Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (95 mails)
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[opensuse-project] my experiences as a Ubuntu user with the 10.3 beta 1 GNOME CD
- From: Alexander van Loon <svloon@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:33:39 +0200
- Message-id: <1187714019.6263.26.camel@alexander-desktop>
Hello all,
These are my experiences and criticisms of the openSUSE beta 1 GNOME CD.
I hope the openSUSE development team reads this mailing list so that my
criticism could possibly lead to improvements to openSUSE. Please don't
understand me wrong, I'm trying to give constructive criticism and did
not intend to be trolling with text. Originally I discovered Linux when
I bought SUSE Linux 8.0, and after a long period of distro-switching I
decided to stick with Ubuntu, because I think it's the best distro. My
criticism comes with that Ubuntu background in mind. In the past I've
checked out openSUSE alpha's and beta's of 10.1 and 10.2 to see how
openSUSE was progressing, and I checked out 10.3 beta with the same
motivation.
I downloaded the openSUSE 10.3 beta 1 GNOME CD. It's great that there
are now versions of openSUSE with just GNOME or KDE which fit on a
single CD, the download for the DVD was huge and most space would be
wasted anyway since you'd probably use just one DE. It would be even
more awesome if the installation CD could also act as a Live CD, like
Ubuntu.
As soon as I started up my notebook, I noticed the beautiful Grub,
bootsplash and GDM artwork. openSUSE does a very good job at the art
department. The improved start up time which is claimed by the openSUSE
developers is a good thing, but I didn't realy notice it, my feeling
says Ubuntu still starts up faster. Also, after starting openSUSE from
Grub, I'm staring at a black screen for twenty seconds before the boot
splash finally came up. The start up process could use slightly more
polish in that regard. I also noticed the installer by default has
autologin enabled. I disabled it, and I question if it's a sane default.
Isn't it good to have more security if the user has to enter a username
and password in GDM? Otherwise anyone who steals your notebook can
easily access your data.
When I logged in to GNOME I immediately noticed Novell's/openSUSE's
modifications to GNOME, like just one taskbar at the bottom of the
screen (the second one on top of the screen wasted vertical space of the
screen if you ask me), the "Computer" menu which replaces the standard
menu's in GNOME, and the "Control Center" entry in the "Computer" menu
which puts the entries of GNOME's "System" menu in one place in a
window.
I think it's great that Novell/openSUSE are trying to innovate, the new
Computer menu and the Control Center look more clean and simple than the
way it is in standard GNOME. However, I have some problems with how the
new "Computer" menu tries to improve over the standard menu's of GNOME.
There is only room for six "Favorite Applications" in the menu, after a
clean install those are: Firefox, Evolution, Banshee, OpenOffice.org
Writer, F-Spot and Nautilus. I'd certainly use all of those applications
frequently (except I'd use Epiphany instead of Firefox) but I'd also use
Pidgin, X-Chat, gedit and GIMP often, possibly more. That makes for at
least ten favorite applications for an average user like me. The "Recent
Applications" beneath the "Favorite Applications" don't seem useful to
me.
If I want to use an application which is not a favorite application I
have to click "More Applications...". Then the "Application Browser"
opens. I think it's a bit messy, for example I can also find an entry
for "Logout" and "Lock Screen" there, which is already in the menu
itself and for that reason unnecessary in the "Application Browser". The
"Application Browser" also contains entries like "Screen Resolution" and
"Appearance" which are already located in the "Control Center".
Concluding, I think the "Application Browser" is a bit messy, because it
duplicates entries which are already accessible through other menu's.
So the six "Favorite Applications" inside the "Computer" menu are not
enough for me or the average user, and the "Application Browser" which
is used to start non-favorite applications is cluttered with a lot of
duplicated entries. Besides from that, having to open the "Computer"
menu, then opening the "Application Browser" and then finally being able
to start the application you needed to start but for which there is no
place in the "Favorite Applications" section, takes a great deal longer
and is less simple than if it would be done with the "Applications" menu
in standard GNOME. I'm sure Novell invested a lot of time in usability
research for this, but it simply doesn't cut it for my use case.
There are a few solutions for this problem which I'd like to see. One
solution is simply to use smaller icons and text in the "Favorite
Applications" section, so that there is room for more entries there,
twelve would be enough I think. Possibly some would say that this way it
would look cluttered and not pretty, though. However, I think the best
solution would be to integrate the "Applications" menu as it is seen in
standard GNOME, the expanding menu with applications grouped in
categories, inside the "Computer" menu. Then you would have the best of
both worlds. This would mean removing the "Favorite Applications"
section and placing categories like "Internet" and "Office" there, which
would reveal the applications in that category when that category is
pointed with the mouse cursor.
