 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 500, 25 March 2013 |
A tentative idea that started with Issue One back in June 2003 -- with a goal to publish a weekly summary of distribution news, operating system reviews, opinions and tips -- has been going on, Monday after Monday, for nearly ten years now. So without further ado,
WELCOME TO THE 500th ISSUE OF DISTROWATCH WEEKLY!
This week's feature story is a review of the recently-released openSUSE 12.3, a major new update of one of the oldest and most popular Linux distributions of all times. Is the new openSUSE a good potential replacement for some of the more controversial recent distribution releases? Read on to find out what we think. In the news section, Ubuntu announces major changes in its release process, Debian integrates the popular "Backports" repository into its main archive, and Slackware becomes the latest distribution to replace the Oracle-controlled MySQL database with the MariaDB fork. Also in this issue, an opinion piece discussing the increasing effort by the two major players on the Linux market, Red Hat and Canonical, to introduce new standards and the effect this has on the many smaller and more traditional Linux distributions and development teams. As we look forward to the next 500 issues of DistroWatch Weekly, here is a big THANK YOU to all our writers, contributors and especially the readers who have kept us going for so long. Cheers and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (25MB) and MP3 (41MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First look at openSUSE 12.3
 The openSUSE project has been around for a long time under one name or another. The community distribution attempts to be one of the best and most flexible desktop, server and cloud solutions available in the Linux ecosystem. It is a lofty goal, but the project, through the course of its long history, has generally done quite well at providing a polished Linux distribution to its users. The latest release from the project, version 12.3, appears to be mostly made up of incremental improvements. The packages in openSUSE's repositories have been upgraded, giving users access to the KDE 4.10 desktop, GNOME 3.6 and up-to-date virtualization technology. Improvements have been made to openSUSE's OpenStack cloud technology and the systemd init implementation. The project has transitioned from using MySQL to MariaDB and the project's Btrfs implementation has been updated in the hopes of offering better reliability and file system snapshot support. This version of openSUSE will receive security updates for two releases plus two months, or approximately 18 months in total based on the current release schedule.
People wishing to try the latest version of openSUSE have a number of download options. The project offers a handful of flavours, including a full DVD with a large collection of optional software, a KDE edition, a GNOME edition, a Rescue CD and there is a minimal net-install option. Each of these flavours can be had in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. I opted to download the KDE edition of openSUSE 12.3 and I found the ISO image was about 930 MB in size. Booting from the openSUSE media brings up a boot menu which will let us launch the distribution's desktop environment from the live media, launch the system installer or perform a media check. Diving into the live environment brings us to a KDE desktop. A window opens which introduces us to the distribution and provides many links to the project's documentation, help forums and to the KDE project's user documentation. Dismissing this window we find a collection of icons on the desktop. These icons act as launchers for a web browser, the system installer, the LibreOffice suite and the KInfocenter which provides us with information on our machine's hardware. At the bottom of the display we find an application menu, task switcher and system tray. I found that desktop effects were enabled by default. These are mostly subtle visual effects and the KDE desktop was quite responsive while these bits of eye-candy were enabled.
openSUSE 12.3 - the welcome screen
(full image size: 1,109kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
The openSUSE installer is a graphical application which has a great many features. Generally speaking each page of the installer gives us a simple question and we can supply answers or take the default settings. Should we wish to look deeper most pages have advanced options which allow us to tunnel further into the configuration details. This makes installing openSUSE fairly straight forward, but it also gives us a great deal of power over our initial setup. The installer walks us through accepting the license agreement and confirming our preferred language and keyboard layout. We select our time zone from a map of the world and we can optionally set the date & time.
The partitioning screen takes a singular approach, letting us check boxes to indicate which features we want for our system and the partition manager will then attempt to match our desires with a partition layout. Alternatively we can manually manage partitions and I found the installer to be very flexible. We can select almost any file system for our partitions, encryption is supported and we can even set mount flags for specific mount points. Both LVM and Btrfs are supported by the partition manager. The next page of the installer asks us to create a user account and set passwords for both our account and the root user. The final screen shows a summary of actions the installer will take and there are links next to these actions. Clicking the links bring up pages where we can alter the pending actions. For example we can swap out GRUB2 for GRUB Legacy or LILO, we can change which partitions will be formatted and other details.
The first couple of times I went through the installer I tried to set up a Btrfs volume as I had the last time I experimented with openSUSE. It was one of the features I enjoyed most when using openSUSE last year, but this time I wasn't able to get the installer to configure the advanced file system. I tried with a few different layouts and with simply handing the entire free disk space over to the installer's guided partitioning wizard, but each time I was shown an error saying Btrfs couldn't be set up. I finally gave in and set up my system using the ext3 file system instead. The installer copied its files to my hard drive quite quickly, only taking a few minutes. When the installer finished it offered to reboot the machine.
openSUSE 12.3 - running the graphical installer
(full image size: 1,161kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Aside from the errors I ran into while setting up openSUSE I ran into an additional issue, namely hardware support. At first I attempted to load openSUSE on my desktop machine (dual-core 2.8 GHz CPU, 6 GB of RAM, Radeon video card, Realtek network card) and, initially, I had trouble getting the distribution to boot. Disabling kernel mode setting I was able to get openSUSE to boot, but only to a text console; I was not able to access the desktop or graphical installer. Switching to my laptop (dual-core 2 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, Intel video card, Intel wireless card) I ran to into lock-ups the first two times I attempted to boot from the live media. The third time I attempted to load openSUSE on my laptop the operating system brought me to the live desktop without any problems and without any adjustments made on my part. In addition to running openSUSE on my laptop I also ran the distribution in a VirtualBox virtual machine. In both environments I found openSUSE ran quickly, boot times were short and the desktop was very responsive, even with file indexing and visual effects enabled. The operating system was light on resources, using approximately 225 MB of memory while logged into the KDE desktop.
Booting openSUSE brings us to a graphical login screen. The first time a user logs in they see the same welcome screen we encountered on the live media. Icons for launching popular applications sit on the desktop and the background is mostly dark and subtle. Shortly after logging in a small notification appeared in the corner of the screen letting me know package updates were available in the repositories. Clicking on this notice brings up the Apper package manager and it displays a list of packages waiting to be downloaded. We can select which items we wish to upgrade and then Apper goes to work, downloading and applying the updates, all the while showing us progress information. It's a smooth experience, made smoother than we might normally expect of Linux distributions as we are not prompted for a password or privilege escalation prior to the new packages being installed. Apart from handling updates Apper also functions as the distribution's primary graphical package manager. Using Apper we can browse through software categories using a simple web-like interface. We can mark packages for installation or removal with the click of a button. Queued actions are handled in batches by Apper. I found the package manager worked quickly and I encountered no problems with it.
openSUSE 12.3 - downloading package updates
(full image size: 277kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
I did, however, run into a problem when trying to play multimedia files. There are audio and video applications present in openSUSE's default installation, but no non-free codecs. The system will offer to hunt down these codecs when we attempt to play media files, but this doesn't help us as the codecs are not packaged in the main repositories. Enabling media playback is a rather roundabout process which leads us through several pages of the openSUSE wiki, downloading the necessary community repository information, enabling these repositories and then confirming we will choose to trust the third-party package signing keys. It is not a user-friendly process and even doing it properly takes us through about eight screens. Once the community repository is enabled the system will offer to download the codecs. In my case what actually happened was the package manager downloaded the codecs, Flash support and about 970MB of additional packages, including the "screen" utility, several command line shells, the Python scripting language and LibreOffice updates. It was a long, slow download with a lot of extra software attached to it, but I did (in the end) end up with multimedia and Flash support.
The KDE edition of openSUSE comes with a useful collection of software. We're given the Firefox and Konqueror web browsers. The Kopete and Konversation chat clients are installed for us as is the LibreOffice suite. The Okular document viewer is available to us. The KTorrent bittorrent client is installed by default as is the Marble virtual globe. The KDE System Settings panel is available to help us configure the graphical interface and the YaST configuration utility lets us administer the rest of the operating system. There are accessibility features available, including an app to assist users in manipulating the mouse, another magnifies the screen and there is a virtual keyboard in the default installation. I found two privacy tools, KGpg and the Kleopatra utility, these both deal with security keys and encryption. The Network Manager utility assists us in getting on-line and there are the usual small apps for editing text files, managing archives, crunching numbers and taking notes. Java is available to us and I found the system runs both a mail service and secure shell by default. Behind the scenes openSUSE runs on the Linux kernel, version 3.7. I found when trying to run a command from the system's console, when the command was not available, the system would to try to locate the missing program in the distribution's repositories.
The YaST configuration manager has always been a shining star in openSUSE's sky. The graphical portal allows us to configure all aspects of the operating system from the comfort of a well organized graphical interface. There are a lot of options to choose from, but they are arranged clearly and the YaST family of tools do a nice job of providing both power and ease of use. I found the YaST tools worked well and they grant a lot of power to the system administrator, giving us control over all the distribution's services, security, networking and packages. I did run into a few cases where YaST's utilities would produce an error indicating a new configuration couldn't be saved, but I found closing the control centre, going back and trying a second time always gave me the desired results. One unexpected characteristic of openSUSE's default configuration is all user accounts are granted sudo privileges by default. This is handy in a home environment, but probably isn't what we want in more complex situations. The YaST control centre dedicates a module to managing sudo and the default behaviour is easy to change should we require a more restricted security policy.
openSUSE 12.3 - the YaST configuration centre
(full image size: 290kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
One thing which surprised me in the wake of openSUSE 12.3's launch wasn't technical in nature, but perhaps political. A few years back the Fedora team introduced a policy change in their distribution which would allow regular users to install updates without administrator privileges. There was quite a strong (and negative) reaction from the Linux community over the issue and the change was eventually reversed. On the other hand openSUSE allows users, even users without any sort of admin or sudo access, to install updates in the same manner and I have yet to hear a peep from the community over the issue. There appears to be a double standard here and I have to wonder why openSUSE gets a pass while Fedora does not over the same feature.
While getting openSUSE up and running I ran into several speed bumps involving hardware support, enabling multimedia support and an inability to use Btrfs and the associated Btrfs features. These problems make me think the current version of openSUSE could have benefited from additional quality assurance checks. It certainly wasn't the same simple install-and-go experience I enjoyed with version 12.2 of the distribution. However, once the pieces were in place the distribution provided a surprisingly smooth, fast and pleasant experience. The operating system boots quickly and runs fast. Even with all the desktop features enabled the system is responsive and KDE 4.10 is quite polished. There were a few minor glitches when using the YaST configuration panel, but overall YaST is still one of the better configuration tools in the Linux community. I really like the detailed documentation provided by openSUSE, the welcome screen and the attention to little details. The openSUSE project is really ideal for users who want a balance between power and ease of use and the entire system appears focused on the idea that things should be easy without removing control form the user. It's a fine line to walk, but I think the openSUSE developers have done a good job.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Ubuntu approves major release changes, Debian integrates backports into main archive, Slackware replaces MySQL with MariaDB
 Discussions over possible changes in the Ubuntu release process continued last week. From the user's point of view one of the less positive outcomes was the decision to halve support length for non-LTS releases: "In a meeting of the Ubuntu Technical Board last night, the technical leadership of Canonical's Linux distribution decided to halve the support time for non-LTS releases to nine months. The reduction in support for non-LTS releases from 18 to nine months should give the developers more time to concentrate on testing the packages to which users will be able to upgrade between major releases. No decisions have been taken, apparently, on how the up-to-date packages will be delivered to users; the Technical Board only decided to 'enable users to continuously track the development focus of Ubuntu without having to explicitly upgrade'. The implementation details are expected to be worked out in the next few weeks." Ubuntu Fridge has a very good summary of the changes.
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 As happens regularly during the advanced stages of "freeze" in the development of Debian GNU/Linux, speculations about an imminent stable release have started hitting Linux news sites. Last week it was The H Online that came up with a suggestion of a possible release of Debian 7.0 on the Easter weekend: "The Debian release team is entering the hot phase of the upcoming Debian 7.0 'Wheezy' release. The list of release-critical bugs has been shortened to less than a hundred, and for approximately half of those, the developers have already decided to ignore the problems in question or to drop the packages if patches will not be submitted soon. However, the developers will only accept small patches that fix the problem in question and do not touch other parts of the system as they are trying to move ahead with the release. A release candidate for the new Debian Installer has been available for over a month. Taking the current progress into account, it is possible that Debian Wheezy could be released over the Easter holidays." That would be this weekend starting on Friday, 29 March.
A more factual and no less interesting news from the Debian project came from Debian developer Francesca Ciceri who announced the integration of Debian backports into the main Debian archive: "The Debian project is pleased to announce that the backports service for the next stable release, Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (code name 'Wheezy') will be part of the main archive. Backports are packages mostly from the testing distribution (and in few cases from unstable too, e.g. security updates) recompiled in a stable environment so that they will run without new libraries (whenever it is possible) on the Debian stable distribution. While as for now this service was provided on a separated archive, starting with wheezy-backports the packages will be accessible from the regular pool. The users of Wheezy will have to add to their sources.list file this entry: deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main. All users of the service are invited to check their regular mirror if it carries backports and pull from there. Please note that this change does not affect the current stable release - Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 (code name 'Squeeze')."
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 The growing list of Linux distribution replacing the Oracle-control MySQL database with a fork called MariaDB expanded over the weekend with the addition of Slackware Linux. From "Slackware switching to the MariaDB database": "The big news here is the removal of MySQL in favor of MariaDB. This shouldn't really be a surprise on any level. The poll on LQ showed a large majority of our users were in favor of the change. It's my belief that the MariaDB Foundation will do a better job with the code, be more responsive to security concerns, and be more willing to work with the open source community. And while I don't think there is currently any issue with MySQL's licensing of the community edition for commercial uses, several threads on LQ showed that there is confusion about this, whereas with MariaDB the freedom to use the software is quite clear. Thanks are due to Heinz Wiesinger for his work on transitioning the build script, testing, and getting us all behind this move. He's been working with MariaDB (and their developers) for several years now." Also, don't miss the extensive changelog of Slackware "Current" (the distribution's development branch), with an unusually large number of new entries during the past week.
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| Opinions (by Jesse Smith) |
The growing divide
People often regard Linux (or GNU/Linux, if you prefer) as an operating system. When asked "What operating system do you run?" many of us, myself included, are likely to reply, "Linux". I believe this concept of Linux as a single operating system to be a generalization at best and, at worst, inaccurate. The label GNU/Linux really refers to a family of operating systems, each with their own distinct quirks, rules, package management utilities and installers. Sometimes these differences are good as they allow for friendly competition and variety, allowing each user to find an operating system which fits their ideal. At other times these differences make extra work for developers, reduce the spread of software products and force users to give up some features in order to enjoy others.
