I’ve been disappointed with opensuse in the past few releases, but this looks impressive. I’m tempted try try it, but I am currently very happy with my arch install.

Screw the Kindle Fire. Get the Nook device by Barnes and Noble , if only as a way of saying kudos.

Nice show. The review was quite good overall. It would be nice if you would follow the release notes on all distribution reviews.

Chris: You are able to install rpmfusion repository with mouse clicking or from the command line. Adding codecs requires just two commands in terminal and the process is very similar compared to openSUSE [1].

Fedora has had snapshot feature since Fedora 13. It is mentioned in release notes [2] but unfortunately LAS is usually too concentrating bashing Fedora and not giving a good review (sorry about the critic).

===

It would have been nice to hear some discussion about new systemd feature.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1IC9yOXj7j6cdLLxWEBAGRL6wl97tFxgjLUEHIX3MSTs
http://lwn.net/Articles/468049/
http://lwn.net/Articles/468381/ (requires login)

===

Unfortunately Canonical/Ubuntu still doesn’t seem to be interesting work with upstream … oh well

“Bringing The PackageKit Interface To Ubuntu
…
However,
it’s not bringing PackageKit to Ubuntu Linux, but rather just their
interfaces and they will interact with Canonical’s own design.
…
Richard
Hughes, the lead developer of PackageKit, has already responded to ask
about this incomplete PackageKit implementation and to say ”it’s a shame
the new API couldn’t be added to PackageKit itself.””

“There’s
also plans to implement systemd support in a similar way under Ubuntu –
just to take advantage of their system interfaces and integrate that
into the Ubuntu stack”

===

[1]
- Fedora: http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
- openSUSE: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/new-user-how-faq-read-only/407184-multi-media-restricted-format-installation-guide.html#post2394434

[2]
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-File_Systems.html

Great point!

I was going to suggest, if there could be some designated day when every Linux user goes to a B&N store or online and buys something from B&N and if possible (to a clerk, say) let’s them know they’re making this purchase to thank B&N for fighting this lawsuit? If political campaigns can have money bombs, and Indy Bundles can list Linux users as the most giving, why not a money bomb for B&N?

In openSUSE, all you really need to do is enable the Packman repository from Yast – this only takes a click, as it’s listed under the Community Repositories in YaST. That’s it. Now, when you go to play a video for the first time with the default video player, a message will pop up explaining that the codec isn’t present and asking if you’d like to download and install codecs. If so, just supply the root password and all of the codecs you can imagine are then downloaded and installed. So despite what some OpenSUSE pages/users say, you never even need to go to the OpenSUSE website to install codecs.

In that sense, I don’t really understand the complaint in this review about OpenSUSE’s codec policy (maybe this isn’t available in LXDE, XFCE or other dinky – I mean less-featured – desktops the review concentrated on ). OpenSUSE doesn’t break the law by distributing patented codecs, but it installs just about as easily as it does Flash.

I really enjoyed this review and I’m glad to see OpenSUSE getting some good attention and press for work it’s really been doing for a long time now producing innovative tech paired to a very polished, stable desktop distro.

I was really happy when Chris spent a lot of time on the install and the summary screen. In July of 2010 my Windows XP install had become very screwed up and since I figured I needed to install something new one way or another, I decided to try to evaluate Linux distros (I’d been playing with them for ten years but never convinced to switch). I had some disastrous experiences with other distros and was almost convinced to install Windows 7 instead. I decided to try one last distro by going to Distro watch and working down their popularity list and choosing the first one that I hadn’t tried and hadn’t heard bad things about (yes I was watching the Linux Action Show while still running Windows and knew not to try Fedora ). Someone loaned me a Win7 disk and I basically installed OpenSUSE and Win7 back to back.

