Comments on: openSUSE 11.2 Setup and Review http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/ The software development weblog of Benjamin McCann. Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:15:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Slurp812 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-44287 Slurp812 Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:46:15 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-44287 Why is it to be expected that free software must suck out of the box? I say bullcrap. That is the old way of thinking. There are other distros that are more polished, and they too remain open source. Dont get me wrong, SuSE is great. Sure it could be better, but to expect that it will be less than paid for OS is just (IMHO) giving up. Kudos to all the developers who make this stuff all possible for us. Constructive feedback is much better than whining... Why is it to be expected that free software must suck out of the box? I say bullcrap. That is the old way of thinking. There are other distros that are more polished, and they too remain open source. Dont get me wrong, SuSE is great. Sure it could be better, but to expect that it will be less than paid for OS is just (IMHO) giving up. Kudos to all the developers who make this stuff all possible for us. Constructive feedback is much better than whining…

]]> By: Red Tussock http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-23904 Red Tussock Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:13:53 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-23904 Whilst I admire your enthusiasm, I switched off about the Paragraph titled, : Review: The Problem with Linux is Usability and Resource Allocation. This paragraph is a classic moan by a recent user of OS's that are paid for ... by that I mean, your have just installed an OS on your computer, for next to nothing mate ... a simple thanks to the thousands of people involved in Application development might seem the least you could say I think. I have used SuSE since v 4.8, its been a long road to here, but I do not profess to have contributed much to its development, other than positive encouragement to the many many developers that put so much of their time and lives into making it a better space to be in. From me you will hear a simples thanks Guys and gals ... its a bit raw around the edges but most of all its awesome thanks!!. Whilst I admire your enthusiasm, I switched off about the Paragraph titled, : Review: The Problem with Linux is Usability and Resource Allocation. This paragraph is a classic moan by a recent user of OS’s that are paid for … by that I mean, your have just installed an OS on your computer, for next to nothing mate … a simple thanks to the thousands of people involved in Application development might seem the least you could say I think. I have used SuSE since v 4.8, its been a long road to here, but I do not profess to have contributed much to its development, other than positive encouragement to the many many developers that put so much of their time and lives into making it a better space to be in. From me you will hear a simples thanks Guys and gals … its a bit raw around the edges but most of all its awesome thanks!!.

]]> By: Ben http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-23518 Ben Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:28:57 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-23518 Hey Mike, glad I could help. I'd love for more people to use Linux which is why I write these articles, so don't think I'm trying to discourage its use. I get that Torsten doesn't work for Novell and I'm not trying to disparage volunteer work on open source projects. My complaints aren't about display drivers, but rather are about Linux usability. Surely someone with the time and skill to write Marble could contribute elsewhere to a more impactful portion of KDE. That's his choice to make of course. I do realize there is a lot of software that can't be distributed with Linux, but it could be made easier to download and install it. And in fact Novell has worked on this with its one-click installers, but they could go further by integrating it into the OS. There should be a box that pops up and screams at you telling you that you haven't installed the driver, your performance will suck without it, you may want to choose a card with good Linux support, and here's how to install the driver. That's something someone with no Linux experience could at least begin to understand. Otherwise, you're stuck there scratching your head and wondering why your computer doesn't work. I use both Windows and Linux everyday and stand by my position that Windows is easier to use. You don't face the dependency hell that exists in Linux when installing software on Windows. I'd love for that to change and will continue to use Linux regardless. However, it's absurd that this OS was released with a bug that causes Eclipse and Flash not to work because of a bug in GDK. The testing is really just unacceptably bad. Hey Mike, glad I could help. I’d love for more people to use Linux which is why I write these articles, so don’t think I’m trying to discourage its use. I get that Torsten doesn’t work for Novell and I’m not trying to disparage volunteer work on open source projects. My complaints aren’t about display drivers, but rather are about Linux usability. Surely someone with the time and skill to write Marble could contribute elsewhere to a more impactful portion of KDE. That’s his choice to make of course.
I do realize there is a lot of software that can’t be distributed with Linux, but it could be made easier to download and install it. And in fact Novell has worked on this with its one-click installers, but they could go further by integrating it into the OS. There should be a box that pops up and screams at you telling you that you haven’t installed the driver, your performance will suck without it, you may want to choose a card with good Linux support, and here’s how to install the driver. That’s something someone with no Linux experience could at least begin to understand. Otherwise, you’re stuck there scratching your head and wondering why your computer doesn’t work.
I use both Windows and Linux everyday and stand by my position that Windows is easier to use. You don’t face the dependency hell that exists in Linux when installing software on Windows. I’d love for that to change and will continue to use Linux regardless. However, it’s absurd that this OS was released with a bug that causes Eclipse and Flash not to work because of a bug in GDK. The testing is really just unacceptably bad.

