On Thu, 2010-07-29 at 17:29 -0700, Martin Mielke wrote:
it's been a while since I last watched the list and a while since OpenSUSE 11.3 hit the market so I installed it yesterday on my desktop PC at home, the same one I used with OpenSUSE 11.0 + patches before the installation: HP xw4200 (3 GB RAM, 64bit dual-core, etc). It was an installation from scratch so I backed up my account and installed everything as new... the installation process went fine (only an error message for a repository, can't remember which one now, sorry) and the system booted. I've been using SuSE since version 5.3 back in 1995-6 (?) and for the first time in so many years I have to say: I'm disappointed with the final result. Reasons for such a bold statement could be many but here I'll list just a few in random order:
I've found 11.3 to not yet be 'perfect' but to be very fast, stable, and productive.
* I expected KDE 4.x to be faster and lighter but it's not... maybe the next lines are related to this behavior... please read on.
<rant> Oh, good grief. So don't use KDE, there are multiple alternatives. I am so sick of the *@^*(&$%@( KDE 4.x nattering which accounts for 75% of the traffic on this list. </rant>
* SaX2 is missing in action - if not, please tell me where to find it as YaST2 can't either. The only way to get a dual-head setup up and running with Xinerama on a supported nVidia gfx card with the latest official nVidia drivers/modules (1) was to dig into forums for infos and using some nvidia-* tools I never heard about before. At least I learnt something new in the meantime :-) although I don't know where/how to activate the 3D acceleration...
Agree, the X setup/config issue is a bit confusing; but I know have the Nvidia repos installed and the native driver is working well. Although my second monitor doesn't magically show up as it did under 11.2 - but I haven't looked into the issue at all [too much paying work to do].
(1) nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-256.35_k2.6.34.0_12-14.1.x86_64 and x11-video-nvidiaG02-256.35-15.1.x86_64
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-195.36.31_k2.6.34.0_12-11.1.x86_64
* some "basic" effects such as the bouncing mouse pointer to provide feedback of an application starting leave a trail across the screen which goes away after a while * similar to the previous point, moving a window across the screen causes the same effect, even with the "don't show contents", etc
Under GNOME I've had not artifacts of effects issues at all.
* in average, the box is much slower when compared to its performance running OpenSUSE 11.0 - even running Folding@Home with 11.0 wasn't that heavy load and it allowed me to run lots of applications, as expected. Changing from one virtual desktop to another or waiting for the menus appearing when you right-click on the Desktop takes ages now...
I pound the machine with DbVisualizer, Evolution, Open Office, Monodevelop, simultaneously, all day - performance is great.
* all the nice Composite effects (wobbly windows, transparencies, etc) are gone and the error message is: --- Compositing is not supported on your system. Required X extensions (XComposite and XDamage) are not available. ---
When enabling effects / compiz I did get a warning that my hardware is
not supported - I enabled anyway and it has worked perfectly.
--
Adam Tauno Williams