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Novell’s OpenSUSE 11.2, the latest release in a long and popular line of Linux-based operating systems, hit Internet mirrors everywhere this week, packed with the latest and greatest of what the open-source software world has to offer.
The distribution, which is targeted primarily at desktop users, ships with the latest versions of the Firefox Web browser and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, as well as up-to-date versions of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments. On these counts, OpenSUSE bears a strong resemblance to the latest versions of Fedora and Ubuntu Linux.
However, there’s plenty that sets OpenSUSE apart from its chief Linux rivals, most of which has to do with the longtime SUSE focus on catering to power users (in the Windows sense of the word). Where Fedora and Ubuntu focus on delivering friendly interfaces for mainstream user functions and shunting everything else to the command line (the home of the Unix power user), OpenSUSE enables users to click their way through a great many administrative tasks-control panel complexity be damned.
On the plus side, this philosophy makes OpenSUSE somewhat more discoverable than its peers. I find it easier to explore the capabilities of an application through menus and tool tips than by squinting at config files. In fact, it was with SUSE-circa Version 7.3-that I got started with Linux (around 2001). On the other hand, the more-is-more approach does lead to confusion in some corners, such as where parallel, installed-by-default software upgrade and installation tools vie for your attention in right-click menus and system control panels.
A great example of the positives and pitfalls inherent in OpenSUSE’s power-user orientation lies in the way that OpenSUSE 11.2 exposes and integrates community-packaged software into the distribution. The tools that ship with Version 11.2 do a great job of tapping the ready-to-install applications that individuals and open-source projects can create using Novell’s OpenSUSE Build Service. As a result, it’s easier than ever for users to locate and install the particular software they want, but it’s easy as well to turn reasonably supportable distributions into Frankenstein-like mashups of potentially conflicting packages.
With that said, I think the moves that Novell and the OpenSUSE team have made around embracing community packaging efforts are worthwhile, and serve to maintain OpenSUSE in its place as one of the best desktop Linux distributions available.
As a server operating system, OpenSUSE offers the software and the configuration tools to handle most Linux workloads, particularly those that require up-to-date open-source components such as databases and programming frameworks. However, OpenSUSE 11.2 sports a shrunken window for bug and security fix support of 18 months, down from 24 months for previous versions.
OpenSUSE 11.2 comes in versions for x86 and AMD64 systems, and can be freely downloaded from http://software.OpenSUSE.org/112/en. The download images available from this site include a 4.7GB DVD image that contains the entire distribution, as well as separate Live CD images that include the GNOME and KDE desktop environments. New in 11.2 is the option to write one of these Live CD images to a USB stick, a welcome improvement that can speed installation times.
Software Sources
Software Sources
During the past few years, Novell and the OpenSUSE project have been building tools and Web-based services that enable anyone to create ready-to-install software packages for OpenSUSE and other Linux distributions. OpenSUSE isn’t the only distribution to boast a volunteer software packaging community, but OpenSUSE 11.2 makes the process of finding and configuring these packages faster and simpler than any other Linux option I’ve tested. For instance, both OpenSUSE and Ubuntu include a tool for configuring networked software repositories, but where Ubuntu requires users to locate and manually enter repository details into the tool, OpenSUSE offers up a list of popular community repositories from within the tool.
The list of community software sources that appears within the OpenSUSE repository tool is limited to well-established projects, such as those for OpenOffice.org, Mono and Mozilla, but it isn’t much more difficult to subscribe to smaller packaging efforts. I could, for instance, find and install packages from the OpenSUSE Build Service by visiting the Web front end for the service, searching for my desired package and clicking a “one click” install button.
After clicking the one-click button next to my chosen package, my OpenSUSE test machine presented me with a dialog from which I could opt to subscribe to the package’s repository, to fetch later updates or to not subscribe, to avoid pulling in any future packages. In some cases, choosing a package from one repository would pull in multiple other repositories.
Also new in OpenSUSE 11.2 is a tool called webpin that’s meant to allow users to search for packages hosted at the OpenSUSE Build Service without having to visit the OBS Website to search for them. During my tests leading up to the OpenSUSE 11.2 launch, this feature wasn’t yet working for 11.2, as the back-end Web service on which it relies hadn’t yet been updated to support the new version.
Once I selected a new repository to configure, OpenSUSE would ask me whether I wished to import the cryptographic key with which packages from that repository were signed. Both Ubuntu and OpenSUSE are configured by default to prefer that packages be cryptographically signed. However, on Ubuntu, importing a repository key is a manual, multipart process, while importing a key on OpenSUSE is a matter of clicking the “import” button on a pop-up dialog that appears after you choose to subscribe to a repository. (update: beginning with Ubuntu 9.10, configuring a PPA and importing its key can be done with a single command from the terminal)
Also on the package management front, OpenSUSE 11.2 is the first OpenSUSE version where in-place, network-based system upgrades are considered a supported upgrade scenario. The distribution update command “zypper dup” goes beyond a regular update by uninstalling packages to make way for new ones, if need be. This command, when combined with an assortment of software repositories with overlapping packages, can lead to warring upgrades unless users assign their repositories priority scores in the software sources tool.
OpenSUSE 11.2 ships with the PackageKit framework for installing software. This framework offers the benefit of running without root privileges until it requires elevated rights to do its work.
During my tests of OpenSUSE, I found that my software update and installation operations were frequently blocked while the service that backs PackageKit went about its business in the background. This service never took too long to do its work, but these blocks added to a sense that OpenSUSE’s right hand often seemed unaware of what its left hand was doing.
In future versions, I hope to see PackageKit better integrated with the distribution.
Other Highlights
I was pleased to find that OpenSUSE now offers an option for full volume encryption (with the exception of the boot partition). This brings the distribution even with Fedora and Ubuntu, both of which have offered this sort of encryption in their past few releases. Like Ubuntu 9.10, OpenSUSE 11.2 offers an option for encrypting user home directories.
Unlike Ubuntu and Fedora, OpenSUSE offers users a check-box option of creating a separate home partition, which can be handy for preserving user data while switching among distributions or versions. I also noted that when I opted for a partitioning setup based on LVM (Logical Volume Management), the OpenSUSE installer suggested adequate root and home partition sizes, leaving the rest of the disk open for other uses.
SUSE distributions have long set themselves apart from the rest of the Linux pack on the strength of their graphical administration tools, and Version 11.2 continues in this tradition with a new partitioning tool that appears both in the system installer and in the Yast config tool set.
Executive Editor Jason Brooks can be reached at [email protected].