“We asked Andreas Jaeger, Project Manager at SUSE Linux, about his experiences with managing a massive and complex software project, and to give us some hints about the next SUSE release, the development of which is scheduled to start in just a couple of weeks.” I especially like the release notes question, to be honest.
May I suggest asking Mr. Andreas Jaeger “Why is installing packages a nightmare in this release?”, “Shouldn’t wireless be a lot easier than it is?” and finally, “Do you think your users will transcode their mp3s to whatever formats SuSe likes?”.
I’m sure Mr.Jaeger is a very competent professional, being project manager, and all, so he ought to know how many problems this new suse release has. After so much hype and beta testing and RCs, they decided to change the package management and they really screwed up. Install SuSe. Install a package; any package. It’ll almost certainly fail to install properly. Trying to get your wireless connection working is also a fun adventure.
As for MPEG playback (mp3, dvds, etc), while I understand WHY it isn’t included out-of-the-box, the reason why it is so horribly difficult to find repositories, or even package names to get this working is something I cannot understand. Sure, it looks polished and professional, but under the hood it feels slow and broken. And this is something Mr. Jaeger shouldn’t have to be told. I wouldn’t give an interview after releasing a product that is inferior to the previous one. And XGL alone, while it has a lot of potential, isn’t enought to save it…
I regret having recommended OpenSuSe to a couple of friends of mine, who are obviously having all these problems, asking me how they solve things. They can’t, YaST2 won’t work properly.
Hopefully (K)Ubuntu won’t be such a letdown.
After installing Debian, SLAX and Ubuntu repeatedly, SuSE was disappointing beyond its graphical installer/boot/shutdown screens.
If there’s a better installation tool than apt-get, YaST isn’t it.
Media players that can’t play DVDs but return a URL explaining why and how to install the libraries should not 404 when you follow them. People I know with corporate editions of SuSE appear to have media support already built in and supported, but OpenSuSE users have no way of knowing this. SuSE users at a local user group seem less aware in general of newer apps and technologies in Linux, but that could be a fluke.
As a desktop OS, it doesn’t look substantially different from what Debian offers, besides a more polished installation. If someone here who knows the real difference can school me in what’s cool about SuSE, I’ll gladly stand corrected.
I’ve had the same problems with Suse. After the installation (which is no better than Ubuntu’s, Mandrake’s or Redhat’s), you’re left with a slightly buggier than usual and much slower desktop OS. Having heard so much about how great Suse is, I was really disappointed about how slowly it ran on slightly dated hardware. The same hardware ran Redhat, Mandrake and now Ubuntu perfectly well.
Your post is a long one, so I’m not going to quote you, but would like to comment on some of your comments.
As I’m sure you know, Novell owns SUSE. As such, ultimately, Novell’s interests will be given priority, with as much input from the community as possible, as long as it doesn’t ultimately interfere with Novell’s goals.
Novell wanted the new package management system in place for the SLES/SLED 10 releases due out this summer. Those releases are based on the 10.1 codebase. They needed to get it into 10.1 first. Unfortunately, it was a late decision. They tried to get it right by release time, but just didn’t quite make it. The fixes are supposed to be coming.
As for wireless, I’m vaguely aware of 2 issues: I was told that the old version of the madwifi drivers were incompatible with the shipping version of the kernel, and that the new version wasn’t stable enough, but would be made available when it was. The other issue was with ndiswrapper, and concerns about the legality of it. I just downloaded the latest source, compiled, and installed it. No problem there.
You talk about people having to transcode their media files, but then say later that you understand the reasons for the lack of multimedia support. I can understand why they don’t provide the codecs and libraries, but wish that they didn’t cripple the programs so that they won’t work even after the libraries and codecs are installed. Sounds like a fight for another day, because the workarounds are easy. I don’t understand the troubles you are having finding the necessary repositories. Packman and Guru should have everything you need.
My initial impressions were much like yours. I did find the way out of all of my issues with one program:
Smart Package Manager.
You can find step-by-step direction here: http://spinink.net/2006/05/20/installing-smart-package-manager/
The version that is installed by following these directions will have all of the needed repositories already included. The only thing that I couldn’t get was decss, but it is available elsewhere. With Smart, you resolve the package management issues as well as the multimedia format issues.
I was counting on Kubuntu as my “Plan B”, but after installing smart, and then installing xine and mplayer from the guru and packman repositories, I don’t think I’ll be needing “Plan B” this time around.
I’d also like to know how Novell came to the conclusion that one particular WM is the future of Linux, given the comparisons between Gnome and KDE. Navigate network resources like shares and printers in each WM and come back to me with your conclusion on usability/configurability. Find a configuration file and edit it as root without using the terminal. Convert an image in a folder to another format without opening a program. Show me previews of an image in a folder.
None of these features are trivial to me.
Gnome and KDE are Desktop Environments, not Window Managers. A Window Manger is either part of a Desktop Environment, or, in some cases, standalone. The WM has the main purpose controling the way graphical windows are positioned, resized, moved, etc.
I too am dissapointed. After running/hacking suse 10.0, I was looking forward to 10.1; hoping this would be the first distribution I wouldn’t have to hack the hell out of to get running (In hacking I mean going to command line, recompiling). All I am after is simple WPA wireless config…
Whats the whole point of releasing something of supposedly good quality, only to have to go install another package manager, compile a driver/program, etc. Don’t get me wrong, windows has its config nightmares as well, but I don’t need to recompile and drop to a command line to get things done.
Just my 2c worth.
It’s because they changed the way updating worked during beta, the querks are there but it should make SUSE much better in the long run. I personally think it’s the best after a bit of tweaking.
Also XGL is much improved, people say it’s uselss but moving smaller windows around take up under 1% cpu here. I’d rather have my GPU do most of the work than the CPU thank you very much.
