My answer to that would be ZENWALK!
Yes/No/Maybe?

I am another SUSE 10.1 defector. I used it on my Sony Vaio laptop and in spite of all the problems with it (SUSE) I was reluctant to change as, like you, I had invested a lot of time and effort in getting it to work. However, I was VERY pleasantly surprised on how little I had to do to set up Zenwalk.

My Vaio uses an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 that runs 500% better on Zenwalk than it did on SUSE. On SUSE the screen resolution was very poor and slightly embarrasing. On Zenwalk it is crisp and clear. Don't ask me why, as both distros were using the same ATI proprietory drivers as far as i know.

Audio
You can play MP3s in Zenwalk 'out of the box'.

Video
Gxine has so far been able to play every video fromat I have tried, including Realplayer with no extra plugins of special setups.

Speed
Zenwalk boots up twice as fast as SUSE and runs as fast as everyone says it does.

Wifi
I had to download the firmware for my wifi card but once that was done wifi operates even better than it did on SUSE. That is saying something as that was one thing that was really good on SUSE.

Yes, their are niggles with Zenwalk and it has its weaknesses (adding software!) but overall it is a great distro and well worth trying out.

I've also pretty much had it with 10.1. I started using Suse on and off with 9.1-9.3. I had 9.2 installed for by little bro's computer but I never took the plunge.

Then 10.0 came out and it became my full-time desktop. It ran uneventfully for close to a year. Finally decided to upgrade to 10.1 and then the problems. I can tolerate things not working, and requiring some work on my part to get them to work. But the update problems are outside of that scope, that falls solely on Suse's shoulders. I also couldn't find any mention of these problems in opensuse.org or novell.com besides bugzilla in opensuse.org.

I guess I could go back to 10.0 but the fact that the update issue got past testing, and that there still isn't a resolution this many months after the release left a very bad taste in my mouth. I'm pissed that Novell would push that ZMD bullshit on us. Maybe I'm missing something but I still don't see the benefits of the new package management system. I sincerely don't care about key verifiable repos if that's all it has. All the other new additions don't add up to squat if something as central to a distro as package management and patches are fubarred.

I'm using SimplyMepis 6.0 LiveCD while posting this. Its running suprisingly fast for a LiveCD but the installer is annoyingly dumb. Why restrict installing partitions to more than one hard drive? I just don't get it. Guess it's onto Gentoo then.

Other stupid things suse has done lately on my PC:
-the respositories take forever to load, for installing programs as well as updates
-when trying to update a certain item, yast demands that I put in CD 1, when I didn't even install off CDs.
-took away support for my gamepad(actually suse 10.1 has done this all along, but I don't think I've mentioned it yet). Why the hell did they do this, it just makes no sense.

also, the copy of kuickshow that I'm running for some reason goes to the nexn image whenever the down key is pressed no matter what the key configuration is set to, and the repositories don't seem to have another version available

Unfortunately I don't have the time to install and configure another distro at the moment, but when I do I'll give a few new ones a try.

Be careful. After I first installed 10.1, I thought the same about going back to 9.3. It wasn't possible at that point. I did reinstall 9.3 and was dual booting with 10.1 for a while. Apparently, the update problems were global because I had them on 9.3, just like I had had with 10.1.

To be fair to Novell, I was able to get 10.1 working well after reading about and installing the Smart package manager - but it was only after probably at least half a day's work. That's inexcusable on a distro as mature as SUSE.

For the past month, things have been sweet again with Zenwalk. The only problem now is what to do with about 100GB available on my hard drive.

out with suse 10.1 loyal "for now" to ubuntu 7.04
was suse player since version 6.x

Well, my Suse 9.1 is actually running very nicely now (66 days uptime today).
Unfortunately it is quite old now. YAST appears to be broken -- unable to connect to updates or sources.
I still use it every day as my main system for everything but I can't help thinking its days are numbered.
I think I will buy new hard drive soon and try out Ubuntu.
There is one main thing I am worried about: with Suse I can use a light window manager (Ice WM) but still use Konqueror and any of its accessories. I hope I can do the same with Ubuntu because I don't think I could cope without Konqueror for browsing files, moving files, network browsing and so on.

SUSE 9.1 is no longer supported, even for security updates. If I remember correctly, support for 9.3 has been dropped, too. Check Novell's site or the SUSE board here to be sure. Even 10.0 is almost two years old.

Ubuntu is Gnome-based and does not use Konqueror. Even though I prefer KDE overall, Gnome's file browser is Nautilus and is quite good.

"SUSE 9.1 is no longer supported..."

