Preface

First I should state, that it's possible the serious issues I ran into were solely a hardware failure issue, and to OpenSuse's credit, it TOLD me there was a hardware failure occuring. While Ubuntu went blithely along in ignorance that the system was falling apart and losing data without telling me, OpenSuse was "in my face" telling me.

I have a Dell technician coming tonight (hopefully, see my posting "Dude, You're Getting (Support) Hell".

Ordering and Delivery (poor)

So, backing up. As usual, I pre-ordered the OpenSuse 11.0 Retail DVD via the website. First of all, it was not straight forward finding the pre-order option, the site kept sending me to the 10.3 or Enterprise purchases, and as usual, Novell has outsourced the delivery processing (apparently) to Digital River, and they once again were EXTREMELY late in actually getting the product to me (weeks). With the exception of one Suse releast, this has been the case with them every single time. Novell REALLY needs to crack the whip on their distribution channel.

When it did finally arrive, I noticed the user manual was significantly smaller than previous issues. That's a none-issue for me, but since I usually recommend Suse to newbies, and one of the selling points is the printed manual (and lots of newbies REALLY LIKE THAT), I think they should be careful to not become like "everyone else" and dispense with the manual. There are many users out there, mostly non-techies, but willing to do a little work for themselves if it is spelled out in black and white and IN PAPER, so hopefully, in trying to get more users into the Linux fold (whatever the distro), Novell won't drop or make so anemic as to be useless the printed book that is included. I know paper (and shipping books) is getting more and more expensive of course, but just something to keep in mind as an appreciated feature that I am not aware of many (any?) other distros offering.

Hardware Information - Dell m1330n

Installation (easy and slick)

Default Install vs. My Preferred (Super) Power User Install (Definitely not for everyone)

Out-of-the-box Hardware Support (perfect, suprisingly even better than the Dell ubuntu distro!)

DVD and Multimedia Playback. (fail - legal compliance continues this Achiles' Heel/Hell)

Crypt Partition, Performance, and Issues. (significant improvement)

S.M.A.R.T.! (OpenSuse intelligently includes and pro-active, Ubuntu, clueless and passive even after manual install)

Bad Blocks

Lack of SMARTs in Ubuntu.

KDE 4, Gnome, KDE 3.5 (Totally a matter of taste/preference).

Eye Candy (easy, but be careful)

Base (Safe) repositories vs. "other repos" (more is NOT always better)

 "Young" and "Basic" Users vs. Experienced Users, Power/Super-Power Users & Business/Corporate Users/Admins

Summary