openSUSE 11.2 Setup and Review
openSUSE is my favorite Linux distribution. Linux in general has some usability frustrations as a desktop user, so I hope to share some of the ways they can be dealt with. If you have questions of your own leave a comment.
Fix horrible bug that breaks buttons
GDK has a horrible debilitating bug that was not caught before release and at the time of writing the fix has not been backported as an online update. This makes buttons in both Flash and Eclipse unresponsive to clicking. You need to “export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true” in order for things to work correctly. I added this in my ~/.bashrc file:
# .bashrc
# User specific aliases and functions
alias untargz="tar zxvf"
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true
export PATH=/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse-3.5:$PATH
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
********. /etc/bashrc
fi
1-click installers – Setup graphics card, multimedia, and fonts
An easy way to install most of the software you need is to use a 1-click installer. If you have an NVIDIA or ATI graphics card, then you’ll want to install the drivers using one of these installers. I also recommend installing “Codecs pack for KDE”, “VLC Media Player”, and “Fonts with subpixel hinting enabled”.
Install Chrome
Setup multimedia
This is a perennial setup step on Linux distributions. We’ll install the codecs needed to watch videos on Linux.
- YaST > “Software” > “Software Repositories”
- Click “Add”
- Select “Community Repositories”
- Select “Packman Repository” if it is not already
- YaST > “Software” > “Software Management”
- Install libxine1-codecs.
Setup time synchronization
NTP (Network Time Protocol) can be used to synch your system’s clock to a server on the internet.
- YaST > “System” > “Date and Time”
- Click “Change…”
- Select “Synchronize with NTP Server”
- Add the server for your region from pool.ntp.org (e.g. I used 0.us.pool.ntp.org since I’m in the United States)
- Check the “Save NTP Configuration”
- If you hit “Configure…” you can also add backup servers (e.g. 1.us.pool.ntp.org , 2.us.pool.ntp.org , etc.)
Setup a static IP address
This step is optional and is meant for people that know what a static IP is and want to set one up. Having a static IP address is very nice when you want to remote desktop to your server or access it in some other way without worrying about what the IP address is. There may also need to be some configuration done on your router for this one. Or you may prefer to investigate DHCP reservations if your router supports them.
- YaST > “Network Devices” > “Network Settings”
- Under Hostname/DNS, you may change your hostname and Domain Name if you prefer
- Under Global Options, switch to “Traditional Method with ifup”
- Under “Overview”, select your network card and click “Edit”
- Enter your static IP (besure to also enter DNS and gateway information)
- Hit save
Setup a network file share (NFS) using Samba
Another optional step, Samba allows you to share files on your computer with others on the network.
- YaST > “Software” > “Software Management”
- Install “samba”
- YaST > “Network Services” > “Samba Server”
- Choose “Not a domain controller”, start during boot, and tell it to unblock the firewall
- Change sharing settings as you’d like and hit “Finish”
- Add a user to Samba by running “smbpasswd -a username” where username is the user you’d like to create.
- Connect from your Windows machine by right clicking “My Computer” and browsing your network. If you have trouble connecting you might also try opening a “Run…” dialog off the start menu and typing in your IP address with two leading slashes e.g. “\\192.168.10.2”
Setup remote desktop through NX
The two main remote desktop softwares for Linux are VLC and NX. NX is much faster and is what I would recommend. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get desktop sharing to fully work. If you get desktop shadowing to work properly then please let me know. In addition to installing NX, we’ll also open the corresponding port in the firewall so that we can connect from another machine.
- Download the NX Linux packages
- Run “rpm -iv nxclient-3.4.0-5.x86_64.rpm”, “rpm -iv nxnode-3.4.0-5.x86_64.rpm”, and “rpm -iv nxserver-3.4.0-5.x86_64.rpm”
- Run “/usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver –install”
- Run “/usr/NX/bin/nxserver –keygen”
- In your NX client, open “Configure…” > “General” tab > “Key …”
- Copy the contents of “/usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key” into the key window and save it
- Open “/usr/NX/etc/server.cfg”
- Uncomment ‘EnableSessionShadowingAuthorization = “1” and change the value to “0” which will enable you to select “Shadow” in the client under the General > Desktop if you’d like to do desktop sharing.