When I opened YaST in the "Control Center", it occurred to me that it
has a GTK interface now. That's great, because YaST with the Qt
interface looked so out of place in GNOME. It still seems to contain a
few bugs though, for example as soon as you exit a module you opened in
YaST, you get an error message. I hope the bugs can be fixed in time and
that it will make it to the final release?
There are some other annoying bugs, of course I know I was using beta 1,
but these bugs seem so obvious to me. I wanted to install Epiphany
because that's more integrated in GNOME than Firefox, I click "Install
Software" in the "Computer" menu, my notebook starts loading a bit, but
then nothing happens? I click "Desktop Effects" in the "Application
Browser" to enable Compiz, but nothing happens? I click "Logout" in the
"Computer" menu, but nothing happens (when I hit the power button on my
notebook to shut down the hard way, that did make the logout dialog
appear)? When I try to use the "Online Update" module in the "YaST
Control Center" (because the OpenSUSE updater, which is accessible
through the taskbar in the right corner, doesn't show any updates, which
seems unlikely since I haven't updated after installing beta 1) it says
"No active update source is available" and asks me if I want to quit? In
the "Software Repositories" module of the "YaST Control Center" I
noticed that only the CD was enabled as a repository (which I disabled
because it kept bugging me about the CD when I wanted to install some
stuff) and that the SL-OSS-factory and SL-Factory-non-oss were disabled
by default? The splash screen for OpenOffice.org is borked, and there
are no icons visible in it's interface? I mean, shouldn't these bugs
have been noticed during testing for the beta 1 release? Is it useful if
I file bugreports for these, or is it likely these obvious bugs have
been fixed by now?
If I'm correct openSUSE still ships XGL. Why not use AIGLX, which is
included in X.org itself, or the NVIDIA drivers, depending on the
available videocard? I thought XGL is no longer necessary now?
Also there don't seem to be any easy instructions for enabling playback
of restricted audio and video formats on openSUSE. Ubuntu has this page
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats - which gives the
simple command "sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse" to enable playback of restricted
audio and video formats. Even better, Ubuntu has automated codec
installation, and it also has a "Restricted Devices Manager" to allow
easy installation of the NVIDIA drivers. openSUSE has this page
-http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats - to inform about restricted
formats. It doesn't mention any easy way to install those extra
GStreamer packages like in Ubuntu. I'm not interested in DVD playback.
In the MP3 section the first suggestion is to install RealPlayer or
banshee-helix (no way!), the (better) second suggestion suggests
installing an extra GStreamer package, but instead of explaining on the
page itself an easy way to download an RPM through a repository, it
links to a tutorial on an external website which explain how to manually
download and install a package, which is user unfriendly by Ubuntu's
standards. And besides MP3, it doesn't mention enabling playback of AAC
and restricted video formats. It does not mention w32codecs (which is an
apt-get away in Ubuntu). In the NTFS section ntfs-3g is not mentioned
(which is an apt-get away in Ubuntu). Concerning the NVIDIA drivers, it
tells me to get the official NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA itself? Again,
in Ubuntu this can be done through the Restricted Devices Manager. On
this page - http://en.opensuse.org/Flash_9 - it is explained how you can
install Flash on openSUSE. Again, it doesn't explain how you can do that
through openSUSE's own repositories, but refers to the Adobe website.
Strange, because I installed flash from the openSUSE repositories myself
(I believe after enabling the non-OSS Factory repository?). These -
http://en.opensuse.org/Optimal_Use_of_MS_TrueType_Core_Fonts_for_a_KDE_Desktop_on_SuSE - are the only instructions I found for installing the Microsoft TrueType Core Fonts ;(which is quite essential because those fonts are used so often in text documents and on websites), but the instructions are KDE specific. Also, I can't find openSUSE packages of David Turner's font rendering patches anywhere on the web, while meanwhile they are easy to find - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=343670 - on Ubuntu's forums. As you've probably guessed I'm really disappointed with openSUSE here, and I'm considering to install Ubuntu again after just a few days of testing because Ubuntu makes life so much more easy. Package management is a lot easier in Ubuntu with Synaptic.
As a last thing I wanted to mention, I can get a good idea of the
direction Ubuntu is taking and it's progress through the blueprints on
Launchpad - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy - and the
information pages - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/tribe4 - about
Ubuntu's test releases. Of course openSUSE News -
http://news.opensuse.org/ - provided news on new features such as
1-click install and improved boot time, but I still think Ubuntu is
doing better than openSUSE in this respect. Also, Ubuntu has official
forums - http://ubuntuforums.org/ - which openSUSE should have, too.
