Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Just installed SUSE 10.1 beta


blackbelt_jones
01-26-2006, 10:01 AM
I've been up all night fwith so I'm going to bed right now. I'll have more to say after some much needed z's. My three word firsat impression is as follows: "buggy but promising".

In the meantime, check out the awesome bootsplash screen! (http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6102/background9wn.jpg)


(Later)

As I was saying, "Buggy but promising" is my initial impression, and since it's a beta release it's the promising part that's probably going to matter in the the end.

I haven't figured out how to mount CDs with SUSE10.1 yet. I'm used to CDs mounting automatically with SUSE, and they don't. withthis release. For the moment, I'm assuing this is probably a bug. I'm also assuming that there are several ways to get around it. With Debian I used to use KDisk free to mount CDs, and of course there's a way to do it at the command line that I just haven't learned yet.

For the time being, I simply used my other hard drive (which is running SUSE 10.0) as a back door. One of the first things I really loved about SUSE was how it makes it easy to save all the RPMs from the disks to a local directory on the hard drive and add the directory to the installation sources in yast., rendering it unnecessary for me to fumble with the CDs when I install the packages. So I copied the rpms from the disks to directory in hda2 and copied that directory to hdb2 very simply and painlessly with the help of a kanotix disk

I suppose that the lack of automatic CD mounting may not be a bug at all, but a deliberate change that I don't understand yet. Not so very long ago, I used to think SUSE was a shoddy distro because I kept losing my internet connection, but I eventually came to realize that the connection shut down only when I wasn't using it, and that this was actually a good thing, because if I'm not actually using my connection, then all I'm getting with it at that moment is vulnerability-- and when I need it again, clicking on the Kinernet "plug" icon will restore my connection in about one second.

As usual, I installed my SUSE system with Gnome, and the first thing that I noticed is that installing a basic Gnome system for 10.1only requires the first three CDs, instead of all five. The second thing I noticed was the cleanest, simplest default gnome default configuration that I've ever seen anywhere. At first, I thought that THIS was some kind of mistake. No upper panel? No window selector? No workplace swiitcher? No <i>clock?</i> And when I added the workplace swithcer, the was only one desktop.in place.

But it didn't take me long to realize that no mistake was made. I was able to get that Gnome desktop just the way I liked it-- more quickly, more easily and more completely than ever before without any preconceived notion of the "average" desktop configuration in the way. I don't know if SUSE or Gnome is responsible for the change, but I think it's a great idea.

.

cybertron
01-26-2006, 11:45 AM
SuSE does a nice job of theming their distribution if nothing else.:)

I wouldn't worry about it being buggy either. That's why they release betas.;)

blackbelt_jones
01-26-2006, 12:34 PM
What, me worry?. This is why I decided to keep 10,0 installed on my larger hard drive.

I opened up a second user account so I could take this screenshot (http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/7553/screenshot4lg.png), of a default suse-gnome desktop.. You can see how simple it is and unadorned it is, although I was apparently wrong about there not being a clock..

blackbelt_jones
01-30-2006, 07:23 PM
I found the beta SUSE 10.1 too buggy to play with just yet, so I installed Kanotix on that hard drive. Incidentally, I installed XFCE on Kanotix. I found out how to install Keyboard shortcuts, and with XFCE, a few well-chosen shortcuts make a huge difference in how it handles. I also installed an nvidia driver for the first time in a debian distibution, which means that I now have games I never heard of to play with. I'm sort of rediscovering Debian. I knew that I would one day.