A recent conversation on G+ about stability and GNU/Linux distributions have led me to reevaluate the platforms I tend to pass on due to the enterprise label commonly applied to them by the community.
During this series I will use the desktop in my normal fashion of web development, office work, and general computing. I’ll use the tools provided to update, install and manage the desktop environment as any general user would. These tests will be highly subjective to the task on hand and what I hope to accomplish.
13.2 First Impressions
I’ve been running SUSE 13.2 for a few hours on my i5 desktop and am currently installing it on my laptop. During this time the only setbacks I’ve had is my lack of familiarity with YaST and the OpenSUSE installer. On a wired connection desktop installed the system without issue. Nviidia drivers were provided by the community page and YaST took grabbed the necessary drivers automatically.
Installation is slow, I suspect this is due to the huge .iso installing tons more than it actually needs I should have only included what’s on the usb drive.
Upcoming Enterprise Test
Test Requirements
- The distribution must have an active support cycle of no less than 36 months. so 13.2 is out but OpenSUSE 13.1 is in
- NVIDIA compatible drivers for a GTX750ti either during or after installation
- Available software, image editing, word processing, and basic multimedia software.
What will be evaluated
- Stability on my Intel i5 SandyBridge Desktop and System76 laptop
- Default desktop environment
- Ease of use for my daily tasks
- Community support features
- Installation
What won’t be evaluated
- Age of packages and kernel
- Gaming
- Official or unofficial respins
Distributions
