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20060105 Thursday January 05, 2006

OpenSuse 10.0 vs. Ubuntu 5.10 Ever since I got a new HP Pavilion, I've been planning what's next for my Dell Dimension 8300. I decided it's probably best to retire my somewhat hosed Fedora Core 3 box (Dimension 8100) and replace it with a new Linux server. After talking with a good friend, I decided to go with OpenSuse 10.0 or Ubuntu 5.10. Steve was a good enough friend to burn me DVDs of both. Yesterday, I bought a new 160GB hard drive and last night I tried to install Ubuntu. I went w/ Ubuntu b/c Steve tried them both and said he liked Ubuntu a lot better. I've never used Ubuntu, and I have used Suse a fair bit - so I figured I'd try something new.

When I started installing Ubuntu last night, I figured it'd be a breeze. I have a DVI KVM Switch hooked up to a Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse, and Ubuntu immediately recognized them both. However, at 44%, it failed to install gstreamer0.8-jpeg and the installation bailed out. I was able to login to the desktop and (seemingly) get stuff working, but I'm always a bit leary about a failure in the middle of an OS install. After an hour of futzing with it, I tried again and got the same error. Around 1 a.m., I said "screw this" and threw in the Suse DVD.

I had the same good results with Suse, where my keyboard and mouse were recognized. However, when I got prompted for the root password, my keyboard quit working and I was up shit creek. I started the re-install process before going to bed at 2 and picked it up again this afternoon - after a beautiful day of skiing at Copper. I got almost everything working on Suse this afternoon, and just as I was about to call things good - the keyboard problem came back. Pretty disappointing since I'd just gotten my Apple Cinema Display to work.

As I speak, I'm trying Ubuntu again, without the KVM switch. I suspect there's probably a piece of hardware I have that's causing the failure, so hopefully unplugging things will solve the problem. If I don't get it figured out in the next hour or two, I'll probably just go with Suse, setup VNC - and get a wired keyboard for when I need direct access.

24 hours later: It's interesting to see that almost the commentors on this post are recommending Ubuntu. After posting this, and receiving a comment from Brett, I tried the Ubuntu Live DVD. What I found was that Ubuntu recognized my cinema display, but it entered into a non-stop flickering loop that I couldn't solve. Therefore, I threw in the Suse DVD and tried again. This time, Suse recognized everything flawlessly (including my HP OfficeJet G85). So I'm sticking with Suse - mainly because it seems to recognize my cinema display, printer and DVI KVM switch the best. With apt-get working on Suse, it's been a breeze to get everything setup. Posted in Open Source at Jan 05 2006, 07:22:57 PM MST 25 Comments

Comments:

I used Ubuntu. It went very well for me. Maybe you should try the Ubuntu Live CD and see how well that works without the need to install anything?

Posted by Brett Porter on January 05, 2006 at 07:38 PM MST #

My Ubuntu server has never failed me for the past 3 months. I have tried OpenSuse, Fedora and final stick to Ubuntu.

Posted by Tyson Cung on January 05, 2006 at 11:55 PM MST #

I suspect that it is a media error (badly writen CD-ROM) as this is a very odd error if you try to explain it with hardware problems or configuration issues. This because GSreamer is a multimedia plugin architecture that was already installed. It only fails on the Jpeg plugin which is simpler and takes place later in the install. But I have used both and personally use Suse because of the need for Oracle 9i clients at work. But both my parents and my more tech oreintated frends use Ubuntu and never had any serious complains about them.

Posted by Jerven on January 06, 2006 at 06:41 AM MST #

I'll second Jerven's comments, I too think it sounds like a media error.

I use Debian (which is what Ubuntu is based on) for all my Linux server needs, as there really is <em><strong>nothing</strong></em> better (and I've used 'em all over the last 12 years).

So, persevere with Ubuntu, you'll appreciate it in the end!

Posted by Carl Fooks on January 06, 2006 at 07:06 AM MST #

Hmmmm, what exactly do you mean by the keyboard wouldn't work. I've had problems with suse where once i had selected an input field, I simply could not type into it. I've found that if you hit the tab key a bunch of times until the initial input field is highlighted again, then typing into the field works. Aside from this extremely annoying quirk, I've had a pretty good experience with suse. Maybe your problem is different though. Good Luck, Steven

Posted by Steven on January 06, 2006 at 07:23 AM MST #

Another vote for Ubuntu. It feels like a real desktop without looking like Windows *cough*SUSE*cough*. Not only that, it's incredibly reliable in my experience.

Posted by PJ Hyett on January 06, 2006 at 12:30 PM MST #

Matt, I don't know why but you seem to me more like a Gentoo kind of guy, I mean with all the compiling and stuff :) Seriously though, JDK 1.5 is hardmasked but it's there so we'd welcome you gladly in our not so mainstream community ;)

Posted by Srgjan Srepfler on January 06, 2006 at 07:46 PM MST #

I've also tried Ubuntu before and it looked crisp but one of the main problems i encountered was installing the latest version of eclipse, postgres and jdk1.5. So i just want to know from those are using Ubuntu if you've come across these or it was me being lazy.I really liked Ubuntu, but for now i'll stick with Fedora as it works and i can customize all my installations.But overall i was impressed with Ubuntu and if i find a solution to my problem, i'll definitely switch to it.