I believe most of the problems this variety causes come not from upstream software projects, but rather from ambitious distributions. Distributions often develop in-house utilities for their users and keep those utilities in-house, which makes them harder to adapt to other distributions. While any distribution can package a distro-agnostic project such as LibreOffice or Firefox (indeed distributions can work closely with these neutral upstream projects), software projects which are kept "downstream", maintained by the developers of a single distribution, ultimately cause fragmentation and result in users losing out on important features. Let's take a look at some examples.
The YaST configuration tool has been included in the openSUSE distribution for years, yet efforts to port this configuration manager to other distributions have typically failed. Likewise porting Mandriva's Control Centre has met with similar road blocks. Various projects first introduced by Ubuntu have generally failed to spread. The Unity desktop environment and One client software have given developers working with other distributions many headaches.
These little incompatibilities between Linux distributions have existed for years and aren't anything new. Most of us have learned to live with them, accepting that running one distribution and enjoying its perks means giving up on other attractive features. What concerns me now is that these incompatibilities not only appear to both be growing in number, but might be introduced deliberately. Looking at the systemd project, as an example, we're seeing the new init system being attached to other projects, including udev and possibly the GNOME desktop. Many Linux and BSD developers have expressed concern that this will limit GNOME and udev functionality to Linux distributions which swap out their existing init system for systemd. In fact it is an issue Gentoo's development team has taken quite seriously, resulting in a fork of udev. The move has also effectively blocked GNOME Shell from making an appearance in the BSD community.
These examples certainly show the existence of incompatibilities, but they don't demonstrate deliberate fragmentation of the open source community, and I did suggest fragmentation might be caused on purpose, so let's look at another example. Canonical recently announced they had decided the new Wayland compositor might not be the solution they had originally hoped it would be and so Canonical introduced a new product, Mir. Now Wayland had not been widely adapted up to that point. Some initial work had been done to make Qt and GTK+ applications work with Wayland, but this functionality wasn't included by default. Both toolkits had added Wayland support as a possible add-on option developers could turn on and test. In short, Wayland was receiving a lukewarm welcome from the community as a whole.
At least it was until Canonical announced the launch of Mir, a potential competitor to Wayland. A week after the announcement went public, this post was made to the GNOME mailing list stating: "The recent Mir announcement makes it a bit more urgent that we put our weight behind Wayland and help it reach its full potential." The post suggests GNOME should support Wayland before the end of 2013 and it's probably not a coincidence this is the same time-line proposed by Canonical for getting Unity working with Mir. I personally think it is also interesting to note the proposed push to get GNOME working with Wayland comes from Matthias Clasen, a Fedora contributor with an @redhat.com e-mail address. I suspect in the final quarter of 2013 we will see an interesting and problematic fork in the road where GNOME runs on top of Wayland on Fedora, Unity runs on top of Mir on Ubuntu and other distributions not based on either of these projects will be running their desktop environments on top of standard X.
Why might this be problematic? Well, aside from the likelihood of new bugs being introduced with the arrival of fresh software there is also the question of video drivers. Linux distributions already suffer from poor video driver support and dividing that limited support three ways isn't going to help. While it should be relatively easy to make existing open source drivers work across X, Wayland and Mir, closed source drivers (those needed for 3-D support and gaming) do not yet work with Wayland or Mir. It's already hard enough to get companies like AMD and NVIDIA to support Linux when they are asked to support the X graphic stack, are these companies going to volunteer to support three different display systems in the small desktop Linux market? Might they only support one or two of the display options and, if so, which ones?
Increasingly we are seeing the Linux community divided into camps, not just the classic RPM vs DEB and GNOME vs KDE camps of the past. The chasms are growing wider, dividing the community into separate groups using different init processes, display systems and access controls. It is my concern as both a developer and a user that we are seeing a division of the Linux community into multiple separate communities. We appear to have the Fedora/Red Hat camp on one side, the Ubuntu/Canonical camp on the other and we have many other distributions stuck in the middle, faced with an uncomfortable choice. Should they join one camp or the other, or perhaps try to stick with existing technology which will slowly lose support as the big players move away? This concerns me as it appears that Linux distributions are not only becoming less compatible with each other, they may be forming new operating system families. Might we see GNU/Linux go from being one family of similar operating systems to being divided into three or more separate entities? I certainly hope not, but right now it looks like the two community members with the most money both want to take their balls and go home.
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| Released Last Week |
CAINE 4.0
Nanni Bassetti has announced the release of CAINE 4.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution with specialist utilities for forensic analysis and penetration testing: "CAINE and NBCAINE 4.0 'Pulsar' are out. Changelog: Linux kernel 3.2, LibreOffice 4.0.1, Sqliteman, remote file system mounter, sdparm, netdiscover, NirSoft Launcher with FTK imager and sysinternals tools, new RBFstab and Mounter. Rbfstab is a utility that is activated during boot or when a device is plugged in. It writes read-only entries to /etc/fstab so devices are safely mounted for forensic imaging and examination. It is self installing with 'rbfstab -i' and can be disabled with 'rbfstab -r'. It contains many improvements over past rebuildfstab incarnations. Rebuildfstab is a traditional means for read-only mounting in forensics-orient distributions." Visit the project's home page to read the complete changelog and to see some screenshots.
SparkyLinux 2.1
Paweł Pijanowski has announced the release of SparkyLinux 2.1, a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution with a choice of Enlightenment, LXDE, MATE or Openbox desktops user interfaces: "I am happy to announce the final versions of SparkyLinux 'Eris' 2.1 E17/LXDE, 2.1 MATE edition and update of 2.1.1 Ultra edition. The ISO images provide bug fixes, updates and new features. All new images of SparkyLinux 'Eris' have been synchronised between themselves and all packages upgraded from Debian testing repository as of 2013-03-15. The new live system provides: Linux kernel 3.2.39; minor bugs fixes; live system on USB stick fixes; full system installation on USB stick; new set of wallpapers. The live system's user name is 'live', password 'live'." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshot.
SparkyLinux 2.1 - a Debian-based lighteweight distribution for the desktop
(full image size: 836kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Clonezilla Live 2.1.1-7
Steven Shiau has announced the availability of a new stable release of Clonezilla Live, version 2.1.1-7, a specialist live CD with useful open-source disk-cloning utilities: "Stable Clonezilla Live (2.1.1-7) released. This release of Clonezilla Live includes minor enhancements and bug fixes: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2013-03-14); Partclone has been updated to 0.2.59; Clonezilla is now able to image MINIX; the keyutils program has been added; the grub-install command is no longer run for grub 1 on an ext4 file system when grub-install is from Debian, this prevents a potential indefinite hang; a prompt about skipping re-installing grub 1 in ocs-functions has been improved...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete changelog.
AsteriskNOW 3.0
Malcolm Davenport has announced the release of AsteriskNOW 3.0, a complete, CentOS-based Linux distribution with Asterisk telephony software, DAHDI driver framework and FreePBX administrative GUI: "AsteriskNOW 3.0. Today, a major update to AsteriskNOW is available. The older 2.x version is now replaced by the new AsteriskNOW 3.0. With the 3.0 release, many improvements are available including: a new version of Asterisk (11 instead of 1.8); a new distribution (CentOS 6.4 instead of CentOS 5.x); a new version of FreePBX (2.11beta instead of 2.10); a re-written Digium phones add-on module with many more options; fixes for numerous issues, including the call detail records problem in the 2.x version." Here is the brief release announcement.
FreeNAS 8.3.1
Josh Paetzel has announced the release of FreeNAS 8.3.1, an open-source storage platform that supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems: "The FreeNAS development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of FreeNAS 8.3.1-RELEASE. FreeNAS 8.3.1 is based on FreeBSD 8.3 with version 28 of the ZFS file system, and features volume based encryption for ZFS. There have been no major changes between 8.3.1-RC1 and RELEASE, mostly bug fixes and minor usability improvements to the GUI. Please familiarize yourself extensively with the encryption features of FreeNAS before using them. Doing the wrong thing can end up in a state where the volume is hidden behind very difficult-to-break AES 256 encryption. Many modern CPUs feature hardware support for encryption. If hardware support is available FreeNAS will use it." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and useful links to documentation pages.
GParted Live 0.15.0-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live version 0.15.0-1, a utility live CD with specialist tools for hard disk management and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is proud to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. The biggest change with this release comes from enhancements to GParted that track live updates of command execution progress in the details section of the apply operations window. Other items of note include: move operations are twice as fast as in prior versions; proper cancel support has been added; volume label length is now based on file system type; unallocated space is selected by default; Linux kernel updated to 3.2.39; based on the Debian Sid repository as of 2013-03-20." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement.
Slackel 2.0 "Openbox"
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 2.0 "Openbox" edition, a lightweight desktop Linux distribution based on Slackware's "Current" branch: "Slackel Openbox 2.0 has been released. Slackel is based on Slackware and Salix. It uses the excellent Salix tools and Salix packages. A collection of two Openbox ISO images are immediately available, including 32-bit and 64-bit installation images that can be burned to a CD. Slackel Openbox 2.0 includes the current tree of Slackware and Openbox 3.5.0 accompanied by a very rich collection of software. Linux kernel is 3.7.10. The Midori 0.4.8 web browser, Claws-Mail 3.8.1 and Transmission are the main networking applications included in this release. SpaceFM is the file manager. It comes also with OpenJRE 7u9, Rhino, Icedtea-web, Pidgin and gFTP." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information.
Linux Mint 201303 "Debian"
Eleven months after the last release, a brand-new version of Linux Mint "Debian" edition (with MATE and Cinnamon, but no Xfce this time) is out: "The team is proud to announce the release of LMDE 201303. Highlights: Update Pack 6; MATE 1.4 and Cinnamon 1.6; installer improvements (graphical time zone and keyboard selection, support for installation on multiple hard disk drives, slideshow, webcam and face picture support); device driver manager; Plymouth splash screen. LMDE in brief: Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian 'Testing'. It's available in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants as a live DVD with MATE or Cinnamon. The purpose of LMDE is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base." Here is the full release announcement with screenshots, additional notes and a FAQ.
Tails 0.17.1
An updated version of Tails, a Debian-based live DVD with focus on user's privacy and anonymity on the Internet, has been released: "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.17.1, is out. All users must upgrade as soon as possible. Notable user-visible changes include: Upgrade to Iceweasel 17.0.4esr; update Linux kernel to 3.2.39, which includes better support for graphics adapter backported from Linux kernel 3.4.29; temporarily drop the Rendition display driver. Bug fixes: remove Indymedia IRC account until we ship a version of Pidgin with SASL support. Known issue: the VirtualBox support in Tails 0.17.1 is not as good as it could be. The next Tails release (0.17.2) is scheduled for April 9, it will be a minor, bug-fix release." Here is the full release announcement with a link to a complete changelog.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- calamariOS. calamariOS is an openSUSE-based Linux distribution optimised for desktop use. It comes with a choice of GNOME, KDE, Xfce and Enlightenment desktop user interfaces.
- Tanglu. Tanglu is a new Linux distribution based on Debian's "Testing" branch, closely following the Debian development. It will have a 6-months release cycle and its target audience are Linux desktop users.
- YouTube Remote Controller OS. YouTube Remote Controller OS is a Linux-based operating system which displays a remotely-controlled YouTube view.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 April 2013. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Happy 500th Issue (by ChiJoan on 2013-03-25 08:05:43 GMT from United States)
I was surprised to find DistroWatch Weekly come up, when I clicked to read the OpenSuse Review. Isn't it usually the opposite, to find the Review after the Homepage gets the DistroWatch Weekly updated?
Back to reading the review...
Joan in Reno
2 • Another great issue: the 500th (by musty on 2013-03-25 08:48:48 GMT from France)
Congratulation for the 500th issue. hope to see more and more.
I am happy to see that the long waited Debian is at the door.
my next hope for the next issue is a comparison of some fedora based distros , cause we are all tired of the 2000th distro based on buntu. Good work, just keep it that way
3 • Ubuntu Gnome (by viktor on 2013-03-25 09:15:47 GMT from France)
Any sign of Ubuntu Gnome (formerly Ubuntu Gnome Remix) being added to the db? Final Beta is coming this week and it's now an official derivative. At only 9 months of support though I will most surely not try the non-LTS releases now.
Happy 500th!
4 • 500th issue (by Dave Postles on 2013-03-25 09:52:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks for all your excellent work in the past and good wishes for the future.
5 • OpenSuse 12.3 (by Sayth on 2013-03-25 09:58:36 GMT from Australia)
I wish Opensuse 12.3 was easier to get going with regarding hardware suport out of the box. I filed bugs and tested 12.2 & 12.3.
Many of the hardware issues for me were firmware related an d could have been solved by a 12mb package. However the response I received stated firmware support would not be included as they needed to fit 700mb size.
Surely today most users are using USB and the hindering users to getting their system up and running to fit a CD is not particularly useful. It's not even a philosphical stance.
Shame Opensuse is a nice system when it works.
6 • re: clarity (by Alex on 2013-03-25 10:08:02 GMT from Australia)
"When asked "What operating system do you run?" many of us, myself included, are likely to reply, "Linux". I believe this concept of Linux as a single operating system to be a generalization at best and, at worst, inaccurate. The label GNU/Linux really refers to a family of operating systems..."
So which one is it Jesse?
Are you saying 'Linux' (the kernel) is a single operating system?
Or that the kernel called Linux, when used in association with a userland, system utilities, and other vital system components (as defined by POSIX) forms a fully functional OS?
Or, that each distribution of GNU/Linux is an operating system unto itself?
Linux is a kernel; not an operating system. When used with a userland like GNU (or Android), it forms a usable operating system.
The distinction is crucial for technical clarity.
7 • The growing divide (by Alexandru on 2013-03-25 10:20:36 GMT from Romania)
Without any doubt, the current situation in Linux land is very similar to "UNIX Wars" from '80s. It is close to impossible to force all projects to use the same software "gears" under the hood. In my opinion, the only working solution is good standartization on specification level (remember "Single UNIX Specification", "POSIX", "X Window System").
As an example, take GCC vs CLang. These two projects are absolutely independent from each other. Still much part of software compiled with GCC can be compiled with CLang and vice-versa. This is due to the fact both implement a well-formed standard of C++. There are several other attempts with various success, namely "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard", "Open Document Standard". So, instead of enforcing specific software, main Linux providers should enforce well designed standards (e.g. specifications) and leave distributions to use anything they wish that implements them.
8 • 500th Issue (by kc1di on 2013-03-25 10:30:20 GMT from United States)
Congratulation on the 500th issue, very good reading. I liked the opinion this month as it voice some of the concerns I've held for over a year now. I do believe we are seeing the divide but think it will go three ways.
in any event believe there are turbulent days ahead for GNU/Linux.