I decided that I will keep using (K)Ubuntu for the moment, but I hope
that openSUSE will improve. My thanks to the development team of
openSUSE for their work, and good luck.
Greetings,
Alexander van Loon
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These are my experiences and criticisms of the openSUSE beta 1 GNOME CD.
I hope the openSUSE development team reads this mailing list so that my
criticism could possibly lead to improvements to openSUSE. Please don't
understand me wrong, I'm trying to give constructive criticism and did
not intend to be trolling with text. Originally I discovered Linux when
I bought SUSE Linux 8.0, and after a long period of distro-switching I
decided to stick with Ubuntu, because I think it's the best distro. My
criticism comes with that Ubuntu background in mind. In the past I've
checked out openSUSE alpha's and beta's of 10.1 and 10.2 to see how
openSUSE was progressing, and I checked out 10.3 beta with the same
motivation.
I downloaded the openSUSE 10.3 beta 1 GNOME CD. It's great that there
are now versions of openSUSE with just GNOME or KDE which fit on a
single CD, the download for the DVD was huge and most space would be
wasted anyway since you'd probably use just one DE. It would be even
more awesome if the installation CD could also act as a Live CD, like
Ubuntu.
As soon as I started up my notebook, I noticed the beautiful Grub,
bootsplash and GDM artwork. openSUSE does a very good job at the art
department. The improved start up time which is claimed by the openSUSE
developers is a good thing, but I didn't realy notice it, my feeling
says Ubuntu still starts up faster. Also, after starting openSUSE from
Grub, I'm staring at a black screen for twenty seconds before the boot
splash finally came up. The start up process could use slightly more
polish in that regard. I also noticed the installer by default has
autologin enabled. I disabled it, and I question if it's a sane default.
Isn't it good to have more security if the user has to enter a username
and password in GDM? Otherwise anyone who steals your notebook can
easily access your data.
When I logged in to GNOME I immediately noticed Novell's/openSUSE's
modifications to GNOME, like just one taskbar at the bottom of the
screen (the second one on top of the screen wasted vertical space of the
screen if you ask me), the "Computer" menu which replaces the standard
menu's in GNOME, and the "Control Center" entry in the "Computer" menu
which puts the entries of GNOME's "System" menu in one place in a
window.
I think it's great that Novell/openSUSE are trying to innovate, the new
Computer menu and the Control Center look more clean and simple than the
way it is in standard GNOME. However, I have some problems with how the
new "Computer" menu tries to improve over the standard menu's of GNOME.
There is only room for six "Favorite Applications" in the menu, after a
clean install those are: Firefox, Evolution, Banshee, OpenOffice.org
Writer, F-Spot and Nautilus. I'd certainly use all of those applications
frequently (except I'd use Epiphany instead of Firefox) but I'd also use
Pidgin, X-Chat, gedit and GIMP often, possibly more. That makes for at
least ten favorite applications for an average user like me. The "Recent
Applications" beneath the "Favorite Applications" don't seem useful to
me.
If I want to use an application which is not a favorite application I
have to click "More Applications...". Then the "Application Browser"
opens. I think it's a bit messy, for example I can also find an entry
for "Logout" and "Lock Screen" there, which is already in the menu
itself and for that reason unnecessary in the "Application Browser". The
"Application Browser" also contains entries like "Screen Resolution" and
"Appearance" which are already located in the "Control Center".
Concluding, I think the "Application Browser" is a bit messy, because it
duplicates entries which are already accessible through other menu's.
So the six "Favorite Applications" inside the "Computer" menu are not
enough for me or the average user, and the "Application Browser" which
is used to start non-favorite applications is cluttered with a lot of
duplicated entries. Besides from that, having to open the "Computer"
menu, then opening the "Application Browser" and then finally being able
to start the application you needed to start but for which there is no
place in the "Favorite Applications" section, takes a great deal longer
and is less simple than if it would be done with the "Applications" menu
in standard GNOME. I'm sure Novell invested a lot of time in usability
research for this, but it simply doesn't cut it for my use case.
There are a few solutions for this problem which I'd like to see. One
solution is simply to use smaller icons and text in the "Favorite
Applications" section, so that there is room for more entries there,
twelve would be enough I think. Possibly some would say that this way it
would look cluttered and not pretty, though. However, I think the best
solution would be to integrate the "Applications" menu as it is seen in
standard GNOME, the expanding menu with applications grouped in
categories, inside the "Computer" menu. Then you would have the best of
both worlds. This would mean removing the "Favorite Applications"
section and placing categories like "Internet" and "Office" there, which
would reveal the applications in that category when that category is
pointed with the mouse cursor.
