New subject: [SLE] a long-time Suser compares kubuntu and Suse

21 Aug 2006

      Hiya!

Warning: this mail is long-winded. If you're not up to reading a very 
long post, then don't bother - delete it now.

------------------------------------------------
A bit of background:

One of the things i've always loved about Suse, and boasted about to 
anyone who's asked me why i use it, is that i can pop in the 
installation DVD and be back online and working again within an hour or 
so. Back in the old days, when i used to love to spend 2 days 
configuring my box after each new installation, that wasn't a concern. 
But as i've matured [i.e., grown old] and Linux has become my primary 
OS, both at work and at home, getting and staying online and functional 
has become my priority. Suse has always been good at that. Turn it on 
and it just works [the vast majority of the time].

i switched from Slackware to Suse in the summer of 1998 (6.0, i think) 
and i've used only Suse since then. i've experimented with other 
distros, but never for more than a couple days before switching back to 
Suse. Debian, for example, is simply a pain in the butt to get working 
for desktop use. RedHat has, and always will, suck. ArkLinux is nice 
and ultra-optimized for speed but is missing a large package repository 
(maybe not true, but it's missing XEmacs packages, and that's my 
primary programming tool). Ubuntu is colorful and nice looking, but 
based on Gnome, which i hate with a deep-seated passion. So i decided 
to give Kubuntu a try. For those who don't know, Kubuntu is basically 
Ubuntu with a default desktop of KDE instead of Gnome.

Over the years i've contributed, on and off, to the Suse newsgroups and 
lists such as this one. In fact, i'll also claim that the hostname that 
you see in the yast titlebar ("Yast @ myhost") is my feature. It was 
added to yast a couple weeks after a sent a bug report to Suse asking 
them to add it because i had accidentally installed software on the 
wrong machine when i had yast open on two remote boxes at once and got 
the windows mixed up. (Before the hostname was there, it was easy to 
confuse multiple yast instances running on different machines.)

i tell you this not to brag, but to put my long history with Suse into 
perspective, so as to proactively dispel any ideas that i'm unfairly 
criticising Suse here.

------------------------------------------------
Now, what this mail is all about:

After some Grief with the Suse 10.1 packaging tools, i bit the bullet 
and installed Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org) on my laptop.

Here i'd like to give a quick overview of what i now feel Suse is doing 
right and where it could improve, compared specifically with Kubuntu. 
In the past i was unable to make such a comparison because i was so 
caught up in my Suse-blindness. Suse's good, but my recent frustration 
with it led me astray, and this is the result...

[Had i never upgraded from 10.0 to 10.1, i almost certainly would not be 
writing this...]

------------------------------------------------
What Suse does RIGHT:

- Administration of network services, e.g. Samba, DNS, etc, is 
incredibly well done in Suse. It's soooo simple to set this stuff up in 
Yast. (And to THINK, i used to LOVE editing those config files by 
hand!)

- The modularity of Yast makes it easy for Suse to add news tools to the 
tried and true Yast interface, both in curses mode and X11 mode. This 
makes new features easy to find, compared to a hodge-podge of various 
tools scattered around the system.

- Setting up network devices is trivial with yast. i'd have never 
figured out how to get my DSL connection working if not for yast.

- The SuseFirewall. Simplicity and effectiveness at its best. Were it 
not for the SuseFirewall, i would probably disconnect my DSL line 
between each click i make in my browser, simply out of paranoia.

- The installation process is pretty damned good. Kubuntu's X11-based 
installer crashed near the end, leaving my system unbootable. The 
text-based installer was much closer to what i am used to with Yast, in 
terms of features, though yast does provide the user with many more 
options (e.g. selecting your screen resolution for X11, whereas Kubuntu 
simply selects the highest resolution your chipset can support).

------------------------------------------------
What Suse could DO BETTER:

- SIMPLE documentation. IMO, Wikis are HORRIBLE means of documentation 
except in some unusual circumstances (and i can't think of a good use 
case for a wiki, to be honest). They are, almost without exception, 
butt-ugly, hard to weed through, and are notorious for having out of 
date or duplicated entries (each of various quality). By comparison,  
Kubuntu's online manual is a dream come true:
http://doc.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/desktopguide/C/index.html

Using it, within *literally* minutes i figured out how to effectively 
use one of the package managers (Adept, a Qt front end for apt) and 
install my XVid/mp3/multimedia stuff. With Suse you've got to search 
for ages, then go find the software, install it, and hope it works. The 
typical case is: a) figure out that it doesn't work, b) google a bit, 
c) go ask on a mailing list (like this one), d) get a terse answer with 
the word "packman" in it, e) go add the sources to yast, f) install, 
waiting on yast to try to figure out if it can use the remote install 
source, g) try again. Ad nauseum.

<short aside>
A recent post to this list claimed that Yast downloaded the 17MB remote 
package list *3 times* in the *same session*. On a 6+MBit DSL line that 
might be acceptable (depends on whether the package server can keep up 
with your line - not all of them can provide more than 100k/second), 
but over a modem it's downright unacceptable.