9 • OpenSuse 12.3 (by kc1di on 2013-03-25 10:37:58 GMT from United States)
I too encountered problems with the latest release of opensuse.
on my desktop machine which is getting a little long in the tooth hardware that was well supported in 12.2 is now broken in 12.3. have sent in bug reports but didn't seem to make any difference in the final release. All in all seems like a step backwards not forwards just too much extra stuff to chase down and it take too much time to get it all working Too two days to track down install get working media and Nvidia and wireless. not to mention Dropbox.
this took hours in comparison to Mint for instance that takes me only 20 minutes from of install to completely configured and running system on both my machines.
Suse developers would really benefit from making the transition a bit easier for the average op.
I understand that they are trying to do much more thant some others but still hours of seeking and downloading and configure it all to work together, with only an effective 18 month longevity period seems a bit much to me.
10 • Wow! 500th issue (by Roy H Huddleston on 2013-03-25 10:39:07 GMT from United States)
I do enjoy this website and am thankful for all the good work and comments.
11 • 500th issue (by Joaquim Torres on 2013-03-25 10:56:32 GMT from Portugal)
Congratulations for a job well done.
12 • openSUSE 12.3 (by greenpossum on 2013-03-25 10:58:27 GMT from Australia)
>Enabling media playback is a rather roundabout process
I guess you are unaware of this: http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_formats/12.3?
One-click install gave me the codecs I needed within minutes. But use openSUSE's FIrefox, not Chrome or another browser for this.
Also can you explain what evidence makes you believe installing new packages does not require root credentials? Perhaps you had ok'ed root accesses a few minutes before and the credentials were still cached.
13 • Congrats on #500 (by Bewbies on 2013-03-25 11:23:35 GMT from United States)
Wanted to chime in and wish DIstrowatch a "Happy 500th" today. I throroughly enjoy coming here for the weekly readings and tips. Thanks again for providing this website and congratulations on this latest milestone.
14 • The growing divide (by Snitch on 2013-03-25 11:33:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Interesting 'Opinion' this (momentous 500) week, Jesse.
Citing 'Linux' as one's OS isn't so bad - it all comes down to the kernel, doesn't it? Even neophytes soon learn to 'sudo' or, better, 'su -' when desperate, as even us poor folks can follow a text recipe readily available from Google for simple operations, particularly when things go wrong.
That brings us to OpenSuSe - wonderful, marvellous, inspirational - at last this developer has got the measure of an important group of its user base and given a root path at the most important time: during and just after installation. Perhaps some other reluctant heroes will grasp this small piece of wisdom?! In larger organisations, it's unlikely that Administrators will experience difficulty in making the necessary user restrictions. Horse/cart and all that jazz.
15 • @5: openSUSE 12.3 (by greenpossum on 2013-03-25 11:35:40 GMT from Australia)
>Surely today most users are using USB and the hindering users to getting their system up and running to fit a CD is not particularly useful.
Come again? The Live editions don't fit on a CD any more, they are just under 1GB in size. If anybody should be complaining it would be the users with only CD drives.
As for booting from USB, a quick search will get you tutorials on how to make a bootable USB stick from the image.
16 • Cheers! (by The Dill on 2013-03-25 11:35:49 GMT from Australia)
Cheers, and happy reporting!
We readers are all Watching with you :)
17 • Félicitations! (by gumb on 2013-03-25 11:40:57 GMT from France)
I seem to remember being here offering congratulations for the 250th edition, so well done on reaching the big five-double-O. This must mean DistroWatch is reaching middle-age.
18 • Fragmentation (by Omari on 2013-03-25 11:48:10 GMT from United States)
As I read the first couple of paragraphs I thought you would cite systemd as an example of how fragmentation is being reduced, not increased. For the first time, multiple distributors are using the same software to control system startup and service control. I can go from Arch to OpenSUSE to Fedora and use the same commands for this sort of thing. Daemon authors can include a systemd service file and have it be used by multiple distributors, instead of each distributor writing its own init.d or rc.d or whatever script, each with its own bugs.
19 • Re: The growing divide (by silent on 2013-03-25 12:02:38 GMT from France)
Ubuntu guys apparently have smartphones and tablets in their vision. So they need a light display server. Limited support of video drivers is not a problem for them because they will target a limited set of hardware. They want Mir in order to have full control of the development. It may be more expensive than using Wayland, but also faster and more reliable, as they want no surprises. What gnome guys do is simply falling between two stools: gnome-shell is struggling on the desktop due to lack of some features (but dropping support for fallback), on the other hand full touchscreen customization is somewhere at the whiteboard phase. For them at the moment Wayland is rather just something new to play with than a clear strategy. Anyway, X server should be kept for some time as a compatibility option on desktop PC's.
20 • food for thought ? (by Joseph Furphy on 2013-03-25 12:05:57 GMT from Australia)
Congradulations on 500 issues
However being a relative new commer to Linux (I've read about 24 of your reviews) I would like it if this site was acronym free zone because I often don't understand them. -- in this review was used LVM, Btrf, LILO, Grub and KDE -- or the real difference between the acronyms.
Is it also possible to add an editorial page of the general Linux community, please?
On behalf of everyone this site, including myself, has helped, Thanks for the help!
21 • codecs and packages (by Jesse on 2013-03-25 12:11:24 GMT from Canada)
>> "Enabling media playback is a rather roundabout process"
>> I guess you are unaware of this...
Unaware of it? I linked to the "one-click" install in the review. As I wrote, it technically works but it is a length process which involves many screens, warnings about untrusted keys and a massive download.
>> "Also can you explain what evidence makes you believe installing new packages does not require root credentials?"
I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. Updating packages to new versions and adding dependencies doesn't require root credentials. Installing new software packages does require root access. This is the same issue which stirred up the Fedora community a few years back. You can easily test this yourself. Login, wait for the update notification to appear, tell the update app to apply all updates, the system does not prompt for a password.
22 • 2x500 (by dimitrij on 2013-03-25 12:14:02 GMT from Slovenia)
Damn I'm getting old :]
With all that fuel put on fire, DW will certainly not run out of topics.
Looking forward to another great 500 Mondays.
Thank you, Sir
23 • Opensuse 12.3 a real slug. (by os2user on 2013-03-25 12:15:10 GMT from United States)
First, after looking on the site for requirements and finding NONE, I foolishly attempted to install on 2.666G HP board but with a mere 256M. Turned out totally impractical: agonizing waits as it ground along, and after reaching the very first "Next" button, it just stopped. So power down to add 256M. -- But let's pause here. Opensuse has shown me they can't run a simple graphical interface AND copy a few files to HD with less than 256M! Ridiculous. The install put a mostly blinding white screen with a dark panel at left and one "next" button WAY WAY down there, literally requiring three strokes on my limited surface. Ridiculous ergonomics: just center it and move the mouse over the button too.
Resuming with 512M, it went adequately fast through the choices (meaning over 5 minutes to boot, but hey, quite a bit quicker than before) , then ground away for at least 45 minutes. -- Oh, and it wanted a net connection too in order to grind away yet more updating a week-old release, but I've learned never to connect to the net while installing.
I'd noticed from start that the mouse isn't always responsive, seems to need a good big wiggle before the system ups its priority and it will follow accurately. Quite annoying. That continues once running off HD too.
The system is nowhere near lively. Gives me the impression it's debating whether to respond, then grudgingly deciding to obey. For now. But soon, human...
Also, the LCD happened to be 1280x1024, and I now wish to use it at 1024x768 with another LCD at my regular desk, but if there's a way to change the screen res, I've yet to find it. So Opensuse remains on the test bench, and from that brief look, I'm not any too eager to get to it.
Now, I understand you guys don't wish to hear complaints about minor points. And it's free, so shut up. Well, even experts have trouble and annoyances, so really, what's the POINT with Linux? Just to look at briefly then set aside for the next? They just aren't practical or fun for everyday: every one is an adventure game just to find where they've hidden such everyday Easter Eggs as screen resolution.
I tried Artistx and OS4, and they're even worse, unusable in my view. Opensuse is touted as a polished version, and may be, but my first impression suggests I'll probably have to stick with PCLinuxOS of 2007, as it's still the only distro I've found which is snappy and reliable. And again, I'm worn out from bad results. Distros need to stop and TUNE, not just pile on NEW.
24 • @21 (by greenpossum on 2013-03-25 12:33:23 GMT from Australia)
>I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. Updating packages to new versions and adding dependencies doesn't require root credentials.
I want to see hard evidence of this or it didn't happen. This is not my experience and that of all the other users I know.
25 • @23 (by greenpossum on 2013-03-25 12:35:11 GMT from Australia)
>Opensuse 12.3 a real slug
Don't even think about running openSUSE in less than 1GB. Sorry to be harsh, but if you don't have that much memory, use a lighter distro. There are plenty out there that will fit your RAM.
26 • Happy 500, and the Linux Divide (by Leo on 2013-03-25 12:44:08 GMT from United States)
I think we, FOSS supporters tend to embrace diversity of offerings, and ultimately believe that the best of breed will prevail. So, Free/Open Software evolves like a complex living creature.
Having said that, multiple efforts at the core foundations will make the community spread to thin. I love Ubuntu and its community, and certainly don't bash them for every decision they make. Quite in contrast, I love the direction they are taking overall, to make a thin OS with a simple interface and stable APIs.
But, this MIR effort seems quite significant, and as Jesse points out, very likely to produce fragmentation at a very fundamental level. One would hope Ubuntu would join a larger community discussion to find an X replacement, be it Wayland or whatever, instead of going its own way.
27 • Congrats! (by Fewt on 2013-03-25 12:47:28 GMT from United States)
Congrats on your 500th issue, and Distrowatch's continued success!
28 • @21 (by greenpossum on 2013-03-25 12:48:05 GMT from Australia)
>As I wrote, it technically works but it is a length process which involves many screens, warnings about untrusted keys and a massive download.
You realise that legally Novell or rather Attachmate is not able to distribute restricted codecs without risking lawsuits and such? The opensuse-community website is not affiliated with Attachmate. So those codecs cannot be included in the images. Other distros have their own justifications for taking the risks they do.
You'd need to download the stuff anyway, one way or another, either in an image or as separate packages so what's the big deal about the download size? The slow download I can sympathise with. The tip is don't do this in the first couple of weeks from the release as Packman will be flooded.
29 • Growing divide (by Richard Davis on 2013-03-25 13:10:15 GMT from United States)
I think when idly ask what operating system you use, most people are looking for near one word answers i.e. Windows, Mac, Apple, Linux. Trying to answer with a "I use a Gentoo based, Kde managed system call Sabayon" you just lose people and they think you are unable to answer a simple question.,
30 • Congrats on 500 (by Manja on 2013-03-25 13:48:14 GMT from Slovenia)
Congratulations for the 500th issue. I read every issues of this awesome weekly writing. I started around number 100 and really enjoy it. Thank you very much for all the work bringing this to us.
I also tested openSUSE on my machine and the installation was very smooth. I love the great work openSUSE has done with integrating KDE desktop and software. Easily one of the best KDE distros around (I also like/use Mageia, Mandriva and ROSA quite a lot).
As for the growing divide in the GNU/Linux community well I guess it has to come to this from time to time to explore fresh new ideas. Although what Cannonical/Ubuntu is doing smells a lot like NIH syndrome. They could easily help improve Wayland and they could even build Unity faster if the used KDE Plasma framework to build the desktop (just like on the same basis we have special interfaes for desktop, netbooks and tablets; and now also a special Plasma Media center interface). And I guess people are also starting to see this bad behaviour of Ubuntu/Canonical and are starting to move away from it. Most of my friends just switched to other distros and to KDE desktops.
Ah well I hope we again start to think more how to work together and close the unneeded gaps. We realy need to get all these projects together and to make a specification or standard so all the bits and pieces work together again. We just need more solidarity. Together we win, divided we loose.
31 • OpenSuse 12.3 (by Sly on 2013-03-25 13:56:10 GMT from United States)
It took a while for me to get OpenSuse running this time also, but it was because the KDE live CD just would not work for me. I downloaded the DVD and it worked like a charm. I am able to play cd's without installing additional codecs, which surprised me because this wasn't the case in the past. Also, I am a bit bothered about the Suse not requiring a root password to update packages. This makes the distro seem a bit less secure.
32 • opensSUSE 12.3 upgrading & re: 31 (by Bill on 2013-03-25 14:18:03 GMT from United States)
I upgraded from 12.2 no issues, been upgrading it for awhile (always from the previous release) with no issues. I know some people always re-install but seems like so much added work to me.
Has there ever be a review here with all commentators successfully installing the reviewed distro with no issues?
re: 31 iirc removing apper and just using Yast for sw mgt, as I do, removes the ability to update packages w/o a password
33 • The growing divide (by Andrew Rowland on 2013-03-25 14:52:59 GMT from Europe)
The Linux landscape has always had these differences and, confusing though it often is to newcomers, has always been resilient enough to continue in spite of -- and sometimes because of -- the differences. When the differences were simply a matter of configuration utilities it could be said that it didn't matter much, at least until you want to change distro and have to learn a new set of procedures.
I could even argue that Linux would benefit from having just one desktop. Think of all those programs that want to integrate with the environment and have to produce separate Gnome and KDE versions...
What is different now is that some of the changes that are occurring are at a low, system level -- init, systemd, X, Wayland etc. Are these things we can trust a user to choose like they choose a word processor or internet browser? Of course not, as the whole distro depends on them. The only way to change is to change distro. Might this lead to fragmentation as Jesse Smith fears? It might, but Linux has never progressed by adhering to standards that thwart innovation, but organically, by a system of 'nature favours the strongest'. In other words, if there are competing systems now, in time we will see whether Mir is a better replacement for X or whether Wayland rises to meet the challenge. Perhaps it is just what the Wayland project needed (I know nothing about the project -- just an example). But if X and init are no longer meeting our 21st century needs, move forward we must.
So I think it more likely that we are going through a period of uncertainty as the rivals battle it out, and eventually distros will choose the strongest contender, just like most distros recently leapt to LibreOffice rather than OpenOffice once the dust had settled over the Oracle takeover. Unless of course Jesse is right and certain parties are deliberately fragmenting -- but would that be in anyone's interests, including their own?
34 • 500 issues without fragmentation (by Bill on 2013-03-25 15:14:08 GMT from United States)
As I look out my skylight I see that there are tiny blossoms in my maple tree and bushes with new yellow leaves. It would seem that Spring has arrived. Yet, I also see a lawn covered with a white blanket and snowflakes continuing to fall. Looks like Winter isn't done quite yet. Somehow, the seasons find a way to work together as I watch the progression from the warmth of my home.
