SUSE 9.2 vs. 9.3: A 64-Bit Comparison

By: Rob Reilly
Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:36:17 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5861/1/

Head-to-Head on an AMD 64 Notebook

SUSE Linux Pro 9.2 and 9.3 are both good distributions to put on your new 64-bit AMD Athlon 64 notebook, once you fix the nVidia and Broadcom chip issues. I'm here to report that the new version has repaired some nagging little time-wasting problems and added new functionality, too.

Should you buy 9.3 or just stick with 9.2?

If you don't have 9.2, I'd say give 9.3 a try. I'll outline what I found and then you can make your own decision.

Installation Impressions

Loading 9.2 or 9.3 from the DVD is a relatively pleasant experience on my HP 5460 notebook. Both installations took about 2.5 hours (including the aforementioned after-installation tweaking) while consuming between 7 and 8.6 GB of disk space.

After my recent Pavilion, SUSE Make for Great Portable 64-Bit Computing story came out, there was some discussion about mounting a swap partition. During my follow-up investigation, I did a test by ripping a CD while watching the memory monitor. The free swap didn't move a bit. My conclusion is that on this machine, swap might not even be necessary. Anybody out there want to test this theory?

The overall look and feel is good old SUSE, with a new olive drab color scheme. It reminds me of the Ubuntu Linux colors. I like happier colors, myself. Experienced and novice Linux users will find 9.3 organized and easy to follow. One feature that I liked was the selectable simple or expert mode on some of the configuration screens. The boot-up screen also has a nice little progress bar at the bottom, telling you how soon the machine will be operational.

On a 64-bit notebook, you sure won't have to wait long for new screens to appear in YaST. I opted to check every box on the Software Selection section. As in 9.2, I added a few individual programs like, the Bluefish HTML editor and Mozilla Mail. As always, I had to change the time zone from Pacific to Eastern and the bootup runlevel from 5 to 3. I like to start up in the command line.

Nothing much has changed, in the online update department, from 9.2 to 9.3. You should definitely go through the update process to keep your security up to snuff. I made sure that the on-board NIC was wired into my network, since the Broadcom chip wasn't detected. The RealTek chip, of course, was easily detected and configured properly.

After the update, I was hoping that the nVidia driver would work, without any tweaking. No dice. The driver ran fine, except for hardware acceleration. Enabling that would reset the resolution and cause the screen to be scrunched over to the left side. I had to reload the update to get the screen back to 1280x800 resolution. I was disappointed that it was all working properly in 9.2 and broken in 9.3. I've seen some discussions about the problem on the Web and think it will probably be resolved shortly.

Sound was another area that caused me trouble. In 9.2 I had to change permissions on /dev/snd*, /dev/dsp* to make the mixers work. In 9.3 I was able to simply add my user (rreilly) to the audio group, in YaST to have audio. I also still had to change the permissions on /dev/hdc, (rw,rw,rw) to run CD player/ripper programs.

I did notice some instability in Mozilla. Clicking on a link would occasionally shut Mozilla down, without warning. I also had an occasional lockup, where Mozilla would stay on the screen, but I couldn't click on a link or even close it out.

While putting SUSE 9.2 on my then newly purchased 5460 notebook, I made sure that I created a separate /home partition during installation. This not only protects my data from possible corruption, should something go haywire, it also has the happy side-effect of letting applications immediately recognize my personal settings and data, after the new install. It also cut down on my post-installation tweaking and file copying when I loaded 9.3.

For example, after installing 9.3, Mozilla Mail immediately displayed all my saved folders and email messages. I didn't have to re-enter my SMTP or POP server names, either.

Even though there were a few shortcomings with 9.3, we should remember that it's a new release with quite a bit of work that has been done behind the scenes. I'm confident any issues will be addressed pretty quickly.

What's Been Fixed?

The last thing we want on a fire-breathing notebook are things that slow down progress. Some might think these are minor beefs, but they were big irritations to me in 9.2. It was nice to see them fixed in 9.3.

• The Alps Glidepoint Touch Pad mouse wheel function now works properly. I think it's exceedingly tedious to have to cursor over and grab a slider to scroll the screen (in Mozilla) up and down. Normal scrolling and text zooming in Mozilla worked with the mouse pad slider right from the start.
• Similarly, my external Gyromouse wheel mouse worked immediately, with no fuss. The Glidepoint and Gyromouse even worked at the same time. You can turn on/off the mouse pad with the little switch, if you want to.
• XMMS started automatically when I clicked on SmoothJazz.com via Mozilla. It took a while to get it to play anything because XMMS refused to make a sound until I changed the output plug-in from "Automatic Detection" to "Alsa 1.2.10 Output Plugin."

