A Quick Look at SUSE Linux 10.0

I have to admit that I have never been a big fan of SUSE Linux. With the boxed sets not available in my part of the world, coupled with prohibitive international shipping costs in online stores, the only option for obtaining SUSE Linux, until recently, was to wait patiently for the distribution's RPM package tree to appear on its servers and perform a remote FTP install. This usually happened 2 - 3 months after the official product release, by which time other distributions might have released newer versions with more up-to-date packages and perhaps more exciting features.

After SUSE was acquired by Novell, things began to change. Version 9.1 was the first SUSE Linux release that was made available in the form of a downloadable single-CD ISO image - an equivalent of SUSE's "Personal" edition. Novell became even more generous with the next two releases as both versions 9.2 and 9.3 appeared on its servers as five CD images and one DVD image, which effectively represented SUSE's Professional edition without the commercial applications and support. Finally, in August 2005, Novell opened SUSE Linux to public participation in its beta testing program and the ISO images of SUSE Linux 10.0 were released for free download as soon as the boxed products were ready to ship.

For many Linux hobbyists and enthusiasts, participating in a distribution's beta program, reporting bugs, and exchanging information with the developers on a mailing list is one of the key reasons for choosing a distribution. Excited by the prospect of joining the testing process, I rushed to download the first beta of SUSE 10.0 as soon as it was announced, updating it after each new beta and release candidate. The newly created openSUSE mailing lists quickly gained a large number of subscribers as other SUSE enthusiasts discovered the joy of helping a project to fix the bugs and produce the best possible release. Overnight, SUSE Linux became an open project where the developers and testers were having "a lot of fun" building a great distribution.

Finally, the long awaited October 6th arrived and SUSE Linux 10.0 final was released to public mirrors. The resulting rush utterly surprised the SUSE release team which, until then, had little experience with making large files available for public download. The main SUSE server, which also hosted BitTorrent files, was virtually inaccessible for several days, preventing legitimate mirrors from synchronizing with the main server in order to take some of the load away.

There was also some confusion over all the different editions of SUSE Linux 10.0. Although both the "OSS" and "GM" (GoldMaster) editions are free to download, the "OSS" edition contains Free Software only, while the "GM" edition includes some freely distributable but proprietary applications, such as Acrobat Reader or RealPlayer. Furthermore, the retail edition ships with additional commercial applications, as well as a printed manual and installation support. A 1 GB "LiveDVD" edition, also available for free download, is meant for those who wish to evaluate the product or test hardware compatibility. The "OSS" edition (distributed as five CD images) supports x86, x86_64 and PowerPC architectures, while the "GM" edition (distributed as five CD images or one DVD image) only supports the x86 and x86_64 processors.

SUSE Linux 10.0 is not a revolutionary release. Instead, it seems like a transitional product from a closed-door SUSE to an open project similar to Fedora Core. As such, the initial release was probably a testing ground for all the new bug reporting and information exchange infrastructure. That said, SUSE 10.0 does ship the latest versions of most applications; in fact, the GNOME 2.12 packages were included in SUSE just one day before the final release candidate went public - this might give us an indication of how cutting edge SUSE 10.0 really is. Several new applications, such as the amaroK media player, Krita vector drawing program, Mozilla Sunbird calendar application, and Novell iFolder file synchronization tool were also added. The new SUSE now ships with AppArmor Lite (included as a YaST module) - an answer to Red Hat's SELinux functionality and a piece of technology Novell acquired earlier this year from Immunix.

Early reviews of SUSE 10.0 indicate general satisfaction with the product. The installer is slightly simplified to hide some of the "expert" options while the latest version of the KDE desktop looks better than ever. Some issues remain, however. Multimedia playback of many popular audio and video formats is not included, so further downloads and tweaking are required to set these up. Some users have also complained about the lack of integration of PDF and other plugins into Firefox. The distribution also contains newer versions of the Beagle desktop search engine and Xen virtualization technology, but because they are not considered mature enough, they are not part of the default install. Wireless networking also remains a problem area for many users. And the ever-present complaint about the sluggishness of YaST is still valid - although well-designed and very useful, especially for Linux newcomers, the time it takes to complete certain tasks can test your patience, even on a reasonably powerful computer.

With SUSE 10.0 behind us, openSUSE's true direction should manifest itself more clearly in the next release - version 10.1, scheduled for early March 2006. It will go through the full cycle of four alpha (the second of which is expected this week, complete with the latest beta of KDE 3.5) and four beta releases, before one last release candidate. This is where the openSUSE project is likely to start fulfilling its promise to build a product that can be deployed and enjoyed by any computer user, not just the venerable "Linux enthusiast". From this perspective, SUSE 10.0 represents little more than an open continuum of SUSE's 9.x releases. The upcoming SUSE 10.1, however, might be an altogether different product.

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