[KLUG Advocacy] Impressions of SuSe 10

Bruce Smith bruce at armintl.com
Tue Nov 1 08:29:23 EST 2005


I've been running SuSE 10.0 for a couple weeks now on my work and home
desktops both.

I did a fresh install on both systems, preserving my /home directory.

> 	The hideous and confusing xlock/screensaver-lock is gone... finally.

Yes, and it was about two days before I went back to xscreensaver.

"gnome-screensaver" looks nice at first, but it has a couple REALLY
ANNOYING "features".

1)  I like to type my password, press ENTER and return to my desktop.
I don't want to press a key, wait a couple seconds for the screen to
appear, then type my password.  I found myself typing the password, the
screen would appear half way though my password, and it only accepted
the last few characters of my password, which obviously isn't correct.
Then I have to wait for a timeout and try again.  That SUCKS!

2)  DPMS doesn't seem to work with gnome-screensaver.  The monitor stays
powered up no matter how long you wait.  I made sure that the option
dpms was in xorg.conf, I even manually checked the dpms settings in with
the "xset" command.  I also couldn't find any dpms settings in it's
configuration.

After asking about #2 on the opensuse mailing list, I learned that I can
just uninstall gnome-screensaver, install the xscreensaver rpm, and I'm
back in business just like before.  Whew!!!  :-)

> It is replaced by an intuitive GTK unlock widget that displays the count
> down in a manner that makes it clear that it is in fact a count down.

xscreensaver has also improved, in that it doesn't timeout while you are
typing.  (plus it works SO much better in the above situations! :)

> 	Multimedia is still horked up.  

It's worse than 9.3.  There are NO multimedia packs in the online update
utility this time.  xmms doesn't even support playing mp3's out of the
box!!!

I did find some repositories containing mplayer and libraries to fix mp3
support in xmms.  I also figured out how to add the 3rd party
repositories as input sources to the software management system, which
makes dependencies a LOT easier. 

> The Big One:
> 	There is one clearly outstanding difference between SuSe 9.3 and SuSe
> 10: speed.  Someone really lit a fire under this thing,  the interface
> is dramatically faster and more responsive.  This is noticeable
> immediately,  everything is faster.  It feels like just got a new
> laptop.

Really?!?  I had the opposite impression.  Changing between workspaces
on my system, there is a noticeable lag before the windows appear.

I also have one major problem with the gnome workstation switcher
applet.  Sometimes (intermittent problem), it loops when logging on.
The menu bars appear but are completely blank (which makes it hard to do
anything :)  I have to right-click on the background, start a terminal,
run "top", find the process getting 100% of the CPU, and kill it before
I can complete logging in.  This isn't too bad for me, but makes it is
REAL inconvenient for my users!

 - BS




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