A brief SuSE 10.2 review by a newbie

[phreak0ut]

This is my first review on anything. Also, I'm pretty new to linux and I'm just getting started with. So, the experts, please spare the flaming

I've installed a 32-bit version as I've heard that the 64 bit linuxes are a bit of a pain. Had bit of a trouble on 10.1. Well, lets not go to that now.

Installation
The animated boot menu which started was simply fantastic. Tuxs moving around in Christmas mood. There's one more thing which I found out about this menu, which I'll be writing later. The installation was a bit of a pain with Add-on chosen. It would ask for the Add-on media. I insert it, then it asks for CD1 again. I insert into drive, but it again asks for it. Tried disabling CD drive as it was popping out /hdb for CD1. So, the installation was aborted and reinstall starts again. Tried with Add-on again. Same result. Installation aborted. So, I decided to go ahead without installing anything from the Add-on media. One thing noticeable during the install is, that the partition is formatted in ext3 as opposed to the usual ReiserFS which was used till 10.1 due to some issues. I read somewhere(don't exactly remember) that its got upgrade issues and they will be discontinuing with that. I don't know if that is good or bad. Install went super smooth

Post installation
Again, you see the animated boot menu which is quite different from the usual which you see from SuSE. I found one thing 'strange' about this boot menu. I installed SuSE in December and the animated boot menu was present. From the 2nd of this month, I was surprised to see that the animated boot menu was replaced with a non-animated one, but it still is good. A cool blue one with smooth lines. Very well designed and easy on the eyes. But yesterday, I was again surprised to see that the animated boot menu was back. I boot my machine today, the simple non-animated screen is back. I don't know if there is some kind of calender which is being followed so that it keeps tab of the holiday season or special days and an appropriate screen is loaded or its a bug. Either way, both looks nice

I logged into GNOME and was really surprised and awed by the face lift it has got compared to the previous versions and other distros. I usually prefer KDE, but this time I think I'll stick with GNOME on SuSE for a long time to come. The Control Center is beautifully done and well laid out. As soon I saw the Desktop Effects icon, I wanted to try it out immediately and that's the reason I wanted to try out either SuSE 10.2 or FC6, but SuSE landed on my hands first. But, I was dissappointed to find out that my hardware still doesn't have the driver support and I need to wait for a long time for ATI to write one for my Xpress 200 One thing I noticed in GNOME was, in the Run application, the text entered shows up with a bit of a delay. Don't know the exact reason, but trying to find out.

Logged into KDE. Again, I was surprised to see that the menu was revamped compared to the default KDE which you get to see in most distros. Its designed as a pop up, nearly squared box. Its got everything inside it. From Favorite applications, My Computer, Applications all rolled into one but in a well designed manner. It takes sometime to get used to it though. There are lots of applications bundled which SuSE is quite good at I first tried out my hands on the media players. Somehow Banshee couldn't play my mp3s like the rest of the audio players. I installed Smart and installed all the codecs and installed VLC player as well and voila! SuSE can handle just about any codec. Sound is really good compared to Fedora. I don't know why this happens. Sound seems to be a bit distorted on FC. SuSE always has delivered smooth sound and its done it again. Installed Google Earth, but somehow it never moved further from the splash screen. I gave it enough time, but somehow it refused to start and had to force quit it all the time. KDE is still buggy and it hung once when I had to wake up my computer. I think those bugs will be resolved once KDE 4 is released.

The software update is a very nice thing and it notifies if there are anything new available in the repos which is good to keep your system updated.

Well, this was my short review on SuSE 10.2. Please do let me know if I missed out on anything and I will be glad to respond.
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________________

EDIT: Well, the 3D Desktop Effects runs on my hardware after all!! Thanks to JGuru's wonderful post, I got it running Please do check it here for people who find it difficult to run Desktop Effects with my configuration.

[subratabera]

That's really a nice review brother...

