Suse 9.3 and Ubuntu ??

[Andy Choens]

On Sun, 2005-04-10 at 04:54 +0200, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> I just came accross a review of Suse 9.3.
> 

Yeah, I thought about buying 9.3 and updating my boxes from 9.2, but
then I decided not to.  I installed Ubuntu instead.  Since I've been
bouncing around with SUSE for a long time, I thought I would respond.

> Apparently it's due this month like Hoary, and comes with the very
> latest OOo2, gnome and KDE, like Ubuntu. Also, the screenshot of Gnome
> looks very clean, like Ubuntu. 
> 

Is there anyone out there making a cluttered gnome install?  That would
be difficult I think.


> Now I am not a Suse expert, but I looked at it since  9.0, and it seemd
> to me that they always were lacking behing, like Mandrake (one release
> behind Ubuntu for Gnome ie), and that they were KDE centric and gnome
> looked ugly in both of them.
> 

Gnome wasn't necessarily ugly, but it wasn't tweaked.  Gnome never got
the attention from SUSE that KDE did.



> Now when I read this Suse 9.3 review, I am shocked, it looks to me as if
> Novell realised how successful Ubuntu is, and decided do exactly the
> same thing (last Gnome/KDE and polished Gnome). 
> 

Ummmm, no.  Novell bought Ximian.  That's what 9.3 has such a nice
polished GNOME desktop.  I hear that the boys over @ Ximian know a thing
or two about gnome.....



> Now with Novell having obviously fortunes to spend to develop it,
> compared to a handful of hard working Ubuntu guys, could it be that Suse
> would improve faster than Ubuntu, and that we will soon lagging behind
> next year ?

Hardly.  Everything they are producing is open source.  Ubuntu will
benefit just as much as SUSE, Red Hat, etc.  I'm sure Ubuntu may even
come up with an idea that SUSE adopts.  For example, having an
application send hardware info to the developers with a place for users
to comment is a really good idea.  I like this feature a lot.  

That's the beauty of OSS.  We all win.  The differences between distros
come about as a result of packaging, software choices, bug testing, and
support offerings.  From what I can see so far Ubuntu has done a great
job with everything except the support.  I won't comment on how their
corporate support is since I haven't used it.  Novell can throw more
man-power at things, and they have more offices, phone lines etc.  So,
one might be able to argue that they have "more" support than Ubuntu can
provide.  But, the market will make that decision, not us sillies on a
mailing list.


> "I" feel ripped off again. M$ stole our logo, and now Suse decide to
> copy Ubuntu ! Not fair.
> 

Stole the logo?  Who's logo?  I'm lost here.

I wouldn't want to tell Nat Friedman he's copying Ubuntu.  Uu seems like
a really nice distro so far but I wouldn't accuse the Ximian guys of
copying it.  Let's see, they wrote the MTA I'm using..........



> Thank GOd, I think Ubuntu still has the lead, since it's free unlike
> Suse and Mandrake who both charge around 100USD/Euros or so. 

For some uses Ubuntu could be said to "be in the lead" but in many ways
SUSE is way ahead, and is likely to stay there.  I don't see any config
tools here with the power of YAST.  I actually appreciate this, because
I want to really learn the nuts and bolts of it all without the GUI, but
for many installations, YAST is awfully hard to beat.  Their hardware
detection is equal to Ubuntu's and their installer is much nicer to look
at.  Ubuntu's is extremely functional, and got the job done, but might
not go over with some people.

On the other hand, Ubuntu is a MUCH smaller download.

Ubuntu took a lot of tweaking to really make it useable.  SUSE includes
things like the new Real Player, flash, etc.  Ubuntu had to have all of
this installed and set-up.  In the install and run department SUSE wins
if you have to interact in an environment where other people run
windows.  But, Ubuntu is more of a pure OSS distribution.

I also like the lay-out Uu adopted with their gnome-panel.  It really
organizes things better than anything I've used before....but this is
something that others can easily do too.

Who's to say who "wins?"  Remember, this is open source.



> And both
> (?) use RPMs (Suse doesn't use DEB's does it ?), and after using
> Mandrake, I soooo much prefer the joys of Deb packages ans
> synaptic/apt-get.
> 

SUSE is in based on rpm.  Mandrake has their tool urpmi.  I've never
used it but as I understand it's the same idea as apt.

YAST's tools are definitely inferior in this regard.  SUSE puts so much
time into their DVD releases (which do have a ton of software on them)
that they don't really support the idea of repositories as easily.  It
is possible, but it's not real obvious how to set it up and many people
never do.  Thus, someone ported apt to SUSE and many use this.  I don't
know if apt with rpms is really any less effective than with debs.  I
haven't learned enough about the debs yet.


peace
--andy