- YaST > “Security and Users” > “Firewall” > “Allowed Services”
- Allow “Secure Shell Server”
Upgrade to the ext4 file system
ext4 is the new default file system on openSUSE 11.2. If you did a clean install, you will be running ext4 by default. However, if you have a drive you did not reformat when installing the OS then you may be running ext3. For example, I have two drives: 1 60 gig drive I use as my root partition and a 500 gig drive I use as my home directory. When I installed openSUSE 11.2, I wiped the root partition and reformatted it as ext4, but I wanted to keep the data on my home directory, so I couldn’t reformat it and left it as ext3.
- Run “df -T” to see your file system types. For me it showed /dev/sdb1 as ext4 mounted on /home
- Run init 1 to switch runlevels
- Unmount the drive: e.g. “umount /home”
- Run e2fsck on the drive : e.g. e2fsck /dev/sdb1
- Run tune2fs: e.g. tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg /dev/sdb1
- Edit /etc/fstab to change ext3 to ext4 on the drive
- Run “mount -a” to remount the drive
Review: The Problem with Linux is Usability and Resource Allocation
openSUSE is as good a Linux desktop as you’ll find. Unfortunately that’s not saying as much as I’d like. There are so many broken things on the system and yet so much effort was put into developing things that average person doesn’t give a rat’s ass about. There’s a whole load of crap that comes with the system that’s a waste. It’s incredibly frustrating to me to see so many resources go into this software that few people care about. I don’t need Marble when the far superior Google Earth is available on Linux. I don’t need Kaffeine when VLC is a better alternative. Most of the games are a waste and can’t hold a candle to the hundreds of Flash games available online. I’ve never used digiKam, but have to assume that at best it’s Picasa‘s ugly stepsister. There are dozens of programs I’d rather use than KDE PIM: GMail, Thunderbird, LinkedIn, etc. The list goes on, and on, and on. Why are we building this stuff? The single biggest improvement in openSUSE 11.2 is that Firefox is now the default browser. This took way too long, but is a welcomed change. I wish VLC would replace Kaffeine. Someone at Novell, Canonical, et. al. needs to do some user testing. Any 12-year-old kid would tell you you’re crazy if you think people would rather use Marble than Google Earth. Linux distros have done an absolutely horrifyingly awful job of picking the best software to be the default. Instead of wasting all this time, how about we come together and decide to make an operating system that just works? There are so many usability frustrations that I’d like to see solved instead. Novell, Canonical, and the other leaders in this area need to step up.
As mentioned, there are a lot of usability problems. For example, Flash was unusable in full screen mode after install. It turned out this was because I hadn’t yet installed my NVIDIA driver. But this is a big problem. How would any casual user know they had to do this? My parents, brother, or sister would not have known to do this despite being reasonably computer savvy. I knew because I’ve used Linux for many years, but if it requires a computer science degree to watch a YouTube video then you’ve failed. And when I did realize I needed to install the driver, I needed to know which of three drivers I wanted. Are you serious? I could just imagine asking my mom what graphics card she has. That would be a fun conversation. It’s 2009. And you don’t have the ability to detect my hardware? I understand that there are licensing issues, but once I’ve said I want to install a graphics driver you should be able to tell me which one I need. I want to get rid of the “Recently Used” option on the Kicker menu like I can with classic, but there’s no option to. I don’t understand why YaST has a “Media Check” option. Can’t you tell there’s no CD/DVD in my drive? I tried to edit my network settings with YaST and it told me to use NetworkManager or change the setup method to Traditional with ifup. How do I do either of those things? I don’t know what NetworkManager is or how to open it. There’s nothing in any of the menus called NetworkManager. When I started Firefox it asked me if I wanted to use Flash, gnash, or swfdec. But I tried gnash and swfdec and neither could play a Hulu video, so are you insane? Of course I don’t want to use either of those. Why are you confusing me? Flash on Linux is a big problem. The controls on the Hulu just stop working with frustrating frequency. I can’t figure out why Amarok and Kaffeine are both broken. I could go on, but you get my point. Let’s fix these problems instead of building more crap no one asked for. I know how much of this work has been done by volunteers and am extremely grateful for it. I’ve contributed to several open source projects myself and know what it’s like, so I hope those reading know I am thankful to have this amazing free software. I’m happy for what’s been done and am hoping the leaders of KDE and openSUSE will make some hard choices about what’s worth investing in and supporting, so that these projects can become successful in the mainstream world because as it stands now, even as great as it is, Linux simply isn’t ready.
