openSUSE 11.1

I’ve been using Linux for about 2 years and all I had used properly was Ubuntu.A few months ago,I felt like I needed some change and wanted to try something new.This feeling was also motivated by a couple of buggy Ubuntu releases.Ankur suggested me to wait for openSUSE 11.1 which was scheduled to be released on 18th December 2008.After my Majors(in December),I decided to try out openSUSE 11.1.

So I started my quest to get an openSUSE CD/DVD.I checked out various tech-magazine DVDs but none of then had openSUSE11.1.I was not in the mood to download the CD so I decided to buy a DVD.This decision was also motivated by the huge repositories availiable on the DVD.Thus,I ordered a openSUSE 11.1 DVD from Linux Bazar.I got the DVD the very next morning but it turned out to be an openSUSE 11.0 DVD.I spoke to the Linux Bazar guys about this and they offered to send me a replacement DVD in a few days.They took 2 to 3 days to download the openSUSE 11.1 DVD.By the time I received the openSUSE 11.1 DVD I had just 2 days of my semester break left.

The installation was a bit slow as compared to Ubuntu but considering the number of packages the installer was installing,it was pretty fast.The openSUSE installer-YaST is very good and has a user friendly interface.YaST is also a system management application which is used by openSUSE as a Control Center.I decided to install openSUSE with GNOME as the desktop environment.The installation was hassle-free and I didn’t face any problems in installation.I installed all the essential stuff,media codecs etc and just got a feel of openSUSE before leaving for Bhopal.

openSUSE gives equal importance to GNOME and KDE.This is something that lacks in Ubuntu.Ubuntu variants in other desktop environments like Kubuntu and Xubuntu are just KDE or Xfce and nothing more than that.The GNOME version of openSUSE looks like KDE because it has a single panel and a menu that looks similar to the KDE4 menu.openSUSE has given me an opportunity to use rpm package manager.Using openSUSE 11.1 has been a good experience so far.Somehow it gives me a better feel of Linux.I would therefore say that it is not suitable for absolute noobs.People who know their way around Ubuntu should definitely try out openSUSE 11.1 once.