This page contains brief notes about my experience so far with SuSE Linux 9.1, configured on December 18, 2004 and later upgraded to 9.2 in the hope that would fix some glitches and support my NVidea graphics card.

I decided to switch from Red Hat Linux to SuSE Linux after it was no longer possible to purchase a boxed version of Red Hat Professional.

I have since changed my mind. My SuSE 9.2 installation had a problem in X at one point which forced me to reboot. The system was unable to reboot. So I switched to RHSE release 4.

The remainder of this document serves purely as an historical record.

So far, I have mixed feelings about SuSE 9.1 mostly due to some GUI slowness in certain applications (Mozilla and XTerm of all things). If not for that slowness, which is an intermittent delay in obtaining focus when I attempt to select text or position the cursor with the mouse, I would be quite happy overall with SuSE 9.1 as both a server and Desktop machine. This review is minimal since I just began using the system about one week ago, but I have been using it many hours per day as a Desktop machine. Eventually, I will port my server to the machine and more fully configure it. After doing that I will write a more extensive review.

How I use Linux

I have used Linux as a server for ten years. Sometimes I use my server as a workstation. This is one of those times. My current plan is to configure SuSE as a server, then port oceanpark.com to my SuSE box. I will also use the SuSE box as a workstation for work.

Server applications I run include: Apache, Tomcat, Oracle, SSH, LDAP, DHCP, Samba, NFS, IMAP (via stunnel), MySQL, PostgreSQL, djbdns, a custom SMTP server programmed in CLISP, NNTP server, and some other custom applications.

Client applications I run include Mozilla (web and mail - will likely try Firefox since that is working well for me on Windows XP), SSH, emacs, vi, Open Office, myriad X clients of all kinds, and programming tools such as Perl, gcc, cvs, etc.

Positives

Mozilla + Totem worked out of the box so I could play music from http://di.fm.

The Bug report feature is impressive. One communicates directly with SuSE developers to report and evolve work on a bug.

YaST seems like a worthy alternative to the Red Hat Network thing. Overall, I was more impressed by the package GUI offered by YaST than I was by the package GUI offered by Red Hat.

Nice overall look, once I did some tweaking of fonts (see below)

Negatives:

One of the menu labels is 'Edutainment'. Do I really want to be using an OS whose marketing department thinks that 'Edutainment' is a word? Please SuSE team, move the set of programs under 'Edutainment' to be under 'Applications'.

Strange slownesses that remind me of problems I once had with KDE on Red Hat a couple years ago. The problem seems to occur mostly in Mozilla but that might just be since that is the application I tend to be using all of the time (for web and email). Downloads seem a bit slow and it sporadiacally gets into a state where the mouse and keyboard become unresponsive for several seconds. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Type some keys. Nothing. Finally, I get a response. If I am unable to resolve this problem, I will not be able to continue using SuSE Linux, so I assume I will find a fix to this. The problem also has occurred in XTerm, so it is probably some kind of driver or other X issue. And the network slowness is equally annoying. I will reserve judgement on that since network slowness is always hard to diagnose. All of these problems reminds me of things that happened years ago in Red Hat when I was trying to use KDE, back in the time when using Linux as a Desktop was an exercise in futility (two years ago). There was some absurd broken thing called Klipper that I had to get rid of back then -- perhaps that is the problem here. The problem 'feels like' some kind of basic system issue -- similar in feel to what the old broken Micrsoft 'Fast Find' cache would cause where it was trying to be clever and just making your life miserable. I'll report back once I figure this out.

NVidea card setup was a hassle. First, to enable acceleration (which I am not conviced really works yet when I see ghosting occur as I drag a window to move it across the screen), I had to FTP some instructions which told me to use YOU (YaST Online Update) to configure the card. Once I did that, I went through the usual steps of configuring my monitor (a Sony 20 inch TFT display) to 1600x1200 resolution, etc. When I finally clicked on 'Apply' the next thing I saw was a screen with a bunch of vertical lines and even Ctl-Alt-Backspace was unable to get me out of that state. Fortunately, the problem just 'went away' when I exited the system and rebooted. So this is not a critical issue, just a glitch.

Fonts are good, but not great. Compared to Red Hat Blue Curve, I find that there is less consistency across applications. I had to experiment to make Mozilla use fonts that were not absurdly large and not Ariel, for crying out loud. Perhaps the KDE folks are too stuck on Konquerer to bother setting up some good fonts for Mozilla? Or are the fonts that come with SuSE simply not as nice as what come with Red Hat? I don't know and I don't want to have to know. Stuff like this needs to be fixed to work out of the box so that Linux can compete with Microsoft at the level of aesthetics. So far, the verdict is: NOT YET.

Most likely I will setup SuSE 9.2 before I have a chance to enhance this review. Once I have SuSE 9.2 set up and my server ported to it, I will prepare a new review of 9.2. Of course, if I am unable to resolve the mouse and keyboard and network sluggishness issues, I will be going back to Red Hat.

-end-