What a difference! It was 2010 and Windows still thought it was the only OS in existence. It wouldn’t let me install, saying there was no room on the disk when there were hundreds of gigs free. After searching online I figured out what was going on. Windows saw that I was attempting to install to a disk other than the default boot disk. Completely on its own it was trying to create and install a boot partition on my primary hard drive without telling me! Fortunately there were already four partitions on there and it was failing. To get around this I needed to temporarily change the boot order in my BIOS. Some people without good BIOSes weren’t as lucky as one person I read about online had to actually open his machine and disconnect drives to get Win7 to install only where he wanted it to!

As I watched Windows 7 install, I kept asking, “What’s it doing? Why won’t it tell me what it’s doing?” I’d just installed OpenSUSE and beforehand I was shown a list of every thing it intended to do and I could change EVERYTHING down to how many seconds to wait at the Grub menu before booting. Even when I specified a partition/boot scheme that wouldn’t work, the installer warned me of this but still gave me the option of beginning the install anyway! I could choose to install or not any program… configure hardware… set default sound card and volume (something that caused no end of trouble with other distros as I had two sound cards in the machine at the time). I could completely control my experience.

I finally saw the Linux way of things… *I* was in control. It was *my* machine and only *I* had the final say as to what was done on my machine. Nothing was done without my approval and everything could be changed or tweaked. Of course, I also booted into KDE, which gives you access to everything, which enhanced this message. I became an instant die-hard Linux fan. I’m so bad I’m even “saving” OpenSUSE 12.1 for Christmas and am trying to resist “peeking” at in until then except for watching this review.

The only thing I wished the review did was cover the default desktop, KDE, a bit more. There were “issues” with KMail2 using Nepomuk/Akonadi/whathaveyou and for OpenSUSE 11.4 they went with the KDE 4.6 desktop but the 4.4 KMail/Kontact as a result. This time around they went with KMail2 even though there are still serious issues with existing KMail users being able to successfully import their messages and serious memory issues with Nepomuk attempting to load the entire e-mail archive into memory in order to index it! There are warnings about KMail2 in the release notes and one major OpenSUSE contributor has gone so far as to describe KDE as “broken” for this release and got so upset when his suggestion to not make it the default desktop this time around was voted down that he’s declared he will not fix any bug from now on that appears related to KDE!

I’ve asked for, but not really gotten, an answer regarding why KMail2 was viewed as broken for 11.4 and not used but is included in 12.1 even though it still has thoroughly documented, severe issues (even the OpenSUSE community manager blogged about his negative experiences with KMail2). At the least, KMail could have been included and KMail2 released via update once it was in working order.

I think this big contention about KMail2 was worthy of mention in this review. In fact, I bet folks at the OpenSUSE forum that the Linux Action Show review of 12.1 was going to make their reviews of Fedora seem kind in comparison because of the KMail2 issue. Now I have to eat a lot of crow (not that I’m unhappy at a good review), but if you do have someone from OpenSUSE on in the future I hope you question them about this, and *hard* – OpenSUSE voted on a community “declaration” about what it is and isn’t and one of the items approved was that OpenSUSE values stability over features. Between that and the fact KMail2 was skipped for stability in 11.4 makes it hard to justify its presence in 12.1.

>In openSUSE, all you really need to do is enable the Packman
repository from
>Yast – this only takes a click, as it’s listed under the
Community Repositories
>in YaST. That’s it.

Sounds easy indeed!

>Now, when you go to play a video for the first time with the default
video player,
>a message will pop up explaining that the codec isn’t
present and asking if you’d
>like to download and install codecs.

I really like openSUSE uses PackageKit.

I’m disappointed that Ubuntu developers are not willing to improve PackageKit:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-November/034478.html

>In that sense, I don’t really understand the complaint in this review about OpenSUSE’s codec policy …

I don’t understand the complains about any distributions codec/proprietary software policy. openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, … are different in many ways and it would be important to mention in reviews. Unfortunately LAS doesn’t.

One thing why I’m always liked openSUSE is their hard work for Upstream. Alone for that reason I would choose openSUSE over most of the other distributions.