From your review it is clear that openSuSE 10.2 still have many bugs which needs to be fixed. Also the boot menu surprise is also a bug I think. After reading your review i have changed my mind and will wait for the next version of openSuSE. Until then I will experiment with Fedora and Ubuntu. BTW their is no such problem with sound on my system(Fedora). i have already installed 4 OSs on my system and now I am looking for a new HDD for trying out all those flavours of Linux ...

[praka123]

Neat review...

[phreak0ut]

Originally Posted by subratabera

That's really a nice review brother...

From your review it is clear that openSuSE 10.2 still have many bugs which needs to be fixed. Also the boot menu surprise is also a bug I think. After reading your review i have changed my mind and will wait for the next version of openSuSE. Until then I will experiment with Fedora and Ubuntu. BTW their is no such problem with sound on my system(Fedora). i have already installed 4 OSs on my system and now I am looking for a new HDD for trying out all those flavours of Linux ...

Yes, SuSE still has bugs which needs to be fixed, but trust me many have been ironed out from 10.1. I think waiting for 10.3 will be a better idea. I need to experiment with FC6 and Ubuntu as well, but I don't like to remove OSes just like that. I need to buy one HDD as well Somehow sound is still slightly distorted according to what I have noticed. I have noticed this effect even at my friend's place with FC6. Lets hope they improve

Originally Posted by praka123

Neat review...

Thanks

[NucleusKore]

I am quite happy with 10.1. I downloaded 10.2 for promotion sake, or if anyone requires it, but I am sticking with 10.1. Once you throw the zen updater out and run the online update manually its very smooth.

[lalit_ngp]

i hv a problem with 10.1........i hv the dvd .........while installing my pc hangs at kernel installation in the middle where 130 packages where left

[phreak0ut]

Originally Posted by lalit_ngp

i hv a problem with 10.1........i hv the dvd .........while installing my pc hangs at kernel installation in the middle where 130 packages where left

Did you download the distro? If so, did you do a MD5 check? Most of the time, installs fail due to this reason. If you still have the ISO, do an MD5 check using a an MD5 checker which are available. Google for that. Also, I suggest that when you burn ISOs of OS, please burn it at the least speed possible.

[Manshahia]

Installed SUSE 10.2

Some bugs
1. When i started installing it, i had no LInux partitions on my system. So as my system has 256 RAM , it asked for a SWAP partition of 1 GB and asked for the path. But as there was no Swap partition on the System, i had to quit the Installation.
Then Popped in Mandriva DVD, Created a Swap Partition and then the installation started.

2. At the end it asked for internet connection and asked whether i want to connect or SKIP.
I chose SKIP, then too it started connecting nd then FAILD.


Some Cool Features

1. I Had a SUSE 10.0 nd nw i installed 10.2
It has a nice menu(Dont knw whether it was present in 10.1?)
2. They hav changed the starting color frm Green to Blue(NICE LOOK).

3. When we open my computer it opens all the information making it slow coz it searchs free memory, ram , processor etc everytime we open it.

4. They hav provided a feature by which one can restart with any operating system he has installed on his system.
When we restart it asks, reboot?? Reboot into windows?? Reboot into Suse fail safe etc.
And when we choose any of these , bootloader is nt shwn and it directly into the told operating system.

[Pathik]

Nice review dude

[phreak0ut]

Well guys, thanks a lot for the valuable feedback, but I'm really saddened to see the same review ripped off and posted on Orkut by Manshahia. Here is the link http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?c...401698&start=1
I doubt if it will be the same after he reads this, but I would have been glad to allow it to be posted, if he had just asked me. That's so lame and retarted!!!

[phreak0ut]

^That's a good boy!

[kalpik]

Originally Posted by phreak0utt

Again, you see the animated boot menu which is quite different from the usual which you see from SuSE. I found one thing 'strange' about this boot menu. I installed SuSE in December and the animated boot menu was present. From the 2nd of this month, I was surprised to see that the animated boot menu was replaced with a non-animated one, but it still is good.

That's not a bug.. That's by design.. I've given a tutorial to permanently enable or disable it here.

[phreak0ut]

^Yes Kalpik. I wrote this review quite earllier than someone had asked here. I prefer to have it random. Thanks for letting us know again

[Tech Geek]

Nice review.