Linux with KDE or Gnome or Unity, Compiz or Wayland or Mir or Mutter; it looks like these are fragmentations, but I've been watching from the warmth of my wide screen monitor for a few years now and it looks like somehow Linux will move on and make progress as surly as the seasons will change.
I like winter and I like spring, I like Mate and I like KDE. Thank you Distrowatch for putting up 500 issues and teaching me so very much. I have learned and will continue to donate to those distros which I know and like. And I will continue to keep my eye on when the pool will open while keeping my snow shovel nearby.
That's the fun of life, variety, diversity, progression.
Thanks again Distrowatch.
35 • Happy 500th, the growing divide, Slackware (by JWJones on 2013-03-25 15:18:09 GMT from United States)
Happy 500th, Distrowatch!
Nice to see Slackware taking the lead on MariaDB. And with all the talk of the great divide in Linux, and the plethora of options and differences between distros, let me just say how much I appreciate Slackware for staying strong, true, steady, and stable. KISS, and let the user decide and remain in control, without multiple layers of obfuscation.
36 • The coming divide? (by Scott Dowdle on 2013-03-25 15:48:20 GMT from United States)
Red Hat and Fedora are more open... and I think that is better.
How many distros have adopted Unity... or even have it as an option? How many have adopted GNOME 3 or have it an an option? That might be a good indicator for an upcoming trend.
Canonical has more desktop users so in theory they can leverage those (which is about the only thing they are good for) into getting nVidia and AMD to support Mir.
I don't use proprietary video drivers so I doubt it will affect me.
37 • Jesse's openSUSE review; and "Growing Divide" - is it just a Gnome/Ubuntu thing? (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-25 16:08:00 GMT from United States)
Jesse has covered two important issues this week. As an openSUSE user, I agree that I also always have some tinkering to do to get each new release running properly. There's nearly always a driver fix or software patch I've got to track down. I've learned to wait a few days after the release, and then hang out in the openSUSE forums to see what problems others are getting solved, and to ask my own questions. The openSUSE forums are the best part of the distribution in my mind, as they have a large number of professional engineers freely contributing their time to help others solve problems. Once I've got things fixed up nicely, I've always had a great 6-9 months of trouble-free, worry-free computing. openSUSE is powerful, but not perfect - as in not "perfectly simple". I don't think there's really a way to access all that power and to do it with complete simplicity - as a user, you've just got to be willing to learn how to fix problems.
Regarding the "Growing Divide" - I feel like I've missed out on a lot of the problems that Ubuntu and Gnome users have torn their hair out over. SUSE always used KDE as the default desktop, and did not default to the KDE 4.x series until it was fairly mature, so I've missed all the weird DE problems of Gnome and Unity and from the KDE 4.0, 4.1 series.
SUSE also tends to go with the standards that other large distros like Red Hat and Mandrade/Mandriva/Magea agree to, such as the change to systemd.
Since I've missed out on nearly all of the big problems other Linux users seem to have struggled with over the years, I wonder if the "Growing Divide" Jesse wrote about is simply a matter of Gnome and Ubuntu continuing to cause problems for their users? Change for the sake of change itself?
38 • OpenSUSE (by David McCann on 2013-03-25 16:36:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm currently testing OpenSUSE and it's running nicely: after spending two days on installation. This is the 32-bit version, which is evidently even less well tested than the 64-bit.
The live disk couldn't run because of a segmentation fault in the video. The full disk installed, but I had to alter the grub configuration to get X, create a user manually, and tell it that I had an ethernet port. All I need now is a video player that doesn't run in slow motion.
39 • Happy 500th issue! (by Stefano B: on 2013-03-25 16:46:51 GMT from Italy)
Happy 500th issue! To read DW weekly is one of the first things that I do every monday morning! Great job!
40 • @38 • OpenSUSE (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-25 17:11:40 GMT from United States)
Hi David,
One trick to installing openSUSE is to always try to download and install from the full DVD if possible. This distro doesn't seem to do near as well as Ubuntu and Mint at shoving everything you need into a smaller Live CD/DVD version. I've recommended that they stop producing the Live CD/DVD's if they aren't going to be able to control the quality of installation, or that they at least post a strong warning to avoid installing from that media. I think this may have contributed to the installation problems Jesse ran into as well.
If you go to the openSUSE forums, you'll find that most of the long-time users refuse to install from the live media or the Net install - they only use the full DVD. Although it takes longer to download, you get the added advantage of having a full repair disk plus an emergency off-line repository with thousands of software packages.
41 • KDE is going to Wayland too (by mz on 2013-03-25 18:07:59 GMT from United States)
From what I hear KDE is going to Wayland just like GNOME. I don't know if their is as firm of a timeline as GNOME has, but the commitment seems to be there:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/KDE-sets-its-sights-on-Wayland-1825273.html
If KDE & GNOME both go to Wayland, and presumably Cinnamon goes with GNOME, then only projects for old desktops like XFCE & LXDE would be stuck on X11. It would seem appropriate that such low resource desktops would use legacy drivers old X11 on the old computers that they seem to target. I hope Mir acts as a kick in the pants to Wayland supporters, and is promptly forgotten after Wayland goes live, but you never really know.
Oh & happy 500th.
42 • 500th issue (by Ika on 2013-03-25 18:28:40 GMT from Spain)
Happy Anniversary! Hoping there'll be much more 500ths!
43 • openSUSE (by Ika on 2013-03-25 18:30:25 GMT from Spain)
Since Jesse made an openSUSE review, I’ll (re)post here my experience with this distro.
I never liked openSUSE. I’m not talking about the look; it’s quite cool. But this is one of the less important issue since all can be customized.
Well, I decided to give it another try. The full 4.7 GB DVD with the default KDE DE...
...And encountered the same things that always made me to quick remove it:
1. Wifi connection. It took me a while to get it work. And it isn’t working properly: it shows like it is a bad net connection - THOUGH IT IS FULL !!! - and the connection key shows the red light, though it is pressed as connected!!!
2. Package management: too complicated. Why aren’t able (or willing) the developers to create a unified one?
OTOH, is incredible a so “great” distro lacks some essential and very used programs like Skype or VLC!?!? Someone will say “It can be installed from...”. It’s a bullshit! Why not out-of-the-box? More: these are not in the repos!!!
3. Not detected a free/unallocated space. I have a 100 GB free space in my HDD but the installer did not detect it. So I had to install openSUSE in the partitions where I had another distro. But had to be aware not deleting these partitions because once deleted there were unreadable!!! So I mounted these existing partitions as required (/ and /home and using the already existing swap).
Above all these, I dont like the idea of the superuser. Why not the custom setting root+psw followed by user+psw (optional or not)?
After a couple of days I found I was logged in automatically, though this function is not enabled.
Overall, excepting a couple of pop-uped windows notifying about a KDE bug, the system seems to work quite smooth and fast.
But I’m not sure if keeping it or not.
Maybe not..
44 • Successfully tested openSUSE-12.3 on 5 different PCs (by oldcpu on 2013-03-25 18:33:47 GMT from Germany)
I successfully tested openSUSE-12.3 released (GM) version on 5 different PCs. 3 were installations off of full DVD, and 2 were liveDVD boots:
* installed on ancient athlon-1150+ 32-bit MSI motherboard, 2GB RAM and GeForce FX5200 graphics card. Installed LXDE desktop. Initially had to boot with 'nomodeset' until obtained openSUSE patched kernel (for nouveau driver regression that is in 3.7.x kernel impacting all GNU/Linux distributions) and patched proprietary legacy nvidia driver being incompatible with 3.7.x kernel impacting all distributions. With proprietary nvidia driver functioning, the performance on this old PC is good. Best its been for many years.
* installed on Dell Studio 1537 laptop with Intel Core2 duo P8400 CPU, 4GB RAM, radeon HD3450 graphics. Worked well with radeon graphic driver. I note the AMD proprietary driver does not work with 1.13 version of X in all GNU/Linux distributions so I did not attempt that driver install.
* installed on 64-bit Asus motherboard with Intel Core i7 CPU, 6GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GTX260 graphic card. Worked well with nouveau driver. Proprietary nVidia driver requires a patch to work with 3.7.x and 3.8.x kernels which I did not try to apply.
* booted liveDVD to different Asus motherboard with intel Core i7 CPU, 6GB rAM, nVidia GT210 graphics. Worked well with nouveau driver.
* booted liveDVD to Lenovo X220 core i5 laptop with 4GB RAM and Intel graphics. Worked well with Intel driver.
In 3 of 5 cases above, to get Network to function I had to go to YaST > Network Devices/Settings for an easy network configuring, after which Network (with Internet) worked fine. I believe this was a packaging mistake (obscured by another network bug being resolved), there is a new bug reported on this, it is noted on the 12.3 bug summary wiki and work around stickie posted in the openSUSE forums.
I'm impressed with the speed of this openSUSE-12.3 release and its polished appearance. In my view of using SuSE-Pro and then openSUSE since year 2001, this promises to be one of the better releases for MY hardware.
45 • OpenSUSE review (by Joseph on 2013-03-25 19:11:52 GMT from United States)
I have some disagreements with several parts of the OpenSUSE review.
The first is the insistence on many reviewers' parts to use the live disk to base their review on. As with most problems with Linux, I blame this on Ubuntu. A Live CD is something to play with and not a preferred installation medium. OpenSUSE should be reviewed from the real install DVD. There are many differences, including the fact that the DVD gives the user the option to customize every single package installed on the system while the live disk merely copies an image. Without reviewing the real, full installer, readers aren't made aware of this awesome feature that is lacking in most distros today. On top of that, there's a lot less files to download after install, and the criticism about the number of packages to download after the first use of the file manager would not exist. In fact, the DVD gives the user the option to install all updates before being dropped into the desktop so flash, MP3 playback, security and bug fixes are all applied before the user ever sees the desktop. Such is not the case with the live disk, which does not provide an optimal install experience. It's something you'd use in a pinch if you really needed to install a copy of Linux onto a machine you were already running a live image on; it's not the preferred way of doing things and I believe statistics show 75%-80% of OpenSUSE users install from the actual install DVD. Another issue is that the live image requires at least a gig of memory to function correctly and even then running programs before starting the installer could affect free memory and the success of the operation; the DVD has no problems running in 512MB (and possibly less) memory.
" Apart from handling updates Apper also functions as the distribution's primary graphical package manager. " This is not correct. Under the "Computer" tab of the KDE launcher is an icon labeled "Install/Remove software". This launches the YaST package manager and THIS is the primary package manager. Apper is there for updates. If one really wants to one can use it to install packages just as one can use zypper on the command line, but it's not recommended, promoted, common, or normal to do so. One would need to get to it through the KDE desktop configuration tool to use Apper in this fashion. In fact, many OpenSUSE users disable Apper entirely due to past experience with it blocking the YaST package manager from working (which appears to be mostly/completely fixed in this version, finally).
" Enabling media playback is a rather roundabout process" It actually isn't. During one's initial configuration of the system after install, one should use YaST, select the option to manage repositories, and then add community repositories. From here one can add Packman which houses the non-free software and any other repo that makes sense. Now there's no problem finding codecs and if one installs SMplayer or VLC there's no codec issue at all. There's no need to go to Wikis, use one-click installs, etc. Just configure the repository.
Other than these disagreements, I really enjoyed the review and found it quite thorough.
46 • The growing divide/video drivers (by tammerlane on 2013-03-25 19:17:13 GMT from United States)
Congratulations on you 500th issue. I have read Distrowatch Weekly for some years, but this is my first response. You guys do a great job. My main comment concerns video driver support. Although not a gamer I have always used video cards from Nvidia and Ati. This is partly why I haven't been able to use a Linux distro fulltime. I feel that driver support for Linux from these proprietary vendors has always been spotty and problematic, and implemented with varying success by differing vendors. My second comment might be considered blasphemy by some. Any GUI OS that depends heavily on Command Line Interface seems unfinished and unreliable. When I ask for help and I'm told to 'open a terminal and type ...' I usually format that partition and move on. This is getting less frequent as distros become more polished and usable. BTW I started using computer in the DOS days and have done some programing, but I prefer a good GUI.
47 • @43 - openSUSE software (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-25 19:18:16 GMT from United States)
>"OTOH, is incredible a so “great” distro lacks some essential and very used programs like Skype or VLC!?!? Someone will say “It can be installed from...”. It’s a bullshit! Why not out-of-the-box? More: these are not in the repos!!!"
Skype is a proprietary blob of software. openSUSE devs probably don't have any tools that would turn it into an optimized RPM to put in one of the official repos. The last version of Skype made available for openSUSE was for version 12.1, and that was only for the 32bit version. I don't use video chat software, so I'm not sure if this 12.1 version will work on 12.3 on a 32bit system. My experience with other software tells me that that's unlikely, but you could try it out or search the opensuse forums to see if someone else has had success getting it working.
VLC - the VLC project keeps fantastic, up-to-date versions of its software for openSUSE and many other distros. They offer one-click installation for openSUSE 12.3 from their website.
Keep in mind, the only software that would be in the official openSUSE repos would be open source software that the distro intends to officially support.
48 • Congratulations and another good review (by gee7 on 2013-03-25 19:29:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Congratulations Distro Watch on your 500th issue.
Over the years, you have given me many happy hours of reading and information that has helped my understanding of Linux and file management. A big thank you.
The most important thing about Linux is its philosophy of sharing - of sharing information, of sharing technology, of sharing insights into how to do tasks and overcome problems.
These insights can regularly be found on Distro Watch, usually written by the great team, but also often found in readers' comments.
That sharing philosophy is laid out in its copy-left licence, which should be left untouched by Governments and companies that work closely closely with their governments if it is to keep its integrity and the spirit of the original.
I noticed that the first thing I had to do when installing the default KDE openSuse was to agree to the licence, that asked me to obey US law in that it requested me not to share this operating systems with people from countries on the US Government's blacklist. That was my reading of the licence anyway - perhaps the openSuse developers could explain why the American government is involved in a Linux system developed in Europe? I knew that KDE had sprung out of Germany, that openSuse (according to Distro Watch) is developed in Germany and I thought that I would be supporting a German and a European system in installing it.
In brief, just to say that I think politics should play no part in sharing Linux desktops distributions.
You know, Linux desktops help individuals to communicate and learn about the world and sometime to overcome barriers set by their own repressive governments.
openSuse installs sweetly in a multi-boot environment (+1 in that it didn't try to format existing swap partitions which can lead to problems with other distos' fstab files) although locating the tick box "not to install Grub" is not immediately obvious. I installed it without giving the user sudo rights, by the way.
