Well, it's been a long run of installations, but here I am at the 6th (and so far the best) installation on this HP Pavilllion dv9000 (custom) loaded laptop (see the specs referenced in the first article leading up to this series:

http://www.techtalkhawke.com/Members/hawke/linux-distro-evaluations

So far, the previous 5 Linux distributions have all, in one way or another failed to pass this fairly straight forward test (again see the "rules of the game in the same first article posting).

Is OpenSuse 10.3 any better than Redhat Enterprise Linux / CentOS 5, 64 Studio Linux, Fedora 8 (test 2), Ubuntu 7.04, or Mandriva 2007.1?

Short answer: Yes.

Now for the longer answer....

I downloaded the i386 version of opensuse 10.3 rather than the x86_64 version in the interest of reducing complications and limitations in software packages. I've run the 64 bit of 10.2 for some time and became frustrated with those issues, so opted to try to avoid them this time around.

The OpenSuse site has completely overhauled their download page and offers easily accessible torrents in addition to direct and mirror downloads. I was able to max out my Internet connection using Torrent and downloaded brisquely (yay for BitTorrent once again).

I should note that when i originally performed this evaluation I was using Open Suse 10.3 RC1, but a few days later the full release came out and I had identical results.

As an aside, the only differences were that over my 1.5 Mbps DSL line it took 11 hours to download the DVD (averaging around 120 KBps) using Torrent but the full version over my cable line took only  2 hours (averaging around 750+ KBps) using direct download. As a tangent I found that my Qwest DSL line was Torrent friendly, and my Comcast Cable line was NOT Torrent friendly. But that is a discussion for a separate article....

Suse has added a Windows based auto-run installer option to their installation media. This means if you stick in the disc while running Windows, it will pop up an installation wizard straight from Windows that copies the necessary files to your hard drive, this is not the only distro to do this, but it was nice to Suse get on the ball with it to help more Windoze users interested in evaluating making a switch.

Unlike all the other linux distros, During the installation I was given a proper network configuration dialog with options for my wifi (some of the distros gave options but the process was very primitive or basic or not available until after the install was complete).
On the down side, unfortunately, like Fedora and Ubuntu, only WEP encryption was given as an option. At least the card and drivers worked properly.
This meant I had to skip the "add repositories during installation" default option that has now been added. This helps a lot if you have a working connection already, you will want to use it.

*** NOTE: The OpenSuse servers are starting to time out since the full release has been announced. I suspect this is from overload of installations. Just be patient and keep trying if you get a time out message trying to add one of those repositories.

Since the WEP was the only option for wifi I just bypassed any network options during the install (unlike some of the other distros it let me proceed with that). I hoped that network/wifi setup after install would work easily...

Suse also gave a lot more choice on preferred desktop manager. Where the other Distros pretty much lock you into one or the other, Gnome or KDE. OpenSuSE made it simple with a click of a radio button to pick one or the other, or even some of the more basic or text only options. Of course you also could install both/all and easily log in/out to another and change back and forth if you wanted.
Since part of what I love about Linux is choice, this was great for me, but I could see how a non-techie user might go "what the heck do I choose? What's the difference between Gnome and KDE?" So maybe a little verbiage describing some of the differences would be a good option during that dialog for Suse to add?

Another thing that OpenSUSE hands down did better than any of the other distros was software choices during installation.
It (probably thanks to the now very robustly developed YaST) gave the most flexible software packages installation options I've seen so far in any of the distributions.
The downside is that installing everything leads to a VERY bloated (Windows-like) system, but sometimes that's what folks want. Fortunately you can choose heavy or light, or just take the defaults as most non-techies would do.

A little new field that was added in 10.3 that I had not seen before was a field called "test keyboard layout". I was able to type whatever i wanted in it. I'm guessing this is to verify that you've picked the right locale/keymapping? But I'm really not sure.

Another tangent, the first time I installed, I had to go back and do it over, because the previous Mandriva installation caused an unexpected (though made sense in retrospect) sort of "cross pollination" of distros.
I booted with a Suse boot menu, but a Mandriva splash screen and kernel.
At first I did a double take, then noticed that many of the kernel modules didn't load.
This was all caused by the retro /boot partition I had forgotten to wipe (which was uneccessary in any other distro). I started the installation over from scratch and formatted the /boot this time around, and that solved that "oops" on my part.

Anyhow, the installation went very smoothly. I found the interface for installation for be nicely polished, but also allowing options for details, again more choice, but with reasonable "sane defaults" to keep from overwhelming newbies.

After the installation was complete, starting YaST and going to the "Network Devices" section, then "Network Card", it was a piece of cake to auto-detect and configure my Wifi card, and now WPA and other optinos were all available.