When I opened YaST in the "Control Center", it occurred to me that it
has a GTK interface now. That's great, because YaST with the Qt
interface looked so out of place in GNOME. It still seems to contain a
few bugs though, for example as soon as you exit a module you opened in
YaST, you get an error message. I hope the bugs can be fixed in time and
that it will make it to the final release?
There are some other annoying bugs, of course I know I was using beta 1,
but these bugs seem so obvious to me. I wanted to install Epiphany
because that's more integrated in GNOME than Firefox, I click "Install
Software" in the "Computer" menu, my notebook starts loading a bit, but
then nothing happens? I click "Desktop Effects" in the "Application
Browser" to enable Compiz, but nothing happens? I click "Logout" in the
"Computer" menu, but nothing happens (when I hit the power button on my
notebook to shut down the hard way, that did make the logout dialog
appear)? When I try to use the "Online Update" module in the "YaST
Control Center" (because the OpenSUSE updater, which is accessible
through the taskbar in the right corner, doesn't show any updates, which
seems unlikely since I haven't updated after installing beta 1) it says
"No active update source is available" and asks me if I want to quit? In
the "Software Repositories" module of the "YaST Control Center" I
noticed that only the CD was enabled as a repository (which I disabled
because it kept bugging me about the CD when I wanted to install some
stuff) and that the SL-OSS-factory and SL-Factory-non-oss were disabled
by default? The splash screen for OpenOffice.org is borked, and there
are no icons visible in it's interface? I mean, shouldn't these bugs
have been noticed during testing for the beta 1 release? Is it useful if
I file bugreports for these, or is it likely these obvious bugs have
been fixed by now?
If I'm correct openSUSE still ships XGL. Why not use AIGLX, which is
included in X.org itself, or the NVIDIA drivers, depending on the
available videocard? I thought XGL is no longer necessary now?
Also there don't seem to be any easy instructions for enabling playback
of restricted audio and video formats on openSUSE. Ubuntu has this page
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats - which gives the
simple command "sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse" to enable playback of restricted
audio and video formats. Even better, Ubuntu has automated codec
installation, and it also has a "Restricted Devices Manager" to allow
easy installation of the NVIDIA drivers. openSUSE has this page
-http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats - to inform about restricted
formats. It doesn't mention any easy way to install those extra
GStreamer packages like in Ubuntu. I'm not interested in DVD playback.
In the MP3 section the first suggestion is to install RealPlayer or
banshee-helix (no way!), the (better) second suggestion suggests
installing an extra GStreamer package, but instead of explaining on the
page itself an easy way to download an RPM through a repository, it
links to a tutorial on an external website which explain how to manually
download and install a package, which is user unfriendly by Ubuntu's
standards. And besides MP3, it doesn't mention enabling playback of AAC
and restricted video formats. It does not mention w32codecs (which is an
apt-get away in Ubuntu). In the NTFS section ntfs-3g is not mentioned
(which is an apt-get away in Ubuntu). Concerning the NVIDIA drivers, it
tells me to get the official NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA itself? Again,
in Ubuntu this can be done through the Restricted Devices Manager. On
this page - http://en.opensuse.org/Flash_9 - it is explained how you can
install Flash on openSUSE. Again, it doesn't explain how you can do that
through openSUSE's own repositories, but refers to the Adobe website.
Strange, because I installed flash from the openSUSE repositories myself
(I believe after enabling the non-OSS Factory repository?). These -
http://en.opensuse.org/Optimal_Use_of_MS_TrueType_Core_Fonts_for_a_KDE_Desktop_on_SuSE - are the only instructions I found for installing the Microsoft TrueType Core Fonts ;(which is quite essential because those fonts are used so often in text documents and on websites), but the instructions are KDE specific. Also, I can't find openSUSE packages of David Turner's font rendering patches anywhere on the web, while meanwhile they are easy to find - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=343670 - on Ubuntu's forums. As you've probably guessed I'm really disappointed with openSUSE here, and I'm considering to install Ubuntu again after just a few days of testing because Ubuntu makes life so much more easy. Package management is a lot easier in Ubuntu with Synaptic.
As a last thing I wanted to mention, I can get a good idea of the
direction Ubuntu is taking and it's progress through the blueprints on
Launchpad - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy - and the
information pages - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/tribe4 - about
Ubuntu's test releases. Of course openSUSE News -
http://news.opensuse.org/ - provided news on new features such as
1-click install and improved boot time, but I still think Ubuntu is
doing better than openSUSE in this respect. Also, Ubuntu has official
forums - http://ubuntuforums.org/ - which openSUSE should have, too.
I decided that I will keep using (K)Ubuntu for the moment, but I hope
that openSUSE will improve. My thanks to the development team of
openSUSE for their work, and good luck.
Greetings,
Alexander van Loon
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For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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