Suse is back
Well, that lasted what, a whole two weeks? I went completely over to Ubuntu 7.04 on europa and discovered that there are still enough rough edges and sharp corners that I missed Suse's capabilities and stability.
The final straw for me was DVD playback. I have no idea what happened, but both Totem and VLC started to refuse to play certain DVDs correctly. For example, Totem would not play the menu in "Madagascar" but would instead immediately play the first title it found. VLC wouldn't even see it. And then there was K3B having problems ripping DVDs. I never had any of those problems under Suse 10.2, and certainly not when Ubuntu was first installed. So, out came the openSUSE 10.2 installation DVD and into the machine it went. In in less than an hour I had openSUSE 10.2 re-installed. I'm really disappointed in VLC under Ubuntu, but I despise Totem under any Gnome-based distribution. Thank goodness for Kaffeine (and a properly working K3B).
So what about all that bullshit I posted earlier? Fine words indeed when you think you've got your back covered and you can continue doing what you did (and expected) before you switched. Unfortunately I couldn't with Ubuntu. And I wasn't in the mood to learn the finer nuances of Ubuntu and uncover what was causing my problems, especially when I already knew how to make it work under openSUSE. Lots of skills transfer between distributions, and lots of skills don't. It's the ones that don't that cause you grief.
Do I still feel 'betrayed' by Novell? Maybe betrayed is too bombastic a word, but I certainly don't feel comfortable using Novell. I've got a constant eye on Novell and its behavior as well as the advances of other distributions. I have no great love for current Novell and I will certainly try this again when the next releases of Fedora and Ubuntu hit the streets. Microsoft is too close to Novell and I don't trust Microsoft.
I did make some changes when I re-installed openSUSE 10.2:
The final straw for me was DVD playback. I have no idea what happened, but both Totem and VLC started to refuse to play certain DVDs correctly. For example, Totem would not play the menu in "Madagascar" but would instead immediately play the first title it found. VLC wouldn't even see it. And then there was K3B having problems ripping DVDs. I never had any of those problems under Suse 10.2, and certainly not when Ubuntu was first installed. So, out came the openSUSE 10.2 installation DVD and into the machine it went. In in less than an hour I had openSUSE 10.2 re-installed. I'm really disappointed in VLC under Ubuntu, but I despise Totem under any Gnome-based distribution. Thank goodness for Kaffeine (and a properly working K3B).
So what about all that bullshit I posted earlier? Fine words indeed when you think you've got your back covered and you can continue doing what you did (and expected) before you switched. Unfortunately I couldn't with Ubuntu. And I wasn't in the mood to learn the finer nuances of Ubuntu and uncover what was causing my problems, especially when I already knew how to make it work under openSUSE. Lots of skills transfer between distributions, and lots of skills don't. It's the ones that don't that cause you grief.
Do I still feel 'betrayed' by Novell? Maybe betrayed is too bombastic a word, but I certainly don't feel comfortable using Novell. I've got a constant eye on Novell and its behavior as well as the advances of other distributions. I have no great love for current Novell and I will certainly try this again when the next releases of Fedora and Ubuntu hit the streets. Microsoft is too close to Novell and I don't trust Microsoft.
I did make some changes when I re-installed openSUSE 10.2:
- I did not install Gnome side-by-side with KDE. I installed KDE by itself.
- I did not install Beagle. I went through and removed everything Beagle-related. The desktop and system runs a lot smoother and faster.
- I installed the latest ATI drivers for the 9700 Pro right after the full install.
- I went to here and set up all of my repositories (or the ones that really mattered), and stayed away from The Jem Reports "Hacking Suse 10.2". I'm holding my breath as I write this, but my repository issues have not come back up. Updates have been reasonably fast and easy.
- I did not install Beryl. I've got enough eye candy on europa.
"For example, Totem would not play the menu in "Madagascar" but would instead immediately play the first title it found. "
ReplyDeletetotem-gstreamer doesn't support dvd menus, totem-xine does. so install totem-xine instead. info from ubuntuforums...
Sorry, totem-xine was installed, and it did work completely at first. Then it stopped working, and only on a few DVDs. Besides, why do you have to know about this peculiar combination about a distribution that touts itself as easy and solid enough for anybody? I have a sneaking suspicion something happened during one of the upgrades, but since I wasn't paying specific attention, I can't say which one.
ReplyDeleteAs a non-techie Ubuntu has the advantage that I can manage to install Ubuntu - something that ground to a halt with Opensuse when I tried it. (I think the answer to that problem is in your blog somewhere-when I have time I might have another look.) Still Ubuntu has lots of weird quirks and certainly isn't drop-dead easy for an old Windows user.
ReplyDeleteNovell != openSUSE. openSUSE is a project sponsored by Novell, like KDE, the Linux Kernel, GNOME, OpenOffice.org, etc. Do you also not feel comfortable using these?
ReplyDeleteTake a look at http://opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS for the information and facts.
@ Francis:
ReplyDeleteThank you for your link. I guess a lot of long term (open)SUSE fans, including blogbeebe as well as me, have been miss informed by the so called Microvell deal. Driven by sentiments rather than reason.
Your link fortunately clears all the misconception up.
With kind regards
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