SLED 10 vs. openSUSE 10.2 RC1

By: Philip McCartney
November 25, 2006

Which distribution is the right choice for you?

As I mentioned earlier, I've worked with many distributions in the past, but I still keep coming back to SUSE. Why not Debian GNU/Linux or one of it's derivatives such as Ubuntu or MEPIS? Why not Red Hat, Fedora Core, Mandriva, or Linspire? And what about Slackware or Gentoo? These distributions all have their own strengths and weaknesses, but like I said, it's all based on personal preference. I have tried every distribution that I mentioned above, but no matter what I do, I still prefer to use SUSE as my Linux desktop.

So then, which SUSE? SLED or openSUSE?

To answer this question, I will provide you with my own view points. I have used each of these extensively, and I have to admit that I like both. However, I've come to the conclusion that I do prefer one over the other, but you will find out which one and why soon enough.

To get things started, I will first discuss SLED 10.

SLED 10 is a rock-solid distribution. Novell has done an outstanding job of implementing a lot of the features you would expect from a desktop Linux, but they've also included other features that you wouldn't find in any other distribution or for that matter, Windows. The installation is very straight-forward, and the fact that SLED was able to detect all the vital hardware within my system. Something I've had to struggle with in the past when testing other distributions.

I settled on SLED's default installation. That way I could have a fully functioning Linux system in a short period of time. The overall installation roughly took 30 - 45 minutes. It actually took more time than that, because I went through the installation several times. I wanted to see how a customized installation handled, and to see if there would be any issues. Needless to say, I didn't have any. The customized installation definitely took quite a bit longer, but that is beyond the scope of this review. In general, if you stick with a default installation, you can always go back and change things later.

With the dizzying array of software applications available online, SLED's offering is fair. Not nearly as many apps as you would find in a Debian-based distribution, but a substantial amount that provide all the necessary tools for your desktop arsenal. Although, there are ways to incorporate many of these apps into a SUSE distribution, I won't be discussing how that is accomplished here since that also goes beyond the scope of this review. For now, just know there are ways to add more applications if you find one that isn't included with your particular distribution.

Once everything is up and running, now is where you need to test-drive everything. After using KDE for the past several years, I've become accustomed to that particular interface because it's more familiar to me. However, the installation sets the GNOME desktop by default. Novell has added a few customizations to this powerful desktop environment. For starters, the "Start" menu dispays the six most recently used programs. There is also a new button labeled "More Applications..." that you can click on that will display a new window allowing you to select an application not currently visible. This has it's good points as well as it's bad ones. It takes some getting use to, but once you become familiar with the way it handles, as well as it's design, it doesn't take long before you're able to move around quickly within this new interface. Believe me, after working with KDE so many years, it was a lot of fun working with the new GNOME desktop.

Beagle, an integrated search engine for applications or documents or just about anything installed on your system works incredibly well. There have been tremendous improvements since I first tried it a couple years ago. My first time trying Beagle was not impressive to say the least. Today however, Beagle is definitely a powerful tool that users should be able to see the benefits it offers.

Another interesting feature that is included with SLED is the addition of Xgl. Xgl technology adds more eye-candy than anything. For intsance, if you have Xgl enabled in GNOME, by grabbing the title bar of any open window and moving it around the desktop, the window appears to move like a curtain attached to a curtain rod (the title bar being the curtain rod). Another effect that I not only thought was cool, but clever as well was the ability to change desktops by clicking one edge of the screen and dragging it across to the other side... creating the illusion of a rotating box. Each side of the box representing a fresh desktop. And when you get back to the fourth side, your original desktop, all applications you were working with are still in tact. This is great if you have applications running in the background, you can have them open in another dektop while you're working on something else. This is not something new in the Linux or *nix arena, but it is a new technology that makes switching desktops a little more interesting.

The one aspect I was not impressed with was the way updates are handled. Sometimes they worked, but most of the time they didn't. I was always getting errors that often forced me to go into YaST and individually hand-select each item to be updated. So obviously, there are a few areas that still need fine-tuning, but for the most part, this release is better than what I've seen when compared to other distributions.

I apologize for not including any screenshots, but I've recently converted my system back to openSUSE 10.2 RC1, which I'll be discussing next. Click on the link below to learn more.

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