Yes, but I'm living in denial. I had better get more serious about defecting.

I guess we don't want this thread to turn into a 'which distro' discussion, but the following thoughts come to mind when I think about defecting.

AtomicAmish has reminded me I'll have to decide whether I can get along without any of KDE's tools.

I have found that Gnomey things go faster. But I have never got along with Nautilis or Epiphany or the Gnome desktop in general.
I suppose I can stick with IceWM or WindowMaker on most distros.

But I might be a KDE addict now.
There are KDE things I have come to rely on:
Konqueror
Kprinter -- easy pseudo printers, e.g. for fax and pdf
Kbear FTP
K3b for burning CDs
Kate (yeah, it's only an editor, but I have settled in with it for html editing)

I know there are alternatives to all that, but with how much more learning curve?


As I said before, I use IceWM for a light desktop -- but I still use all these handy, easy KDE tools.

My experience with KDE apps or applets is that they are slow but they are easy and pretty.

I let the children use the whole KDE desktop -- and it is the most crashy thing on my system.
But, for a former Windows user like me, KDE made it easy to carry on with my work from day 1 on Linux.

Suse came with about 10 different window managers/desktops. Don't other distros do that?

What do users of the latest KDE think? Is it still crashy? In some distros or all?

I have to re-iterate the other big issue with changing distros: I spent a huge number of hours getting some things to work they way I wanted. In particular: Hylafax, Sound (Creative Audigy2), Jack, synths, midi, NVidia card (with various Twinview / Xinerama trials), Cinelarra (that was a big project that I wouldn't want to do again), Networking.

Am I the only person who sees changing distro as a potentially huge interruption to work and a possibly huge time-suck?

I expect that setting up a second time won't be so difficult. But it still means to me that change of distro (or even just changing to an updated version of a distro) is likely to involve many lost weekends.

In fact, it seems to me that it has taken me two years to install my system, and now it's time to change already.

I hate dual-booting, but I suppose there will be some of that in my future.

I got fed up with the updates screwing things up. Zenworks seemed to always break and when I re-installed without zenworks even the suse updater was slow to the point that I would go have coffee and come back to it later.. The whole yast - zenworks mess drove me to Debian and I couldn't be happier now. I started using Slack a couple of weeks ago and it's as solid as a rock.

Every so often, the KDE crash handler will appear for me. It's not a regular occurence though, and it's always when I attempt something stupid.

Most major distributions have different window managers in their repositories. If you like IceWM with KDE apps, then I'd recommend picking up a KDE distro and installing Ice.


If you're sold on Ubuntu, then with your preferences I'd go for Kubuntu, fixed up with IceWM.

Edit: Cinelerra was really easy for me to set up in Kubuntu. I just added a repository, and used Adept.

I'm rather disappointed in rpm based systems in general, not just Suse. Anything apt based is so reliable in comparison it's almost boring.

Mepis and PCLinuxOS both use KDE by default and both have synaptic package manager - although PCLInuxOS is actually rpm based. The upgrade path for PCLinux isn't very clear either; unless I'm mistaken, the only way of upgrading so far has been a fresh install. Maybe I should recommend (K)Ubuntu/Debian instead. If you want to go at least two years without an upgrade, the latter. For an easy tutorial on setting up about anything in (K)Ubuntu: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty

By the way, does that Kbear still exist? I haven't seen it in any repositories for the last year - and I've seen quite a few before I finally made up my mind.

Thanks for the great advice and opinions people.

Yes, the distro I am most attracted to at present is Kubuntu.
And if I can get Cinelerra going fairly quickly that would just about settle the issue for me.

From what I have heard, Ubuntu would also make it fairly easy to configure my soundcard.

My main day-job customer has just introduced an Ubuntu machine into the business, and he's a newbie, so I would make myself helpful there too if knew my way around it.

I don't know whether Kbear comes with recent versions of KDE. I just found it with Suse 9.1 / KDE 3.2.1 installation.
I have found it handy for updating websites.

Just had a quick look at some Suse forum posts: looks like Kbear came with Suse 10 too -- a few complaints about it crashing and this comment:
"KBear has always been flaky like that. It should have been strangled at birth."

http://kbear.sourceforge.net looks like a dead link -- either that or broken mysql/php there.

What do other people use for a graphical, drag-and-drop FTP? gFTP?


Thanks again guys.

gFTP, filezilla, d4x, ...

Hi, This post is very informative, however I would like some specific information. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Best Regards,

Hi, This post is very informative, however I would like some specific information. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Best Regards,