SUSE
From Superk
I have mixed feelings about SUSE. Originally it was one of my favorite distros for the desktop, but now I\'m not so sure I care for it much at all. Amongst all the RPM-based distros, it still ranks #1 for me, but there lies the crux - RPM. After many discussions with some very knowledgeable people in the TFUG IRC channel, I\'ve been wholeheartedly brought back to the realization of the power of APT-based distros; specifically Debian. But more on that in a bit.
SUSE really is a fantastic distro if your needs are basic (well, even if they are not - again more on that in a bit) and you are fairly new to Linux in general. SUSE offers a fantastically simple installation and gobs of beautiful eye candy that makes the desktop experience a true pleasure. If that\'s where your interest lies, then SUSE is for you. If you can be happy with what SUSE has to offer in the way of packages, then YaST makes your life incredibly simple as well. Management is a breeze with YaST.
Hardware detection & support is also very nicely handled by SUSE and this is probably one of my favorite features. I\'ve gotten complacent because of SUSE\'s inate ability to find, detect & help automatically configure just about any hardware I throw at it. In the Linux world, this is Windows replacement.
I\'m sure all that sounds really great, right? So why the hesitency to call it the best distro ever? Well, there is where the meat of the article lies. Let me explain.
Contents |
Philosophy
As I said before, I\'ve been around and around on the RPM debate with some very knowledgeable friends of mine and after much discussion, I have some very serious reservations for using anything RPM based at this point. One of these friends is heavilily involved in RPM development at Progeny and, therefore, has a very intimate view of the inner workings of RPM. From him I hear a plethora of disconcerting news about the horrid disorganization of the RPM community and what RPM has become in the real world. Albeit the original specs for RPM and it\'s original guidelines for how it should work seem nobel enough, it has been bastardized to such an extent by the likes of RedHat and other distros (including SUSE) that it has become a jumbled mess of incompatibility. This concerns me. In my earlier days I had really taken a liking to Debian (entirely on the server at that point) due to it\'s incredible package management with APT. Never in APT have I been stuck with the sickening dependency paradoxes that are prevelant (well, at least not rare) in the RPM world. This is a major concern, in my opinion, that the RPM community needs to somehow rectify. But I\'m not sure that\'s possible considering how it has been altered. The original RPM could be re-released, but it would be an almost entirely seperate package management system than the RPMs of [fill in your favorite distro].
While I don\'t claim to know the slightest bit about the details of RPM\'s disorganization, the small amount I do know concerns me enough to not want to continue using RPM for much of anything.
About SUSE Itself
All that philosophical bit out of the way, I still have some other reasons for being hesitant about recommending SUSE to anyone.
YaST
While YaST is a really fantastic idea for general system administration, the way it works is far from ideal (or even sane). YaST is dependend on a good deal of very custom scripts, configuration files, file locations, etc. in order to work. If you are happy doing \'\'\'all\'\'\' your system administration through YaST, you should be fine. But what happens when there is a configuration variable or scenerio that doesn\'t fall within the confines of the YaST system? Any custom configuration that takes place at the system level has to be done \'\'very carefully\'\' lest it break YaST\'s operation for good. This is a concern to me. The beauty of Linux is that it has a common consistency at the system level for how things work. Configuration files are stored in /etc, executables for userspace applications are in /bin & /usr/bin, etc., etc. While the YaST way of doing things \'\'generally\'\' follows this order, it does some things just enough different that it can really be a nightmare for the seasoned Linux administrator who is not familiar with it\'s functionality or it\'s shortcomings.
For instance, once a YaST configuration is changed manually, a special script needs to be run (generally \'SuSEconfig\') that reads the YaST-specific configuration files and updates [supposedly] standard configuration files accordingly. If this special script is not run, the changes in the YaST configuration files is not applied and may or may not remain persistent. Things can get very confusing. Conversly, if a regular configuration file is edited manually in a section maintained by YaST, those values can either be overwritten the next time the YaST update script is run or worse, cause conflicts with YaST altogether. This scares me quite a bit. In my experience with YaST, I\'ve found that an all-or-nothing approach almost has to be taken where the administrator must choose to either always use YaST or never use it at all.
Compatibility
As I hinted at in my YaST discussion above, SUSE does some strange things with it\'s filesystem layout. This is hardly unique to SUSE (even Debian does it to an extent), but SUSE puts some things in locations that are fairly unique to SUSE. One example is it\'s web server default DocumentRoot. In SUSE it\'s set at /usr/www by default while Debian stores it at /var/www and RedHat uses /usr/local/htdocs (or something - I don\'t ever use RedHat). This makes switching between distros \'\'very\'\' confusing at times. Again, this isn\'t unique to SUSE, but it is a frustration of mine.
Package Management
I know I\'ve harped on this already, but one last note about SUSE\'s package management that frustrates me. Many packages are extremely SUSE-specific. What I mean by this is that RPM packages from other distros or even those that are build based on a generic system spec often are incompatible with SUSE. It is almost always necessary to use packages exclusively built for SUSE or build from source. Maybe this is a problem with other distros as well, but it shouldn\'t be. RPM should be RPM no matter what (my article on Debian will have some comments about this in the APT world as well). So much for my dream world of logical & simple computing.
Conclusion
Overall SUSE is a fine distro for the not-so-picky or not-so-ideological Linux user, but as I grow in my Linux experience, I find I fall farther and farther out of these categories (despite my best intentions). It is a distro that, in my opinion, cuts too many important corners to get to the final \"warm & fuzzy\" feeling it portrays when running. In the grand scheme of things, I have grown to appreciate the knowledge of things being \"done right\" under the hood even if it means sacraficing a little of that eye candy or polished \"feel\" that is only skin deep. Sometimes it\'s best to get it right underneath before just making it look pretty. For that I\'ll stick with Debian and leave SUSE to those who care less.