On the downside, for me the installation gave a system without internet access. It has been years since I installed an operating system that did not recognise my wired connection, it takes me back to 2002. Then I could not use the graphical software to set up my network connection, all data was greyed-out, which I took to be a permissions problem. So I went looking for the right command to use as root. After some time searching online, I find that the answer, thanks guy who posted:
Open a Console
$ su
give root password
# yast2 lan
configure DHCP or whatever, just guess at things if you have to, he he …
Bob's your uncle.
What I found really likeable about openSuse (I installed it 2 days ago so haven't had a chance to find other delights yet), was the easy installation of Enlightenment (install E17) as an alternative desktop, so that the user can decide at Log-in whether to use Enlightenment or KDE. As this will be my only operating system with Enlightenment, it will keep a special place in my set-up as long as it stays reasonably stable. Fingers crossed. I find it fast and light so far. Well done, guys.
That's my 2 pennies for this month.
Thank you, Distro Watch.
Have fun, best wishes all.
49 • Reply to @Ika about OpenSUSE (by Joseph on 2013-03-25 19:34:09 GMT from United States)
>...And encountered the same things that always made me to quick remove it:
>1. Wifi connection. It took me a while to get it work. And it isn’t working
>properly: it shows like it is a bad net connection - THOUGH IT IS FULL !!! - and
>the connection key shows the red light, though it is pressed as connected!!!
What specifically is your problem and why did it "take a while to get it to work"? What happened? Did you need to install a driver, configure something extra, are you using a WiFi chipset that is brand new or one that is poorly supported by the Linux kernel itself? This criticism doesn't tell us anything useful because it's unclear whether you, the distro, or the chipset are to blame.
>2. Package management: too complicated. Why aren’t able (or willing) the
>developers to create a unified one?
It's right there on your KDE task launcher. Go to the "Computer tab" and click on the icon that says "Install/remove software." That's what you use. What's so hard about that? Apper notifies one of updates, which is what all KDE distros are supposed to use to unify things, as you complain about.
>OTOH, is incredible a so “great” distro lacks some essential and very used
>programs like Skype or VLC!?!?
It doesn't lack them; they're just not installed by default. I could think of all sorts of programs *I* find useful that aren't installed by default anywhere, like PostgreSQL, the RapidMiner data mining suite, the Eric5 IDE, etc. OpenSUSE does include a true open source VoIP program, LinPhone, and a media player, Kaffeine. Don't fault it for not including your favorite. That's like criticizing it for not including Chrome when it ships with Firefox as the default.
>Someone will say “It can be installed from...”. It’s a bullshit! Why not out-of-
>the-box? More: these are not in the repos!!!
Skype is NON-FREE. It can't just be included in the distro. Some codecs are also of questionable legality depending on what country you're in so they're also not included on the disk. It's not "bullshit", it's the law, and you're very opinionated about something you're apparently not familiar with. Did you ever actually ask anyone first, or read the explanation on the website itself? OpenSUSE's home base of Germany is very strict about DRM and hosting something like VLC which can play back DVDs (which Linux does by decrypting them) could get them in trouble. That's why they're not in the MAIN repo.
Simply go under community repos in the repository tool in YaST - seriously, isn't configuring the repository the second step after booting into a Linux desktop, after configuring the desktop itself? - and enable Packman. Then you can install all the proprietary software you like and deal with any legal issues that may or may not exist in your own country. I've got no problem installing VLC on my machine.
>3. Not detected a free/unallocated space. I have a 100 GB free space in my
>HDD but the installer did not detect it.
The automatic option didn't detect it or you couldn't see it manually? The automatic recommendation may not always be the optimal one or the one you might have in mind; that's what the manual configuration is for. I find it highly unlikely that the partition manager on the install DVD couldn't see free space.
> So I had to install openSUSE in the partitions where I had another distro. But
>had to be aware not deleting these partitions because once deleted there were
>unreadable!!!
I don't follow this at all. How could you install OpenSUSE into an existing partition without screwing up the distro that was there, or did you format that partition first? And yes, deleting partitions would make them unreadable... I don't understand your point here either.
>Above all these, I dont like the idea of the superuser.
Um... that's Linux (except in Ubuntuland). OpenSUSE didn't invent superuser, UNIX did.
> Why not the custom setting root+psw followed by user+psw (optional or not)?
I'm not sure what you mean here either. Root is superuser.
>After a couple of days I found I was logged in automatically, though this
>function is not enabled.
I think after a couple of days you'd been on a wild configuration spree of features you didn't understand. :-) You had to have configured automatic login in the KDE configuration tool; it didn't turn on by itself.
50 • Re: Successfully tested openSUSE-12.3 on 5 different PCs (by Joseph on 2013-03-25 19:52:30 GMT from United States)
I can concur: I installed OpenSUSE 12.3 on a laptop with an AMD Sempron CPU, 1.8GHz, 32bit, single core, with 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 200M graphics, and a 75GB, 4200rpm (!!!) IDE hard drive.
Everything essentially worked out of the box. The wifi chipset in this machine is a broadcom model that actually needs to have a binary blob copied into its processor on boot-up. Since OpenSUSE can't distribute that blob due to copyright, they have a solution built-in. Just run "install_bcm43xx_firmware" at the command prompt as root (with the machine connected to the net via wired interface). This runs a script that connects to broadcom's website, downloads the windows .zip file with the windows driver, runs a tool to snip out the binary blob from that driver and then copies it onto the right space on the hard drive. :-) Now on the next boot the open source driver can copy that blob into the chipset and activate it and wireless works fine. :-) Awesome!
Even things like the keys to change screen brightness, multimedia keys, etc. work out of the box. Although this machine shipped with XP, many of those same features don't work with a default XP reinstall. :-)
The PC can actually run full KDE as a desktop too in its 512MB of ram (so much for KDE being "bloated"). Obviously you don't want to run lots of programs at the same time or have a dozen browser tabs open at once, but keeping expectations reasonable I could do the things I would normally do with a laptop on it. In fact, I could even run XBMC (despite being below their recommended specs) and play back 720p video at full screen! This machine has no video acceleration and the CPU usage goes to almost 100%, but at least it works!
XP is very swappy and loves to copy memory out to the page file. With a 4200rpm HD and a single core CPU, this KILLS performance. Thanks to Linux's advanced handing of memory, this does not become a problem with normal use so things are much smoother.
But the biggest surprise of all was yet to come. I've tried OpenSUSE on this laptop since 11.3 in 2010, so I wasn't shocked that things like wireless or dedicated keys worked (they always had). However, there had always been a bug that manifested only on battery power. About 11 mins in with battery usage, CPU use would shoot up to 100% for a minute, come back down, then do it again, etc. It would be X that was using the CPU. This was not a KDE problem has it happened with Gnome and LXDE. I also observed it in other distros that I tried; I assumed it was an X issue (only Puppy with its really old limited X driver appeared immune). I found bug mentions of this problem affecting certain chipsets in the bug trackers of several distros, but it seems no one ever found the ultimate cause (OpenSUSE appeared to mark theirs as fixed when it wasn't). I'd given up ever being able to reliably use this old laptop without it being plugged in.
To my shock, the battery finally works fine! I don't know who fixed what, but this is so far the only distro I've tested that runs fine on battery on this laptop! I don't know if other distros are working now too or not, but whatever it is, this made 12.3 completely awesome to me! That someone somewhere fixed a problem that only manifested on a few eight-year-old laptops is fantastic. That OpenSUSE 12.3 can run so well with a full KDE desktop on something with such weak specs testifies to how it can fly on mainstream desktops and laptops. And as always, the attention to detail and polish OpenSUSE displays puts it above other distros into a class by itself. This was really a fantastic release, especially factoring in that it came out in six months rather than the OpenSUSE's usual eight.
51 • Slackware and Mariadb (by Cahrles on 2013-03-25 20:02:39 GMT from United States)
@35 - I have nothing against Slackware, but to say it's "taking the lead" is a little... misleading. Mageia switched to MariaDB more than a year ago, and a handful of other distros have as well.
52 • Mandriva SOHO Server (by Jesse on 2013-03-25 20:05:10 GMT from Canada)
Someone asked if I would be willing to review Mandriva's SOHO Server edition. I'm a bit on the fence on whether to give it a shot. On the one hand Mandriva generally makes a very user-friendly server for small businesses. On the other hand the server comes with certain limitations and requires registration to download. So I'm going to open the floor to comments. If you think Mandriva SOHO should be reviewed or if you think it is too restrictive and should be skipped, please drop me an e-mail.
53 • RE: The growing divide (by M. Edward (Ed) Borasky on 2013-03-25 21:03:26 GMT from United States)
I'm glad you wrote this, Jesse, because as a long-time Linux and open source user, I've noticed it too. And you have a much bigger platform than I do. But to be honest, I think it's 'game over', and Red Hat and Canonical won. Linux is big business, and the days of a "free as in beer and as free as in freedom" operating system are numbered.
It was nice while it lasted, but in the end, the lawyers and accountants need to collect their fees and they can't do this without dependable, repeatable and scalable profit models. I think you'll see consolidation and thousands of "community" developers, tired of doing hard work for no pay, will migrate to businesses that aren't ashamed to ask users to *pay* for the robust and efficient software they use. Code, in short, is for closers.
54 • tested openSUSE-12.3 - 64 bit version (by Bill on 2013-03-25 21:46:26 GMT from United States)
I installed openSUSE 12.3 64 bit live DVD alongside Mint MATE, Trinity, Kubuntu and a few others on my Gateway quad core. It wasn't too long before I tracked down enabling packman repository and getting everything I wanted. I only have one small problem: I am running conky at startup but I can't find a way to get hddtemp to load at startup. It doesn't show the temp in conky. I Googled it but can't find a way to start hddtemp. I added it to session, but it didn't work. In other distros it asks when you install hddtemp if you want to start it and on what port, but not with openSUSE. Any ideas, links? Thanks in advance.
55 • Users beware of PCLinuxOS (by Galen Thurber on 2013-03-25 21:55:31 GMT from Canada)
As an experienced Linux user I am disgusted by the conduct of PCLinuxOS leadership.
In my case they belittled my reports claiming I was a Microsoft plant, then an Ubuntu plant, claiming I was making up false reports and I was demanding that they give me special treatment. No amount of data given to them would suffice. I used the distro and reported bug in good faith, their distro seemingly behind searching and corrupting other distros on my system despite being totally segregated, chainloading bootloaders etc... This has happened numerous times. PCLinuxOS leadership went on a personal attack of me for reporting this to them, they even searched for any dirt about me they could twist, cherry pick or outright lie. I had even paid for their premium service in good faith. They 503'd me and my IP range
After wiping my accounts, post, blocking & banning me they sent users to contact other bug reporting site mods to claim I was making bugs up and I was to be ignored / blacklisted.
Their repeat actions proved to me they have systemic integrity problem. I'm left with what seems like an infected system from using their distro. No rootkit detection is able to find what is wrong.
When deciding on what distro to try there ought be a code of conduct rating assigned to distros in order to protect people.
56 • Gratz x500! (by Sam on 2013-03-25 21:57:09 GMT from United States)
Gratz on dinging 500 DWW! Can't believe this work didn't give Ladislav a heart attack years ago!
Normally I run into all sorts of niggling bugs and memory bloat when trying out a SuSE release ever since my favorite 9.x series. Strangely, 12.3 runs flawlessly on both my Lenovo T400 and HP Mini. Even put it to work as a server on the old goat white box in my home library and haven't had a second of downtime. It feels good to be working on SuSE flawlessly again, since their mess-ups around zyyper in the 10.x series sent me fleeing first to Fedora, then Ubuntu, then Mint, then Ubuntu, then Mint...
Oh, and not sure what processes people have running that they're complaining it doesn't function without more than 1gig of memory. I have 8 gigs on the T400 and SuSE 12.3 running with Office via wine, Chrome with several tabs open, and Google Earth open clocks in less than a gig.
57 • Wayland causes fragmentation... wat? (by d on 2013-03-25 22:26:10 GMT from Finland)
Blaming wayland for the fragmentation? wtf? Wayland was (and still is) the sanest path to replacing X. There would have been no fragmentation if canonical didn't again suffer from NIH.
wayland had "lukewarm reception"? From what I've seen peeps have been pretty damn excited about wayland all around...
This Mir idea is stupid, there's no good reason for it - anything they want to do with it, they could have done with their own wayland compositor. Android driver support for wayland has already been done, it just doesn't have anyone to maintain it - canonical could have stepped up to do that. Instead now we get Mir that has to reinvent the wheel all over again, and has no chance of catching up to wayland - pure stupidity.
58 • *** 500 *** (by octathlon on 2013-03-25 23:22:59 GMT from United States)
Congratulations on 500 issues, and thanks for your work on Distrowatch.
59 • Congrats (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2013-03-25 23:27:24 GMT from United States)
Congradulations to DW on 500 issues. Here's to 500 more.
On the Mir vs. Wayland deal; I hope, as some posters have said, that Mir gives the Wayland devs a kick in the rear to get it up and ready for work. I also hope that Ubuntu or its community (interested as I use Kubuntu) will support Wayland as well as X, just in case.
60 • slow motion (by gumb on 2013-03-26 00:37:54 GMT from France)
@38 David McCann - I'm interested in what you mean about slow motion video. I've been suffering a problem like that since installing openSUSE 12.2 on one machine some months ago. What graphics card / driver are you using? What more precisely is the effect you're experiencing?
@51 Joseph - Good to hear your experiences. I have a 'main machine' not dissimilar to your own laptop, running every openSUSE release for many years but I'm yet to upgrade to 12.3. I can never believe the many comments people make about considerably higher spec machines than our own being 'old' or 'outdated' and not up to the task of running anything more than some extreme lightweight Linux with LXDE or similar. 512MB RAM, single-core Pentium M, 4200rpm IDE HD and Bob's your uncle! The latest version of Linux running the latest KDE. Yeah, a bit slow, but people make such a fuss.
61 • Go Distrowatch (by Barnabyh on 2013-03-26 01:02:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Been here since the mid-100's, been reading since 2005 when I switched to Linux 100%.
Thanks Ladislav, Jesse, and everybody else behind the scenes. Good fun, although it's sometimes better to ignore the comments.
62 • Btrfs on OpenSuse (by Ralph on 2013-03-26 01:17:26 GMT from Canada)
I was astonished to find I was able to successfully install Btrfs with OpenSuse on the nth partition of my nth harddrive without needing a separate boot partition, i.e. I installed GRUB to the root partition. I used the non-live DVD and I was warned by the installer that the install would probably fail unless either I changed file systems or added a separate boot partition. But it did not fail and everything appears to be running smoothly.
63 • openSUSE 12.3 (by eco2geek on 2013-03-26 02:04:01 GMT from United States)
Congratulations on your 500th issue!
