[SATLUG] 3d effects and ATi

[John Pappas]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 1:31 AM, Kristian Erik Hermansen <
kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:

> My praises for SuSE:
> * LDAP, Active Directory, and Windows integration are top notch
> * Looks very slick during/after installation
> * Excellent 64-bit support


Agree.


> Here are my criticisms of SuSE:
> * Lack of quality software packages
>

Not sure I can comment accurately, but I assume that you are talking about
the default repo set.  Much like the Multiverse repo in Ubuntu, without the
3rd party repos (PackMan, ATI/NVidia, Mozilla, Openoffice, VLC, Madwifi,
etc) there is a lack of software.  Once those repos are added, there is a
much wider selection, along with updates.

* Software repositories are slow


Yeah.  They are working on it, but I agree.  APT is WAAAYYY faster.


> * Third-party software sources required to install many applications
> (some without hashes/keys)


Yep, comments above apply here.


> * SuSE assumes too much about you using the GUI tools if you have
> graphics installed


Not sure what you mean here, but I can probably relate.  I have a couple of
CLI only boxes, and I love yast (ncurses) via screen.

* SuSE does not follow standard networking config files (name of file
> is appended with MAC address?  wtf???)


True.  Those germans ;)


> * SuSE is a DVD installer, not a single CD Live/Installer combined
> (requiring waste of bandwidth, and time)


10.3 changed that a bit.  You choose the CD/WM combo (i386/KDE) ISO and it
is a single (minus non-OSS) CD install.  I am not sure if it is live or not.


* Lack of fast mirrors to download the ISO image(s)


Maybe.  I have not had any problems.  I use ANL and kernel.org.

* Laid off AppArmor developers after they created an exceptional
> software package ... ridiculous!


Agreed.


> * SuSE is owned by Novell, and Netware is dead.  They got into the
> Linux space to fill that void and own a piece of the action...
>

True, although not sure why this is a con, as more commercial action with
linux will (generally speaking) help overall adoption.


> * Someone I know who previously worked at SuSE told me something that
> makes me doubt they have the will to provide a long-term commitment to
> the distro...


Time will tell.  Fortunately, application specific data (minus possibly the
Novell apps) will survive such a failure.  At that point, "Choice" provides
us a path to adopt another distro ;)