OpenSUSE 10.3

Finally, yesterday I chose to remove Ubuntu and put OpenSUSE 10.3.

I procrastinated the decision of putting OpenSUSE on because many posts around the web saying about huge installation times (talking figures of 5-6 hours) and so I decided for the Ubuntu live CD for that specific reason in the holidays - I wanted to USE my PC not watching it installing!.

Anyway those times are probably times for an online install, since with the DVD ISO it took 33 minutes for me! Damn.

The impressions are good. UI responsiveness (which historically is, imho, a Linux BIG weakness) from OpenSUSE 10.2 seems improved (I don’t know if it’s because of real improvements or because I switched from KDE to Gnome [edit: I switched to KDE and performance is still good - so real improvement :)) - but they were much worse than what I got from Ubuntu. Then I installed Compiz.. and they improved very much. Really Linux gains from Compiz so much, both in terms of eyecandy and UI responsiveness, that it could really become a desktop OS (if only it had AAA applications.. but missing AAA apps is not its fault).

About missing apps, I will for sure install VMWare player or server to keep essential software (Visual Studio mainly) around. Astoundingly, I took for granted support of MS Office in Wine.. instead it seems, judging from WineHQ AppDB entries, that MS Office support is far from complete (at least for any version later than Office 2000).
On another topic, OSS is well known for its multiplatform compatibility. So I took for granted x86-64 (AMD64) to be a well supported architecture around. Sadly there are still programs requiring x86 32bit (e.i. mono-debugger) so I will use that for now (more than enough, I have no reason for 64bit anyway).

January 3, 2008 | Filed Under Linux | Comments Off 

← Previous Page