]]> By: mike http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-23468 mike Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:34:57 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-23468 Thanks for the tip -- installing the (non-Open) NX server instead of trying to use FreeNX solved my problem with a black screen. I feel you still haven't got the point that Torsten was making. Torsten works on Marble. He may not (or maybe he is?) working for Novell or part of the downstream openSUSE team that consumes Marble (and myriad other apps). If Torsten stopped working on these products because they have "good" alternatives (for certain values of "good"), that doesn't free him up to work on the usability issue you have with installing non-Open display drivers! For that matter, as you discovered, there is a non-Open driver for Nvidia cards, but Novell can't distribute it with openSUSE because Nvidia's license doesn't let them. I think Novel do sell SLES (for money) which includes the non-Open driver from Nvidia, by the way... Another gripe I have: if you applied these standards to Microsoft Windows, it too would be "not ready" (ever tried installing Windows on a clean OEM machine? Did you have issues with the default apps selected? What about the drivers? Any other gotchas that your mother should be able to figure out if Windows was ready? And you had to pay good money for that? Hmm) . A lot of people looking at Linux actually do feel that Windows is "not ready" -- that's why they look at alternatives. I don't know. I feel this discussion on Linux being not ready for the masses is old and just FUD. Maybe we should all just get a Mac? Is that ready ? Thanks for the tip — installing the (non-Open) NX server instead of trying to use FreeNX solved my problem with a black screen.

I feel you still haven’t got the point that Torsten was making. Torsten works on Marble. He may not (or maybe he is?) working for Novell or part of the downstream openSUSE team that consumes Marble (and myriad other apps). If Torsten stopped working on these products because they have “good” alternatives (for certain values of “good”), that doesn’t free him up to work on the usability issue you have with installing non-Open display drivers! For that matter, as you discovered, there is a non-Open driver for Nvidia cards, but Novell can’t distribute it with openSUSE because Nvidia’s license doesn’t let them. I think Novel do sell SLES (for money) which includes the non-Open driver from Nvidia, by the way…

Another gripe I have: if you applied these standards to Microsoft Windows, it too would be “not ready” (ever tried installing Windows on a clean OEM machine? Did you have issues with the default apps selected? What about the drivers? Any other gotchas that your mother should be able to figure out if Windows was ready? And you had to pay good money for that? Hmm) . A lot of people looking at Linux actually do feel that Windows is “not ready” — that’s why they look at alternatives.

I don’t know. I feel this discussion on Linux being not ready for the masses is old and just FUD. Maybe we should all just get a Mac? Is that ready ?

]]> By: Ben http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-22792 Ben Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:50:36 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-22792 Hey Torsten, Thanks for sharing the other point of view here. I'm sure it's frustrating for you to read my comments because you've undoubtedly put a ton of effort into Marble. And I completely agree that competition is great and makes products better. My personal point of view is still that it would be better for Linux users if efforts on products like Marble that currently have good alternatives went into solving basic usability issues with Linux. But of course most people working on these products are volunteers and get to choose what they want to work on and sometimes you just want to do what you enjoy instead of what others want. Best, Ben Hey Torsten,
Thanks for sharing the other point of view here. I’m sure it’s frustrating for you to read my comments because you’ve undoubtedly put a ton of effort into Marble. And I completely agree that competition is great and makes products better. My personal point of view is still that it would be better for Linux users if efforts on products like Marble that currently have good alternatives went into solving basic usability issues with Linux. But of course most people working on these products are volunteers and get to choose what they want to work on and sometimes you just want to do what you enjoy instead of what others want.

