understand manner, and from here, you can choose to configure any that you need. If you want to set up a RAID, there's a sub-section for that as well. Something I like most about YaST's partitioner is that it gives you a flowchart look at your devices and mounts. In the bottom-left shot, we can see that YaST is going to automatically mount the available Windows partition to /windows/C, while my home partition for openSUSE will of course be set to /home. If you wish to use a different filesystem than ext4, you can also change that to ext2, ext3, Reiser or XFS. Again, default is best for most people. A moment ago, I mentioned the device graph, and here is what mine looked like: I don't know about you, but I think an overview look like this is cool. What's also interesting, is that YaST picked up on the swap partition from my other Linux install, so to save hard drive space, it automatically chose to use it instead. We're at the...

An In-Depth Look at openSUSE 11.3

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Rob Williams