And what do you know - i haven't had to subscribe to a Kubuntu mailing 
list to figure anything out (nor have i had to google a single time).

The kubuntu manual is simple, straightforward, and gives me the *exact* 
commands/packages i need to install to solve my problems (e.g., the 
much-maligned multimedia packages). It's as simple as "apt-get 
install ..." Granted, a fast DSL line still helps, but even without one 
the process is faster than with Suse because the apt tools don't have 
the high logistical overhead which Yast software management tools do. 
That leads us to...

- Yast's software management is simple to use and effective but 
*incredibly* slow compared to apt-based tools. Orders of magnitude 
slower. The most annoying thing is that after any given install, Yast 
has to run the SuseConfig.* scripts, updating every single setting for 
every single app/service on my system, including those which have 
*absolutely nothing* to do with what i just installed. e.g. if i 
install a game, the Latex and Apache SuseConfig scripts are run. 
WTF?!?!?! With Adept (or other apt-based tools), it's trivial to search 
for new packages and installing them is FAST. There are no absurd wait 
times or "this repo is not signed. Do you want to continue?" warnings 
on every frigging install. (And that misleading "do not show this 
warning again" checkbox which doesn't really do what nearly everyone 
thinks it should.)
Today i had to find out the hard way which development tools i needed to 
install on Kubuntu. This is a process consisting of:
a) Try to configure/build one of my source trees.
b) See what breaks (i.e., what tool/library is missing).
c) Install the missing package.
d) Lather, rinse, repeat. [For the non-Americans in the crowd, that 
means "start from the beginning," or "go back to step (a)".]
In yast this is downright tedious to do because the install process 
takes so damned long. With apt/Adept it was almost a pleasure, with 
almost no wait time involved. Searching is simple and installation is 
lightening-fast.

Now i've known about apt for years, and have used it in small amounts 
before, but i always found it tedious because it was missing a front 
end. With Kubuntu's clear, straightforward documentation, i was led 
directly to Adept and was downloading updates from faraway servers in a 
matter of under three minutes. And the Adept UI is a dream to use 
compared to Yast's software manager (which isn't bad in and of itself, 
but could learn some ease-of-use tricks from Adept).

------------------------------------------------
And finally... my [very personal] conclusion:

i'm convinced. After 8 full years of being a die-hard Suse user, my 
laptop is going to stick with Kubuntu. My desktop PC will stay Suse, if 
ONLY because i've used Yast to set up the PC as my primary DSL 
connection and a router/firewall for the two laptops. If that was as 
easy to do in Kubuntu as it is in Suse, i'd have reinstalled my desktop 
machine today. i'm *that* convinced that Kubuntu is what i'm looking 
for in a desktop OS. For a server, i'd almost certainly stick with Yast 
because administering the network services is so simple to do. (And all 
these years i've thought that Suse is stronger as a desktop than a 
server.)

<final gripe>
And Kubuntu supports my GigaBit NIC out of the box, which Suse doesn't. 
To get it working under Suse i had to a) google until i found a forum 
talking about the driver, b) go download the driver sources from 
RealTek, c) hack its sources because it had typos which prevented it 
from compiling, d) install it. And repeat (d) every time i upgraded my 
kernel (which, granted, wasn't so often because the 10.1 update tools 
are so hosed).
Fine - not every distro can get every driver included. But i can't even 
get this driver through online updates with Suse, whereas Kubuntu "just 
has it", even though they're using an older kernel than Suse 10.1 does.

This is the longest mail i've written in some time. i hope that anyone 
replying to it will have the decency to liberally SNIP out large parts 
before posting back to the list ;). And, just as importantly, i hope it 
hasn't upset anyone or offended anyone's sense of decency or propriety. 
Suse is still good. But Kubuntu is also good.

:)

-- 
----- stephan@s11n.net   http://s11n.net
"...pleasure is a grace and is not obedient to the commands
of the will." -- Alan W. Watts

a long-time Suser compares kubuntu and Suse

stephan beal

Anders Johansson

stephan beal

BRUCE STANLEY

suse＠rio.vg

stephan beal

suse＠911networks.com

John Andersen

suse＠rio.vg

suse＠rio.vg

suse＠rio.vg

suse＠rio.vg

John Andersen

stephan beal

John Andersen

Jan Engelhardt

Jeff Rollin

suse＠rio.vg

PerfectReign

Stan Glasoe

Jeff Rollin

Basil Chupin

Basil Chupin

Jeff Rollin

Jan Engelhardt

suse＠rio.vg

stephan beal

Hans van der Merwe

John Andersen

Hans van der Merwe

John Andersen

Kenneth Aar, Grafikern.no

Hans van der Merwe

suse＠rio.vg

Jan Engelhardt

Carl William Spitzer IV

Carl William Spitzer IV

Jan Engelhardt

stephan beal

James Knott

Bob S

Jeff Rollin

Clayton

John Andersen

Clayton

stephan beal

John Andersen

PerfectReign

Clayton

stephan beal

suse＠rio.vg

stephan beal

Jeff Rollin

suse＠rio.vg

Clayton

John Andersen

Craig Millar

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