Taking openSUSE 11.4 for a spin

When I worked for Novell as the openSUSE community manager, I ran openSUSE more or less exclusively (modulo a few installs of Fedora and Ubuntu to see what other distros were up to). Since I left last year, I resumed distribution-hopping and haven't spent as much time with openSUSE. With some time away, I was looking forward to trying 11.4 and seeing what had changed. The answer? Not very much.

The openSUSE installation routine has changed very little since 11.0. In fact, very little specific to openSUSE as a distribution has changed since the last release or even 11.2. The 11.4 release carries plenty of software updates — KDE 4.6, GNOME 2.32.2.1, the 2.6.37 Linux kernel, Xfce 4.8, and so on — but very little in the way of improvements to distribution-specific features and tools. Consider, for instance, the improvements that have been made for the Ubuntu software Center or Linux Mint's menu in the last few releases — openSUSE has been fairly static. The Libzypp backend for YaST and Zypper package management has picked up a few tricks, WebYaST has matured from its status as a "technical preview" in 11.3, but openSUSE 11.4 really contains few major updates specific to the distribution itself.

That said, there's still plenty to like about openSUSE 11.4, especially for KDE users. If you want a smörgåsbord of desktops on one disk, look no further than the openSUSE 11.4 DVD. Users have the latest KDE, two GNOMEs, Xfce, and LXDE to choose from, along with a few assorted window managers as well.

The KDE 4.6 experience is well-polished, and carries the improvements that come with 4.6 like KDE's Activities, improvements in the Dolphin file manager, and so on. Given the eight month release cycle, it means that openSUSE has jumped two major KDE releases with 11.4 — the openSUSE 11.3 release shipped with KDE 4.4. Even with KDE as the default desktop and a strong affinity for the KDE Project, the openSUSE team picks and chooses its applications based on the best tool for the job rather than defaulting to KDE applications for all tasks. For example, the default browser for all desktops on openSUSE 11.4 is Firefox 4.0beta12 (which will update as it approaches release). The project chooses GIMP for photo editing, rather than Krita, and LibreOffice is the default office suite for GNOME and KDE, rather than KOffice. Speaking of LibreOffice, openSUSE is the first of the major distros to ship LibreOffice in a stable release. Not surprising, given that some of the folks behind LibreOffice are involved with openSUSE and/or SUSE Linux development.

Where KDE has made a significant leap forward in 11.4, the default GNOME desktop in openSUSE 11.4 has evolved very little since 11.3 or even 11.2. This is due in part to GNOME's focus on GNOME 3.0 and the eight month release cycle for openSUSE. Since the openSUSE folks are shipping GNOME stable, they're stuck with the 2.32 release from last September. It's still a usable desktop, but it's fairly calcified. Novell seems to have largely lost interest in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) business, or investing significant development in GNOME — and that's reflected in openSUSE 11.4. This is not to say that Novell is not investing in GNOME, but it seems the heyday of desktop innovation from Novell has passed.

Many of the openSUSE/Novell-driven packages in GNOME are showing signs of neglect as well. Take, for instance Evolution, the Slab menu, and Tasque. The Slab menu was driven by Novell and maintained for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), which doesn't seem to be a major focus for the company at this point. Assuming the openSUSE folks adopt GNOME Shell with the next release, the menu has probably reached its end of life. Tasque (a simple to-do manager) was a project started during one of the Novell hackweeks, and has mostly stagnated after an initial burst of activity. Evolution, since it is an upstream part of GNOME, is no longer Novell's responsibility alone — but from the planning pages for Evolution it appears that little in Evolution is being addressed until after GNOME 3.0.

GNOME 3.0 is not entirely absent from 11.4, however. The openSUSE 11.4 DVD (and repositories) have GNOME 3.0 packages that seem relatively current. When first installed, GNOME Shell on openSUSE 11.4 did not start properly — but an update seems to have fixed the problem and GNOME Shell and the GNOME 3.0 preview seem fairly solid at this point. I'm not entirely convinced yet that GNOME 3.0 is an improvement on 2.32, but it's there for users to try if they so desire. Those interested in GNOME 3 may also want to check out the Grumpy Editor's experience from this week's edition.

Packages and repositories

One thing that users may find off-putting about openSUSE is the number, or lack thereof, of packages available for the distribution and the lengths that one has to go to get some fairly popular packages. This is in part a real problem, and in part a problem of perception and education. If one knows where to look, it's often possible to find the software you want — but it involves a level of commitment.

One example is Dropbox. This is a relatively popular third-party package for many Linux users — but Dropbox only provides packages for Fedora and Ubuntu, not openSUSE. You can find Dropbox packages in the openSUSE Build Service (OBS), but it's going to require that a user know about the build service and where to look. It's not clear from running "Install/Remove Software" (which launches YaST's Software Manager) that you have options in OBS.

