Introduction

After being postponed, SUSE 10.1 was finally released on the 11th of May. That day, http://www.opensuse.org was down, probably dying under the huge number of people eagerly pressing F5 on their Internet browser. However, the ISO files were present on a few mirrors and the "GM" (Gold Master) acronym in their name indicated that this was the official release.

A lot of Beta versions and release candidates had been previously made available since the previous official release. SUSE 10.1 didn't include the latest Gnome 2.14 and KDE 3.5.2, probably because they had been released after the SUSE 10.1 code freeze. For these reasons, I was expecting a high quality product, well tested and very stable.

There had been rumors that SUSE had chosen Gnome as their default desktop and that they had been working on a graphical theme. I immediately though of the nice blue bubbles found in Fedora Core 5 and the preview screenshots of the UbuntuLooks theme which would come with Ubuntu 6.06. Fedora had set a new standard and Ubuntu was about to make their move, now was the time when SUSE could show the world what they were capable of, in terms of making a desktop operating system as nice looking and stable as possible. In more than one occasion SUSE had proven by the past how good their distribution was, so I had a lot of expectations for that release.

I read some forums and found out that the default English desktop installation only required the first three CDs. I downloaded them and booted on the first one... {mospagebreak title=Installation}

Installation

The first thing I saw was an animated screen with a nice SUSE Linux 10.1 logo in the center, a blue background picture and the word "welcome" written in Japanese, English, German, Italian, Czech, French, Spanish and Chinese coming from the sides. I was beautiful and I immediately felt very impressed!

How did SUSE manage to animate that screen? I don't know. I was still trying to figure it out, when a boot menu appeared.

I chose "Installation" and SUSE started to load the kernel.

The boot sequence was hidden by a nice boot splash screen and although it didn't feature a progress bar, a little animation kept me busy.

The system then launched XWindow and the famous SUSE installer "YaST" appeared on the screen. As you can see on the screenshots, YaST guides the user through three different sections: Preparation, Installation and Configuration. For each section, a number of steps appear on the left panel. While the user is answering questions relative to a step, the left panel indicates which steps are left and which steps have already been done. This is very ergonomic since it gives the user an idea of how long the installation will take, and it allows the installer to ask more questions without exasperating the user.

The help button also provides some help and useful information for each step.

As soon as YaST knows which language to use, you're asked to check your installation media. Of course, MD5 checksums are available on the mirrors and it is always recommended to check the integrity of an ISO file after downloading it, but once burnt on CD, the media can get scratched or damaged and this "Media Check" can avoid some unpleasant surprises or chaotic behavior.

YaST then asks to agree with the SUSE Linux OSS 10.1 Novell Software License Agreement. I've never been aware of all the legal considerations around that, but I doubt people actually read this before clicking "Next". If it's here and I'm asked to agree with it, there's probably a reason, as I always did before in such circumstances, I simply clicked "Next".

I was then asked whether I wanted to update from a previous installation or to proceed with a new one. I didn't have any version of SUSE previously installed on this machine, so I can't tell you how well the update works. There is an option called "Include Add-On Products from Separate Media". SUSE includes a number of non-free software such as Macromedia flash, Sun Java... etc. Fortunately they are not mixed with the free software (even though they are stored on the same media if you chose the DVD version) and they are stored on a separated CD called SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-Addon-Biarch.iso.

YaST then asked me to set my clock and time zone.

I then arrived on the Desktop Selection screen and I selected "Gnome". I had heard rumors that SUSE had chosen Gnome as their default desktop, but as you can see here, no desktop is selected by default. If you click next without selecting anything, an error comes up and asks you to make a selection. It is therefore difficult to say that SUSE preferred Gnome over KDE.

After that, YaST moves to the Installation section and presents a summary of default installation settings. As you can see below, it is possible to get an "expert" view of it, and by simply clicking on an item, the user can change its settings.

For instance, I wasn't happy with the keyboard layout, so I simply clicked on it, and YaST opened the following screen.

I changed my keyboard layout, and I even had the opportunity to test it. For some users, it is not always obvious what keyboard layout should be selected. A lot of installers lack this option and I was happy to see it in YaST.

I then clicked on "Software" and I was able to review what packages were going to be installed. A lot of options make the software selection easy and it is possible to browse the packages depending on many different criteria. A search engine is even included and the user can easily add or remove packages or family of packages from the list. For each package, a description and a lot of information is made available. Also, YaST indicates how much space will be taken and how much space will be left for each partition.

I thought the concept was great. Somehow SUSE managed to give a lot of choice to the user without making the installer complex. For instance, I could simply review the installation settings chosen by YaST and click "next" or choose to customize my installation completely.

Once I was finished looking at the installation settings, the installation itself began. YaST created and formatted my partitions and then started to copy the packages to the hard drive. A nice slide show depicted the features of SUSE 10.1 while a vertical progress bar indicated how long I would have to wait until completion. In the progress bar two lines indicated exactly when I would have to change to CD2 and then CD3. This is the first time I saw that, and I thought it was a marvelous idea!

I clicked on the "details" tab. More information was shown, and YaST was giving details for each package. However, I wasn't particularly interested in this, and while I had to wait for the installation to complete, I began to think that this would have been the perfect opportunity to read the release notes. However they were nowhere to be seen.

Something tricky happened just before I had to insert CD2. YaST said the "Basic Installation" was finishing and it rebooted my computer. Maybe it needed to boot from the hard drive and install the rest of the packages in some sort of second stage install. I don't really know. However, once rebooted, YaST came back exactly where it was and I was asked to insert CD2, and then later CD3.

