openSUSE 10.3: why did Novell ever bother?

By Sam Varghese
Thursday, 11 October 2007 20:40

Opinion and Analysis

Linux users don't accept criticism of their chosen distribution easily - that's probably why a number of reactions to my last piece about openSUSE tended to be somewhat short of making a point.


Comments about RTFM and the use of language tend to miss the point - in this day and age, a benchmark has been set for Linux distributions which cater to the mass market. If openSUSE is not meant for the punters, pray to whom is it trying to cater?

No matter what opinion one has about Ubuntu, over the last three years it has more or less been the benchmark for any distribution which claims to be for the general user. Distributions like SimplyMEPIS, PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint have followed suit and made installation a breeze.

And let's not forget good old Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) which has just released its 2008 version (one which I hope to look at next week).

Back to openSUSE 10.3 - which can lay claim to being the progeny of the oldest surviving commercial distribution. There are so many loose ends lying around that it is actually beginning to look rather pathetic.

Take the addition of software download sources, for example. Where would one expect to find an interface to do this? Right inside the same application that handles software installation.

But it isn't there. To add some more download sources after installation, one has to jump through a hoop. Or, to put it more literally, use some other tool to do a task which, logically, should be within the software installation application.

The menu itself is ugly, spread as it is over three or more columns - and providing access to very few applications. What's the problem with a nice single linear menu?

But then it gets worse. Maybe someone thought, "oh, we've provided links to just a few apps, let's make up for it" and added an option within the menu for "more applications." Click on that and you get a browser the size of Times Square which provides links to every single application, utility, and system tool. Why does one need everything at one go? It's just clutter.

It's not as though this menu design is due to the desktop environment which openSUSE uses (I've installed the one that uses GNOME). The standard GNOME menu is neat and clean.

At least if the system was stable, I wouldn't mind all these annoyances. Every time I've installed SUSE - apart from openSUSE on two occasions this year - my conclusion has been the same: slow, but solid. And bear in mind, the first time I installed SuSE was in 1999.