John wrote:
I'll tell you what this patent protection did for me.
Just as an opener: I think you jumped in head-first here because of some misconceived angst caused by the words Patent" and "Microsoft".
I had a nearly fully functioning SUSE 10.0 system. I never could get the nVidia driver to install and work for 3D video, although it worked fine in SUSE 9.2 Professional.
I, like many, many others, have had no problems with using the nVidia drivers in SuSe. There was a slight huccup some time ago with one version of the drivers provided by nVidia but that was all. If you had problems then you should have come back to this forum and/or nVidia and your problems would have been resolved. Why didn't you ask for help instead of stewing for all this time over this non-existent problem?
I made the mistake of upgrading to openSUSE 10.2 and now I'm regretting it big time. Mplayer was uninstalled by the upgrade, and none of my multimedia apps work cause of file format patents, from what I can tell by the big warning about patents on a Novell web page. I never saw or heard a peep out of Novell about patents before this Microsoft "deal". I think Novell got shafted by Microsoft. Time will tell, especially if MS ends up acquiring Red Hat (heaven forbid the financial experts are wrong).
Why in the heck did openSUSE 10.2 have to remove a perfectly functioning Mplayer and leave me with a broken Kaffeine (which worked great before) and broken Noatun and broken XMMS, etc. I can't play any video formats now or burn any CDs. This is really pitiful.
You say above that you "had a nearly fully functioning SUSE 10.0 system" and that you "never saw of heard a peep out of Novell about patents before this Microsoft "deal"". Well, and I can be corrected about this, but you did hear about patents - and you heard it when you were insalling SuSE10.0 because it was then that the ability to play DVDs was removed from SuSE because of this 'patent' problem. Don't you remember having to go hunting for the files needed to be able to view DVDs because they were no longer included on the CDs or DVD from SuSE? Now, as a matter of fact, (BTW I am running 10.2 which I finally installed on my "main" system several days ago), I never used to use kaffeine as my player of anything - I thought it was a "toy" - and used xine for my DVD viewing and, I think, I used amarok when I did (once in a blue moon) want to play an audio CD, but a yesterday I discovered the full power of kaffeine when I found that it would make my new dvb card work "out of the box". I also discovered that I could watch DVDs using it (I watched, again, the original *The Planet of the Apes* with Heston last night) and this morning played one of my favourite audio CDs, Credence Clearwater Revival. So why are you saying that kaffeine is broken? It's not. Oh, Mplayer I also have installed but now that I discovered the beauty of kaffeine I don't think I'll be using Mplayer. Mplayer, BTW, is not included on the downloadable CDs or the DVD for 10.2 because of disc space as I understand it but should be on the boxed 10.2 (people can correct me about this), Re burning CD or DVDs. I have burnt several DVDs and 10 CDs using k3b in 10.2. Why can't you? I don't know.
I'm really disgusted with what this upgrade has done. And why so many file updating programs? There's Yast, Yum, Smart, openSUSE Update, Synaptic, and a few more I can't remember at the moment. How in the world is a Windows user ever gonna convert and deal with so many choices? The strangest thing of all is how the documentation compares Smart to Yast and Yum and shows how superior it is to both. Then why include Yast and Yum anymore? Just provide Smart package manager and be done with it. Package management in Linux leaves a lot to be desired, compared to Windows Add/Remove Program and Setup programs.
Ah, now you have come up with something which I think is a damn disgrace for Novell and SuSE- this stupidity about the way the system is being updated/upgraded. I gave away trying to fight the bungling and only use smart which works with minor, occasional hiccups which are resolved quite often in a matter of minutes by the competent team at labix.
Is Linux desktop ready for prime time? I wish, but unfortunately, that's not the present situation.
Almost there.
Disgruntled openSUSE user
Don't let the self-inflicted angst cloud your judgement :-) . Cheers. -- In a period of great joy and pleasure you are comforted by the thought that tragedy is just around the corner. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org