Posted by Twice on January 07, 2006 at 02:14 PM MST #

To TWICE: You can use automatix to configure all of the "uncommon" packages. I used it to configure all of my video codecs and Sun JDK 1.5. Another bonus is that it will install Firefox 1.5 and all of the plugins ;) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=66563

Posted by subvert on January 07, 2006 at 11:41 PM MST #

Ubuntu, Debian or Gentoo. I perfer Gentoo, but all are good.

Posted by Chris Love on January 16, 2006 at 04:40 PM MST #

I tried Ubuntu Live, SuSE live, and Mandrivia Live. The only one that recognized everything and everything worked fine was Ubuntu. On SuSE I had problems with my network card and sound card. With Mandrivia, problems with screen resolution. So I'm downloading right now the Ubuntu installer and will install it.

Posted by Leonardo Horovitz on January 28, 2006 at 09:42 AM MST #

I use SUSE10,it's a better product,everything went well in my computer except the charset when I browsered net pages.

Posted by libin on March 30, 2006 at 08:48 PM MST #

Ubuntu Schmubuntu. SuSe is far more professional, polished and accomplished. I'd give 10.1 a try now. And if you want a truly inspiring distro...try PCLinuxOS. Take it from a linux guy (since 1995)...Ubuntu is nice for accomplished users but for those who want to get things done with minimal hacking, PCLinuxOS and SuSe are the way to go.

Posted by devnet on May 15, 2006 at 11:56 AM MDT #

I agreement with devnet. Although I really like Ubuntu, you do have to tinker a little to get things working. Although, Automatix has helped tremendously with the multimedia stuff. PCLinuxOS is the best out-of-the-box experience I've seen, but it's KDE-centric. Although it's possible to install Gnome from the repository, it's 2.10 and buggy. PCLinuxOS is also only for the x86 platform currently. I also really like SuSE. It works on various platforms and has good Gnome and Kde install options. The hardware detection in SuSE is solid and the Eval version comes with some good stuff, but you still have to hunt down a libdvdcss rpm. Ubuntu's Dapper Flight 7 looks good and I'll give it a run when it comes out.

Posted by Robert on May 16, 2006 at 08:59 AM MDT #

I am surprised to read a lot about hardware detection and installation stuffs but nothing about distribution features. The question I often ask to myself: "When a distribution is more suited to a particular use rather than another ?". Sometimes the answer will be Ubunto, sometimes Gentoo, sometimes SuSe (...). I will not be talking here about security or system stability. I am pretty sure all the systems here are equivalents (they are all built on the same platform) If you want to have a great control of the installation process and customize the system for your own hardware, if you want to install a linux box with just what you need nothing more then Gentoo if for you. Be aware that the installation process is not easy and is time consuming. I like the way Gentoo manages package dependencies and gives you the freedom to update your system on-line with very simple command line. You want to install for example a web server with apache, mysql and php without a server X ? Gentoo is my choice. Have you ever used the SuSe Administration console Yast? If you are a sysadmin, I think you will be happy and surprised to see the power of this tool. Ubunto is a very good Linux workstation but the administration tools are simpler. You want to manage a linux server with a powerful graphical administration console? SuSe is my choice. You want to have a great linux workstation? My choice is Ubunto. For both these distributions, the installation process is (usually) straightforward.

Posted by Florent on May 17, 2006 at 02:38 AM MDT #

I've been using Suse for two years and it's all rather professional; for a beginner, YaST is very good. If you pay a little money/ download the eval. version, a lot of non-OSS is included. That, in my opinion, is the only real advantage to Suse. I could say I've been a fan for some time, I even like the green chameleon logo. But... After installing (X)ubuntu on a few ancient laptops I saw how great Ubuntu is at hardware detection and equally easy installation - not as well polished graphically from a designer's point of view though, but after all it's just the install. Ubuntu is mainly Debian made a lot easier. The advantage of Debian/Ubuntu is the huge amount of wiki's, mailing lists, forums, etc. available on the internet, and a very simple and powerfull installation tool (apt-get, aptitude, synaptic), equal to Suse's (great too, of course) YaST2. Anyone with some competence at typing "Ubuntu watching DVDs package" or whatever in a search engine, will find how to deal with that. Typing a few words in a terminal now and then shouldn't be scary. In that respect, it'll be hard for Suse, and other RPM-based distros such as Fedora, to survive this Ubuntu wave. Suse is not even better at stability anymore. BTW, the KDE/Gnome thing is not an issue. In Ubuntu, just type: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop or sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop in the terminal (while online) and you'll have KDE, or the (fast, simple) Xfce-GUI. So choosing Ubuntu doesn't mean being stuck to any GUI either. From a marketing point of view, they're doing great with all these pseudo-separate distro's Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edub., Xub., etc..

