[lug] SUSE- comments

[J. Wayde Allen]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, ljp wrote:

> I have just installed SuSE 7, on a spare pc, after using RedHat for years,
> just to try it out. I just wanted to exchange a few thoughts on it.
> 1- Nice partitioning program. I think its easier, and better looking than
> RH's.

OK, just to be the devil's advocate.  I picked up a copy of SuSE a few
years back, and since everyone had said that it was very easy for
beginners I gave it to my wife to see what she thought.  I let her
install, and kind of watched to see how it went.  When we got to the
partitioning section, it took a good amount of time for BOTH of us to
figure out how to make it work.  Yeah, I thought it "looked" pretty, but
sure didn't feel that it was intuitive.  Just goes to show that user
friendly is in the eye of the beholder.  Perhaps, they've improved on it
...?

> 2- I also liked the 'prefab' installs available, or the easily navigated
> 'do-it yourself'. I always thought RH's was a nightmare to try to go through
> and install selected packages. I dreaded that part. I really like the
> 'automatic' feature that will install other packages as needed.

I've yet to really feel comfortable with Red Hat's RPM system.  It just
feels kind of clunky to me.  I usually find that I have the best luck with
an old fashioned tarball.

The SuSE system was equally confusing to me.  Lots of screens with options
that didn't make a lot of sense to me.  Installing a single software
package (say Octave) as opposed to an entire software category (math) via
the gui interface in either SuSE or Red Hat always seems to be difficult
for me.  So far the only package management system that I've found that I
like is Debian's.  In the Debian system you simply use the arrow key to
highlight the Octave package, hit the "+" key, and then hit return.

> 4- The install seemed to take longer than RH's (probably because of
> ReiserFS, I suppose), but it at least looked better than the curses graphics
> RH has used. (I dont know about RH7- I won't touch that version with a big
> stick).

My guess is that it took longer since SuSE installs kind of what you want
plus a lot more.

> 6- I was pleasantly suprised at the graphical login. My, how linux has grown
> in 4 years. Or maybe I just haven't paid too much attention.... or maybe the
> damn planet is revolving faster now.

Graphical logins have been around for a long time (XDM and now GDM).  This
is nothing new to SuSE.

> Now,.. the real challange.. go through the kernel and try not to break
> anything, and get it the way I like it. Along with an extra driver or
> two....

Don't get me wrong.  I did run SuSe at home for a year or so.  It is nice
in its own way.  The biggest problem I had with it was a continual fight
between me and YAST.  YAST wants things configured its own way, and I
sometimes wanted to change this.  You had to be careful that if you made a
change to the system configuration outside of YAST, that the next time you
ran YAST it wouldn't simply trash the changes you had previously made.

In general I guess I think that all of this kind of runs into an
interesting dilemma.  When you make a system that is programmed to do
things in a specific way by hitting certain buttons (gui interface) it
seems you give up some of the flexibility of the Unix building block
approach.  Basically the user interface ends up wrapping the building
blocks, and to change the structure you have to figure out how to
deconstruct the interface in order to change the way the building blocks
are ordered or configured.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)