linuxgeek: [LINUX_Newbies] Re: Linux mint 7 VS openSUSE 11.1

Monday, October 12, 2009

[LINUX_Newbies] Re: Linux mint 7 VS openSUSE 11.1

Asking which of two distros is "better" is much like asking which brand of car is better, for the most part. It depends upon your preferences.

Which window manager it comes with is largely irrelevant--both can install any of the many available. On my machine, for example, I presently have KDE, Gnome, and several others just for grins--and I generally have been running KDE using the Enlightenment window manager rather than KDM.

Enlightenment by itself can be stunning in the "eye candy" department--yet it is extremely lightweight and fast and works on many machines with limited resources.

As for Mint and OpenSuSe--to me, that depends largely upon your preference for system management and repositories. Personally, I like the APT system better than RPM--it seems to handle dependencies better. On the other hand, SuSe's YAST system has some devotees as well.

However, personally, given that choice I'd go with Mint and use the window manager of your choice.

If I recall correctly, too, Mint is built on Ubuntu, and can use the Ubunto repositories. To me, that would be an advantage.

My setup starts with Kubuntu (I generally prefer KDE to Gnome or others); then, I add Ghome and whatnot from the repositories very simply--and have a choice at boot time or by a simple re-login.

Originally, Mint was offered as a somewhat prettier interface than Ubuntu, and one that automatically offered the various codecs for media. However, I don't deal with Ubuntu colors (and could easily enough change them if I did), and using the Medibuntu repository it is simple to add the media capability anyway.

Be aware, too, that we are very shortly going to get the next *buntu version, Karmic Koala--within two weeks, IIRC. That will mean that Mint will not long thereafter change their versioning to maintain compatibility with the latest Ubuntu version. I am not aware of the next update scheduled for OpenSuSe, though.

Thus, I suggest making yourself familiar with the Live CD version of each of your choice. If you should decide on Mint, I would not necessarily spend a great deal of time customizing it until you decide whether to try a "distribution upgrade" or a complete re-install.

I also suggest, though, that you install your /home directory in a separate partition from the kernel. That makes upgrades or distro changes much simpler, as it does not have to be reformatted when making the change.

A final thought--if, instead of running your live CD from an actual CD, you might instead download the program "unetbootin" from Sourceforge. This will enable you to install the Live version of any of many popular distros on a USB thumb drive, and run it from there or install it from there. That way, you can actually save data to the thumb drive, as it is still recordable. to me, this is a far superior method than using a CD. Unetbootin is available in versions both for Windows and for Linux. It can either use an ISO image you have already downloaded, or it can download it for you and make the setup even simpler.

David

--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, Arjun Krishna <arjunkrishna95@...> wrote:
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> hey guys
> i had a question. which is better Linux mint 7, or openSUSE 11.1?
> i basically want more eyecandy and better GUI, so if you could tell me which one has better graphics and a nice clean feel. i have heard a lot about mint 7 but opensuse seems to have better gui. is this corect information? i dont mind performance. i've heard that both mint and open suse are good performers.
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