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OpenSuSE 11.0 Review

SuSE 9.2 was my first OS I installed on my laptop 3+ years ago within an hour of getting my much-awaited notebook. SuSE 9.3 lasted me for almost a year before Novell's decision to fork a version of SuSE into the community-supported OpenSuSE. Like most SuSE fans, I tolerated the buggy and unstable nature of OpenSuSE for a short while before ditching it for other distros, particularly Ubuntu. Thus, the announcement of the highly anticipated OpenSuSE 11,0 was a very welcome news. Having played around with OpenSuSE 11.0 for the last five days, I am very convinced that SuSE is back to where it used to be -- leading. Here is a brief review.
  1. The installation is very easy and smooth. I performed a network install without a hitch from the TDS mirror in Madison, Wisconsin.
  2. YaST doesn't break as easily as it used to. At least it hasn't happened yet.
  3. Installing software repositories used to be a pain. One would have to look up the info about the repos and enter it manually. Most of these repos were in Germany and connecting to them used to be a challenge, not to mention a common reason for breaking YaST. Now, it takes a few clicks to include these repos.
  4. There is no default desktop environment, unlike in the past where SuSE clearly favored KDE. This time, people have the option of choosing between GNOME, KDE 3.5.9, KDE 4.0, or Xfce during the installation process. I was very disappointed with KDE 4.0 yet again, so I decided to revert back to KDE 3.5.9 which I love.
  5. Firefox 3.0 comes standard and it is a major improvement over an already robust Firefox 2.0.
  6. XEN virtualization is easily supported. I might ditch VMware if XEN impresses me.
  7. It is loaded with software, and fast repos to download from. What more could one want?
All in all, I am very happy with OpenSuSE 11.0. It would not surprise me if it overtakes Ubuntu as the most popular distro in the near future.
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