I've been using SUSE for some time now. It's even been transplanted from one hard disk to another when I switched computers. I've been doing in-place upgrades ever since openSUSE allowed them, starting with version 11.2. This time I decided to do a clean install, in order to switch from x86 to x86_64, but using the same /home partition. (Tip: Use the same hostname as before.)
I installed from the DVD. There were only two problems. Since a different distro controlled GRUB on the MBR, I told the installer to put openSUSE's GRUB on the root partition, which it did, but it also overwrote GRUB on the MBR and left nothing in its place (so I couldn't boot my computer). Annoying.
Problem #2 was that it didn't automatically bring up the network on first boot. I had to go to a command line and run "ifup eth0" as root. There were no problems with networking after that.
Otherwise, it's been smooth sailing. Granted, my setup is simple -- just an installation using ext3 on two partitions. It even installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver (after adding the NVIDIA repo) with no fuss.
The "Packman" repository is the repository to go to for patent-encumbered multimedia apps and codecs, but if you install from the DVD, openSUSE will install the Fluendo MP3 codec. It'll also install the Flash plugin. In other words, you don't have to enable the Packman repo in order to get Flash and MP3 audio working. And yes, Apper will install updates for you without the root password.
(And the default artwork for KDE is the best they've produced in years.)
64 • @55 PCLinuxOS (by TuxTest on 2013-03-26 02:59:26 GMT from Canada)
I have one of my desktop test on which I have 3 hard drive with Mint LMDE since May 2012, PC-BSD 9.0, Linux Calculate 12, OpenSuse 12.2, Fuduntu 2013.1, PCLinuxOS with Win7 in Virtualbox, Slackel current, Ultimate Edition LTS, Manjaro and Rosa Manjaro Fresh 2012.12.
I have no worries caused by PCLinuxOS on my other partition in multiboot.
regard
65 • @63 - Grub on OpenSuse (by Ralph on 2013-03-26 03:42:20 GMT from Canada)
iirc when (installing OpenSuse from the DVD) I installed GRUB to the root partition I unchecked the box that said it would be installed to the MBR (as well as checking the root partition box) and GRUB did *not* get installed to the MBR. As for the networking issue, I had this too. Another way of solving it is going to the networking tool in YAST and checking the "use DHCP" box.
66 • OpenSuse: Same pretty girl!! Same issues!! (by SaltyNoob on 2013-03-26 03:56:49 GMT from United States)
My 12.2 Opinion
I keep coming back to test it because, visually the KDE versions of Opensuse is outstanding. Battery life is awesome. It has the lowest resource foot print of all the KDE distros. My cooling fan hardly ever comes on. I have to completely disabling wallet, Nepomuk/Strigi, & Akonadi. Reminds me of cell phone bloatware. Why these are on by default, is a flame starter for another day.
My experience with Opensuse is not the best. 11.4, 12.1, and 12.2 all can't keep the clock correct after restarts. 12.1 and 12.2 have the same network timed out issues. A HP printer on a home network with 2 desktops and a laptop is still a major pain with yast since 11.3. Now all these can be fixed but why are they putting out the distro with fixable issues in the first place. Since these issues span over a year, I fail to see what a difference filing a bug would do.
Did you file a bug? A constant saying on the forums. I say, whats the point with this distro. You have have a little experience to know its a bug in the first place. As I read the forums, sometimes you can just feel the RTFM attitude just dying to come out with some the responses. New users to linux and new users to opensuse will always ask dumb questions. Get over it or get off the forums.
I know many will disagree but, "For me" Opensuse is always the pretty girl with to many issues.
12.3 What has changed? Not much!
Clock can't keep time past a reboot. Had this issues in the last 3 releases.
Firewall configuring is still a nightmare.
Network Manager is on for live testing but not running after install.
Updating and app management is still not intuitive.
Not all negative:
KDE 4.10 is nice even though I disable most of its features like indexing, wallet, desktop effects, unchecking 18 of the 22 start-up apps, and removing kdepim. After that battery life is awesome. There' a 3 hour battery difference doing those tweaks.
67 • @66 OpenSuse (by TuxTest on 2013-03-26 04:17:50 GMT from Canada)
* I know many will disagree but, "For me" Opensuse is always the pretty girl with to many issues.*
I agree 100% with you and especially on the last version.
My favorite expression when I use OpenSuse
* why make it simple when it can be complicated *
But it gets better
best regard
68 • @65 -- No, openSUSE didn't install GRUB to the MBR :-) (by eco2geek on 2013-03-26 04:26:56 GMT from United States)
I, too, told the installer not to install GRUB to the MBR, and to install it instead to the root of the partition where openSUSE is installed. And openSUSE did not install GRUB to the MBR.
What I meant was, the MBR (which had GRUB already there, which I wanted to keep, installed and "controlled" by another distro) got overwritten with...nothing. In other words, no bootloader at all.
It turns out there's an option box, "Rewrite MBR with generic code", that's enabled by default, and that's probably what did it. It's just in an obscure place, and I didn't see it and disable it. This has been around for a while:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=541731
Frankly, the openSUSE installer has done something similar (mainly installed GRUB to the MBR even when told not to), in my experience, that I was prepared for something like this to happen. :-)
Most people won't run into this scenario, since they only run one or two OS's.
69 • @66 - openSUSE forums are the best I've seen. (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-26 04:40:40 GMT from United States)
>"Did you file a bug? A constant saying on the forums. I say, whats the point with this distro. You have have a little experience to know its a bug in the first place. As I read the forums, sometimes you can just feel the RTFM attitude just dying to come out with some the responses. New users to linux and new users to opensuse will always ask dumb questions. Get over it or get off the forums."
I've been on the SUSE/openSUSE forums since several years before the sale to Novell, and never once seen an "RTFM" response to a new users' question - or any question for that matter. In fact, my experience has been quite the opposite - I've seen volunteer contributors going far out of their way to help. I've had people help me with emergencies in the middle of the night. I've seen a professional engineer buy some hardware just to see if he could duplicate an error that a new user was getting.
The amazing assistance that is given freely by highly knowledgeable users like oldcpu is one of the prime advantages for me in using openSUSE - no matter how badly I've borked a system by installing the wrong video driver or countless other errors I've made over the years, they've seen me through it all.
Of course, if someone were extremely disrespectful, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't receive the help you sought. But that applies to all the forums for the different distros I've visited over the years.
70 • Mysterious symptoms can make you unpopular (by Somewhat Reticent on 2013-03-26 04:48:13 GMT from United States)
"Paranoia strikes deep; into your life it will creep; ..."
If you make assumptions, you'll suffer for them. I empathize with your frustration.
Some systems get along best when on separate hardware; some bugs are quite devious at hiding.
71 • @68 - OpenSuse and GRUB con't (by Ralph on 2013-03-26 05:14:04 GMT from Canada)
Ah, yes, I guess the reason why I didn't notice the MBR wipe-out on my system was that I installed Suse to my second hard drive, whereas I always boot from another distro on my first hard drive. So I checked out the second hard drive and there was nothing in the MBR sector, though, in all honesty, there may have been nothing there even before I installed Suse -- I think, however, that I had a grub there from my Solaris install. (Solaris is still there but I chainload it from sda.) At least Suse didn't wipe out the sda MBR....
72 • YouTube Remote Controller OS (by Dave on 2013-03-26 06:11:04 GMT from Indonesia)
YouTube Remote Controller OS does not give you (1) persistent storage, (2) nVidia drivers unless you PAY them ("donation") money. Just sayin'...
73 • @Greenpossum Opensuse 12.3 (by Sayth on 2013-03-26 09:52:49 GMT from Australia)
Here is exert when closing my bug report,
"all distros are forbidden to
distribute the firmware. Perhaps they ignore that prohibition, which I doubt,
or they might include one of those foreign drivers so that the firmware can be
extracted without having an active network. The downside is that one must
include about 12 MB of stuff in order to extract 0.5 MB of what is needed. As
the openSUSE developers are always fighting the problem of releases that are
too large for the media"
So basically Opensuse is causing the hardware problems people are expereincing because of leaving firmware out others provide.
Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint etc.
Surely its better to support hardware as users can easily install programs if graphics and network and sound work.
*ps can install and create linux usb's just fine as any user can that was my point - Cd's redundant
74 • OpenSuse 12.3 (by kc1di on 2013-03-26 11:00:11 GMT from United States)
I just want to say that i followed the advise of what some had said and downloaded the DVD install disc and must say that the install went much better than from the live media.
and I have a nice working open suse system installed now. so some of my judgments about the distro were based upon data from installing from the live cd I would highly recommend that you take the time to use the install dvd media it solved several of the problems I was having before.
all in all it's a good release.
75 • OpenElec (by Roy H Huddleston on 2013-03-26 11:27:11 GMT from United States)
Is anyone having success with this? I would love to see this one on the review. I have a Nvidia 9500 GT and having trying to run a Dell 22 inch wide monitor with the Dell 19 inch monitor using the stretch method on two monitors. The 22 inch is vga hooked and 19 inch dvi hooked. I tried to get the Misubishi 55 (WS 55315) inch tv working on the s-video with them but the option is only two. I have an ATI Radeon 64 mb with a yellow tv out rca jack with dvi and vga ports.
76 • Neptune 3.0 “Brotkasten” Release is ready (by Roy H Huddleston on 2013-03-26 13:39:48 GMT from United States)
removed Pulseaudio for better audio experience and no crackling sounds anymore
I wondered why that cracking sound was there. That explains a lot. :)
77 • Debian ethernet drivers (by Tom on 2013-03-26 15:23:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :)
Sorry, a cheeky question here! A tad off-topic but this has always been the best place for swift good nudges.
I've just swapped a hard-drive out of a Debian machine into an Ubuntu machine but Debian hasn't magically read my mind and acquired the ethernet driver. I could plug the old Ubuntu into another machine and use a usb-stick to copy something across if needed.
Is there a way to install the ethernet drive onto the Debian machine? Preferably without having to reinstall Debian from scratch!
Regards from
Tom :)
78 • @73 (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-26 15:34:08 GMT from United States)
What you are saying about Broadcom firmware is not necessarily true. Searching the Fedora forums shows that on the recent Fedora 17 and Fedora 18 releases users are still reporting a lot of problems and work-arounds with different Broadcom devices. A search of the Ubuntu forums shows that users with the most recent Ubuntu 12.10 release are still reporting having to use an ethernet cable to download wireless firmware for some Broadcom hardware.
Sounds like you were simply trying to run incompatible hardware. Broadcom is just as responsible for your problems as anyone. You might have gotten unlucky where your specific Broadcom device was supported on one distro and not on another.
79 • [Solved] Debian Ethernet drivers (by Tom on 2013-03-26 16:14:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :)
I think i might have solved the problem by just replacing the power-supply in the old Debian box. Now it boots up fine when it's beside me but just refuses to boot when it's back in the rack!?!?? A bit weird but there is space besides me so it's kinda solved
Regards from
Tom :)
80 • @73 (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-26 16:28:56 GMT from United States)
What you are saying about Broadcom firmware is not necessarily true. Searching the Fedora forums shows that on the recent Fedora 17 and Fedora 18 releases users are still reporting a lot of problems and work-arounds with different Broadcom devices. A search of the Ubuntu forums shows that users with the most recent Ubuntu 12.10 release are still reporting having to use an ethernet cable to download wireless firmware for some Broadcom hardware.
Sounds like you were simply trying to run incompatible hardware. Broadcom is just as responsible for your problems as anyone. You might have gotten unlucky where your specific Broadcom device was supported on one distro and not on another.
81 • @78 Broadcom peculiarities (by Cork on 2013-03-26 18:57:40 GMT from United States)
“You might have gotten unlucky where your specific Broadcom device was supported on one distro and not on another.”
That certainly seems to be happening to me. My Broadcom 43224 device provides dual band 802.11n on several distros (Mint, LMDE, SolydK, siduction after manual set up, and others) single band 802.11n on some (Sabayon, but there were at least two others), and now 802.11g only on openSUSE. I am going to re-read the siduction docs to see if I can sort out why. Having played with Linux only since late November, I am certainly no expert.
openSUSE 12.3 seems like a terrific distribution, so I certainly hope I can get the blasted card to perform.
82 • @81 - Broadcom 43224 (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-26 19:25:45 GMT from United States)
Did you see these Broadcom instructions: https://forums.opensuse.org/content/157-broadcom-firmware-needed-b43-but-i-have-no-network-easierwork-around.html
You might also want to look at this thread, especially the final post with the alternate firmware download for Broadcom: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/wireless/484284-broadcom-wifi-opensuse-12-3-a.html
83 • @82 - Broadcom 43224 (by Cork on 2013-03-26 20:05:43 GMT from United States)
I had missed the comment in the second thread referenced - makes complete sense that the old firmware only operates 802.11g. Many thanks for pointing that one out!
84 • OpenSuse 12.3 (by mandog on 2013-03-26 20:11:24 GMT from Peru)
I downloaded and installed 12.3 with no problems at all with the gnome live disc, only 1 problem had to add username to video to use my nvidia graphics card. I last used suse 10. and it then suffered dependency hell. its a bit better now but still have to search for some. most non free drivers are obtain by enabling the extra repositories with yast.
85 • Re: 66 * OpenSuse: Same pretty girl!! Same issues!! (by oldcpu on 2013-03-26 20:34:59 GMT from Germany)
> Did you file a bug? A constant saying on the forums.
> I say, whats the point with this distro.
Thats NOT my experience. I have just the contrary experience. The point is important and significant! Bug reports on openSUSE can and do produce solid results benefiting all GNU/Linux distributions.
There have been a number of occasions where I had a problem with sound or graphics that failed on all GNU/Linux distributions. The same problem initially existed on openSUSE. I raised a bug report on openSUSE and also the same bug report upstream. The fix appeared first on openSUSE bugzilla, quickly followed by the fix being submitted upstream by the SuSE-GmbH packages.
Kudos to them and outstanding !
IMHO one does not raise a bug report does the entire GNU/Linux OS a disservice.
86 • Re: 18 Agreed (by lindenbranch on 2013-03-26 21:17:41 GMT from United States)
Systemd should have been mentioned as a movement away from fragmentation. There was no unified system prior to it, and the complaints it is receiving aren't cries against fragmentation, but against the ease at which disparate distributions can maintain fragmentation in the form of their flavor of init.
I understand that arguments can be made in favor of retaining whatever system you have (or had), but fragmentation isn't one of them.
87 • re #84 success with SUSE 12.3 Gnome DVD (by gnomic on 2013-03-27 05:32:49 GMT from New Zealand)
Interested to hear of a good experience with the live Gnome DVD - I had no luck with i686 version. It booted but required user intervention to reach the gui, and NetworkManager was not working ootb. Could you give some indication of the hardware you used? 32 or 64 bit, what kind of video card, wifi if used, and so forth? After this fizzed out on several machines, I haven't been back to investigate further.