I hope the Barnes and Noble vs. Microsoft case wakes up the US government to just exactly how much of a bad idea software patents are. Not only is it possible to acquire patents for things other people have developed, but often they are just plain simple tasks that is impossible to design a competing product without stepping on the patents of someone else. Also, patents can be obtained by people that have never developed anything at all, but merely have a concept of something that exists in nothing but abstraction. On top of that, patents are good for something like 20 years? That’s crippling in the high tech market. Something needs to change.

Joseph: I fully agree with you regarding Mint and OpenSUSE’s sane implementation of the desktop environments. But I still maintain that Mint has too small a dev team (at present) to bring forth technologies like Snapper or colour management as OpenSUSE did. IMO Mint’s modification of the GNOME shell has been THE BEST implementation of the shell so far. However, shell extensions have been around before MGSE (Check out some of the older postings on Web Upd8 http://www.webupd8.org/search/label/gnome%20shell?updated-max=2011-11-02T14:40:00%2B02:00&max-results=10) Beleive me, I’m not trying to downplay Mint’s phenomenal achievements – every single release has been stellar & they maintain an mindboggling selection of desktops (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox plus the rolling awesomeness of LMDE). I feel that given a few years, Mint can come up with groundbreaking technologies as their development team grows. While I use Debian for work, Mint is my fav distro, something that I can recommend my Mom to use.   

Ule-helm_lilli: Thanks for bringing up that point. Amidst all the Fedora/Ubuntu bashing, we forget that the innovations by the Fedora team and Canonical hugely contribute to the development of Linux. Yes, Fedora has bugs, yes it feels permanently ‘beta’ compared other distros, but that because it stays bleeding edge. I am glad that they are brave enough to do what they do & will always remain grateful to Fedora & Ubuntu, even if I do not use them.  

“Amidst all the Fedora/Ubuntu bashing, we forget that the innovations by
the Fedora team and Canonical hugely contribute to the development of
Linux.”

Canonical contributes a lot but at the moment they are mostly working to downstream and not to upstream, so for example openSUSE 12.1 users doesn’t see much Canonical work on this new release.

It seems Ubuntu developers are planning some changes to “Sound Settings” [1]. I really hope they are going to collaborate with upstream designers since upstream designers are planning to make some changes too [2]. I afraid that this is going to be handled in Ubuntu way again …

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/help-ubuntu-redesign-the-sound-settings-menu-by-taking-this-survey/
[2] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/tree/master/system-settings/sound

That is quite true. Canonical does deserve a rap for not contributing enough to the upstream. That is one of the major complaints that Debian has against Ubuntu, and not without reason too. 

In that respect, OpenSUSE and Fedora deserve to be applauded.  

I have made Launchers for watching the Live stream in both Mplayer and VLC. And easy to follow instructions for adding them to a Gnome System. Attached image as an example using Synapse

 If anyone wants to give em a try. Let me know and I’ll email them to you. But don’t paste your email here, for security and spam reasons.

No offense to any OpenSuse people. But is just me, or is Suse mainly for more experienced users? 

Atleast in the regard to easy it is to use .Deb files and the Ubuntu Software Center being very simple to use. I’ve always found it too hard to adjust to how Fedora and OpenSuse operate very differently. 

No I’m not putting Fedora on the same level as Suse, cause I tried Fedora 15…..lets say I did not have a lot of laughs in trying to use it    >:-(

Allan needs to look at the camera when he talks.

Looking away from the camera when you’re talking shows lack of self-confidence, and honestly makes you look like a retard!

Man up and look at the camera! You are ruining the show!

Hope no one gets offended, but i wouldn’t be so honest if i didn’t care so much about the show.

I really enjoyed the segment on OpenSUSE-12.1 (and SUSE in general), I work for .. the TOP computer mfg on the linux team, and for the past 3 years we have shipped SLED on our business class laptops, notebooks, and mini PCs. I originally could not stand the SLED we were testing/QA on, but now I use it for everything- OpenSUSE for desktops and for all my servers and workstations, and even my personal use PCs. And I absolutely LOVE susestudio builds! THANKS and great to have found you! Both Chris and Allen remind me of my team, VERY different people but cover all sets of needs, again, Thanks guys