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I agree completely with your opensuse review. I have had similar difficulties with my installation, particularly with regard to Amarok and Kaffeine. Installing DVD decoding and MP3 playback broke Amarok, uninstalling breaks Kaffeine, and no combination of RPMs from different sources (i.e. Novell vs Packman repositories) seems to fix both. You might also mention the poor printer support. I have an HP 2600n printer and the supplied drivers don’t work. I have to compile a driver and even with that there is no color printing. This printer is several years old. I had similar problems with installing the Nvidia drivers — can’t the system detect these and at least inform you that you should install the drivers?
I commented on some of these problems in my own blog: http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=161and
http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/blog/?p=155
This was the BEST and most honest review. Thank YOU!
Now, if you go to SuSE forum, you see tons of complains …. like problems with Fonts …. & of course a few hundred replies like: what problem?!! They look great on my rig out of the box!!!!!!
And the OP feels like crap!
i find Kaffeine WAY better than VLC.
vlc simply never ran for me. just got black screen.
whereas kaffeine quite happily played digital tv, timeshifting, recordings, etc.
i agree with you on flash video – tried watching bbc iplayer and mock the week lagged so bad it was more like a radio. thats after turning off ipv6.
Hi,
The problem you have is that you obviously do not understand how software development work. And you don’t understand how Free Software works.:-)
That’s all ok and to be honest with that in mind I can feel with you.
I’m the original author who founded the Marble project and who has worked a lot on it.
So let me give you a few answers on your rambling, ok? 🙂
> It’s incredibly frustrating to me to see so many resources go
> into this software that few people care about. I don’t need
> Marble when the far superior Google Earth is available on Linux.
Well, you might feel that Google Earth is far superior. And for many use cases you are certainly right.
But Google Earth has been developed since almost 10-15 years already (it was built by a company called “Keyhole” before they bought it). Marble is a lot younger. But development on Marble is taking place a lot faster than development on Google Earth. Why? Because everybody (even you!) can join the project and improve Marble. Because it’s Free Software.
Now what you are trying to tell us is that we stop working on all inferior projects and everybody starts to work on the same single “best” application. For Google Earth this would not work: I can not participate in Google Earth development since it’s proprietary software where the source code is not available.
But let’s just have a look at Firefox: So if everybody worked on Firefox would that make things better? Probably not. It’s like suggesting that all people should work on cooking the same meal so that it tastes better. That unfortunately doesn’t work. Otherwise you could put 1000 people on cooking a great soup or burger and it would taste absolutely awesome!
But if you have several different groups of people cooking different meals then at one point some people will find a recipe that might taste suprisingly good.
The problem with projects like Firefox and OpenOffice for example is the fact that the code is huge. And it’s not huge because they maybe are better in some ways than other software. But because the code base is a mess from a programmer’s point of view. Tidying it up would cost a lot more time than creating something fresh and new. So that’s why for example Safari and Google’s Chrome are not built on Firefox. Instead they are based on KDE’s browser (which is fresh and new). The source code of this browser is a lot cleaner smaller and easier to maintain. And therefore it’s currently highly popular among programmers.
So ok, there might be a few projects that have a lot of promise for a future that may be bright. Why does openSUSE ship those instead of waiting until they are mature enough?
For Google Earth it’s pretty clear: openSUSE can’t ship Google Earth since the license of Google Earth doesn’t allow to ship it as part of a distribution. So they offer an alternative for people who are not smart enough to install Google Earth. That’s ok and won’t hurt as long as there aren’t too many alternatives which would be irritating indeed.
Also openSUSE has an interest to promote promising Free Software projects: Only if the “alternatives” get some publicity then they will grow and become mature. The Linux kernel itself was once immature and these days it has grown into a very very mature piece of software.
So I’m working on Marble because I think that Marble will become very successful once it has matured a bit more. That’s maybe in 3 years or so from now. I estimate that by that time we can achieve to surpass Google Earth so that Marble will even appear superior to you.
