Saturday, April 23, 2011
Anu
I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE GNOME & OpenSUSE KDE and I've chosen for OpenSUSE GNOME, I prefer OpenSUSE KDE but the current KDE 4.1 is in my opinion way too unstable for daily use.
Kubuntu is way too much neglected by Canonical and therefor stands no chance against the other three. It's way more unstable than OpenSUSE KDE, has less features and almostnothing seems to work in it... Especially Wireless internet.. I'm not even bothering checking out the newer releases of Kubuntu.
Ubuntu is a nice and simple OS and that's the main reason why it's so popular but in my opinion it's way too simple and there it has too few configuration options..
Most configurations still need to be done via the terminal if you want it to work correctly. And applications in Ubuntu work when they want to, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. God knows for what reason..
That's typical Linux behavior but Ubuntu has way too much of it. What I do like about Ubuntu was the GUI for proprietary driver, I have no idea how this works in OpenSUSE because I hadn't had to install any yet.
OpenSUSE KDE is a very nice OS but unfortunately KDE 4.1 is still too unstable for me to use it for daily use. I'm still waiting for the day I'll be able to use it. It looks nice, has great features and it's fun to work in. KDE has always been my first choice but the common crashes are way too annoying.
OpenSUSE GNOME is my favorite for now, more and more worked out-of-the-box compared to Ubuntu (see below for more info). Like Ubuntu it has a very nice look and is fun to work in. There are a lot of software packages available for OpenSUSE, perhaps not as many as for Ubuntu but still plenty. Dependencies are automatically installed every time, the 1-click install is a very nice feature.
Ubuntu problems I had right after a fresh installation:
-: Wireless didn't work out-of-the-box and the usual ndiswrapper had to be used to get it partially working, yes partially because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.. It worked out-of-the-box for a PHILIPS USB adapter for one of my sisters but recently it stopped working completely with our own PHILIPS router, though I think this may be caused by the router-: Screen resolution: man this was a pain to get it working as it should, after searching the web and Ubuntu forums I found a way to configure it (the terminal way) but it still didn't work 100%-: Keyboard numlock: this never worked for me in Ubuntu (last one I tried was 8.04), the numlock light was always on but the numeric keys weren't working so I had to press the numlock button twice every time I started the computer and logged in Ubuntu-: The UI oftenly stopped working for newly started applications so a system reboot was necessary every time it happened-: My two sisters seemed to have a lot of problems with DVD playback while it worked nicely for me in the past if I remember correctly
-: Network manager was one hell of a buggy application on one of my sisters computer so I had to install Wicd instead
OpenSUSE problems I had right after a fresh installation:
-: Wireless seemed to work much better than in Ubuntu, mostly it worked out-of-the-box but I still have the issue where the Wireless connection just won't work periodically after starting the computer but as mentioned in the Ubuntu part this may be caused by my router
-: Sound playback & configuration wasn't working very well at the beginning using PulseAudio. It was still buggy as hell when it was included in the 11.0 beta release
-: Music playback doesn't always work with OpenSUSE GNOME 11.0, I guess this is still because of the buggy Pulse Audio, media players used were Banshee & Songbird. And Banshee sometimes doesn't quit completely and prevents me from being able to start it again.
Summary of Ubuntu & OpenSUSE GNOME:
-: Sound: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 75%
-: Wireless: Ubuntu: 55%, OpenSUSE: 75%
-: Screen resolution: Ubuntu: 85%, OpenSUSE: 95%
-: Numlock on PC start: Ubuntu: 0%, OpenSUSE: 100%
-: Video playback: Ubuntu: 65%, OpenSUSE: 90%
-: Performance: Ubuntu: 95%, OpenSUSE: 90%
-: Software installation/removal: Ubuntu: 99%, OpenSUSE: 99%
-: OS configuration: Ubuntu: 60%, OpenSUSE: 95%
-: Look & Feel: Ubuntu: 100%, OpenSUSE: 100%
I started out with Fedora, tried Ubuntu after a while and switched to Ubuntu completely because I found Ubuntu to be more user-friendly. Then I tried OpenSUSE and it became my main and favorite Linux OS.
Thanks...
