OpenSUSE is one of my favourite Linux distribution. And the latest version of OpenSUSE namely 11.0 surpasses all the previous versions in style, essense and usability by a large margin. Novell has released OpenSUSE 11.0 in numerous formats targeted at multiple platforms. You can download OpenSUSE 11.0 as a DVD image, a LiveCD image for both KDE and Gnome, or choose to install over the network. More over, the OpenSUSE distribution is available for machines with 32-bit, 64-bit and PowerPC architectures which is not something that most Linux distributions tend to support.
I chose to download the OpenSUSE 11.0 LiveCD image containing KDE 4.0.4 and burned it to a CD for installing on my machine. My machine specifications comprise of a modest Pentium 4 2 GHz CPU, 644 MB SDRAM, 40 GB Hard disk and the usual ordinary peripherals found in most entry level PCs nowadays.
The installation went without any hitch and soon I was logged into OpenSUSE KDE 4 desktop. The installer is very pleasing and user friendly and at par with the slick Fedora Linux installer - Anaconda.
Installing Multimedia Codecs in OpenSUSE 11.0
The default installation of OpenSUSE 11.0 does not ship with all the multimedia codecs. Neither does it have Adobe Flash or Sun Java installed. So I had to install the codecs and Flash on my OpenSUSE machine on my own which fortunately was as simple as clicking on any one of the following links [
or 
] depending upon your desktop, which will install a software bundle containing all the codecs, Flash, Java, Libdvdcss and the latest Amarok for KDE and Helix-Banshee for GNOME users, thus making it multimedia ready.
Note: The preceding paragraph is true only if you have downloaded the OpenSUSE live CDs. If you download the DVD which is around 4.5 GB size, then it contain all the multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash player and Sun Java by default.
The chief strengths of OpenSUSE is its well integrated configuration utilities. All system administration tasks can be done using the GUI frontend YaST.
OpenSUSE 11.0 Main Features
The main features of OpenSUSE version 11.0 are as follows :
- KDE 4.0.4
- Linux kernel 2.6.25.4, AppArmor 2.3, Xen 3.2.1 RC1
- YaST the SUSE installer has been ported to use Qt4. This results in better themes for the installer. Both the Qt (KDE) and GTK (GNOME) versions of YaST have seen several changes, and in particular there are improvements to both package manager front-ends. Integration with PackageKit now means that there is a clearer view of all the package groups, with icons to distinguish them quickly.
- As well as a visual change, the installer underwent many structural and ‘under-the-hood’ changes to make the installation both easier and quicker. Many steps are now consolidated or removed where unnecessary, meaning that you can perform an entire openSUSE installation with just seven clicks! To see the full transition, check out Kulow’s talk at FOSDEM (video, slides).
- Compiz Fusion now also comes with an in-depth and highly configurable settings manager: CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm), which is also available by default in openSUSE 11.0. From here you can change a whole horde of settings so that Compiz behaves precisely as you want, or you can even choose to enable a large selection of extra plugins providing new eye-candy or helpful other additions. Be mindful about the performance impact that this might have on less powerful computers.
- One of the primary media changes in openSUSE 11.0 is the removal of the previous 1-CD installation CDs. Now you have the chance of either the DVD installation (with KDE, GNOME, Xfce and much more), or a single GNOME live CD, or a KDE live CD — both of which are installable. For a complete overview of the new layout scheme, see Media Layout/11.0 on the OpenSUSE wiki.
A few screen shots of OpenSUSE 11.0
Compiz effects
OpenSUSE KDE 4.04 Desktop
