# OpenSUSE versus Ubuntu



## lucasbytegenius

Alright, so a friend of mine noticed I was using Ubuntu 10.10 off of my flash drive on a laptop I borrowed, and we got to talking about Linux in general and the blasted strictness of the open source community and other things, and then out of the blue he said, "Try OpenSUSE". Well, I went to the download page, got the torrent, and decided to download the heavy 4.7 GB file later as I was on a 3.8 GB flash drive with Ubuntu and a 2 GB persistence file.
So I forgot about that little torrent, went on in life for a few months, played with Ubuntu, got it set up to do almost everything I needed my Windows installation to do, and then the other day I ran across that torrent while cleaning my files partition. So, I went and downloaded it in sequential trips to the library with my portable hard drive, and two days ago it completed.
I brought it home, excited, but not too excited, as I had raised my hopes up too high before with other distributions, booted up Ubuntu, made a virtual machine for OpenSUSE, and installed it inside. 
The installation process was amazingly intuitive despite the advanced options for power users, and I was thrilled when it completed.
I used to like KDE, but then lately I hated it, mostly due to the fact that Kubuntu left a poor impression about it, and the light colors hurt my eyes.
When I entered the desktop environment, I was a new person. The green contrasted beautifully, and giving it a fleeting glance I proceeded directly to the user menu, and went through everything. I was both pleased and amazed at all the GUI utilities, mostly because I'm a lazy guy and have terminal-phobia, despite knowing a little besides changing directories . But I realized the potential it had for ease of use for power users, and I saw how convenient it was to have a choice at log in of what desktop environment to log in with, without several distros (even though I know with a little work you can do the same in Ubuntu or any other distribution), and awed by how the OpenSUSE team had thought everything through as best they could, from the startup through the login, while retaining a lot of powerful options.
To tell the truth, I am floored. I am so awestruck by this distro that I'm getting rid of Ubuntu and replacing it with OpenSUSE as my primary Linux OS.

Well, if you got through that long post alive, here's what the thread is about:
Discuss OpenSUSE versus Ubuntu, name their strengths, weaknesses, and your experience with them both.

To farewell the departure of Ubuntu in my life, I've made this to say goodbye:


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## lucasbytegenius

*Bump*
Come on, somebody else besides me on here has to have some experience with OpenSUSE!


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## Shane

Unusual to see a Linux thread going on here 

Opensuse has to be my Favorite linux distros too of the many ive tried because it just looks nicer out of the box,everythings more simplified etc

Ive actually got a copy of Opensuse Enterprise somewhere that i got with my Netbook last year.

As much as i do like Linux and everything been open source etc,I just cannot make the switch as im a gamer and trying to get things working in wine does not do it for me...


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## lucasbytegenius

Nevakonaza said:


> Unusual to see a Linux thread going on here
> 
> Opensuse has to be my Favorite linux distros too of the many ive tried because it just looks nicer out of the box,everythings more simplified etc
> 
> Ive actually got a copy of Opensuse Enterprise somewhere that i got with my Netbook last year.
> 
> As much as i do like Linux and everything been open source etc,I just cannot make the switch as im a gamer and trying to get things working in wine does not do it for me...


Yeah, WINE has never worked well for me. The main reason I keep Windows 7 on my machine is solely for some games (AOM and AOE 1, 2, and 3 ) and a couple other programs such as PS5 (which I hardly use at all lol) and for program testing. Running Windows in VirtualBox isn't going to work well for me until I have a faster machine lol. 
I wish a lot more people would realize the potential of Linux, and realize that they do have choices, that there are other operating systems out there. I believe OpenSUSE embodies that experience perfectly, by its inclusion of multiple desktop environments and the software database.


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## Shane

lucasbytegenius said:


> I wish a lot more people would realize the potential of Linux, and realize that they do have choices, that there are other operating systems out there. I believe OpenSUSE embodies that experience perfectly, by its inclusion of multiple desktop environments and the software database.



I think if a version of Linux does go mainstream then it would be Ubuntu because theres such a big community driving it,I mean Dell did a good thing and started selling their machines with Ubuntu,Though im not sure if they are still anymore. 

If Linux could run any windows game then id switch today without hesitation.


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## lucasbytegenius

Nevakonaza said:


> I think if a version of Linux does go mainstream then it would be Ubuntu because theres such a big community driving it,I mean Dell did a good thing and started selling their machines with Ubuntu,Though im not sure if they are still anymore.
> 
> If Linux could run any windows game then id switch today without hesitation.



