openSUSE 11.1: My Personal Advantages over Ubuntu 9.04 & Fedora 10 (and a few tips!)
The other day I realized that Linux Mint wasn't receiving the official security updates from Ubuntu. My Ubuntu Studio desktop had update after update while my Linux Mint desktop had nothing. Strange - so I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 - LTS edition because my laptop's ATI card wasn't supported in the newer version of Ubuntu 9.04. I at least wanted the support that was available until April 2011 from Canonical. I reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04 will all codecs and additonal software and then decided to install even more with the Ubuntu Studio upgrade. That installed the real-time kernel which I was dying to try out. Unfortunately, an error I had experienced in the past came back up dealing with the wifi drivers and the new kernel location. I blogged about it before but it's not even worth mentioning now. As a reminder to everyone, I use a Toshiba Satellite A215 that has an ATI chipset and Atheros chipset. I couldn't upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 because the FGLRX driver is completely corrupted in the newest version of Ubuntu. I still tote the Ubuntu decal on my laptop but I have definitely ventured out to other distros. Besides the 9.04 issue and my keeping 8.04 as the LTS edition, I have been experiencing a few other issues such as Blender never working correctly on any version of my Ubuntu installed on my laptop (worked great on nVidia desktop) and the inability to go into suspend without breaking the system on resume.
To sum it up, during the course of the last two days, I have been deciding between Fedora 10 & openSUSE 11.1. I tried Fedora a few times in the past and I noted that doing something simply like installing Flash was a bit too complicated over Ubuntu so I kept Ubuntu for a while. I went back and tried it on my laptop and a few things i liked included the appearance (very slick boot loader and GNOME interface), the ability to recognize my Atheros wifi card (no Ubuntu version ever suceeded doing that), the ability to suspend and resume properly and the fact that it is Linus Torvalds' distro of choice - according to Wikipedia. I gave it a test run for a while and even Blender worked. However, a random freeze would occur after about 15 minutes or so of using Fedora and I couldn't get it fixed. To be overly critical - I like the amount of DEBs that are available to Ubuntu versus the number of available RPMs for Fedora and openSUSE.
I tried openSUSE after that. A lot of Linux fanboys hate the idea of how Microsoft somehow "owns" openSUSE after a deal made with openSUSE's commercial sponsor, Novell. I read the EULA and did
n't spot a single Microsoft reference anywhere. Also, I've read that this agreement has not effected the development or distribution of openSUSE at all. Personally, anything is better than Vista even if they do have their filthy hands in it somehow. If you can get past that, then you have an extremely user-friendly OS on your hands. To me, it seems like openSUSE has a stable build going on. I greatly appreciate the fact that I'm using the latest Linux kernel available (2.6 something) whereas I couldn't upgrade past 2.24.19 or whatever came with Ubuntu 8.04. The graphics work without flaw in my not-to-oft supported ATI X1200 Radeon. I was able to get the fingerprint reader to work on my first install of openSUSE but it seems to have dissapeared on my second trip down openSUSE lane. At least I know it CAN work. The wifi worked initially (another perk over Ubuntu) but I believe I was experiencing a drop form 54Mbps over my wireless G to 1 Mbps. I googled the issue and it seems to be a prevalent one, however my speedtest.net test gave me 13 down with 1 and I can stream HD YouTube videos without flaw. Supposedly there are a few network tweaks you can apply to openSUSE to give it an extreme boost but for now my speed isn't an issue. I've configured Skype 2.0 correctly and Picasa 3. Blender is working great and my 3D compiz effects are running smoothly. The Flash player install wasn't as simple as in Ubuntu but at least it didn't take too long to figure out. OH YEAH, the biggest issue with openSUSE was something related to my internet connection settings that are automatically configured in setup. IPv6 somehow causes issues with the repos available to openSUSE. I don't know how exactly but every forum post I read directed to disable IPv6. Try this tutorial for assistance: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Disabling_IPv6_completely
Flash Player Install:
Download Adobe Flash player from the Adobe webiste or Adobe Labs if you are in need of the x64 version.
Navigate to the /usr/lib directory or the /usr/lib64 directory respectively for your arch type.
Type "chmod 755 /browser-plugins" to grant permission to that folder. Try 777 if 755 doesn't work. Revert back to original permissions after you are done for additional security.
Extract your downloaded plugin and move it to the browser-plugins folder under lib or lib64 according to your arch. Restart Firefox and there you have it.
Picasa Install: Google Help
Simply add this repository to your YaST and then search for Picasa. Works flawlessly.
http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386
Skype Install:
Just go over this tutorial: http://en.opensuse.org/Howto-Skype
That's it people. I think I'll be keeping openSUSE for a long while or at least until I get a chance to try out Fedora 11 in ten days. Let me know what you think and as I'm still trying to get more community input.
