OpenSUSE 10.0

march 3, 2006

I had wiped off Fedora Core 4 from my Compaq notebook because I needed to run Windows and Microsoft Office (Access to be exact) for my current University of Phoenix database class -- why they still teach Microsoft Access is beyond me. Anyways, I had returned the notebook back to its original Windows ME setup and I hated it. Windows is Windows, and Windows ME seemed to have all the worst traits of Windows amplified. For instance, when I used Remote Desktop Client to access my work PC, Alt-Tab did not get sent over correct. The system was quite snappy because I was running WinMe with 384MB of RAM. But, I wasn't satisfied. So, yesterday I was experimenting with QEMU on WinME but couldn't get the damned thing working. I had ISOs of OpenSUSE 10.0 on my server, I wanted to try it out, but needed Windows. But, now that I had discovered that I could possibly emulate a full system inside of Linux, I went ahead and burned the ISOs to CD and gave SUSE a try. I was pleasantly surprised by OpenSUSE, I never did try the SUSE distribution because it was always commercial, but OpenSUSE is free and I am willing to try anything that is free. The installation was fantastically easy and all my hardware was recognized. Unlike Fedora Core, the default window manager is KDE instead of Gnome -- and that is a major plus for me because I really like KDE over Gnome. The general look and feel of KDE is more familiar to me. I also think KDE is a lot prettier than Gnome (please no flames from Gnome people, I still think Gnome is cool, I just prefer KDE). What was really cool was that QEMU really worked. I was able to install Windows and Office -- and it all worked and was not terribly slow. The system emulation did slow things down a bit, but not enough that I wasn't able to use Windows. And that is fantastic news. Anyways, my server OS will continue to be Fedora Core because that is what I was "raised" on -- I am an old fashion Red Hat guy. But, for the desktop, SUSE is a good OS. I think I'll continue to use SUSE for my desktop machine, it is pretty nice.


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