88 • 87 • re #84 success with SUSE 12.3 Gnome DVD (by gnomic on 2013-03-27 05:32:49 G (by AlmostAWhisper on 2013-03-27 08:52:56 GMT from Germany)
Congratulations on 500 issues and a big thank you to the Distrowatch team! It's a job to keep it going.
Hi gnomic,
NetworkManager was an issue even before the release of openSUSE 12.3. During the installation you could have seen the release note, it gives solutions to some issues and NM was one of them.
Here is my solution.
Open a terminal and log in as root and then use an editor, for example, VI or gedit to modify the fstab file
# gedit /etc/fsatb
at the end of line /home just after default (two empty places) put
nofail
and then save the file and reboot. The NM should work now.
Hopefully it will help you to fix your problem.
89 • openSUSE updates (by Ika on 2013-03-27 09:27:57 GMT from Spain)
Jesse, you're right.
I'm just performing updates right now. In user mode.
No root password is required!!!
Shame!... :(
90 • Booring Opensuse 12.3 from ISO, using grub2 (by humble on 2013-03-27 11:20:33 GMT from India)
unlike some other distros, there is little docu about booting Opensuse from ISO. It is not straight-foreword. This should do the trick
menuentry "openSUSE 12.2 DVD" {
set isofile=/Downloads/openSUSE-12.2-DVD-x86_64.iso
set root=(hd1,3)
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/boot/x86_64/loader/linux install=hd:$isofile exec="ln -s /usr/bin/mount /bin/mount"
initrd (loop)/boot/x86_64/loader/initrd
}
full explanation and further links - http://bikeshed.tumblr.com/post/46069014209/booting-opensuse-iso-from-grub2
91 • @87 OpenSuse 12.3 (by mandog on 2013-03-27 12:52:43 GMT from Peru)
Network manager did not work till I rebooted then was OK did not have to intervene. I think its done for a reason so that it does not update till you have rebooted the second time and the config manager has finnished doing its work.
Update as with Fedora are user level no password, 1 niggle there as it does not warn you that its updating in gnome. Rpm dependencies are still a problem also installing non free drivers used to be horrendous but simple now apart from adding your user name to video and audio. Non free repros affiliated with open Suze can be found in yast and enabled so its not as people try to say unfriendly no need to google for packman repros even libdcss is directly enabled by yast. Although its quick and well polished, It is easy to break and Gnome tends to freeze at times. Unlike Arch "which is my bench mark" rock solid pacman, is faster does not suffer from dependency hell, non Freezing I will use Suze till next time it breaks as it is nice to use with its administrator settings manager.
92 • @ #89 (by Pierre on 2013-03-27 14:06:31 GMT from Germany)
Sad that my post from last night has not been submitted as it seems. Have to repost it as soon as I am at home again.
Nevertheless, I can't see any real problems with Apper's behaviour and for sure no shame. In contrary I appreciate that normal users can perform updates and do not have to rely on the administrator to do that for them. Installing software still needs the root password, so the system is in no real danger here.
It you don't want the normal user to be able to perform updates, simply switch that feature of or remove Apper completely. This is just a preset configuration that can be changes. Shame would be if that wouldn't be possible.
So keep cool.
93 • Growing Divide (by JS on 2013-03-27 22:26:00 GMT from United States)
The answer to the problem of so many distros is to have only a few main ones, and call the rest "forks". An answer to this problem should come soon, because Linux can't grow with all this confusion. Windows doesn't run well on my sister's computer, but Linux runs fast on it. But, I can't recommend it to her with all this confusion going around ("What is the best distro for me?"). I've been using linux for about a year now, and I've never settled on one distro. I am still going from distro to distro, hoping that the next one is the one (for my) home (Quantum Leap kind of...never mind). I don't know what the answer is, I just gave a suggestion. But, something needs to be done, are a mass amount of potential users aren't going to make the switch from Mac or Windows.
94 • opensuse (by William L. on 2013-03-28 00:57:29 GMT from United States)
i installed OpenSuse gnome 64bit the other night and it went through setup fairly decent and when it was done i had the same problem that seems like some of the people here had/have was the Internet. i fiddled with it for a bit and couldn't get it to go on-line until i restarted it and then there it was and running. so i know i didn't do anything to get it running im still to new at the Linux stuff to try to figure it out except for restarting computer out of frustration. and as for @93 you could pick a main distro like Mint,Ubuntu's or Debian and put it on a partition and set up other partitions for the distro hoping till you find one that you like. ive been using Linux about the same amount of time as you and that is how i do it. and i find myself using the Mint version most of the time and play with the others just to learn more.
and a Happy 500 DW
95 • #88 openSUSE 12.3 and network (by gnomic on 2013-03-28 06:32:32 GMT from New Zealand)
Thnaks for suggestions around NetworkManager not running initially with recent live DVD. I found that '#service NetworkManager start' brought NM up and wifi networks then became visible. Still unsure why this isn't done as part of boot process as seen with most live distros.
96 • openSUSE 12.3 no network first boot explanation (by gumb on 2013-03-28 11:17:06 GMT from France)
I'm surprised so many people both here and across the web are writing confused comments and spinning entire theories as to why the Network doesn't work on the first boot of openSUSE 12.3. It's a known bug that crept in at the last minute, and a simple fix is detailed in the Release Notes, linked on the main openSUSE download page here: https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/openSUSE/12.3/
The installation itself advises to always read the Release Notes and tries to fetch the updated version near the end of the process (as far as I'm aware Network is available at this stage, it's after the first full boot into the desktop that it doesn't work). And in those Release Notes it clearly states in section 2.2 that you simply need to reboot once.
Yes it's a nasty bug that shouldn't have been there at all, but the mass fuss and confusion shouldn't be warranted given the clear information made available. RTFRN.
97 • Distro (by Gustavo on 2013-03-28 13:58:23 GMT from Brazil)
I used to change distros from time to time, but, since a few years, Ubuntu base system became so stable and compatible with various hardware that I find difficult to recomend any distro/respin derived from other base systems.
Xfce + Ubuntu base is very hard to beat in terms of stability and hardware compatibility.
98 • re #96 read the release notes - networking fail in SUSE 12.3 (by gnomic on 2013-03-29 07:54:32 GMT from New Zealand)
"Yes it's a nasty bug that shouldn't have been there at all"
Agree with that. But it's a known bug? Known to whom? And why didn't they tell the world? Sheesh. My brief look at the release notes doesn't seem to explain the cause of the problem.
The failure to enter the gui desktop in the Gnome live DVD making it close to useless, that would also be a known bug? Don't mean to be rude but there seems to be a problem with quality control here. Still stunned as one normally expects Swiss watch quality from SUSE in the main.
99 • 98 read the release notes (by mandog on 2013-03-29 11:33:25 GMT from Peru)
Just because it did not work for you does not make things a bug, The gnome live DVD worked for me and countless others a installed flawless. I did not read the release notes and it was obvious to me that it just needed a reboot to get the network working.
100 • RE 98 (by dbrion on 2013-03-29 13:23:20 GMT from France)
" Known to whom? And why didn't they tell the world?"
Well, I bet they should have written an email notification to the Universe (perhaps God would have cared to carry it) .
BTW, before downloading / burning/throwing away, with a dramatic gesture, the installation DVD, some people read the errata.
"Still stunned as one normally expects Swiss watch quality from SUSE in the main."
Origins of Suze are German....
101 • Quality (by Ika on 2013-03-29 15:39:10 GMT from Spain)
"Still stunned as one normally expects Swiss watch quality from SUSE in the main."
Origins of Suze are German....
Well... "Made in Germany" is supposeed to be the warranty of a high quality...
Nevertheless, in this case... :(
102 • RE:SUSE's origins (by Anon on 2013-03-29 17:03:04 GMT from United States)
@100,101
I don't believe that he ever said that OpenSuse was made in Switzerland. It was an example of expected quality, that seems to be lacking in 12.3
103 • Reply to @49 Joseph (by Ika on 2013-03-29 17:45:51 GMT from Spain)
@49 Joseph
1. Speaking about hardware, it is not a brand new one, nor antiquated. It is a 2 years old machine. So, it should find the proper driver(s)...
2. If a developer produce software for Linux how can it be “non-free” with it(s) proper driver(s)??? In this case - Skype, VLC... - if these programs are made for Linux too, I don’t understand how cannot be free: So, what kind of legal problems might there be?!
I could think of all sorts of programs *I* find useful...”
English is not my natural language, but I wrote used, not useful. OpenSUSE may have an other voip program, but Skype is the most used and all my familiars and friends are using it (and Yahoo messenger too). Can I force all of them to use the one you wrote about?! Speaking about communications thru Yahoo I can use jitsi, but don’t find it in openSUSE’s repos. Now, I’m just an occasionally user of the social networking - it is lilited to few emails and rarely this voip service. But I need them.
3. Package managing is still quite comlicated; at least not so handy. Is far away to Synaptic, for example, which is one of the best, if not the best one, IMHO.
I’m using OS is PCLinuxOS. No need to “configure”(?!) the package manager.
4. "How could you install OpenSUSE into an existing partition without screwing up the distro that was there, or did you format that partition first? And yes, deleting partitions would make them unreadable... I don't understand your point here either."
As I said, english is not my “default” language, therefor I might be a bit laconic in my writing. OTOH, I don’t like spending a lot of space and time with unnecessary words. Neither writing, nor speaking. I supposed it is obvious using partitions already containing another distro, must be formatted.
About installation. I always perform a custom one, so I can create my pesonal partition table and sizes. And I tell you, openSUSE’s installer didn’t read the free/unallocated space. In both my machines. I don’t have a GParted disk, or something similar, so, I had to make use of the PCLinuxOS’s live media to create partitions. Also, might be used the Sabayon’s one, or Slackware’s, or Mageia’s or any other’s distro.
I find it is not normal an installer be not able to read a free space in a HDD.
5. ”I think after a couple of days you'd been on a wild configuration spree of features you didn't understand. :-) You had to have configured automatic login in the KDE configuration tool; it didn't turn on by itself.”
After this couple of days, not only this autologin issue appeared, but a lot more. After every log in, reboot or starting the system it loosed it’s configurations: fonts, color scheme, screensaver... More, the system turned very sluggish, all windows I opened or closed went, well..., not slow, but with a fragmented movement. High CPU and RAM with no program open.
Well, tis happened with the 32 bit version. I installed it because, when I bought the desktop, about 7-8 years ago, it came as a 32 bits machine with a 32 bits Windows Vista installed. Though, the processor is a 64 bits one. The first generation of dual core - Pentium D 925. And replaced the old graphic card with a newer and more performant one and, also have 4 GB RAM.
So, I decided to give a try to the 64 bit install...
And surprise! It is working very well! (Till now, after one day using it; I’ll see later how stands...)
So, I don’t think is my fault, nor hardware’s.
Regards.
Ika.
104 • @103 • 49 (by mandog on 2013-03-29 20:05:25 GMT from Peru)
I installed 12.3 I'm not a Suse user only used it once 5 years ago. I have both vlc. and skype installed. extra repros are easily activated using yast, no great intelligence required. this Google is your friend.
105 • @96, 63 -- no-networking and MBR-destruction problems in openSUSE revisited (by Ralph on 2013-03-29 20:35:52 GMT from Canada)
I've used the NON-live DVD to install both GNOME and KDE versions of both openSUSE 12.3 *and* 12.2 on a desktop with wired ethernet card. Networking did not work automatically with either 12.3 or 12.2, so the alleged "bug" is not a "last-minute" occurrence, at least with respect to the media/NIC employed. Nor did a simple manual reboot (as suggested by the FRN) fix the problem. But all I had to do was go into the YAST networking manager and check the DHCP box and everything worked just fine.
Earlier eco2geek mentioned that his MBR was wiped when he installed Suse, despite telling the installer to install GRUB to the root partition. I later replied that I thought it might have done the same to my system but I did not notice because I installed Suse to sdb, whereas I boot from the MBR on sda -- I later noticed that there was nothing in the sdb MBR sector. However, I had occasion to re-install openSUSE 12.3 on my second hard drive. Before doing so, I installed the GRUB from one of my Debian partitions to sdb. Then upon re-installing Suse to one of the partitions on my second hard drive and telling the installer to install GRUB to the root parition, it did so, but *without* touching any of my MBRs. So I have no idea why eco2geek and others are having MBR-wipeout problem.
106 • @104 mandog (by Ika on 2013-03-29 21:14:11 GMT from Spain)
mandog
”I have both vlc. and skype installed.”
Me too. What I’m saying is I don’t understand why these programs are quoted as “proprietary” or need such drivers if there are written and available as free for a free OS as is GNU/Linux!?!? And, speaking about Skype, it have a RPM build too, especialy pointed out for openSUSE !!! So, I don’t understand this “legally” excuse. As someone pointed out here: legally (stupid I say in this case) US issues for a german distro???!!! Hmmm!!!...
What about US distros using these - or other - "proprietaries"? (LOL)
”extra repros are easily activated using yast, no great intelligence required.”
OK, I agree with you. Nevertheless, compare it with Synaptic, in PCLinuxOS for instance. Or some *buntus (here i’m not very sure, I do not touch “sudo based” distros). Why not make things easier?
107 • @105, @106 (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-29 22:20:13 GMT from United States)
@105 - >"So I have no idea why eco2geek and others are having MBR-wipeout problem."
Probably because they don't know how to set up partitions and Grub properly, and are unwilling to ask for help - just thinking they can plow ahead and click buttons and nothing bad will happen. The bad news for users like that is that distros like openSUSE and Fedora are far too powerful to be guessing with your partition and boot choices. If you don't know, you'd better go to the forums, admit that you are in over your head, and ask. I've had to do it myself many times on many different issues, and sometimes I've failed to ask for help when I should have, and gotten burned.
If someone is used to using a less powerful distro like Ubuntu with far fewer configuration options, they probably figure they can always safely just click buttons or select "automatic installation" and nothing bad will happen to them.
@106 - >"What I’m saying is I don’t understand why these programs are quoted as “proprietary” or need such drivers if there are written and available as free for a free OS as is GNU/Linux!?!?"
There is a whole, huge universe of proprietary software written for use on Linux. Just because it will work on Linux does not mean that it's open source, or that it's "free". And, just because one or two distros decide to provide a package does not mean that it is not restricted and proprietary. All kinds of distros take all kinds of legal risks in order to try to become more "popular".
