Ok, the new v11.0Beta1 shows a lot of promise, especially in the
installation. On my G3/266 based PowerBook Wallstreet with 320M RAM,
it was about 4 times faster overall in every way compared to
installing v10.3. Unselecting packages like OpenOffice unselected all
the other packages associated with it instead of complaining about
dependencies. Very nice. Of course, with Beta software, there were
issues:
1. Installation did not proceed properly after the initial reboot. I
submitted an update to a current bug on this. I did find a work
around, but it required booting into the rescue system and copying the
installed initrd and vmlinux files to the MacOS parition so that I
could add them to the BootX options. After that, I was able to boot
into the system and finish the installation.
2. The Wireless card was detected during the installation. However,
none of my wireless cards work. I have 2 madwifi based cards(DLink
and Netgear), a Belkin, and a Linksys. I even compiled the madwifi
drivers from source and still it doesn't work. KNetworkManager shows
the wireless card, but doesn't show any available networks. The
onboard 10Mbps works fine.
3. Sound doesn't work. It was detected properly, but kmix will use
it. It says "Mixer cannot be found".
4. Network configuration under YaST errors because the installation
source isn't present. Is it really neccessary to have the
installation source to edit network settings? Also, it just wanted to
install a Gnome package and now it's installing a great many packages
that I don't know need to be installed like a bluetooth package.
5. 64bit packages are still required as dependencies on 32bit
systems. Is this because the package includes both the 64 and 32
files?
6. Still seeing hardware dependencies that should not be required.
Not everyone uses bluetooth, palmpilots, cell phones, USB, etc. My
Powerbook doesn't even have USB, so it is pointless to have these
libraries installed and running when there is no reason for it.
Stuff that worked well:
1. Installation - Much better and much faster. I like the fact that
the first couple of dialogs(language, agreement) were condensed down
into one. Package selection and adjustments were quick and easy.
Partitioning could be a little confusing tho. When I tried to modify
the suggested partition setup, it didn't show the actual partition
table, and I almost hosed my drive. That's not a very good idea.
2. Onboard network. I've had issues with this in previous versions,
and it seems to be ok now.
3. Backlight issues seem to be resolved on this machine.
Good job overall guys. I hope v11.0 continues these improvements.
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