[KLUG Members] opensuse 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.04 Impressions

[Mark Bystry]

I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with opensuse 10.3 as well. Of course I have been using suse
ever since release 9.0 so maybe I have a little bias. The only problem that I had in 10.3 was a
stinky MPLayer install which has nothing to do really with the distro. I got that fixed by
downloading an svn version of MPlayer (which I think just turn into MPlayer rc2) and compiling from
source.

The other issue was Compiz-Fusion (CF). It took a few days to finally figure out what exactly I
needed for a stable experience. Thank goodness for the suse forums.

I have always been impressed with ubuntu too. Out of the 7 computers in my house a version of ubuntu
runs on all of them except for my main rig/server which has opensuse installed.

Cannot go wrong with either release in my view.

Mark Bystry


Peter Bart wrote the following on 10/13/2007 08:16 AM:
> The systems these were installed on IBM T30 laptops, P4-M 2.0GHz, 1 gig
> RAM, 40.0GB HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, cd/dvd combo rw,
> Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), 802.11 minipci wireless card
> 
> I have to say once again opensuse impressed me. In addition to the other
> comments, my laptop runs a lot cooler with the default power scheme
> compared to 10.2. The battery also lasts quite a lot longer. Very nice
> for an older battery. Well over an hour of runtime. I had problems with
> some programs exiting under 10.2 which I attributed to a lot of mucking
> around by myself. Those included Seamonkey, Firefox, Epiphany and to a
> lesser degree Evolution. That is no longer a problem. All appear rock
> solid. The only problem seems to be suspend/resume and the scanner on a
> Brother MF machine. The scanner has allways been solved with help from
> Brothers own website
> <http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html>. The
> suspend/resume sometimes pops up a box !!??!! in the notification area
> telling me I have a problem. It then directs me to
> <http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/>. I downloaded and ran
> the script which gave me:
> 
> peter at plumber:~> /home/download/quirk-checker.sh
> Checking your system...
> 
> CRITICAL ERROR: No supported distro
> peter at plumber:~>
> 
> Hmmmm, but the only problems I've noticed are sometimes when resuming it
> will actually go into hibernate instead and sometimes when closing the
> lid it won't suspend. Resuming from hibernate is uneventful. Suspending
> from the menus as well as the hot keys works fine. So that takes a
> backseat for now.
> 
> 	Ubuntu 7.04 impressed me as well. Easy install after the upgrade failed
> from 6.06. I had to try! Suspend/resume finally, printer, wireless,
> ethernet,mouse, etc all detected at install. The only thing that doesn't
> work out of the box is the scanner on an Epson MF machine. Support
> appears to be much more in place to get this working w/o to much
> compared to 6.06. Even the problem with the box not wanting to boot
> while docked in the port replicator was solved. This was traced to a
> keyboard jammed behind a file cabinet, I guess she didn't like the way I
> set it up! No more keyboard. Battery life is much reduced over 6.06 but
> I'll take it even if I have to listen to the whining. Still well over an
> hour with an older battery.
> 
> Best Regards,
>