First Look at SUSE Linux 10.0

The users and fans of SUSE Linux had a reason to rejoice earlier this week. After almost a decade of being developed behind closed doors, their favorite distribution has finally opened up to outside participation - in the form of openSUSE. You'll find more about this on the Front page of this edition. Now let's take a look at the first openSUSE beta.

Early reports indicate that the result of the openSUSE development will be known as "SUSE Linux". It will be available as a free download immediately after the release, in a fashion similar to Fedora Core. However, a retail product will also be provided; this will be labeled as "SUSE Linux Pro" and, together with the printed documentation, it will include the usual non-free and commercial applications that many SUSE customers have come to expect with their boxed sets. Also, Novell is reportedly planning to give away a large number of SUSE CD/DVD sets during various conferences, user group meetings and other IT gatherings. It seems that some of the ideas behind the openSUSE initiative were borrowed from the highly successful Ubuntu project which has already created a large user and developer base despite its comparatively young age.

The first beta of SUSE Linux 10.0 for was released earlier this week. There are editions for the i386 and x86_64 architectures, both of which come in the form of four 700 MB ISO images. Additional packages are made available via FTP/HTTP on the project's main server and its mirrors. Besides the "SL-10.0-OSS-beta1" directory there is also a directory called "SL-OSS-current" which looks like a placeholder for the current development tree. At the time of writing this is just a symbolic link to the beta1 directory, but it is possible that it will eventually become a development repository of SUSE packages, similar to Red Hat's "rawhide", Mandriva's "cooker" or Debian's "sid", with daily updates.

We spent an afternoon investigating the first beta of SUSE Linux 10.0. Compared to SUSE 9.3, the installation program has been subjected to some visible changes, mostly cosmetic, but some of them indicate the direction this novice-friendly SUSE is likely to take in the future. As an example, in the desktop selection dialog users can select either GNOME or KDE, but not both, unless they opt for the advanced packages selection utility. This is in line with the installer in Novell Linux Desktop 9. The package installation step is now hidden from view, replaced by a slide show introducing SUSE Linux to users, and a vertical progress bar. The background of the GRUB boot screen is a breathtaking image of the Prague castle, while the desktop wallpaper in KDE is a detailed close-up photo of a magnificent gecko lizard. Users log in through a beautified KDM dialog. Many of these changes are clearly designed to entice novice Linux users with some eye candy, while hiding the more technical stuff behind "advanced" dialogs and tabs.

The first beta of SUSE 10.0 comes with kernel 2.6.13-rc5, X.Org 6.8.2, GCC 4.0.1, KDE 3.4.2 and a current development release of GNOME 2.11. The first impressions by users on various forums indicate that the release is fairly stable, especially the KDE desktop, but GNOME is considerably less polished (which is probably not SUSE's fault). Our experiences were similar - even as the first beta it is a lot more usable than the first test release of Fedora Core 4. Java packages, and everything that requires them, including OpenOffice.org, are not available on the CDs, but can be installed separately. The YaST Control Center has also undergone some cosmetic changes.

According to the roadmap, the first beta of SUSE 10.0 will be followed by three more beta releases and one release candidate, roughly in weekly intervals. The final release is scheduled for the middle of September. At first glance, the stated goal of "beginner-friendliness" is still some distance away, especially when comparing this release to the latest versions of Xandros Desktop or Linspire, so it will be interesting to watch the development process to see what new ideas the Novell management and SUSE development team come up with. Given the limited amount of time available to complete the process, don't expect many exciting new features. SUSE Linux 10.0 seems like a test run to establish good communication and bug reporting resources between the developers and testers, rather than a break-through release with universal appeal.

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