SuSE 11.1 / KDE 4.x Review

[RoyGBiv]

I realized when I first started doing this last night that I was writing a review less of SuSE than of KDE 4, so I'm going to back up, start over, and try to differentiate between the two. I do not use Gnome, so commentary about that desktop environment will not be included. Also, this is not intended to be a comprehensive review, rather one that focuses on the elements that concern my day-to-day usage. I'm avoiding entirely what most reviewers do and spending an inordinate amount of time on the installer. The installer works. 'Nuff said.

Test System
ASUS A8N-E
Processor (CPU): AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Total memory (RAM): 2.0 GB
GeForce 8800 GT
Samsung SyncMaster 2443 24" LCD Monitor (1900x1200 native)
NVidia CK804 onboard Sound
A Bunch of Hard Drives, both Seagate and Western Digital

First Boot
As with most of my SuSE installations, the first boot went smoothly with the typical things not working properly.

The repository that holds the NVidia proprietary display driver is not enabled on install, thus hardware acceleration was not enabled, leading to somewhat poor graphics performance. This is mitigated by the fact that the OpenSource (OSS) driver has been improved by leaps and bounds, so I didn't have snail trails across the screen when moving windows. Enabling this repository is easy via the YaST Software Manager, and you can install the driver simply by searching for it after doing so. I, personally, do not recommend doing this despite its convenience. The RPM is of an older version of the driver, and the automated configuration routine is somewhat lacking. Downloading the driver from NVidia and following its simple instructions for an install is, imo, much preferred, even if this process requires you to repeat the process whenever there is a kernel upgrade. YMMV.

My monitor was not automatically configured, and the system defaulted to a basic LCD 1280x768 display, which looked odd. Changing it to the desired settings required installing the NVidia driver and using the SAX2 configuration program.

The network came up as expected, but the network manager application doesn't work. Since I have a very basic system -- cable modem connected with a wire to the network port -- this wasn't really an issue, but it's a problem and will be especially for those using routers or who want desktop level information about their network traffic. It's also just annoying to see "Unknown Network Status" on the otherwise pretty sysinfo screen.

Audio was weird. SuSE 11.1 defaults to the Pulseaudio system and, apparently, doesn't install ALSA or the basic OSS at all. At least these fall-backs didn't work, and I haven't looked deeper into options other than Pulseaudio yet. Sound was choppy when playing any of the system sounds, and after I got multimedia working, playback was not good. When I *was* hearing sound, it was very, very nice, but the random stutters and stops were a pain.

SuSE offers both KDE 3.5 and 4.1 as desktop options (as well as Gnome and others), and you can choose which you want as the default. I decided to try KDE4 on a freshly installed system since before my experiences with KDE4 were on a Kubuntu system on which I had installed it as a secondary desktop option after the initial install. Things did not go well, and I hated it. I'm not in love with it now. More on this later.

Firefox is installed by default as well as Konqueror. With KDE4, the default file manager is now Dolphin, which is still buggy, but usuable. KMail is the e-mail application of choice, but Thunderbird is there as well. You've got OpenOffice 3, which is nice. Basically, there's a ton of software here, and all of it I've tried so far offered no major surprises.

Package management speed is better in 11.1 than in the last SuSE system I tried, which was, I think, 10.2. It's still way too slow compared to apt-get, but you don't have time to make dinner now while trying to install one application. (I do not understand why I can update 30 different repos with apt in under ten seconds while it takes sometimes several minutes to update about 10 with SuSE's system zypper.)

Configuration
As with all OSS distros, most major multimedia doesn't work out of the box. On previous versions of SuSE, getting it working was a somewhat complicated process, but manageable, and with the vast number of clear instructional manuals that came out within days of a release, one could say that doing this with SuSE was probably easier than with many systems. One of the third-party repositories focuses on this, so all you really have to do is download these packages, install them, and you're set for everything from MP3 playback to ripping DVDs to playing MOV and AVI and even WMV files.

Now, it's supposedly even easier. On the openSUSE.org website, the developers have put together a "one-click" install link for multimedia support. It does what it says it will do.

But ... xine, the engine that drives KDE's default video and audio players, is now broken. Kaffeine crashes constantly -- hard crashes that require the command line (CLI) to kill. One can install the optional VLC and MPlayer packages, and *those* do work well, but those accustomed to using Amarok and Kaffeine are going to experience frustrations. Rolling back to a previous version of libxine1 solved some of these problems (I could at least play a divx wrapped video and mp3 audio most of the time) but crashes or lockups with the players involved are still abundant. Xine itself is basically unusable. This especially annoys me because I don't like the way either VLC or MPlayer handle transitions between videos in a playlist. In Kaffeine and Xine, when the list goes from one video file to another, there is no visible transition, meaning you can watch things that are separated into multiple files but which are nonetheless continuations of each other without breaking your attention. Since I rip most of the DVDs I purchase and save them into 2 CD sized divx files (better quality than 1 CD sized file and more convenient for archival purposes), this is a major deal for me.

