Hooray for OpenSuse?
I’m typing this from my Dell M1210 laptop after finally installing OpenSuse 10.2 on it. Not everything works (the webcam may need a little work) but the things that really ought to work out of the box do
- Wireless (WPA-PSK)
- Flash (with sound)
- DNS resolving at full speed thanks to the installer option to disable IPV6
- Fonts available out of the box
There were however a few downsides
- Installer couldn’t cope with the fact that Dell by default use all four partitions and the fifth extended one and suggested deleting everything and starting again
- Despite adding Internet sources during the installation the main, non oss and update repos had to be added manually using Yast after the install was complete
Seemingly we’re getting very close to a desktop Linux, freely* available on the Internet for download that can be installed on a consumer laptop without too much hassle. If we imagine the user wants to wipe all their partitions and not be able to download updates that is…
In all seriousness though, the amount of extra configuration really isn’t anymore onerous than after installing XP (and in terms of downloading updates, is actually easier because constant rebooting is not required). Yes I’ll have to install Nvidia’s drivers to get 3D support, but I’d have to do that on Windows too. It feels slick on the Core 2 Duo and practically everything works.
Maybe when 10.3 is released eh? 
*And by freely I mean with mostly everything working out of the box whether or not you’ve had to agree to a tiresome EULA or similar that you didn’t read anyway. (Naughty I know).
Rowan :: Apr.13.2007 :: Linux, Operating Systems :: No Comments »