Here we go, OpenSuSE 10.3 is now out as of Oct 4th 2007. Being the huge SuSE and Novell fan that I am, I had to download the full version and get started. Now that I have completed my first week of SuSE playing, I though a nice review would be in order.

My first tasks was to do an inplace upgrade of the product. I went from OpenSuSE10.2 to 10.3, and everything was well in tact, so we have an A for upgrade.

I then wanted to see our new version in a fresh install with the 64bit flavor. I installed on an HP dv2200 with an AMD 64bit dual core processor and 2GB of memory. The first anoyance showed up right off the bat. The install CD could not support my nvidia graphics card and I was never able to see my install load up. The fix was to use the VESA driver by pressing the F3 option at the install selection window. The VESA driver brings linux up in text mode, then YAST2 starts in graphical mode. Not too bad, although exact same issue I had with OpenSuSE10.2 and SLED10sp1.

I did notice that during the install I had the option to review the release notes. At first I thought this was great, I could review the release notes now while software loads and I won't have to hit the release notes phase of the yast configuration. I was wrong, even though the release notes are there during software install you are still required to see them again as you go through the post configuration. Kinda silly if you ask me.

The very first thing I did after logging in was try out the online update engine. Very easy to setup, but my first experience was bad. My computer locked up when I attempted to install all required updates. My first few day's were actually filled with computer lock ups. I think this is a good way to turn a future OpenSuSE user or even a SLED user off of linux or SuSE. My laptop is fairly new, and these distributions need much better testing. For a PC to lock up right after a fresh build is just asking me to look elsewhere for a desktop operating system.

After a few reboots I finally got through the update process. I find another dissapointing issue; in SLES10sp1 you can select a user to be allowed to run the online updates without being prompted for the root password during every single online update. In OpenSuSE 10.3 I guess we took a step backwards, because I could not see where to select this and now find myself entering the root password everytime a new update appears. This is just asking for users to log in with the root account for regular desktop use.

Now for the fun part, I got a chance to try out the OpenSuSE build services and utilize the one click install feature. My software of choice was compiz-fusion. I could not believe I clicked the once click install, and that's all it took for my PC to lock up again. What's going on here guys? After another reboot the one click install service worked, and it worked good. This service is a big plus for any desktop windows or linux. Not only did my 1 click install work, but it resovled all my dependincy's for me at the same time. I love it.

Compis-fusion working was another story, I ended having to review the install procedures on the opensuse wiki. The wiki is very easy to use, I just entered compiz-fusion in the search bar at the top and my install instructions where right there. In order to make this a successfull product we need to get away from users having to do extra things, like enter in commands in the terminal in order to make things work.

Issue #2 with compiz-fusion; I had no menu bar on any application. After lots of time researching, like a new user should never have to do. I found that I needed to have emerald --replace run during my gnome startup. So my comment is, why can't the people at compiz and beryl and the people at opensuse get together and work these issues out so the end user doesn't have to.

Overall, I was disappointed in the fact that a brand new user to OpenSuSE could be turned off of the product with this new release. After resolving all my issues it seems to be running very well except for the occasional lock up, which is very annoying. OpenSuSE needs a bit more polishing and we need more communication within the open source community. I will be putting SLED10sp1 back on this laptop as I never had any issues what so ever with that distro, and the $50.00 a year is very very worth it for how well polished SLED10 is. As far as OpenSuSE goes I hope we can get it right in the future.