Best,
Ben

]]> By: Torsten Rahn http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-22781 Torsten Rahn Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:30:38 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-22781 Hi, The problem you have is that you obviously do not understand how software development work. And you don't understand how Free Software works.:-) That's all ok and to be honest with that in mind I can feel with you. I'm the original author who founded the Marble project and who has worked a lot on it. So let me give you a few answers on your rambling, ok? :-) > It’s incredibly frustrating to me to see so many resources go > into this software that few people care about. I don’t need > Marble when the far superior Google Earth is available on Linux. Well, you might feel that Google Earth is far superior. And for many use cases you are certainly right. But Google Earth has been developed since almost 10-15 years already (it was built by a company called "Keyhole" before they bought it). Marble is a lot younger. But development on Marble is taking place a lot faster than development on Google Earth. Why? Because everybody (even you!) can join the project and improve Marble. Because it's Free Software. Now what you are trying to tell us is that we stop working on all inferior projects and everybody starts to work on the same single "best" application. For Google Earth this would not work: I can not participate in Google Earth development since it's proprietary software where the source code is not available. But let's just have a look at Firefox: So if everybody worked on Firefox would that make things better? Probably not. It's like suggesting that all people should work on cooking the same meal so that it tastes better. That unfortunately doesn't work. Otherwise you could put 1000 people on cooking a great soup or burger and it would taste absolutely awesome! But if you have several different groups of people cooking different meals then at one point some people will find a recipe that might taste suprisingly good. The problem with projects like Firefox and OpenOffice for example is the fact that the code is huge. And it's not huge because they maybe are better in some ways than other software. But because the code base is a mess from a programmer's point of view. Tidying it up would cost a lot more time than creating something fresh and new. So that's why for example Safari and Google's Chrome are not built on Firefox. Instead they are based on KDE's browser (which is fresh and new). The source code of this browser is a lot cleaner smaller and easier to maintain. And therefore it's currently highly popular among programmers. So ok, there might be a few projects that have a lot of promise for a future that may be bright. Why does openSUSE ship those instead of waiting until they are mature enough? For Google Earth it's pretty clear: openSUSE can't ship Google Earth since the license of Google Earth doesn't allow to ship it as part of a distribution. So they offer an alternative for people who are not smart enough to install Google Earth. That's ok and won't hurt as long as there aren't too many alternatives which would be irritating indeed. Also openSUSE has an interest to promote promising Free Software projects: Only if the "alternatives" get some publicity then they will grow and become mature. The Linux kernel itself was once immature and these days it has grown into a very very mature piece of software. So I'm working on Marble because I think that Marble will become very successful once it has matured a bit more. That's maybe in 3 years or so from now. I estimate that by that time we can achieve to surpass Google Earth so that Marble will even appear superior to you. And of course there is another reason why I'm working on Marble: because working on it is fun! :-) Just like you are "wasting" your time on writing blogs. I'm sure you're enjoying writing blogs anyways. Have Fun, Torsten Hi,

The problem you have is that you obviously do not understand how software development work. And you don’t understand how Free Software works.:-)
That’s all ok and to be honest with that in mind I can feel with you.

I’m the original author who founded the Marble project and who has worked a lot on it.

So let me give you a few answers on your rambling, ok? :-)

> It’s incredibly frustrating to me to see so many resources go
> into this software that few people care about. I don’t need
> Marble when the far superior Google Earth is available on Linux.

Well, you might feel that Google Earth is far superior. And for many use cases you are certainly right.
But Google Earth has been developed since almost 10-15 years already (it was built by a company called “Keyhole” before they bought it). Marble is a lot younger. But development on Marble is taking place a lot faster than development on Google Earth. Why? Because everybody (even you!) can join the project and improve Marble. Because it’s Free Software.

Now what you are trying to tell us is that we stop working on all inferior projects and everybody starts to work on the same single “best” application. For Google Earth this would not work: I can not participate in Google Earth development since it’s proprietary software where the source code is not available.
But let’s just have a look at Firefox: So if everybody worked on Firefox would that make things better? Probably not. It’s like suggesting that all people should work on cooking the same meal so that it tastes better. That unfortunately doesn’t work. Otherwise you could put 1000 people on cooking a great soup or burger and it would taste absolutely awesome!

But if you have several different groups of people cooking different meals then at one point some people will find a recipe that might taste suprisingly good.

