I have been wanting to review OpenSUSE for quite sometime but somehow lost interest in OpenSUSE last year. However, with the release of OpenSUSE 12.3, my interest in OpenSUSE was back but I didn't get much time to critically review it. So, I was eagerly waiting for the 13.1 release to come out. Now after having used 13.1 for around a couple of weeks, I am finally penning down my review. Why a couple of weeks of wait for OpenSUSE? Because I have become quite an expert in Ubuntu and Arch Linux spins but my knowledge was pretty limited as far as OpenSUSE is concerned. So, it took a bit of my time to learn and then critically evaluate this distro.
For this review, I downloaded the 4.1 GB 32-bit and 4.3 GB 64-bit ISOs which come with both GNOME 3 and KDE desktop along with a whole lot of application. I downloaded both as I wanted to install the 64 bit version to my production laptop. For this test, I used a couple of machines:
The first one is my production laptop and after using Debian and Ubuntu derivatives for the last 3 years on it, I wanted a change. The second one is on which I record the RAM / CPU usage for comparison purposes.
OpenSUSE has a 900 MB live ISO as well for both GNOME and KDE desktop. I chose the heavier DVD as I wanted to see what extra it gives over the lighter version. Anyway, I used Linux Mint Imagewriter and an 8 GB pendrive to create a live USB of OpenSUSE. I didn't try out Unetbootin and not sure how OpenSUSE works with Unetbootin. Anyway, Mint Imagewriter is derived from OpenSUSE Imagewriter and I hoped it would work with OpenSUSE. And it worked really well.
I tried out the KDE platform and not the GNOME one. OpenSUSE 13.1 ships with KDE 4.11.2 and Linux kernel 3.11.6. Dolphin 4.11.2 is the default file manager.
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| From OpenSUSE 13.1 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in |
For this review, I downloaded the 4.1 GB 32-bit and 4.3 GB 64-bit ISOs which come with both GNOME 3 and KDE desktop along with a whole lot of application. I downloaded both as I wanted to install the 64 bit version to my production laptop. For this test, I used a couple of machines:
- Asus K55VM laptop with 2.3 Ghz Intel Core i7 3610QM processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M 2 GB graphics
- Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Intel Core i3 processor, 2 GB DDR3 RAM and Intel HD 3000 graphics
The first one is my production laptop and after using Debian and Ubuntu derivatives for the last 3 years on it, I wanted a change. The second one is on which I record the RAM / CPU usage for comparison purposes.
OpenSUSE has a 900 MB live ISO as well for both GNOME and KDE desktop. I chose the heavier DVD as I wanted to see what extra it gives over the lighter version. Anyway, I used Linux Mint Imagewriter and an 8 GB pendrive to create a live USB of OpenSUSE. I didn't try out Unetbootin and not sure how OpenSUSE works with Unetbootin. Anyway, Mint Imagewriter is derived from OpenSUSE Imagewriter and I hoped it would work with OpenSUSE. And it worked really well.
I tried out the KDE platform and not the GNOME one. OpenSUSE 13.1 ships with KDE 4.11.2 and Linux kernel 3.11.6. Dolphin 4.11.2 is the default file manager.
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