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Moving from Debian To SuSE Linux and Back Again (OSNews)

[Posted June 9, 2004 by ris]

This OSNews article compares Debian with SuSE Linux. "I switched from Windows to Linux about 4 years ago when I finally found a distribution that didn't annoy me, Debian. It required a bit of manual tweaking but I always found that the important things "Just worked". Well after 3 years of just working, I finally rode my installation into the ground through a combination of kernel upgrades and running a diverse mix of packages from the "unstable", "testing", and even "experimental" branches of Debian. It got to the point where KDE would boot unbearably slowly, applications would fail to start, and my mouse and keyboard would stop working if I didn't use them for a few minutes. After much fiddling I finally decided a reinstall would be the path of least resistance. Since I'd been hearing all these fantastic reviews for Suse 9.1 I thought I would give it a try; after all it sounded like this was finally a no-nonsense, "just works" distribution for the fabled average user."

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Unbalanced review...

Posted Jun 11, 2004 7:14 UTC (Fri) by apollock (subscriber, #14629) [Link]

I am a Debian zealot, but I have to say this review is a bit unbalanced.

He's comparing a mish-mash Debian install with a stable release of Suse. (I realise that Debian's release cycle compounds this problem somewhat). There's no mention of kernel versions or KDE versions or anything. I don't think he even switched back to a fresh Debian install afterwards. I wonder how he would have felt about Debian if he did?

Unbalanced review...

Posted Jun 11, 2004 21:49 UTC (Fri) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

Well, it's not like he liked SuSE 9.1. Starting even from the position he was in, you'll note that he still went back to his old Debian install in the end. He seemed to have nothing very positive to say about SuSE.

Moving from Debian To SuSE Linux and Back Again (OSNews)

Posted Jun 15, 2004 18:15 UTC (Tue) by petebull (subscriber, #7857) [Link]

I'm maybe a bit harsh, but a Debian user which doesn't come up with

$ yast --help
--------------------------------------------------------------
(...)
exceptional case for installing packages:
/sbin/yast OPTION <package>

OPTION:
-i, --install install rpm package

<package> can be a single short package name (e.g. gvim)
which will be installed with dependency checking, or the full
path to an rpm package (e.g /tmp/gvim.rpm) which will be
installed without dependency checking
--------------------------------------------------------------

Sheesh. And the continued whining from distribution testers about the
unavailable codecs. Use free stuff. You're not even allowed to use the
Windows Media Codecs outside of a registered version of Microsoft
Windows, if I'm able to grok the licensing for that software.

Clicking on .rpm in Konqi and the above mentioned method of calling "yast
-i file.rpm" should be avoided at all costs, because NO dependency
checking will be done. You'll sure fry your system with that method.

And suse-linux@suse.com (german) or suse-linux-en@suse.com would probably
recommended installing mplayer from http://packman.links2linux.org/

I'm a very happy SuSE/Debian/Gentoo/RedHat user. Each distro has its
strength and weaknesses, and the report on osnews make me think of
someone who doesn't try very hard to solve his problems.

Peter