108 • @106 (by mandog on 2013-03-29 22:23:55 GMT from Peru)
1st thing is I do not agree with the rules but they are there The enterprise version as far as I know does come with them as the royalties are paid. You are very wrong about Ubuntu
Debian. They can not afford to be sued by the copy-write holders. Of all Debian makes it the hardest to enable a non free repro. the smaller distro takes the chance but they are breaking the law by not paying royalties. Skype is owned by Microsoft so its 100% non free although they don't charge for it as is nvidia, ATI, adobe, etc, no matter how much we complain nothing can change in the foreseeable future. VLC is deemed as totally illegal by the rules but what the hell I use it
You must also remember Novel, Redhat,Debian Ubuntu Make most of there money in the USA, Pclinuxos etc are not really in the ball game in that respect.
109 • SUSE12.3 (by Jerry on 2013-03-30 00:15:50 GMT from United States)
SUSE is not perfect, but I think it's unfair to criticize its lack of proprietary multimedia formats on the live DVD. The full install DVD contains all those things and was a very smooth experience for me.
110 • 99 • 98 read the release notes (by AlmostAWhisper on 2013-03-30 01:01:11 GMT from Germany)
@mandog
Have you heard gnomic's cry from the 499th Distrowatch? His case seems to be more complicated, I guess. If a reboot can solve the NM problem each one could do it almost in tuition as you did. According to my experiments if one wants to keep his home partition untouched whichever methods he takes, update, upgrade or a clean install he might have encountered some kind of problems, for example NM one. A reboot will clear the NM issue just by a fresh install on a formatted disk or all formatted partitions.
BTW, there's a typo in the 88th comment:
/etc/fsatb should be read as /etc/fstab
If after reboot the NM is still not working (in yast2> network devices>network settings 'not connected' appears), put nofail on fstab could be a help.
111 • Opinion piece - Wayland / Mir / X11 (by William Barath on 2013-03-30 06:46:44 GMT from Canada)
Jesse, you need to research these things a little more before you get too melodramatic about it.
All of Wayland, Mir, Xorg - are moving to using EGL instead of GLX. That is to say, they are moving to a Kernel-based DRM/DRI driver. This is important, because getting rid of X11 is a major hurdle in Linux's growth path.
Much bigger issues with Wayland and Mir are in front of us than that of OEM driver support. Mir is struggling with only a handful of novice 3D developers, yet it may beat Wayland (5 years in development) out of the gates because it is simple. Wayland/Westin is struggling with poor community management - see Ohloh's stats (https://www.ohloh.net/p/wayland/contributors/summary and https://www.ohloh.net/p/weston/contributors/summary) to see how badly they are failing to adopt new developers and/or accept new patches. By no means is Wayland dead, but it's choking on its belief in its own greatness.
Scott Moreau, a long-time contributor to the Wayland Project, has created a fork (Northfield/Norwood) which he intends to keep compatible with upstream Wayland/Westin, and to encourage much greater community support. He's spelled out some specific goals which he believes must be met before Wayland will be capable of meeting its own objectives and competing with existing X11 window management capabilities - in particular he's concerned with frame-accurate updates, core window management features and events, and ability of clients to manipulate compositing primitives (for example, not only use GLSL to process their window contents, but also to choose how their window is merged with the desktop - ie the now traditional transparency vs lighten/darken/multiply/solarize/bumpmap etc.) Scott's initial driving force to create the fork was his frustration with the Westin developers' disregard for his need for minimized and maximized window states to be treated more like a normal window's state by way of the events they receive, and with a missing EGL feature which is making it difficult to do real-time-updated thumbnails of minimized windows.
In my humble opinion, Linux's mishandling of USB devices is a much bigger problem than the choice of desktop display technology. When's the last time you tested a Linux distro's tolerance to inserting a commodity USB device repeatedly, such as a webcam, wifi, sound, or flash storage device? Inevitably the system will become hopelessly confused, with multiple half-mounted and corrupt filesystems bound to locked-up-yet-missing devices, broken sound due to numerous non-working devices in pavucontrol, and every webcam app broken because the first few /dev/videoX devices are in a similarly messed-up state. And if its a laptop (hence need to plug them in and out repeatedly as one moves around for example within one's own home from the office to the patio) then watch the battery life burn down rapidly as the various pegged kernel threads keep the CPU at 100% use and/or prevent suspend to RAM.
Our platform of choice may smell like a rose from an Ethical Software standpoint, but it certainly has its share of thorns.
- Wil
112 • Opinion piece - Wayland / Mir / X11 - part two (by Wil Barath on 2013-03-30 06:57:09 GMT from Canada)
As for Linux fragmentation... Android and Moblin are conspicuously missing from your list of divergent Linux-based platforms.
113 • @111 • Opinion piece - Wayland / Mir / X11 (by mandog on 2013-03-30 13:57:04 GMT from Peru)
111 said In my humble opinion, Linux's mishandling of USB devices is a much bigger problem than the choice of desktop display technology. When's the last time you tested a Linux distro's tolerance to inserting a commodity USB device repeatedly, such as a webcam, wifi, sound, or flash storage device? Inevitably the system will become hopelessly confused, with multiple half-mounted and corrupt filesystems bound to locked-up-yet-missing devices, broken sound due to numerous non-working devices in pavucontrol, and every webcam app broken because the first few /dev/videoX devices are in a similarly messed-up state. And if its a laptop (hence need to plug them in and out repeatedly as one moves around for example within one's own home from the office to the patio) then watch the battery life burn down rapidly as the various pegged kernel threads keep the CPU at 100% use and/or prevent suspend to RAM.
I'm sorry to hear you have these problem I can't talk about suspend to RAM as I don't use it but the rest just seems to work for me on 2 laptops and 1 desktop. Both my laptops seem to be on par with windows on battery life perhaps I'm just lucky?
114 • Elive 2.0 (by Hervé on 2013-03-30 17:21:10 GMT from France)
J'ai installé Elive 2.0 en machine virtuelle VirtualBox (sous Linux Mint Nadia). C'est une des rares distributions basées sur Debian à utiliser Enlightenment. Légère, cette version 2.0 utilise un noyau 2.6.30 et l'ISO tient sur un CD. Une version 2.1 est en développement : l'ISO hybride peut être écrite directement sur une clé USB grâce à l'utilitaire USB Image Writer. Les développeurs encouragent à tester cette version alpha et à remonter les bugs et observations éventuelles. Patience donc avant de voir enfin la version finale 2.1, et bon courage à toute l'équipe Elive !.
115 • The Growing Divide (by Mike on 2013-03-30 18:03:26 GMT from United States)
Certainly the article points out more concerns than I was aware of, using primarily either Ubuntu or Debian.
Nonetheless, some of the same concerns have long been on my mind regarding linux. The adoption of the Unity interface, the move of the top three buttons (min, max, close) from top right to top left, even within Ubuntu, nevermind LXDE, XFCE, KDE, Gnome - Unity vs Mint's Cinnamon / Mate, or Bodh's Enlightenment interface. Add to that YAST, RPM, and Deb as well as the proprietary implementations of each per Distro and much as I like and prefer linux, I agree it's hard to call it AN OS in the same light as Windows or Macintosh. The versions may change, but they work hard at maintaining a fundamental, transparent understanding and functionality in which, once you get past the cosmetic differences, the underlying OS is largely the same from Win 95 through to Win 8. Trying to get the same tasks done from one OS version to the next, one piece of software to the next - install, uninstall, fundamental tasks: file open, close, copy, paste, print, setup, configuration, is largely essentially the same across versions. Not so much the same from one Distro of linux to the next. It's comparably speaking, as though Windows / Macs have essentially achieved being the worst of OS' save all the others.
For all of linux fine points, desirable points, the differences tend to, it would seem overshadow whatever arguable benefits are presented for linux over WIndows or Mac OS.
As users, it gets tiresome to have to juggle the differences. It's one thing to have significant cosmetic differences from one version to the next. It's another to have significant operational differences, however beneficial or useful, from one version to the next, if it means having to learn something new or unlearn something which was working just fine.
New or different isn't always better. That, I would suspect is at least in part a barrier to wider market share than Linux already has. In the music world purists call it selling out to cater to what the market wants at the expense of artistic integrity. Linux users may very well make the same case in support of their favorite or preferred distro over another, but, overall, for all the supporters, of which I am one, it would seem to be at the expense of a larger, and I presume desirable goal.
116 • Jesse@52 Mandriva SOHO server (by subg on 2013-03-30 19:43:04 GMT from Canada)
Yes, there is interest in a review of Mandriva SOHO server. If registration, etc, is an issue, perhaps contacting Mandriva for a test download would be an option - similar to the reviews for Red Hat and others in the past.
Congratulations on reaching 500.
117 • Congrats on 500th! (by Tom on 2013-03-31 00:36:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Happy birthday all!! and happy easter for those that follow that sort of thing. Oh and happy 7777th article! tooo :) BLimey, what a week!
Congrats and regards from Tom :)
118 • @107 (by SallyK on 2013-03-31 10:28:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think this is a prime example of bashing the messenger.
As someone who had the same problem with OpenSUSE wiping my MBR when I tried to install 12.3 a week or so ago, I'm pretty annoyed to be told that it's my fault that the installer defaults to over-writing the MBR even when I've specifically told it to write to the root partition. If it's true that there is a button to turn this function off, it still wasn't obvious in the Live installer, a couple of editions after the problem was originally described.
Yes, I usually use Ubuntu-based distros, but I know exactly how I want my partitions set up and which distro I want to control GRUB. I didn't "blindly go ahead and click buttons", I carefully made sure that the root and home were going in the partitions I wanted them in, and that boot was going in the root partition, NOT the MBR. As far as I can tell, the problem is that the installer doesn't trust users to update GRUB in their chosen distro to add OpenSUSE to the menu - but surely if we're over-riding the defaults it's pretty clear that we know what we're doing and why. And anyway, if we don't, it's as easy as telling us to run sudo update-grub to fix, as opposed to - oh, ooops, we've made your computer unbootable.
OpenSUSE has a lot of good things going for it, but this is a stupid way of handling things, and the best things supporters of the distro can do is to fix it, or encourage others to, rather than blaming the victims, IMO.
119 • Re: Installing openSUSE 12.3 (by eco2geek on 2013-03-31 16:22:10 GMT from United States)
@107 -- You've got to love the Internet, a place where random strangers decide to hold you up as an example of incompetence...
@105 -- After doing some searching of the openSUSE forums,, as well as searching Google, I didn't see any posts (except SallyK's above, just today) about the openSUSE 12.3 installer taking out their existing bootloader. So it doesn't look like it's a common problem.
(I may ask in the openSUSE forums about what I did wrong, depending on whether I feel like subjecting myself to more people like #107.)
Anyway, Ubuntu has a very good series of pages on their Wiki about GRUB2, including instructions on how to chroot into your existing installation to restore the bootloader, or, even easier, use a handy program named "Boot Repair" to do it.
120 • @119 (by Andy Prough on 2013-03-31 16:59:14 GMT from United States)
Sorry - you are right, I'm not aware of the procedures you used during installation. I should not have used your screen name as an example like that.
Please do access the forums - far more intelligent and experienced users than myself will gladly help you out.
121 • revisiting Fedora 18, what a difference a few months make! (by Jeffersonian on 2013-03-31 22:15:05 GMT from United States)
When Fedora 18 was first released, I tried to install it and gave eventually gave up: it was to hard to install, as it was, and was not stable on my machine.
I have tried it again this week (last week of March 2013), and after all the updates, what a difference a few months do!
Here follows a succinct description of my experience.
* Installed it on an HP "ProBook 6475B" with a four cores A10 AMD processor.
* First I had to reinstall Windows 7: the original install being full of bloatware and also used too many primary partitions.
This was easy, thanks to the two Windows 7, CD/DVD that HP ship with the machine. I install with the minimum number of partitions When you request one, you get two!).
* Second I had to repartition properly (to my taste) the hard drive, booting from the latest live Fuduntu (I wish the Fedora 18 DVD include gparted, to make this easier).
Here is for reference the output of parted, print command.
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs boot
2 106MB 53.8GB 53.7GB primary ntfs (Windows 7)
3 53.8GB 500GB 446GB extended
5 53.8GB 54.3GB 520MB logical ext4 /boot
6 54.3GB 54.3GB 16.8MB logical linux-swap(v1) /
7 54.3GB 121GB 67.1GB logical ext4
9 121GB 189GB 67.1GB logical ext4
8 189GB 314GB 126GB logical ext4
10 314GB 500GB 186GB logical xfs /home (encrypted by F18 installer)
* Third, I installed Fedora 18, using the custom partitionning, on the existing partitions as above.
Took a while, because I installed lots of things.
* Booted O.K, and connected to the Ethernet using Ethenet (The WiFi does not work "out of the box, because the Broadcom drivers are missing!
* Installed "yumex" (sudo yum install yumex gparted)
* Updated the system, (sudo yum update) this took a long time: about 1500 packages to update: this went seemlessly.
* Added rmpfusion as a repository.
* Installed *Using yumex) the Broadcomm drivers, and rebooted the system at the same time.
* WiFi worked right away (very fast + stable).
* I installed Mate (sudo groupinstall "MATE Desktop" better for everyday work than Gnome3
That is it...
Wishes:
1) I still wish that someone does a Fedora 18 spin including the wifi Broadcom drivers, because not everyone has access to an ethernet connection,
also because it is pleasnt to have a fully opating system, incling WiFi at the end of the install.
2) Wish that the next release of Fedora (Fedora 19) has a better, more simple to use installer.
3) Wish the installer allows more than one desktop install at the same time.
4) That the default install includes small, useful and efficient : gparted, yumex
Conclusion:
Past the initial bad taste, of F18 a few months ago, now Fedora 18 with all the updates is now a very good brew and up to date of Fedora:very stable and fast!
122 • @115 The growing divide (Mike) (by Thomas Mueller on 2013-04-01 01:49:55 GMT from United States)
"...the underlying OS is largely the same from Win 95 through to Win 8. "
There is a big fundamental difference between Win 95 (DOS-based) and Win 8. Win 95, 98 and ME had DOS as the underlying OS with Windows on top, while Win NT is its own OS, as was OS/2. Win 8's ancestry is in NT, running from Win NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and now 8.
I too notice a great anarchy of many Linux distros. Anybody who wants something more unified can go to FreeBSD. I run FreeBSD as well as Linux; FreeBSD works better than NetBSD, OpenBSD or DragonFly BSD in my experience.
Number of Comments: 122
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SLAMPP Live
SLAMPP was a Linux distribution which can boot and run directly from a DVD, with possibility to be installed onto hard disk. It was designed to be used as an instant home server. Just like other Linux live DVDs, SLAMPP makes it possible to test Linux without messing up the user's existing system. What makes SLAMPP different was the fact that it comes with pre-configured tools and applications that turn a personal computer into a home server. SLAMPP was built using Zenwalk Linux as its base and Slackware Linux for packages.
Status: Discontinued
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