As mentioned in another thread, I use secure sockets for network transmission whenever possible. This is built-in to Thunderbird (e-mail) and various web browsers (https) when the websites support it, but none of the Usenet clients I have found for Linux incorporate nntps into their protocols. This necessitates using stunnel. Stunnel is not included in any of the 11.1 repositories, so I used an RPM for 11.0, and setting this up was a pain in the proverbial ass. I got it done, but I didn't enjoy it.

Configuring Pulseaudio required a few Google searches and a visit to the project's website. The GUI based configuration application for this audio system is, for some reason, not included in SuSE's installation, so I had to use the CLI to edit the config files. After changing various parameters via suggestions in support forums, Pulseaudio now works much better and delivers a high-quality sound I've not before experienced on a Linux system. I didn't realize my sound quality was so poor until I heard what was coming out of my speakers with this. In any case, the problems I experienced here are the fault of the SuSE implementation. It works fine, but it's not configured properly out of the box.

A special note: I use a terminal emulator called yakuake. Its name is an homage to Quake and the drop down "terminal" screen that allows you to enter cheats, chat, etc. That is, it looks like a HUD that drops down from the top of the screen when invoked with the F12 (or other user-defined) key ... very convenient. The version in use for KDE4 has changed how it works somewhat. You no longer have the ability to save a profile change from within yakuake itself. All this really does is invoke Konsole and wrap it differently, so this is really a Konsole issue. Whatever the case, to change profile settings (font, background, etc.) you now have to open Konsole, change it there, then exit the program normally for it to "stick."

I changed a number of other things from their default values, but these are all matters of taste, so I won't comment on them. Other than these issues, configuration was fairly straightforward ... except for KDE.

KDE 4

Oh. My. God.

I don't know who is to blame for all the problems. I know some of it is KDE, some of it NVidia, some of it distro implementation, and some of it with user expectations, but where the lines rest I can't tell.

As an NVidia Linux developer admitted recently, the NVidia's graphics driver does not work and play well with KDE4. Why? I don't know, but it's obvious.

Using the non-authoritative but nonetheless useful app glxgears to get a basic idea of how your graphics card is performing in Linux, I would typically get around 14,000 fps with my current card in other Linux installations. With the current driver in this system, I'm getting around 1200 fps. I had Compiz working two years ago on an older NVidia card on another system, and I could spin that cube without a hiccup. Currently, I can't get it to move without crashing the system. Windows redraw at horrendously slow rates. The effects of KWin, based on Compiz-fusion, are *pretty* but stutter, then crash, leading to a black-screen or white-screen of death that requires a reset-switch reboot ... on LINUX! It's horrible, shades of Windows ME in fact. I turn off all the special effects, but the frame rate in glxgears doesn't improve. The desktop in 2D works fine but not exceptionally well with occasional stutters, and that shouldn't be a marker of a good system these days anyway. If you don't have 2D functionality, you have a turkey, or Windows Vista on a sub-standard system. My system is not sub-standard and actually runs Vista very well. This mess ... not so much. (Lordy I hated typing that.)

Now allow me to say here I "get it." I understand why KDE went this direction, and as I've said before, I think they'll get there eventually, but the users who are complaining about the "bling" taking over for function and who are almost universally being dismissed by *extremely* defensive KDE developers have a major point. This garbage makes Vista look good.

If it worked well, it'd be great, but it doesn't. Now, one could say, it's "in development," and I shouldn't expect it to function perfectly yet. Okay, fine. I can accept that. The problem here is that many major distros that use KDE are using KDE4 as the *default* now. For SuSE, version 11.1 will be the last version that offers KDE 3.5 at all. That "year of the Linux desktop" thing people are always talking about? Not with this. This would drive a non-geek insane if they tried to stick with it.

I'm not going to go into a laundry list. I'll just say that Plasma crashes a lot for odd things. It doesn't save your settings (which seems related to the Konsole thing mentioned above) occasionally. There are needed configuration options missing from the menus. Etc.

I actually *like* the new system or would if it worked properly. It requires one to unlearn a lot about what Windows taught us a desktop was for, but the new system is, I believe, better in many ways. It just needs a massive amount of debugging. I can't learn this system very well when my trying to do things results in the system going down or the settings I came up with not saving, thus requiring me to redo them on every reboot after said crash.

All that said, I used the "one-click" method of upgrading from the default 4.1.8 to 4.2, and things did improve somewhat. The presentation is better, and the crashes are less frequent. Speed is still a problem, although moreso with 3D than 2D.

Side Note: The "one-click" thing the SuSE has going for upgrades and installs of software is impressive. I only used it for a couple things that themselves had problems, so my experience seems less than it could have been. Overall, this addresses an issue a lot of people have with Linux, the apparent (not real, imo) complexity of installing software. This method will go a long way toward reducing people's problems with using Linux.

So anyway ... that's that. I'm going to play with it a few more days then move on to Mandriva and/or Debian and see how things go there.