Yeah, Ubuntu is very popular.
Maybe the game companies will start porting their games to Linux or something, it's really frustrating sometimes. And maybe Wine will improve, you never know.


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## Shane

lucasbytegenius said:


> Yeah, Ubuntu is very popular.
> Maybe the game companies will start porting their games to Linux or something, it's really frustrating sometimes. And maybe Wine will improve, you never know.



I doubt it very much,They will continue to just make games for Windows & OSX i think,Theyre the main ones. 

Have you tried Linux Mint? im just installing the x64 bit on a Virtual machine right now,so far its very nice.

EDIT:






Dedicated 3 cores & 1Gb of ram,Super super fast....same windows cant be that fast even on an SSD.


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## salvage-this

There was a little bit of hope for games being ported over to Linux when Steam come over to Mac.  There were a few bits of code in the version for Mac that seemed to elude that Steam was also making a version for Linux as well.  Unfortunately, Steam decided not to do any more work to get it to work.

@ lucasbytegenius  Just curious. What features of OpenSUSE do you like better than Ubuntu?  From what you said it seems like it very easy to customize.  I tried it out and it could not find a video or wireless driver for my laptop so I switched back to Ubuntu.  Oh and are you using KDE or Gnome the most?


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## voyagerfan99

I tried OpenSUSE but couldn't get the Kernel to initialize after I installed it on my laptop. Switched to Linux Mint and haven't looked back since. Looked into LM10, but it was too buggy on my laptop.

Haven't been running Linux much late;y because I've been playing Minecraft on my Windows installation.


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## lucasbytegenius

Nevakonaza said:


> I doubt it very much,They will continue to just make games for Windows & OSX i think,Theyre the main ones.
> 
> Have you tried Linux Mint? im just installing the x64 bit on a Virtual machine right now,so far its very nice.
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dedicated 3 cores & 1Gb of ram,Super super fast....same windows cant be that fast even on an SSD.



Yeah, I have it in a VM as well, LM9 LXDE. Didn't like it that much, I see the potential, but I was more attached to Ubuntu at the time.




salvage-this said:


> There was a little bit of hope for games being ported over to Linux when Steam come over to Mac.  There were a few bits of code in the version for Mac that seemed to elude that Steam was also making a version for Linux as well.  Unfortunately, Steam decided not to do any more work to get it to work.
> 
> @ lucasbytegenius  Just curious. What features of OpenSUSE do you like better than Ubuntu?  From what you said it seems like it very easy to customize.  I tried it out and it could not find a video or wireless driver for my laptop so I switched back to Ubuntu.  Oh and are you using KDE or Gnome the most?


I end up using KDE the most, with an occasional switch between LXDE and GNOME. I also like the extra supply of GUI utilities to perform the same functions as the terminal commands, for example the HTTPD server can be configured by a control panel. Also, it includes features that will make it easy to set up my network to use my machine as a server for DHCP, DNS, and other things, so that I could use my computer as the network hub or router for a future project I'm planning. It also contains virtualization software, though I haven't given it a try yet, and instead of typing commands into the terminal to configure GRUB, I can do it from a control panel. Also, there is more software included with it than normal distros, so it saves me downloading time to get software I need. The only problem with my installation that I'm having right now is trying to keep my screen resolution consistent after a reboot and between the desktop environments, but I'm working on that.


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## Quiltface

I use linux mint 10 on my netbook and Linux Mint 9 LXDE on my old laptop.  I have absolutely no problems with my netbook running it.  My old laptop however the 2 biggest problems i have is flash video and sometimes the scroll button on the mouse will have a mind of its own...very annoying.  Both of those machines dual boot with windows and windows rarely gets booted into.

I have used open suse and i liked it, there isn't very many linux distros i don't like though.


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## tlarkin

Open SuSe quick fact sheet:
- based on RedHat
- has nothing to do with Novell (only Enterprise SuSe is from Novell)
- uses YUM (yellowdog update manager) for it's package manager
- uses YasT for its control panels
- default shell is bash
- can use gnome or KDE (or other desktop environments)
- can install RPMs native (Redhat Packages)

Ubuntu quick fact sheet:
- based on Debian
- uses apt for it's package manager
- can use gnome or KDE (and other desktop environments)
- default shell is bash
- can install DEBs native (debian packages)


Really it just comes down to personal preferences I think as the differences are pretty minor.  Plus you can change the defaults in either OS to make it tailored to your liking.


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