How Is 9.3 Different Than 9.2?

Many of the applications have been updated in version 9.3. Most of the major programs that I use have been ported over to x86-64 code. Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and the Flash plug-in remained 32-bit.

KDE 3.4

KDE looks pretty much the same between 9.2 and 9.3. A few, minor things have changed.

Moving over the K icon, as well as other ones on the task bar, bring up a larger floating description icon. Nice touch, but might be tedious on slower machines.

The icons on main screen seem a little sharper.

Some nice attention to detail.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 pre-release

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is significantly different from previous versions. All applications within the suite default to the Ceramik style of icons. They are pleasant looking and fairly detailed.

Users that have been using older versions of OOo should realize the version 2.0 has a new set of file formats. 2.0 uses an XML format that isn't backward compatible to 1.X versions. You can save your files in the older .sxw, sxi, and sxc formats. You can also still save your documents in a variety of Windows formats.

Probably the most striking difference between 1.X versions and 2.0 is in the Impress application. The user interface and screens have been completely reworked. The tool bar now appears at the bottom of the screen, by default. The tool bar buttons and icons seem to be generally in the same place.

The main working screen is also now tabbed so users can flip back and forth between Normal, Outline, Notes, Handout, and Slide Sorter. I did make it easier to move between the tasks.

One area that bothered me was that loading both the OpenOffice.org applications and user documents seemed to take longer that the version loaded with 9.2. I also thought saving files would have been improved, but even that took slightly longer.

Gimp 2.2

Version 2.2 of The Gimp loads very quickly, on this machine and is ready for drawing in about 3 seconds.

I was happy to see that the I could acquire an image from my aging HP 6200C flatbed, after setting up the scanner in YaST. XSane via The Gimp detected my scanner and almost immediately brought up the preview window. The throughput of this scanner is now limited by it's ability to scan the page, instead of how much data can be pushed through the computer. Using my scanner under 9.3 is just as fast as under 9.2.

I hadn't noticed the plug-in and procedure browsers, or unit editor under the extras main tab. Perhaps I missed them in the Gimp that was bundled with 9.2. The plug-in browser gives a descriptions and other information about the various filters and script-fu plug-ins. The procedure browser tells about the various scripts and internal routines used by The Gimp (in my version there were over 800). The unit editor shows units, their abbreviations, conversion factors and so on, that are used by the program.

Beagle

I found the Beagle file search program on the File Manager menu, but couldn't get it to work. Apparently, it's easy to get it going because there was no mention of Beagle in the printed documents. The information in the SUSE Help Center amounted to a few sentences on how to start up the beagled daemon. It also noted that Beagle can be started by a user under KDE by executing the command line program "best." Other reviewers have been able to use Beagle, although I think it needs a little more work.

Zen

Zen is supposed to let you run other operating systems in a "virtualized" environment, much like VMWare. It requires some setup, so you'll need to do some research to get it working. It seems like a good feature for use in a data center, but I don't really know how it would be that helpful on a notebook, right now.

Wrapping Up

My overall impression of the release is good.

I'd say that if you want a very stable version of Linux on a 64-bit notebook, like my HP 5460, you might want to stick with SUSE 9.2. Video hardware acceleration and Mozilla will both work reliably.

Otherwise, SUSE 9.3 would save you some time, if you want the latest version of OpenOffice.org, The Gimp, and other normal Linux applications. No doubt problems will be fixed.

So, you can make the call. Be sure to read the other reviews on the Web, especially if you aren't running on an AMD 64 notebook or plan on using the 32-bit version.

Everything on the 5460 happens without hesitation and any way you look at it, Linux 64-bit is significantly quicker than Windows XP (32-bit) on the same machine. The fact that there really aren't any major show-stoppers, especially on this hardware, is a tribute to the open source community and SUSE.

64-bit Linux on AMD 64-bit notebooks are a winning combination that you can take advantage of, right now. I'll say it again, the "Linux on the desktop debate" is officially irrelevant.

Rob Reilly is a consultant, writer, and commentator who advises clients on business & technology projects. His Linux, personal branding, and public speaking skills-related articles regularly appear in various high-end Linux and business media outlets. Send him a note or visit his Web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.