And of course there is another reason why I’m working on Marble: because working on it is fun! 🙂 Just like you are “wasting” your time on writing blogs. I’m sure you’re enjoying writing blogs anyways.
Have Fun,
Torsten
Hey Torsten,
Thanks for sharing the other point of view here. I’m sure it’s frustrating for you to read my comments because you’ve undoubtedly put a ton of effort into Marble. And I completely agree that competition is great and makes products better. My personal point of view is still that it would be better for Linux users if efforts on products like Marble that currently have good alternatives went into solving basic usability issues with Linux. But of course most people working on these products are volunteers and get to choose what they want to work on and sometimes you just want to do what you enjoy instead of what others want.
Best,
Ben
Thanks for the tip — installing the (non-Open) NX server instead of trying to use FreeNX solved my problem with a black screen.
I feel you still haven’t got the point that Torsten was making. Torsten works on Marble. He may not (or maybe he is?) working for Novell or part of the downstream openSUSE team that consumes Marble (and myriad other apps). If Torsten stopped working on these products because they have “good” alternatives (for certain values of “good”), that doesn’t free him up to work on the usability issue you have with installing non-Open display drivers! For that matter, as you discovered, there is a non-Open driver for Nvidia cards, but Novell can’t distribute it with openSUSE because Nvidia’s license doesn’t let them. I think Novel do sell SLES (for money) which includes the non-Open driver from Nvidia, by the way…
Another gripe I have: if you applied these standards to Microsoft Windows, it too would be “not ready” (ever tried installing Windows on a clean OEM machine? Did you have issues with the default apps selected? What about the drivers? Any other gotchas that your mother should be able to figure out if Windows was ready? And you had to pay good money for that? Hmm) . A lot of people looking at Linux actually do feel that Windows is “not ready” — that’s why they look at alternatives.
I don’t know. I feel this discussion on Linux being not ready for the masses is old and just FUD. Maybe we should all just get a Mac? Is that ready ?
Hey Mike, glad I could help. I’d love for more people to use Linux which is why I write these articles, so don’t think I’m trying to discourage its use. I get that Torsten doesn’t work for Novell and I’m not trying to disparage volunteer work on open source projects. My complaints aren’t about display drivers, but rather are about Linux usability. Surely someone with the time and skill to write Marble could contribute elsewhere to a more impactful portion of KDE. That’s his choice to make of course.
I do realize there is a lot of software that can’t be distributed with Linux, but it could be made easier to download and install it. And in fact Novell has worked on this with its one-click installers, but they could go further by integrating it into the OS. There should be a box that pops up and screams at you telling you that you haven’t installed the driver, your performance will suck without it, you may want to choose a card with good Linux support, and here’s how to install the driver. That’s something someone with no Linux experience could at least begin to understand. Otherwise, you’re stuck there scratching your head and wondering why your computer doesn’t work.
I use both Windows and Linux everyday and stand by my position that Windows is easier to use. You don’t face the dependency hell that exists in Linux when installing software on Windows. I’d love for that to change and will continue to use Linux regardless. However, it’s absurd that this OS was released with a bug that causes Eclipse and Flash not to work because of a bug in GDK. The testing is really just unacceptably bad.
Whilst I admire your enthusiasm, I switched off about the Paragraph titled, : Review: The Problem with Linux is Usability and Resource Allocation. This paragraph is a classic moan by a recent user of OS’s that are paid for … by that I mean, your have just installed an OS on your computer, for next to nothing mate … a simple thanks to the thousands of people involved in Application development might seem the least you could say I think. I have used SuSE since v 4.8, its been a long road to here, but I do not profess to have contributed much to its development, other than positive encouragement to the many many developers that put so much of their time and lives into making it a better space to be in. From me you will hear a simples thanks Guys and gals … its a bit raw around the edges but most of all its awesome thanks!!.
Why is it to be expected that free software must suck out of the box? I say bullcrap. That is the old way of thinking. There are other distros that are more polished, and they too remain open source. Dont get me wrong, SuSE is great. Sure it could be better, but to expect that it will be less than paid for OS is just (IMHO) giving up. Kudos to all the developers who make this stuff all possible for us. Constructive feedback is much better than whining…