But Dropbox is a (partly) proprietary third-party application that openSUSE has little control over. A more glaring omission is the lack of some fairly popular free software tools, like Bluefish, OpenShot, and Snort. You'll also not find things like WordPress or Drupal packaged for openSUSE, whereas you'll find packages for those for Debian and Ubuntu. However, I don't fault the project for not focusing on LAMP-based projects that are not well-suited to installation and setup from packages.

This is compensated for by the openSUSE Build Service for some packages, and by the Packman project, which provides a number of packages for openSUSE that aren't in the "official" repositories. You'll find a number of packages in Packman, in particular multimedia packages that are not distributed with openSUSE due to legal concerns. You can find, say, Bluefish in the openSUSE Build Service, but it's less than clear which iteration of the package one should choose, as Bluefish is packaged in two different repositories and there's no way (shy of actually adding the repository and taking your chances) to determine which version is preferable.

In general openSUSE is not quite at par with other major distributions for package depth when installed. Users will probably need to do a bit more legwork and research to get the most out of openSUSE, which suits longtime SUSE fans just fine — but may not help its chances with users new to Linux.

Hardware support for openSUSE 11.4 is excellent, or at least it's excellent on the selection of hardware I tried it on. I tested openSUSE on two laptops and under VMware. The primary machine I used for testing is a ThinkPad X61 with 4GB of RAM. One of the things that I like about openSUSE is that the x86 release still has support for 4GB of RAM with a vanilla install — no need to install a different kernel to have support for 4GB or more on a 32-bit install. Running the 64-bit release is also an option, of course — but it's not unusual to get a 32-bit only DVD or CD from magazines that ship openSUSE as a free DVD.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

The release of openSUSE 11.4 marks the "official" introduction of Tumbleweed, the rolling release version of openSUSE, which we covered back in December when it was announced. openSUSE is not the first distribution to attempt a "rolling" release, of course, but it is the first major distribution to do so. The idea for Tumbleweed is to provide openSUSE users with the latest stable releases of software, rather than requiring users to wait for major openSUSE releases or ride the Factory (development) distribution.

It's early days for Tumbleweed, but if the first updates are any indication, it may be best for the openSUSE project to avoid steering new users towards Tumbleweed. Using Tumbleweed as directed by the openSUSE wiki requires manually adding the Tumbleweed repository and doing a distribution upgrade. This triggered several package conflicts on my system. The Zypper error messages are not particularly user friendly, though nothing catastrophic happened when I went ahead with the update and choose to keep the obsolete packages.

During the 11.4 release cycle, Project Evergreen has also taken off. Led by Wolfgang Rosenauer, Evergreen is an attempt to continue updates for openSUSE releases past their official 18-month lifecycle. Support for 11.1 ended in December, and Evergreen has provided updates for users since. Whether it will be around in 18 months for users of 11.4 to depend on is another question. Rosenauer says that the project has been able to keep up with all 11.1 updates since December, but "the project is not at the level I'd have liked it to be though. The reason is that if I cannot manage it anymore for whatever reason it'll most likely die since there are no other driving persons behind it yet." Despite that, Rosenauer says that 11.4 is "a good candidate for the next supported version and I'm planning towards it. I hope that more active people are joining in during the next months." Status for Evergreen is available on the openSUSE wiki.

Even though the openSUSE Project has never formally decided what it wants to be when it grows up, it would seem that it's settled into a role all the same. openSUSE is an experienced Linux user's distribution, with an interesting collection of tools (like OBS, SUSE Studio, and Tumbleweed) for well-informed users and developers. Though openSUSE is well-polished and very stable, it has enough rough edges that I would hesitate to recommend it to users who have no or very little prior Linux experience.

But developers and experienced Linux users should feel right at home on openSUSE. The project has focused on a lot of under-the-hood features, infrastructure, and developer tools. It also seems to have picked up a bit of steam and enthusiasm in the community over the last year. While Novell's attention has been largely focused on its pending acquisition by Attachmate, the existing openSUSE community seems to have been revitalized a bit. While Novell's fate was in limbo, openSUSE enthusiasts realized that openSUSE's continued existence — or at least its continued improvement — requires more than just making requests of Novell.

But the project is still, at least for the time being, largely dominated by Novell — though significantly less so than just a few years ago. It may become even more independent if, or when, the foundation comes to fruition. The foundation is still in discussion and most of the discussions seem to have tapered off in February — most likely the victim of pending release pressure. Those interested in the topic have an open invitation to contribute.

The next openSUSE release should come out in November of this year, though it's unclear right now what features are being targeted and whether it will be another minor update or a major jump from 11.4. Judging by the interest in 11.4, the project seems to be regaining some momentum and 2011 could be a very interesting year for openSUSE.