The problem with projects like Firefox and OpenOffice for example is the fact that the code is huge. And it’s not huge because they maybe are better in some ways than other software. But because the code base is a mess from a programmer’s point of view. Tidying it up would cost a lot more time than creating something fresh and new. So that’s why for example Safari and Google’s Chrome are not built on Firefox. Instead they are based on KDE’s browser (which is fresh and new). The source code of this browser is a lot cleaner smaller and easier to maintain. And therefore it’s currently highly popular among programmers.

So ok, there might be a few projects that have a lot of promise for a future that may be bright. Why does openSUSE ship those instead of waiting until they are mature enough?
For Google Earth it’s pretty clear: openSUSE can’t ship Google Earth since the license of Google Earth doesn’t allow to ship it as part of a distribution. So they offer an alternative for people who are not smart enough to install Google Earth. That’s ok and won’t hurt as long as there aren’t too many alternatives which would be irritating indeed.
Also openSUSE has an interest to promote promising Free Software projects: Only if the “alternatives” get some publicity then they will grow and become mature. The Linux kernel itself was once immature and these days it has grown into a very very mature piece of software.

So I’m working on Marble because I think that Marble will become very successful once it has matured a bit more. That’s maybe in 3 years or so from now. I estimate that by that time we can achieve to surpass Google Earth so that Marble will even appear superior to you.
And of course there is another reason why I’m working on Marble: because working on it is fun! :-) Just like you are “wasting” your time on writing blogs. I’m sure you’re enjoying writing blogs anyways.

Have Fun,
Torsten

]]> By: vannus http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-20994 vannus Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:48:19 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-20994 i find Kaffeine WAY better than VLC. vlc simply never ran for me. just got black screen. whereas kaffeine quite happily played digital tv, timeshifting, recordings, etc. i agree with you on flash video - tried watching bbc iplayer and mock the week lagged so bad it was more like a radio. thats after turning off ipv6. i find Kaffeine WAY better than VLC.
vlc simply never ran for me. just got black screen.
whereas kaffeine quite happily played digital tv, timeshifting, recordings, etc.

i agree with you on flash video – tried watching bbc iplayer and mock the week lagged so bad it was more like a radio. thats after turning off ipv6.

]]> By: Ramin Bourne http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-17896 Ramin Bourne Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:32:37 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-17896 This was the BEST and most honest review. Thank YOU! Now, if you go to SuSE forum, you see tons of complains .... like problems with Fonts .... & of course a few hundred replies like: what problem?!! They look great on my rig out of the box!!!!!! And the OP feels like crap! This was the BEST and most honest review. Thank YOU!

Now, if you go to SuSE forum, you see tons of complains …. like problems with Fonts …. & of course a few hundred replies like: what problem?!! They look great on my rig out of the box!!!!!!

And the OP feels like crap!

]]> By: David Mann http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/opensuse-11-2-setup-and-review/comment-page-1/#comment-17754 David Mann Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:59:16 +0000 http://www.benmccann.com/dev-blog/?p=222#comment-17754 I agree completely with your opensuse review. I have had similar difficulties with my installation, particularly with regard to Amarok and Kaffeine. Installing DVD decoding and MP3 playback broke Amarok, uninstalling breaks Kaffeine, and no combination of RPMs from different sources (i.e. Novell vs Packman repositories) seems to fix both. You might also mention the poor printer support. I have an HP 2600n printer and the supplied drivers don't work. I have to compile a driver and even with that there is no color printing. This printer is several years old. I had similar problems with installing the Nvidia drivers -- can't the system detect these and at least inform you that you should install the drivers? I commented on some of these problems in my own blog: http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=161and http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=155 I agree completely with your opensuse review. I have had similar difficulties with my installation, particularly with regard to Amarok and Kaffeine. Installing DVD decoding and MP3 playback broke Amarok, uninstalling breaks Kaffeine, and no combination of RPMs from different sources (i.e. Novell vs Packman repositories) seems to fix both. You might also mention the poor printer support. I have an HP 2600n printer and the supplied drivers don’t work. I have to compile a driver and even with that there is no color printing. This printer is several years old. I had similar problems with installing the Nvidia drivers — can’t the system detect these and at least inform you that you should install the drivers?

I commented on some of these problems in my own blog: http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=161and
http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=155

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