The 1st pane of the install wizard, titled “Language, Keyboard, and License Agreement” allows you to independently choose the language and keyboard. Why? Because things don’t always match. For example, lots of Germans end up with US layout keyboards on their laptops.
But honestly, I think it’s pretty obvious, but maybe that’s just me…
Sure. I like the idea of them being independently chooseable. But they should default to the right thing, no? In a similar way, I have to choose a language for the EULA even though I’ve already chosen one for the installation. It is right that it’s possible to do these things in every combination, because it leaves nobody behind, but I think some extra thought could go into not asking as many questions right out of the box. Still, the impression I’m getting after having used SuSE for a little bit this week is that the SuSE philosophy differs dramatically from mine on this point.
On the “Create New User” pane, you were asked about auto login, although to be fair it used different language: “automatic login” I see where that could be confusing.
I don’t understand the admin account thing, though. Unless you did some magic elsewhere… you’re not root.
Heh. I had the opposite issue. Told it to autologin and it didn’t. This may be for the same reasons that caused me to get icewm even though I chose enlightenment; maybe the ancient login manager thing it installed for me doesn’t know how to automatically log in…
Auto login does depend on the DM; I know it works on KDM & GDM, and I assume it works on LXDM. I’m quite certain XDM predates it by a couple generations.
Putting the final install choice of keyboard layout on the “accept EULA” page you must admit thats a bit random. wheres the network dns settings, under a picture of a duck?
Im not flaming you personally but some of opensuse’s gui choices seems a bit odd to say the least.
Ok i missed the auto logon tick-box, my bad but shouldn’t that be off by default?
Ya, but at that point you’ve already asked me which desktop I want. So you know whether the login manager you’re going to choose supports autologin, and can therefore prevent me from ticking a box which you know isn’t going to work. Someone will say “but that’s hard! that means we have to have that installer page adapt itself depending on previous choices!” and I will say: yes, yes you do.
It did prompt first. It just didn’t wait very long - 10 seconds may be too short here, but then again, you can’t do anything with the machine until the reboot happens, so why wait?
Rest assured, it only happens once, and only during the install. The Live images are more clear about this, as there’s an assumption you might actually be working with the machine during setup.
Right. There’s a spectrum of philosophy on configuration, and even Ubuntu vs. openSUSE doesn’t reach the ends; I’m sure I could find a review somewhere on the web that says Ubuntu’s installer has too many steps, and openSUSE’s isn’t flexible enough.
A lot of the openSUSE ethos is around choice and flexibility. To that end, openSUSE’s balance point goes for sane defaults but lots of opportunity to change. No one can objectively say that’s right or wrong, its different and subjective. Part of the core argument for trying it, though, is subjective, in that experienced Linux users were asked ;-).
Would I give my Mom an openSUSE laptop and say “go have fun”? My Mom, probably not. I’d send her a Chromebook. Your Mom, I dunno; that’s up to you. You? You’ll probably have a lot of fun, and find out there are some things you appreciate having a bit more control over. Or not.
Agreed.
I believe all the desktop choices on that list support Auto Login. In your case, Enlightenment isn’t on that list yet. Bryan was just making life hard on you ;).
I disagree.
First off, its the first choice you make. You’re final choice is to actually modify the disk.
But more to the point, the layout changed in YaST a bit this version, in order to present a simpler interface: the traditional ‘table of contents’ was dropped, and larger titles added. Some of the layouts changed to accomodate - here’s a screenshot of the same pane in 13.1:
I think it makes sense to present this first, and I don’t find it random at all. I don’t see how you can ask for language & keyboard at any other place in the install, than the very start?
Yes, we should probably automatically switch the EULA. No one’s saying its ‘finished’ or ‘perfect’ or any such nonsense ;).
If you have some interest in patching 1992’s xscreensaver to respect XFCE’s configuration, you’re contribution will be welcome. Otherwise, and alternate reading of this complaint might be
“… you gave me some rope and I made a noose. WTF?”
What rope?
I was just wondering after you get past the awkward installation issues about a situation that my friend told me lately.
You see, sometimes I help out at a community center and it so happens that they have a spare room (away from the macs and winblows PC’s ) that is available to be used for an “Open Source Suite” as there are a few geeks with old desktops that said they’d like to donate their kit to the project.
Do you think we should all install OpenSuse ? 'cos it seems quite a stable area of the linux market, as mentioned on the previous podcast. Anyway, we’re loking for something that can have a tremendous community so keep everyone occupied - so perhaps OpenSuse KDE Desktop was a good desktop to aim for ? Tell me waht you think as I’ve only a fortnight before the suite opens, and get this thing established: cheers.
It depends what the open source suite is for, and who’s using it. If it’s normal people rather than geeks, I suspect there’ll be more success running Ubuntu on the machines just because more third-party apps support it and there’s more documentation out there on how to do things with Ubuntu.
I would go a stop further and say Ubuntu-Mate or Lubuntu. They are both more of what a non geek would be expecting to see. On old machines you would also get better performance from the above mentioned.
I decided to I wanted to poke at the new XFCE 4.12 release.
Oh lookie there, it’s in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed already. 
I love to use opensuse, because to it feels very finished and well rounded. I am quite a noob and I find it easy to use and yet the power functions seem to be as easily available if I would ever need to use them. I had some problems with my mouse (GOD why did I have to get a Microsoft mouse!) and installing steam causing me to hop around a bit, however the rounded feel still makes me come back to it over and over. Also it leaves a lot possibilities to try different thing (DEs for example) within the distro seamlessly, because it all is there and prepared.
P.S. I am sticking with the KDE version.
P.P.S I live in the Netherlands and saw that oSC is in Den Haag this year, which is the ideal opportunity to go, but I am still doubting a bit. I have exams just after the oSC weekend and so I can’t go all days. If there is anyone who already is known with oSC I would like to ask you: Is it worth to go just one of the days? And which day would be most rewarding?
I thought I’d give OpenSUSE a go using Virtualbox (v4.3.24). OpenSUSE installed OK without any problem. Unfortunately the “guest” kernel modules in OpenSUSE are still for version 4.3.20. I also noted that dkms is not in the OpenSUSE repositories etiher.
After a bit of digging around was able to pull dkms from the packman repos here:
http://packman.links2linux.de/package/dkms/528563/all
Once installed, I attempted to set up the Vbox kernel modules but ran into issues again as the main Vbox kernel module failed due to an issue with gcc. I’m a little stuck as the repos offer several versions of gcc (v4.8.7 & v4.9.2).
I would appreciate a bit of guidence, as I would like to give OpenSUSE a proper test drive. Many thanks in advance.
It’s for people with no idea what open source is about.
I’ll try Ubuntu, but I imagine there will be plenty of dd’d USB sticks hanging around for people to try other distro’s.
