TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

SuSE and I have a long and generally pleasant history. I was one of those guys who would actually go to my local electronics store and purchase the new boxed version every six months or so.

At least, that was the story with SuSE up until version 10.3. At that point, things started to go decidedly downhill, and it hasn't been until relatively recently that I'm beginning to feel comfortable again.

Unfortunately, this release didn't help my already shaky resolve with openSuSE. Read on to see why.

Install:

The installer for 11.1 is not noticeably different from 11.0, but it's still pretty. I decided for the first install to go for KDE 4 as the default desktop. KDE 3.5 is no longer a first-tier option (though it's still available in "Other").

If I can count on one distribution doing their best to prop up KDE 4 into something less buggy and more usable, it's SuSE. The demo discs of each new version of KDE 4 are released running on openSuSE, so I figured I'd at least be getting their best effort.

Post install I played around on the desktop a bit and found a few small visual improvements. The add/remove/lock widgets icon that used to be in the top right corner of the screen is now on the far right of the bottom toolbar, for instance.

Unfortunately, the icons in the taskbar still don't scale properly and leave artifacts when the animations of surrounding icons change. They looked great in 1024x768, but when I changed to 1280x800 they were a pixelated mess.

Sound did not work out of the box. I was given an error message that I don't remember exactly. The basic idea of it was "Tried it, failed, reverting to default."

I searched for help with openSuSE and my soundcard (Intel HDA) and ended up using good old alsaconf and alsamixer to configure everything.

During this trial I also realized that my front multimedia keys did not work. Other random weirdness included a strange noise that would come out of my speakers when I hit certain key combinations. I suspect it was some sort of system bell notification, but it sounded more like a screech owl with hemorrhoids.

KDE 4 still has no option for touchpad controls, so typing this rant (which caused my palm to occasionally brush the touchpad) resulted in some unpleasant side-affects.

It was so annoying in fact that I nixed my original intention of writing the rant inside of SuSE 11.1 and popped over to XP on a spare machine instead. You try typing a cohesive article when at random intervals whole strings of text are highlighted and deleted.

Installing my Nvidia drivers was much more work than it should have been. Unlike Ubuntu, SuSE 11.1 is incapable of auto-detecting the manufacturer of your video hardware and offering an official version of the driver from a repository.

I had to research it, and my only options were manual install (doable but annoying) or setting up a third-party repository from Nvidia (download.nvidia.com) and using that. I chose the latter. It broke my desktop resolution.

To clarify that statement: prior to installing proper video drivers I was able to select my laptop's native resolution (1280x800) from the KDE resize and rotate control panel. All was good.

After the update I was throttled back to 1024x768 and given no larger option in resize & rotate. I had drop to a console and manually add the resolution back into my xorg.conf.

The responsiveness of the desktop in KDE 4.1 is very sluggish. Something as simple as swapping to another virtual desktop should not take 5 seconds to think about. My laptop is hardly a clunker.

The right-click menu left much to be desired. When working with a ZIP archive I wanted the option to "Extract to here." No go. There was also no option to right-click and send a folder to an archive. These are small things that you don't realize you use every day until they're gone.

I've been informed via email that there is a package for this called "kde4-ExtractandCompress," though both the submitter and myself are at a loss as to why this isn't installed by default.

You might wonder if all of the above complaints are specific to KDE 4. I did, so just to make sure I performed a clean reinstall with the Gnome desktop to see if it made a difference.

All the complaints I had regarding my hardware (Nvidia card, sound) were still present, and although the visual presentation was solid there were new annoyances with this configuration.

The program menu is the same as the one I saw originally in SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, with tabs rather than proper menus. Selecting a menu opens a window with icons in it rather than a real "menu." I find myself having to make five or six steps to do something that would take one or two in a traditional hierarchical model.

Software Selection:

MP3 support was not included, which wasn't surprising. Firefox, OpenOffice, and GIMP were installed. Pidgin was not. The selection was standard for KDE-based distributions, with very little (if anything) that stood out.

Add/Remove software in the Gnome desktop install is complete trash. It's unusable. YaST's Software Management app is just as bad. The fact that there are two ways to install anything is a problem in and of itself, but I'd expect at least one of them to actually work.

Add/Remove would display multiple versions of the same program even when I attempted to filter it. The search facility came up with no results despite the fact that I saw the program I was looking for in the list on the right side. It took forever to reload its software list when I changed a filter setting.

I gave up and tried YaST software management, but the interface made no sense to me. I spent ten minutes just trying to find a simple "search" box and had no luck. Then for some reason unknown to me it kept asking for the install DVD when I attempted to install a package from an online repository. I rebooted and wiped it in disgust.

Conclusion:

The inclusion of KDE 4.1 is both a blessing and a curse. It's definitely pretty and gives some interesting visual updates to the aging Linux desktop, but it's still too buggy and missing basic features. Is it getting better? Definitely, but it's not there yet.

If KDE 4.1 represents the best the Linux desktop world has to offer, we all need a good hard slap in the face. We're reinventing Vista for Linux with KDE 4, and at this point in the game, the Vista Aeroglass interface is actually more stable. We should be ashamed.

I wish I could say the Gnome desktop cured all ills, but it doesn't. Software management didn't work at all, and that's the heart and soul of a distribution. Often the only way to meaningfully differentiate one distribution from another is to compare their packaging scheme. When something that fundamental fails, the resulting distribution is worthless. Bad show, Novell.