Why is Ubuntu 9.10 more popular than openSUSE 11.2?

[Viper2]

Seriously, why is this?

I had Ubuntu (Gnome) installed on my PC previously, and while it's good, openSUSE (KDE) seems like years ahead.

OpenSUSE looks 5 years ahead of Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a terrible appearance. OpenSUSE has better menus and Yast is far better than anything Ubuntu has. OpenSUSE has much better font rendering also, and KDE is much more customizable than Gnome.

Now I agree that openSUSE is more difficult to configure and not super easy like Ubuntu, but openSUSE is well worth the extra effort.

So is Ubuntu only popular because it's so easy to set up? Like I said, I am not dissing Ubuntu, it is a very good distro, but openSUSE is a much more polished and modern distro.

Opinions?

[bigtomrodney]

I personally was a fulltime SuSE user between 9.2 and 10.3. I found the the release quality went downhill with particular relation to the state of its repositories. They went from having the best multimedia support (up to 9.3) to having none at all. It was far too common to have broken dependencies in the repositories. I also found that their 64-bit release as at 10.2/10.3 was completely insufficient.

The short version is quality control. Final releases felt like betas and you had to chase other repos just to make the system usable. On the other hand Debian and Ubuntu have bigger repositories, better hardware support and now a larger community.

The other aspect is a deep mistrust that many users have since Novell/openSUSE decided to go into business with Microsoft. There were fears of patent pacts and Linux users having legal difficulties.

[GNU-Fan]

My theory is that Ubuntu is advertised and built for starters, so that is where beginners are pointed to.

As the former newbie proceeds her journey into GNU/Linux land, she gets more and more independent of the choices the distributors once made for her. After some time, the user will know how to adapt his system to look/behave whatever he wishes it to be. If Ubuntu turns out to stand in the user's way, it may be replaced by the more mainstream distributions, like Debian, RedHat, maybe Gentoo.

My impression is that SuSe is somewhat in the middle. Too much effort for a beginner but too "narrowing" for experienced users.

Just my personal POV. SuSe was actually my very first distribution, and at the moment I have to use it at work. But I never really fell in love with it.

[MikeTbob]

Adding to the info above, It's also notable that Canonical is more involved with Linux than Novell is. Here is a quote from Matt Asay
Slashdot Interviews Story | Matt Asay Answers Your Questions About Ubuntu and Canonical

But two, the company is remarkably consistent in what it does choose to go after. In particular, we are relentlessly focused on improving the Linux user experience.

Novell has bigger fish to fry.........I don't think they are actually trying real hard either.

[oz]

Marketing and public relations might play a role in Ubuntu's popularity as well.

[elija]

Speaking from strictly personal experience I tried OpenSUSE 10.1 and it remains the only operating system to completely trash my hard disk. So for me it will be less popular than anything. I have tried a later version (Gnome instead of KDE) and it was quite good. But I didn't have the nerve to try it on a real computer.

Now more generically, I think that Novell are more interested in corporate use than domestic use. SLED and SLES are their major products and OpenSUSE is almost an after thought, albeit a very polished one.

[daark.child]

Its the marketing. Canonical is good at marketing Ubuntu to the masses and I'm yet to see any other Linux vendor or maintainer match the marketing skills and budget like Canonical.

[Viper2]

I think the fact that Novell owns the openSUSE project is the main reason it looks vastly more professional and polished than Ubuntu. Though Ubuntu is a great functioning distro, it simply looks amateurish compared to openSUSE. But on the flip side, Ubuntu is all about user-friendliness and that must be it's appeal.

KDE 4 is simply a far more appealing GUI compared to Gnome. Gnome looks about as aesthetically appealing as Windows 95 until you modify the appearance of Gnome.

I give openSUSE a lot of credit for making a KDE distro that runs awesomely, because I have heard that Kubuntu is quite mediocre. Mandriva seems good as well. I have used Mandriva in the past and it was good, but I have heard mixed reviews about Mandriva 2010. However, I haven't tried it yet.

[elija]

KDE better than Gnome?

That's very subjective. And wrong

[GNU-Fan]

Indeed, Sir