Distro#2 openSUSE 11.0

The second distro in this project is openSUSE 11.0. I burned the DVD for 32Bit PC, it also provides 64Bit PC and PowerPC as well. You can use DVD, LiveCD, or netinstall to install openSUSE. Beside FTP/HTTP downloading, Torrent is also available. The installation guide shows the good looking screen, I think that's the best I have seen in my experiences of five distro installs.

After booted up from DVD, I asked checking media at 1:46, I always do this if there is a option when I firstly install from a new burned disc. You don't want to wrongly blame a distro not working because there is a problem on the disc. It finished checking at 2:03, took almost 20 minutes.

After checked the disc, it directly loaded the installation system (YaST2). So, here we go! After accepted the terms, it started probing the hardwares. I used the Automatic Configuration and then chose GNOME 2.22. It also provides KDE 3.5/4.0, XFCE, Minimal X Window, and Minimal Server Selection (Text Mode) at this stage. As for partitioning, you can use LVM if you want. Next step is creating a normal user. In this screen, there is an checkbox says Use this password for system administrator, therefore I assumed that is like we have on Ubuntu and OSX. I didn't uncheck Automatic Login.

Now it gave an overview of installation before performing the installation. It gave the last warning about the harddisk is going to be formatted. It started installation around 2:20, and finished at 2:34. In the process, it shows a nice time meter about packages/size/time.

At 2:35, it brought up Automatic Configuration window. At this stage, you have to choose detecting or skipping a type of hardwares, one type by one type. After that, I saw a green background and lasted a while. Then an error message about GNOME Settings Daemon, but I sure that the installation is completed at 2:42.

Now, it's the time to do first-time updating, but I need to set up DSL, I suppose. I opened up the Control Center, and DSL is right there, the first icon. After I created a new provider, it asked installing a new package smpppd, and it can't access package database. So I clicked on Install Software, and hope I can installed that package from DVD. Again, I got same error. I also tried the options in YaST.

By the way, memory usage is 230 MB. I checked the disc, and found /media/SU1100.001/suse/i586/smpppd-1.59_SVN16-10.1.i586.rpm. I use rpm to install three RPMs

sudo rpm -i wvdial-1.60-31.1.i586.rpm smpppd-1.59_SVN16-10.1.i586.rpm wvstreams-4.4.1-32.1.i586.rpm

DSL configuration window seems to work now, the packages are getting installed from DVD. After rebooted (takes about 53 seconds to desktop completely), I have Internet connection. At 3:19, I finally can do the first-time update, it only took a minute for some packages. Then, update notifier said there are another packages need to be updated, so I did update. The weird thing just happened, for the administrative tasks, after I typed the root password, I got nothing. No error window, just nothing. After rebooted, still nothing, I broke openSUSE, nooo!

Since I have broken it, I am not going to do anything more, although I can still su in terminal. Time to conclude. The whole process till now, I saw few small errors. It's kind of buggy. They may be avoidable if I know more about openSUSE, or maybe not. It's easy to install, and easy to break something perhaps?. I didn't feel it's easy to use. This could be biased by my other experiences. The memory usage is low, which I like. Overall, I wouldn't use it.

Lastly, a screenshot,