The LXF Test: First look at OpenSUSE 11.1

Rounding off a stellar year for the Linux world comes the release of OpenSUSE 11.1. Anyone who is a part of the community will agree that 2008 has really pushed the boundaries of what is possible with Linux in its many different incarnations. It's also been just over five years since Novell announced their intention to take over SUSE Linux in a move that sent ripples throughout the community. Back then it was seen as a desperate attempt by Novell to strike back against Microsoft which had famously beaten Novell with Windows NT 4 and 2000. So what has the five years done for SUSE? Are things really better under Novell, or are they just kidding themselves?

OpenSUSE 11.1 is the final big release of 2008 (unless Debian decides to spring Lenny onto us at the last minute), bringing with it some great improvements to one of the most venerable distros in existence. We managed to snag a copy of the DVD installation which, thanks to our super-fast internet connection at LXF Towers, was downloaded in about 20 minutes or so. This is no mean feat, principally because the DVD installation is one of the largest ones available, weighing in at a smidge over 4.4GB, pretty much the limit for a single layer DVD. When you consider that Fedora comes in at 3.3GB, it really does make you wonder what OpenSUSE does with all that extra space.

Installation inspection

First impressions of any distro are often formed through the installation and it's here that we immediately start to draw comparisons with Ubuntu and Fedora. OpenSUSE uses YaST2 (Yet another Setup Tool) to carry out the installation. Green is the word, and green is most definitely the colour used to great effect throughout the process. It's never really overpowering, instead providing a slick user interface to help the user get up and running quickly. SUSE historically was a KDE stronghold until the integration with Novell, the owners of Ximian who were intrinsically linked with Gnome, so it's no surprise to find that GNOME is the default desktop, although there is the option to choose KDE or other window managers.

Make mincemeat of partitioning your disk by using the
new partitioning tool during install.

We stuck with the Gnome install, but it's worth noting that OpenSUSE's KDE implementation is not to be missed, especially with the introduction of KDE 4.1 along with the very late inclusion of Amarok 2.0. Moving quickly through the remaining installation questions we came across one that really rankled us - one that we've complained about before - and that's the option to log in automatically as your first created user. This kind of thing makes security experts cringe when they come across it and we strongly recommend that you disable it if you want to have any kind of security. Of additional note is the work that OpenSUSE has done on the partitioning tool; the majority of users may never notice it, but the interface is much improved and makes the whole partitioning process more straight-forward.

We managed to get up and running in around 25 minutes with an install of around 3GB in total. Once you've cleared the initial setup that OpenSUSE performs (largely automated) you get the chance to log in. Probably the first thing you'll see post-login screen is the Smolt popup, encouraging you submit anonymous hardware information. Clearly the work that Fedora has done collecting anonymous hardware information has interested OpenSUSE - it just goes to show that open source really is about innovation and sharing.

Help define priorities for OpenSUSE by using Smolt
to submit hardware information.

New features

Importantly, OpenSUSE is very clear that participation ultimately guides the areas of driver development. The benefits of getting a large number of submissions are clear especially when you consider the many and varied configurations that one might find OpenSUSE installed on. OpenSUSE has also stuck with its usual configuration of Gnome (2.24.1 in this case) which consists of a single panel with the Application Menu being launched from the bottom left, a la KDE and Windows Vista.

It's no normal menu though, as it marks the continual development of OpenSUSE's Slab concept, something that can take a little getting used to if you haven't come across it before. Instead of giving you the traditional entries in menus, you actually get shortcuts to your recently used applications and the ability to use search to launch applications. It sounds a lot more difficult than it actually is, and after a while you feel like you're taking a step backwards when you return to a distro with a standard interface. Given that we're used to a stock Gnome desktop, it takes some time to get used to the panel being at the bottom of the screen but once you're past that it soon becomes natural.

Love it or hate it, Slab isn't going away -
it does work once you get used to the interface.

Moving onto package management: we were very impressed with OpenSUSE's interface which provides a good change from the increasingly staid Synaptic or the work in progress underway in Fedora. Accessible through an entry on the Slab menu, you can quickly and easily search for new software to install. It came as somewhat of a surprise to see the host of proprietary software that was automatically selected for installation, including Flash and some MP3 codecs. In fact, one of the patterns (role-defined package manifests) is 'Proprietary', similar to Ubuntu, which also allows easy access to proprietary software and plugins.

A little on the cluttered side, but very easy to use -
find software relevant for specific functions using
OpenSUSE's package management tool

Looking closer at the patterns, you can see that OpenSUSE has really put some thought into this - having role-specific package manifests makes it easy to get up and running quickly when you need to achieve a specific aim, such as creating a kernel development environment or even creating a KDE desktop environment. The concept sounds similar to package groups, but it's really quite different - patterns offer much more refined groups targeted at specific scenarios. We'd like to see a similar approach introduced in other distros; it makes it much easier for the new Linux user to find software that's relevant to what they want to do, without having to wade through hundreds of packages.

OpenSUSE still hasn't learned the whole
less is more philosophy!

Summing up

Overall, if we only had one word with which to describe OpenSUSE then it would have to be 'polished'. It doesn't have the stunning bootup that is a mark of Plymouth (found in Fedora) or the blatant ease of use that Ubuntu brings, but it is a looker and also provides a solid development platform to move forward to the next release of OpenSUSE. It's been a year of community growth for OpenSUSE, with the election of a community board along with the appointment of Joe Brockmeier as the Community Manager. In the best traditions of open source software, OpenSUSE has taken the best bits from other projects and applied it to themselves. There's no harm in that, but we look forward to the extension of these ideas and the added innovation that we are sure will come.