[KLUG Advocacy] Impressions of SuSe 10

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> 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!

Ah,  from other systems I'm used to habitually pinkying the shift key
and typing my password, so I didn't notice that one.

> > 	Multimedia is still horked up.  
> It's worse than 9.3.  There are NO multimedia packs in the online update
> utility this time.  

Yep, this was most disappointing.  Multimedia is always
going-to-work-next-version----really-we-promise.  Waiting for working
multimedia out-of-the-box on a LINUX distro is like waiting for a stable
version of M$-Windows.  Or a version of M$-Windows that includes enough
tools to be useful out-of-the-box.  Or a secure verson of M$-Windows.
Or a version of M$-Windows with a decent web browser. ... 

> xmms doesn't even support playing mp3's out of the box!!!

Realplayer plays them however.

> 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. 

Got URLs to these?

> > 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?!? 

Yep,  everything flies on my laptop compared to 9.3 - where clicking on
the Applications menu often resulted in multi-second delays.

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

Nope, it is snaptastic.

> I also have one major problem with the gnome workstation switcher
> applet.  Sometimes (intermittent problem), it loops when logging on.

Haven't seen that one yet, but I've only logged-in-out about a half
dozen times.

> 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.  

Ick!

> This isn't too bad for me, but makes it is REAL inconvenient for my users!

Users?!  Screw 'em! :)
> 
>  - BS
> 
> 
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