I vs openSUSE

Brief introduction
This article has been written for a long time and at the moment a little more than not relevant. After sitting a bit on openSUSE, I got so attached to it that until recently there was my main distribution.


Hello dear Habrahabr community members! In this article, I would like to talk about my impressions of my attempt to return to openSUSE.

As you know, there is an opinion about the openSUSE distribution that this OS is extremely user friendly, all parts of which are well-matched to each other. I completely agree with part of this opinion. In terms of build quality, openSUSE, in my understanding, is close, or even on a par with MacOSX. No other distribution kit has ever evoked such feelings in me. But as for user friendliness, here I am inclined to doubt a little. Details below.

How did it all start?


This is my second approach to the "shell". The first was a few years ago, and it was as if successful. Only, at that time I did not have normal Internet access. And there were some problems with the ATI video chip. So I decided to postpone further acquaintance until better times, replacing it with AgiliaLinux, I don’t remember which version. And when the best times came, I decided to try Linux Mint, at that time 13, with the Mate desktop. So he has since taken root with me. And he would have stood still, but yesterday I wanted to look at something new that I could not stand, and installed openSUSE 13.1.

Installation


As you know, Ubuntu and its brothers / sisters can be downloaded and installed from an iso-image lying on a USB flash drive or on a hard drive. Can openSUSE do the same? I think we should try. It doesn’t work, then it’s not fate. And I will not try.

So, a brief search on the Internet led me to this page . Without thinking twice, I mounted the image of the freshly downloaded distribution kit, took the grub.cfg file from it, and made the following corrections (shown in bold):

menuentry 'Installation' --class opensuse --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
set gfxpayload = keep
loopback loop /openSUSE-13.1-DVD-x86_64.iso
echo 'Loading kernel ...'
linuxefi (loop ) / boot / x86_64 / loader / linux install = hd: ////openSUSE-13.1-DVD-x86_64.iso
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrdefi (loop) / boot / x86_64 / loader / initrd
}

I put this file along with the iso image on a USB flash drive, in the root directory, renaming it grub-suse.cfg. Earlier, I installed grub2-efi on the same flash drive, although, as practice has shown, this is not necessary if grub2 is already on the hard drive. Be that as it may, I reboot. The grub2 menu appears. By pressing [Esc] I go to the command line and write the following:

set root = (hd1,1)
insmod /path/to/grub2_modules/loopback.mod
configfile /grub-suse.cfg

A menu appears. I select the first item and, lo and behold, the download has gone! And not only that, go! The installer booted normally and also installed the system normally. After some short time, the computer rebooted into a freshly installed system. The update applet showed that the system wants to update. Well, let it be updated. For the update only, I gave the sudo zypper up command in the terminal. And then the applet on the taskbar is uninformative. After the update, I connected Packman and installed the codecs, making several discoveries for myself on how to do this correctly.

Re-introduction to the system


As I wrote above, this is my second approach to the "shell". So, if not everything, then much, should be already familiar. In principle, the way it is. But not everything turned out as rosy as I expected. About this in order.

Firstly, the general impression of KDE is somehow depressing. There was a time when I thought that KDE is the only full-fledged desktop, and everything else is just pathetic crafts. But having lived first with AgiliaLinux, and then with Linux Mint, I got used to GNOME2 first, but in general I fell in love with Mate. The environment is very simple, fast, not overloaded with beauties and excesses. Against its background, KDE looks like something big, too shiny and quite heavy. Until he installed drivers from AMD, the fan on the processor periodically spun up, then stopped.

The problem described above is, in general, not a problem. This is just a matter of habit. But the problems began to appear a little later. Performing simple actions, such as minimizing windows or switching between them, sometimes the screen turns into something indecent. The image looked like a dump of triangles. Moving the mouse around the table, this whole bunch of triangles moved and it was not possible to make out anything in this mess. Only switching to the first system console with the subsequent sudo /etc/init.d/xdm restart command helped. Faced with such a problem about five times, I just turned off the visual effects. Now there are no problems, but there isn’t something like that, unusual. Anyway. The main thing is that everything works, and without gross reboots.

Then there was a problem with IPTV. It just does not show and that's it, although there are all the necessary codecs. The problem was in the firewall. The fact is that in openSUSE it is active by default. And, among other things, extinguishes all broadcasts. Well, open / var / log / firewall, read the last lines, find the broadcast address in them and insert it into the list of user-defined firewall rules. In the end, everything works.

So far, this seems to be all the problems. And as you can see, these problems are solved. But they are not simple for a beginner. Not knowing where to dig, you can quickly become disappointed in the system. Take at least the installation of codecs. The network has many descriptions of the process, but in few places at least something is said about the “change of supplier”. At first, the proposal to update the packages with a change of supplier caused me doubts and fear of breaking the system. Later, I discovered that you can go into the zypper GUI (before that I used the command line - a habit) and select the version I need. In this case, dependent packages will also be replaced with packages from the same provider.

The system is installed. There are no problems with the packages. Video, audio and TV work. It would seem, enjoy and enjoy! But, some strange feeling constantly gnaws. There is always a desire not to wait for Mint 17, but right now to return the 16th, having demolished openSUSE. At the same time, something stops. Well, wait and see - decide what to do next ...

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