Suse 10.2 worked out of the box with this card too, but it was a buggy version of the ipw3945 driver, so it would start dropping packets under load until you manually updated the drivers and firmware from semi-source.
10.3 just works out of the box period. Yay! I can't tell you what a pita it was in the 10.2 and other distros previously.

Also the Suse folks have HUGELY fixed/improved the package management under YaST. It used to be dog-slow in 10.2, and unusuable in 10.1. Now in 10.3 it has a number of interface/usability improvements, and is much, much faster (finally!). This means I'm less likely to try to bolt on another package manager like SMART or others.

Since at this point OpenSuSE 10.3 passed the test, i continued to push the testing further in other areas such as Multimedia which is an area that non-commercial distros of Linux usually fall flat, including Suse, until you manually download and install package after package for DVD, mp3, mpeg, avi, flash, java, etc.

Out of the box (with a full downloaded DVD install, not even the retail box), I found pleasantly to my surprise that Flash and Java worked in both Konqueror and Firefox. Usually it was one or the other in 10.2. For flash I tested on both Youtube and Myspace. This has never worked out of the box for me before in both browsers. Another hurrah!

This time around, thanks to the much slicker package management during installation and post-installation. I had all the repositories already included, so it was easy to add packages for DVD/decss, mp3, and much more.
So after a little post-install package run.

For audio media, I had to change Amarok's default playback engine from Xine to gstreamer, but as soon as I did so, mp3, and Internet streaming worked out of the box as well. This was easy to do in Amarok's Preferences menu option. A simple "pull down" box listed the engine choices.

Everything for the basics of a non-techie, but media interested user was up and running.
The bugs in the Kontact suite were fixed, and so many other areas were integrated and running so much better.
It also seems that 10.3 is running noticeably faster and more stable (so far) than previous versions as well. Maybe less debug mode code now?

Also in 10.2 my HD DVDRW only worked with a kludgy work-around (Detailed on http://www.hawkes-haven.com) that was apparently plaguing all Linux distros. But somehow they have fixed it in 10.3 so that it detects the media correclty. I was able to start burning regular Cds and DVDs immediatley. I have not yet tried dual layer or RW burning yet. I also have not tried HD DVDs, since I have no reason to believe any of that is yet resolved in the Linux world sadly.

The internal microphone was a pain to get working with other distros and 10.2. It now works out of the box. Also the weird problem of when you plugged the headphones in (and they worked) but the external speakers kept running, in other distros and 10.2, is also now fixed.

I should note that my Verizon pci-express broadband card worked easily as well.
USB works fine including automounting of usb drives (there were some issues with this in 10.2 that appear now to be cleaned up out of the box).

There is a lot more I can do to make this a more complete evaluation now that the basics are all working "out of the box". I have not yet performed evaluations on some of the areas I mentioned before (DVD-DL-R, etc.), and other areas. Below is a list of areas I plan to check out and report back on in the near future:

• DVD-DL burning
• HD-DVD  playback (not holding my breath on that one)
• Built-in webcam
• Different memory cards in the multi-format mem card slot
• Firewire and DV-link
  
• Hibernate/Sleep (auto shutdown on low battery does work properly)
• Modem (never used, but should try it out for the purpose of a complete test)
• HDMI link
• external vid ports (worked fine in 10.2, but have not used yet in 10.3)
• 
  

I have pre-ordered the retail version of 10.3 since I have been so impressed with just the freely available downloadable DVD. I'm curious if there are any advantages (besides the user manual and 90 days tech support, and generally just supporting the Suse developers) to installing the "full" retail version.

I'll report back in separate articles as I have more.

Meanwhile, I've used VMware for years, but I'm going to try out the Xen Virtual Machine included with OpenSuse to see how it compares to VMWare (certainly a lot cheaper as in free). Once I learn how to use Xen, I'll perform further evals of other Linux distros from within the virtual machine setup. But so far I have not come across any other Linux distros that meet my techie, media, and especially hardware needs better than OpenSuse 10.3.  I've burned a dozen DVDs for friends and am hading them out to help me evaluate this on other people's systems. I'll report back in upcoming weeks to see if it holds up "out in the wild".

So the score for now is:

1. RHEL/CentOS 5 = FAIL
2. 64 Studio Linux = FAIL
3. Fedora 8 (test 2) = FAIL
4. Ubuntu 7.04 = FAIL
5. Mandriva Spring 2007.1 Free = FAIL
6. OpenSuse 10.3 = SUCCESS
   

You'll remember from the beginning of this series I left out Gentoo and OpenBSD and other more "techie" distros due to the nature of this eval for non-techies. I love Gentoo and OpenBSD, but I wouldn't recommend it for newbies.
I'll add more evals as I have time.

Ciao for now!
-Hawke