Project: Linux Reviews

SUSE Linux 10 - a.k.a. Mercedes Linux

By Ramnath Shenoy <rsemails@gmail.com>
Posted: ( 2005-11-27 07:47:32 EST by prakash )
Oct 2005 completed my first year as a SUSE Linux user. I had started out with SUSE 9.2 warily. Having been through a myriad of Linux distros in the last 5-6 years, I had reached a conclusion that Linux was fine to fiddle around with at home, but not for the regular work at office. I could not spare time for geeky software and “terminals” were a dead end!

All that changed in Sept 2004, when a friend gave me SUSE Linux 9.2 – his words were – “SUSE is also called the Mercedes of the Linux world”. SUSE Linux Version 9.2 got me hooked to a point where I was willing to try it out for some time albeit with my XP on a different partition as a standby - 'in case, there was some problem'.

The first week was quite painful – moving over 200 MB of emails across OS's is not a job for the faint hearted. I tried various cross platform programs like Thunderbird and finally managed to get the job done. The effort was worth it. SUSE 9.2 was easy to install, recognized all my hardware easily, did all the partitioning on its own. In fact it pretty much installed itself on its own. SUSE 9.2 was by far the best Linux distro I had seen for common business user. I refer to the type who at any given time has the following open - a browser, an email client, a file manager, a word processor and a spreadsheet program. Life consists of surfing some sites, POPing mail from any account, working on and exchanging Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

All that was very well covered by Konqueror (browser, file manager), OpenOffice (word processor, spreadsheet) and Evolution (email client). The GUI and the overall experience was exquisite, the only glitch was that it seemed a bit heavy on the system. Still, I wasn't complaining too much considering all those years of Virus attacks and buggy software from the world of Windows.

Then came SUSE Linux 9.3 by which time I was hooked enough to get rid of the Windows partition itself and go the whole hog with SUSE. However the gripes just increased – OpenOffice was a major drain on the system. The solution was to upgrade to more computing power and RAM. Expensive, but well....NO way, I am going back to XP!

So when the same friend, gave me a DVD of the “latest, latest” SUSE 10, I was a bit wary? More hardware upgrades? Was the WINTEL -Windows- Intel syndrome being repeated all over again? Fortunately with SUSE 10, Novell as well as the other biggies like OpenOffice seem to have got everything right for a change. The OS is a shade faster than version 9.3. OpenOffice was certainly twice as faster in opening files.

Apart from the welcome improvement in speed, I really could not find anything else new. All the regulars programs seem to have upgraded their versions, but the version number seems to be the only thing new!

The OS itself does have some new stuff which I have listed below

1. 1.A “Search application” button in the Start Menu – very useful considering that the complete install will result in over 1000 applications being installed on your machine. When you type in the name of the program you are looking for, it gets highlighted in the Menu.
2. 2.YAST - The install/remove software button has been replaced by the more fancy 'Software Management” title. The functionality of YaST Support Module has changed. You can use the module to prepare a support request and collect information about your system.
3. 3.Novell AppArmor – found in YaST Control Center, this latest from Novell is supposed to protect your applications from software exploits. You can set up a profile to define what an application is allowed to do or not. So even if the application is exploited, it doesn't affect the entire system.

   More info on AppArmor was supposed to be found at /usr/share/doc/packages/subdomain-docs/apparmor-userguide.pdf. However this file was not present on my system, instead I found a file called adv_ug_apparmor.pdf at the above location, which was quite informative.

4. 4.Novell has also incorporated a new technology called Xen in this version as a preview. Xen allows you to run multiple instances of the Linux within the same system in their own virtual space.

No complaints on that though. The overall experience of using SUSE Linux 10 is really great. Smooth, seamless and fast are the words I would use to describe it. I really wonder why anyone would still want to stick to Windows.

Other articles by Ramnath Shenoy

Current Rating: [ 6.18 / 10 ] Number of Times Rated: [ 258 ]

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