[KLUG Advocacy] Impressions of SuSe 10

[Bruce Smith]

> > 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.

I have the habit of pressing BACKSPACE, waiting half of a second, and
then typing my password.  Unfortunately it takes about TWO seconds for
the box to appear on my screen, causing me to lose about 4 characters.

> > 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?

Set an install source to this mirror:  http://packman.inode.at/suse/10.0
(I couldn't find any American mirrors, North or South!)

The trick is upgrading the needed RPM's that are already installed.
I found one message on the SuSE mailing list explaining how to do this
with the command line interface to software maintenance:  "y2pmsh".
Unfortunately the message had errors, so I figured it out by using the
"help" command in y2pmsh.

I _think_ it involved the "newer" command, then manually installing the
one(s) I wanted to upgrade (install command, I think).  IIRC, the
"upgrade" command does them all, if you want to or not!  (YMMV :)

For new installs (mplayer), you can use the software management GUI.
It solves all the dependencies, etc.

> > > 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.

Just the opposite for me.  And it's not the video card driver either.  I
have a Nvidia card at home (xorg driver), and a Matrox at work.  Both
are fairly new and fast cards (for 2D stuff anyway).

> > 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.

One message I found while google'ing  sort of implied that it only
happens if you have your focus setting to "follows mouse" (my setting).
I haven't had a chance to verify if that's true or not.

> > 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!

Yup.

> > This isn't too bad for me, but makes it is REAL inconvenient for my users!
> 
> Users?!  Screw 'em! :)

Except they call me complaining they can't log in!  :-)

I think I'm going to have to switch them to KDE until this gets fixed.

 - BS