Posted by Nathan on May 27, 2006 at 05:28 PM MDT #

I will probably never find this site again. It is obviously well read and posted. I am using a 2year old laptop that has never had XP reinstalled. It works fine, but that is like never raising your cars hood and thinking everthing is fine, right, I know better. I have a super-tower with a dual-core cpu, etc, running Vista. That is my tinker machine. BUT after Googling Suse vs Ubunto for a few hours, and reading this last thread, I'm gonna do it. No dual triple booting. Just go for broke with Ubuntu. I just bought two thick books on both distros, and they both had the latest software on disk so I am all set. I just gotta work up the nerver to slap in the disk and go. You all can take credit for pushing one more user out the Window! thanks so much. Dale.

Posted by Dale in Seattle on July 22, 2006 at 06:36 PM MDT #

@Dale, That's real nice to hear. Nice too, BTW is the fact that if one distro for some reason or another doesn't work completely for you, there's always another one out there ready for download. Check distrowatch.com for example. Since my post two months ago for example, I gave Fedora Core 5 a try, because of a little buggy thing with typing Hebrew that I just couldn't get working with Ubuntu, and I found Fedora equal to Ubuntu in a lot of ways (community support, easy restricted software installation tips such as video DVDs, mp3, flash, plugins for Mplayer to watch stuff made for WinMedPlayer, etc.), very stable too by the way [Fedora Core is the RedHat sponsored free Linux OS]. Well, that's just for those who need to type Hebrew and it might already be fixed anyway. One thing that's great about Ubuntu, on the other hand, is the fact that you never really have to reinstall it for an upgrade to a higher version, which is still the default way of handling this on RPM-based systems like Fedora or Suse. I hope you'll have a good time trying your new Linux desktop, and for Ubuntu, check https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats for the mp3, DVD and Windows media codecs, Flash, etc. if you need some of that (try using Synaptic while following the advice there). regards, Nathan, /home/Rotterdam

Posted by Nathan on July 24, 2006 at 02:50 PM MDT #

I tend to lean more toward suse 10.0 just because I've used it more. I'm really curious about ubuntu because of all the recent hype surounding it. I think I like suse because I fit more into the server development category than the desktop category that ubuntu seems to be better suited. they're both really nice distros. but suse does just feel a little more professional to me. I'm thinking about upgrading to the most recent version of suse (10.1). does this distro come with xgl on it?

Posted by undefined on August 17, 2006 at 11:50 PM MDT #

Yes, OpenSuse has XGL, so have many other distros, but it won´t work out of the box. For instance proprietary nVidia/ATI drivers have to be installed into the kernel, and OpenSuse comes only with open source software. But this won't be a problem, just follow the wikis. For example, http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Xgl_on_SUSE_Linux .

Posted by Nathan on August 23, 2006 at 06:31 AM MDT #

I have used suse before and now trying ubuntu and i like it more. the best part is its more like what i learnt in the university compared suse.

Posted by Konsumativi on September 21, 2006 at 06:20 AM MDT #

If you find bugs or have problems with Ubuntu post them here: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bugs This will make Ubuntu better for everyone :)

Posted by 207.225.207.59 on October 29, 2006 at 08:29 AM MST #

I like SuSE more, as u have a choise of desktops, KDE or GNOME while Ubuntu has only GNOME; GNOME completely written on C, while KDE on C++, and as such,- KDE is more functional and faster then GNOME, and it's important. apt-get sometimes working improper with dependencies, braking down some applications, what I cant say about SuSE's zypper in OpenSuSE-10.2. I've seen many productions systems running SuSE, while very few running Ubuntu. Xgl is the advantage for SuSE, just need a little effort to make it running. Also, Yast2 Control Center on SuSE,-I didn't saw anything even near of that.

Posted by Dmitry on December 27, 2006 at 06:55 PM MST #

I always use SuSE as my default OS. Back in 2005, I built a new computer and decided not to use Windows. So, on my old PC, I searched and read about almost every Linux distro known to man, and decided to use SuSE. Ever since then, I have never used another distro and never needed to. However, a couple of months ago, I heard people say that Ubuntu was a great distro, so I tried it on one of my older PCs (256MB RAM, Intel Celeron 900MHz CPU, 30GB Maxtor IDE HD). The installation went fine with no problems, but I didn't like it. It didn't come standard with many apps, I don't like GNOME, and for some reason, 1/5 of the time when I boot it up, it would lock up. SuSE, however, works great. I comes with tons of apps, easily ties into my home network, and it is able to share files with other Windows computers on my network. And once you buy Crossover Office and install it, nothing beats it. (For those of you who don't know this, Crossover Office is a program that can install .EXE and .MSI files on Linux.)

Posted by tratal on March 08, 2007 at 03:17 PM MST #

I've tried Ubuntu and openSUSE but my favorite would have to be Ubuntu. I had ubuntu up and running in about a half an hour. It took me 4 tries of 3 hours each to get openSUSE running.

Posted by phil on May 21, 2007 at 01:44 PM MDT #

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Matt Raible is the Lead UI Architect at LinkedIn. The opinions on this site are mine, not my employers.
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