eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: OpenSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu 6.10

OpenSUSEs YaST offers users one place in which to graphically configure a laundry list of system settings, including quite a few server configuration tasks. Whats more, YaST offers a text-mode front end that looks and works very much like its graphical

SUSEs background as a direct rival to Red Hat in the enterprise server space means that openSUSE ships with high-end elements, such as AppArmor security and Xen virtualization support, which Ubuntu does not offer right out of the box.

When we reviewed openSUSE 10.1 early last summer, we found both good and bad, but were annoyed by the half-baked state of the systems software management tools, which have settled down quite a bit in 10.2.

The transition from the classic SUSE software management toolset to the new Zenworks system (based on Ximians Red Carpet) is moving along well, but we found it more difficult to browse through available software on openSUSE than on Ubuntu. We also found

We were pleased to find that the power management functions suspend and hibernate worked well on both Edgy and on openSUSE 10.2.

The new menu makes it easier to launch recently-used applications and documents, but we found that it took longer to navigate to other installed applications than with the traditional GNOME menu, which remains available.

OpenSUSEs reworked start menu for KDE boasts the integrated search results that Vista offers, and that GNOMEs new menu does not.

Ubuntus software management tools and catalog of ready-to-install software packages have, in the past, been the Ubuntu attribute weve most prized. In Edgy Eft, these tools continue on more or less unchanged, and software management remains a particularl

Ubuntu 6.10 is the follow-up to version 6.06 (Ubuntu releases sport a year-month versioning scheme), and, as one would expect, Edgy Eft sports a number of definite improvements over the earlier version, such as updates to version 2.16 of the GNOME desktop

For the most part, Edgys client applications are integrated very smoothly into the system. One negative element we encountered, however, was the state of spam filtering support in the Evolution mail client thats included as Ubuntus default mailer. Out