Novell wanted the new package management system in place for the SLES/SLED 10 releases due out this summer. Those releases are based on the 10.1 codebase.
So people using OpenSuse, and buying Suse Linux, are forced to put up with pointless crippleware in order to sell Novell’s enterprise stuff which will hardly get used? Brilliant advert there Novell.
I was told that the old version of the madwifi drivers were incompatible with the shipping version of the kernel
Personally, I think this is BS. Madwifi was broken in 10.0 as well even though it was there. If you download the sources and recompile it it works as flawlessly as it does on any other distro. Madwifi drivers are as solid as any others you’re likely to find, . I get the impression that they’re deliberately crippling wireless, pointlessly, to favour and sell their enterprise stuff.
My initial impressions were much like yours. I did find the way out of all of my issues with one program:
Smart Package Manager.
Quite frankly, I don’t know why they don’t adopt it.
The only thing that I couldn’t get was decss
You can download a DeCSS RPM from just about anywhere, and you can get it off the main DeCSS site. It’s pretty generic.
Edited 2006-05-31 11:20
So people using OpenSuse, and buying Suse Linux, are forced to put up with pointless crippleware in order to sell Novell’s enterprise stuff which will hardly get used? Brilliant advert there Novell.
Only because they couldn’t get all the bugs out in time. Had it all worked as they had hoped, I’m sure there would be few complaints. If they didn’t use a common code base, then people would accuse them of only using the good stuff in the enterprise versions. Novell/SUSE puts a lot of development into SUSE. If there were multiple code bases, then they would have to choose where to spend their time/resources. I somehow doubt that the free version would get the attention. Having a single code base makes sense for everyone. The goof this time was trying to slip in such a major change so late in the game.
Personally, I think this is BS. Madwifi was broken in 10.0 as well even though it was there. If you download the sources and recompile it it works as flawlessly as it does on any other distro. Madwifi drivers are as solid as any others you’re likely to find, . I get the impression that they’re deliberately crippling wireless, pointlessly, to favour and sell their enterprise stuff.
I don’t use madwifi, so I don’t know about the actual issue. However, I can tell you that they badly want wireless working. They will be relasing SLED 10 later this year, and want to see it on corporate laptops everywhere. Laptops with wireless.
Quite frankly, I don’t know why they don’t adopt it.
Agreed. So far, it seems like the best choice available.
You can download a DeCSS RPM from just about anywhere, and you can get it off the main DeCSS site. It’s pretty generic.
I know, and I did. I was referring to what I was able to get using Smart w/the packman and guru repos.
I still haven’t completely made up my mind regarding 10.1, but it seems like everyone is ready to pounce on Novell for being evil. While I don’t think purchasing Ximian was such a geat idea, I don’t think they are trying to cripple or kill SUSE. Tying the enterprise versions to the codebase of the free version will help make sure that it always gets all of the developer attention possible. This may not be the best release ever, but it’s still a great distro. There are problems, but nothing that can’t be worked around. I’m not sure that there is a distro out there that doesn’t have some issue that has to be dealt with. At least the ones with SUSE have workarounds until official fixes are in place.
Wrong, 10.1 is better, for gnome that is as well Smart packager does it all for you and is gtk, so you dont need YaST since it has tons of mirrors.
Zenworks applet works so much better then YOU, it’s pretty much like Ubuntu’s updater.
SuSE has gone pay, forking off into a free version. Users are complaining that the packaging system doesn’t work, and the maintainers have, for some reason, decided to lock out mp3 support.
We’ve come a long way since Red Hat 9.
Novell are not going to pay $60.000 for mp3 support, yes thats how much it is. People want free software, free distros but at what other price?
Simple solution. Provide a little script on the desktop once the system is installed: “click for mp3 support” and that would do what needs to be done. I doubt anyone would complain.
It’s $25,000 for an unlimited license. The problem is that the license doesn’t cover redistribution, and therefore doesn’t cover any free software, as free software _must_ be redistributable.
I’d like to know why suse is one of those distros that likes to break stuff between releases? I have CD writing that broke during the transition from 10.0 to 10.1, DVD-playing that broke during the transition from 9.3 to 10.0, mp3 playing that was lost a long time ago etc.
Unfortunately their is no such thing as the perfect Linux distro. In many ways OpenSUSE is very good but its already been well documented here it has issues and therefore isn’t perfect.
I find half the fun with Linux is trying and new versions and/or distros and then comparing them and inevitably, between different PC hardware things don’t always “just work” out of the box.
I admit to being a long time Debian/*ubuntu lover but even they aren’t perfect. I did like the look of the stock OpenSUSE 10.1 KDE desktop but what good is that with crap package management? Under Ubuntu Dapper RC I managed to get my Intel 3945abg wireless interface to work no problems but had to manually configure the screen in X. As I said, it’s all part of the fun and games for me
I haven’t personally run into any issues outside of package management with 10.1. Having said that, I cannot imagine why they would release this version with package management obviously broken. The release was already delayed, why not wait until it is actually finished? The fixes for package management are supposedly going to come this week or early next week…why didn’t they just wait to release until it was fixed? Now they have all this bad publicity as a result.
Calm down maybe just a little bit – if everybody were to complain how much they hated xyz feature of whatever distro then it wouldnt be worth enabling comments at all.
I could rant my extreme dislike of Ubuntu but I dont because it doesnt add anything constructive.
Ive been using SuSE since 8.1 & yes this release is rather not up to the usual quality of prior releases but as said before there are workarounds & the zen problem is due to Novell integrating it into OpenSuSE so that it has some testing done before its used for SLES 10 & NLD 10.
& that the codecs have to be downlaoded – I think everybody must have heard of that by now .
– if not – search on OpenSuSE for YaST repositories .