YaST then finished installing the packages and moved to the third and last section: "Configuration". I was asked to set a few things, such as the hostname and domain name of the machine, a root password and a default user. An option was checked by default for "Automatic login" and I left it untouched. The Network Configuration step was very efficient and it detected nearly all my settings. I set my proxy settings and used the "Test Internet connection" wizard to make sure everything was fine.

However, when I was presented the following step ("Online Update"), it failed to contact the server. The options seemed to indicate that YaST was trying to send my hardware profile and some registration code to a remote server. I didn't really see why it would do that, and as the step was optional, I selected to do that "later".

After a little while I was presented the release notes. Although it is always interesting to read release notes, I got used to read this type of documentation while I have nothing else to do. At this precise moment I couldn't wait to reboot the computer in order to see what my newly installed SUSE 10.1 was like and there was no way I was going to sit down and read through all these pages... I thought of the 30-40 minutes I spent doing nothing while the system was installing the packages. The notes would have been read by now, and I would actually have liked reading them. I clicked "Next".

The same way YaST presented the installation settings and the network configuration, it now showed me the hardware configuration. Most of the hardware had been detected by default and I simply changed a thing or two. I clicked "Next".

And finally here I was. The installation was now finished. YaST had been great in the way it never really made anything difficult for me and always presented me with default choices and useful information. The installation consisted in a lot of steps but I could always see where I was and how much had been done. Also, I found YaST both simple and efficient in the way the user didn't have to set every little thing but could do it if he wanted to. This was definitely the best installer I had seen so far. {mospagebreak title=Inside SUSE - Gnome 2.12}

Inside SUSE - Gnome 2.12

I rebooted the computer and I was welcomed by a nice grub menu. Then GDM started and logged me in automatically, with this splash screen.

The default gnome desktop uses a theme called "Gilouche" which defines its own controls and window borders and uses the "industrial" icons. I though it was beautiful, classy and professional-looking. The background picture was nice as well. Blue is supposed to be the most popular color among distributions. Some studies showed that it was the best color for a background picture in terms of ergonomics. SUSE was traditionally green, and it moved to a blue theme with a little bit of green. This is very nice.

A lot of software is installed by default and SUSE included everything to make the distribution a nice desktop installation. OpenOffice and The Gimp were even customized to look more like the overall theme.

The Gnome desktop preferences have also been redesigned. Along with YaST they offer everything the user needs to set up his environment.

The File Explorer has become very nice. With the "industrial" icons and the "Gilouche" window borders, it looks really good. A set of very handy applets were also included in the taskbar. A Desktop Search applet allows the user to search folders, files, applications and a lot of other resources by keyword. I believe it uses Beagle. A Software Updater also indicates whether or not packages are available for update.

And a very nice tool was added: The Screen Resolution applet. The user can now change the screen resolution by simply clicking on it.

The menus are very consistent, well organized and they use a beautiful set of icons.

The overall impression I got from the Gnome desktop was one of simplicity and beauty. Some impressive innovations were made and the result is astonishing. {mospagebreak title=Inside SUSE - KDE 3.5.1}

Inside SUSE - KDE 3.5.1

I also wanted to see how the default KDE desktop looked, so I installed SUSE 10.1 on another computer and chose KDE during the installation. Once YaST finished setting up the system on my machine, I rebooted and KDM automatically logged me in. The KDM splash screen looked exactly like the GDM one, apart from the fact that it was written KDE 3.5.1 instead of Gnome 2.12.

Once in KDE, I was welcomed by SUSEgreeter and the KDE tool tips. I closed both of them and began exploring the desktop. KDE 3.5.1 is very nice looking in any distribution, but to make it even more beautiful SUSE has modified some parts of it. The K menu button was replaced by the SUSE "Kameleon" and the KDE Help Center features a nice SUSE logo and a customized start page. The SUSE documentation was also included in it.

I found a few things irritating though. For instance, among all the icons placed on the desktop, only two of them are actually useful ("Trash" and "My Computer"). Firefox and OpenOffice can be run from the menus and the green logo is simply pointing to SUSEgreeter. The printer icon opens a printer pool which shows what documents are being printed, and the "Network Browsing" icon can be found directly in "My Computer".

The menus themselves were also poorly designed. For instance, in the "Internet" menu, some items have a name and a description ("Konversation (IRC Chat)") and others don't ("Data Exchange" actually points to KTorrent).

Apart from that, I found the KDE desktop very pleasant. It features a nice selection of KDE components and software (Amarok, Konversation, Kopete, Kontact, KTorrent, K3B, Kaffeine, KBluetooth...etc), although SuperKaramba is not installed by default.

The "My Computer" icon opens a page which shows a lot of information about the system and from where the user can access many different places: The home and root folders, the network, the CDROM, other partitions or hard drives and removable medias. It is a very handy tool.

The YaST control center requires root access and allows configuring system settings. It is complemented by the KDE control center which the user can run to modify his desktop settings.

Overall, it looks like SUSE focused their efforts a bit more on their Gnome desktop than on KDE. However, it still looks really nice and very professional. {mospagebreak title=Conclusion}

Conclusion

When I started to review SUSE 10.1 I knew I was going to see a great distribution. Things have gone far beyond my expectations though. Everything worked perfectly and the system seemed to be very stable. The boot splash, the login managers, the installer and the desktops were customized with a unified SUSE look and feel that made them beautiful and very professional. The YaST installer in particular impressed me a lot, and I was amazed to see how SUSE succeeded in making a great desktop operating system, both with Gnome and KDE, offering a lot of software, a lot of options, a lot of configuration tools without making it hard at all for the user. This release also comes with great new applications such as Xgl, Xen and AppArmor. Everywhere I looked, I saw really nice things, great ideas and a beautiful presentation. What a great distribution, what a great release!