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May 14, 2006

Suse 10.1

If you weren't aware, Suse 10.1 was released this past week (May 11th, to be exact). It's an update from Suse 10.0 and has many new features that those who're running older versions of Suse may find very interesting.

I downloaded and installed Suse 10.1 over the weekend. I intially tried to download the software immediately after the release, but the mirrors were really non-existing at that point and downloading directly from the opensuse.org Web site was painfully slow. What's even more interesting is that the Torrent wasn't even moving along that fast. At one point, the fastest that I was seeing was just about 20kbps.

That's painfully slow.

So this weekend there were enough mirrors and the like out there so that a person like myself could download the update with minimal issue. The only downside to getting the 10.1 update at this point is that you must download the 5 CD ISO images ... the DVD isn't ready until the 18th, nor is the "install from the Internet" option. Anyone that knows me well will understand my frustration with this: I'm a DVD user, and don't like to waste CDs.

I did happen to find a nifty little thing on the opensuse.org Web site that shows you how to combine your 5 CD ISO images into one DVD, however. I'm going to try this sometime later on in the week.

The Network Manager applet in all of its glory.

So, after my installation of Suse 10.1, I noticed several changes in the way that software works ... not to mention some new software additions altogether. I think my personal favorite at this point is the new Network Manager applet. In the past, the applet has been used more for providing information about your network connection. In 10.1, it plays more of an active roll, especially with setting up your wireless network connection. You have to enable this service, as it is disabled by default. During the setup process, you're given an option to enable it or if you skip past this part it can also be enabled later in the Network Card section of Network Devices in YaST.

Security options when setting up a wireless connection.

Speaking of YaST, Novell has done a great job of redesigning the main interface, removing alot of unused space and making it much more compact. Now, if they will continue this trend into the other components that make up YaST, I really do believe that they'll have a great software/hardware management product on their hands.

And, speaking of software management, there are already repos available on the net for use with Suse 10.1. What's even better is that the opensuse.org Web site has a list of several great repos that you can manually add into the Installation Source option of YaST. On the site, there is information about these repos and what they're designed to do for the end user. For example, some of the repos are designed for specific processors in mind (i.e. i686 or x86_64), others are designed to allow installation of non-oss software, such as MP3 players and Windows codecs.

Personally, I highly recommend installing the Packman source. You'll be glad you did. Additionally, I also install a source that's not listed on the opensuse.org site. The kernel.org Web site, which is where you can download the Linux kernel, also plays host to Linux operating systems, such as Suse 10.1. You can use the kernel.org site to replace the need to use CD's or DVD's on your machine. Here's the information:

protocol - HTTP
server name - mirrors.kernel.org
Directories - /opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-inst-source/
/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/

Use these two directories to provide 1) a CD/DVD replacement and 2) a non-oss installation directory. This is great for pulling down non-open source software. Here are some things that I recommend installing after you update your Installation Source in YaSt:

Mplayer (installs all kinds of video and audio codecs)
Flash (the Macromedia Flash player)
Acroread (the Adobe Acrobat reader)
Xine (installs the ability to play DVDs)

Regarding speed and Suse 10.1, I've found that this version of Suse is a lot more reponsive than the last. Gnome seems to be a lot quicker than in the 10.0 release. Applications, such as Firefox, seem to open very fast. Even the menu structure seems to zip along, where before it would sometimes hesitate to open.

The only downside that I've uncovered thus far is with the 3D drivers distributed by ATI. Not that this is a huge surprise, of course. While the latest Nvidia drivers seem to work with no problems, the ATI drivers that I downloaded and installed caused my X to go nuts. After about an hour working to recover everything that was changed, I was finally about to get back into my GUI. This is obviously not a good thing, but until ATI finally starts playing ball, this is going to be a common thing with updated Linux distributions.

Maybe it's time to switch back to Nvidia.

~out...

Update: I have managed to get the ATI drivers up and running, but not before almost taking down my system twice. It's a bit complicated, but with the help of a few web sites out there it wasn't too bad. The important thing to remember is that you need to read the README after installing the fglrx module. It will have you run a command against SAX2 and add a line to /etc/ld.so.conf and run ldconfig.

Xgl in action ... click for a larger image.

But, after the driver is installed properly, it's a breeze to get Xgl working properly. All you have to do is open the Software Manager in YaST, do a search for Xgl and compriz and install them. Once this is done, there will be an icon in the Gnome Control Panel where you can enable or disable the 3D desktop. The wobby windows, zooming, virtual cubed desktop and other nifty 3D effects are pretty darn neat ... not to mention the dropped shadows.

Posted by ed at May 14, 2006 04:28 PM

Comments

Posted by: Troy Overton at May 16, 2006 02:46 PM

Posted by: Troy Overton at May 22, 2006 03:41 PM

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