Some impressions on SUSE Linux 9.3
SUSE Professional Linux 9.3 is the first Linux package I’ve actually bought (as opposed to getting it on a magazine cover disk) since version 9.1 last May. I’ve actually bought all of SUSE’s releases since version 8.1, in October 2002, except the last (version 9.2), but I did manage to get that off a cover disk when it was just about to go obsolete (as is SUSE’s custom). I was really quite disappointed with that release; although I couldn’t install it on my laptop, which has a faster processor than our desktop PC (650Mhz instead of 450), it seemed slow even for that machine.
The installation method this system uses has remained pretty much unchanged; it’s still YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool), which I consider the most comprehensive Linux configuration system out there. Linux Format claims that they have had a love-hate relationship with this software, but mostly hate – well, I’ve not found anything to match it. A case in point: YaST doesn’t change anything on your hard drive until you’ve approved everything, including the disk partitioning and the choice of programs you want to install. Mandrake, once you’ve chosen your disk partitioning scheme, it formats the drive straight away – before you’ve been given the opportunity to choose what (if anything!) you want to install. YaST is divided into modules, which can be slow to load up. But it really is comprehensive.
As ever, the versions which come on the CD and the DVD are inconsistent. A huge range of packages is now available only to DVD users – despite there being five CDs. This includes the database PostgreSQL and the Java-based development system Eclipse, the lightweight desktop environment XFce, and the Objective-C and Fortran compilers. Given that SUSE is meant to be a comprehensive distribution, I can’t see how any of this can be deemed so unimportant as not to supply it on CD. Novell should remember that a fair number of their Linux customers right now are interested in software development, rather than just home office use. Fedora Core 4 manages to fit Eclipse and Postgres onto their four CDs – why can’t Novell find room on five? On top of this, five packages on the DVD failed to install. Then again, the lack of Eclipse and XFce on the CDs is not as great a loss as it looks, because both are not the most up to date versions, and they can easily be obtained from third parties. But the tools exist for SUSE to allow users to quickly download these packages from their website, using APT or some similar tool. To date, SUSE is the only distribution which doesn’t support such a tool – Fedora and Mandrake, the other main comprehensive distributions, both have at least one such tool.
This edition has had a great deal of work done on presentation. While the machine boots up (this takes quite a long time), it gives you some information as to what’s going on; you can read all the messages by pressing Escape. The login screen has changed completely, and while loading KDE (the main desktop environment), the please-wait display has changed to SUSE’s own (similar to that seen during booting) rather than KDE’s own. That Microsoft-copying landscape backdrop has gone, to be replaced by a sort of swirly deep blue design centred on SUSE’s logo, and the old, rather toy-like brightly-coloured designs have been replaced by rather more sober and less intrusive stylings. As for GNOME, it’s come on in leaps and bounds since I first started using SUSE Linux, and it’s almost up to the standard of Fedora and other GNOME-oriented packages. Novell bought up Ximian which produced a commercial GNOME desktop, and has integrated some aspects of it into this. (I downloaded Ximian Desktop and hated it – it was slow and took over my whole system. But the stylings have been borrowed for this, and are pleasing and well-designed.) The menus could be better organised, though – you can get a terminal by right clicking on the desktop and selecting the terminal from the menu, but if you go through the Applications menu, it’s three menus deep.
Bad fonts have always been a major source of irritation in using Linux, and a little progress has been made, but not much. The first thing I always look at, of course, is the web browser – you can choose Mozilla, Firefox and Konqueror, which is to KDE what Explorer is to Windows. A lot of webpages still don’t render properly – pages you expect to see in a serif font come up in a sans font, for example. The BBC’s webpage, whatever you set as the default font in Firefox, always comes up in Nimbus Sans, a terribly bad Swiss font which often places letters so that they touch each other.
This package’s version of Konqueror is one of the most unresponsive web browsers I’ve ever come across – pretty much any operation results in a pause which blocks you from doing anything else. For example, when you type a location into the location bar, it pauses to load the contents of the drop-down box with the recently-loaded page locations in it. It takes only a second or so, but all these seconds add up, and this can be a real annoyance when it happens in the middle of your typing. Konqueror still doesn’t memorise how big the browser window was when you last closed it, so if you want a full-screen browser (as I always do), you’ll have to maximise each time you open it. It is incredibly slow when scrolling webpages which use graphics, like this one; it would be nice to be able to turn off gradual scrolling. It also does not support the editing buttons used in applications like MT and WordPress; unlike Safari, which does not even display them, Konqueror displays them, and then mangles your text when you use them. You can, however, use Firefox instead of Konqueror, and I usually do.
The other main internet application I use a lot is the multi-protocol messaging client. It offers two, Kopete and GAIM, the latter being part of the alternative desktop environment, GNOME. Even KDE users will most likely end up using GAIM, however, because Kopete appears not to support MSN – logging into MSN always fails with a “wrong password” error. (I didn’t test out any of the mail clients, because I do all my mail on my Mac with Thunderbird.)
I’m not too bothered by the other main problem people have raised with this release, lack of support for MP3, because I use my Mac for all my audio needs. My laptop’s sound chip doesn’t compete with either my Mac or my iPod. You have to use the RealAudio player to play your MP3s rather than the normal KDE or GNOME applications. Some might find this a big drawback, however. It’s possible that this is such a big drawback that someone might actually produce their own packages with the MP3 support built in – I wonder if James Ogley has done this on his version of GNOME?
In short, this is a very typical comprehensive Linux distribution – it’s not a dedicated server package, nor a consumer-oriented desktop version like Xandros or Linspire. I would say it’s aimed at the enthusiast, and while crippling the sound applications by leaving out MP3 put them on firmer legal grounds, leaving out a vast number of packages of great interest to the enthusiasts seems a strange decision. SUSE pack a whole DVD full of the source code; why on earth couldn’t they manage an extra CD? I’m not even going to bother discussing whether this is a replacement for Windows; Novell boasted at one point that one of its new Linux releases “eliminates the last pockets of resistance”, but much as this is at its core a superior operating system, there still isn’t the software for anyone to say “get rid of Windows and just install this”. If you want to do that, get a Mac.
A word of warning – make sure you get a good price! Certain companies (like Foyles of London) have been charging well over the odds for this package. Your best deals, as usual, can be found online. I ordered mine from Amazon and it arrived the next working day and cost a little over ã40 – this was the upgrade version minus one of the manuals, but still the same software. Don’t get ripped off!
A few screenshots:
GNOME, with Firefox – this blog displays correctly because my CSS stylesheet takes into account standard Linux fonts.
GNOME, with Firefox – but the BBC’s news website doesn’t look so good.
KDE, with Konqueror – notice the massive spaces around apostrophes – big problem with that particular font. Also, check out the remains of the gecko logo on the title bar!
KDE, with Eclipse – GTK applications are displayed with KDE controls. I wonder if this particular example is legal given the different licences for Qt and Eclipse?
