Why upgrade to openSUSE 11 from openSUSE 10.x
You’re at the breaking point of what to do with your current openSUSE 10.x (hopefully at least 10.2) installation. You hear that openSUSE 11.0 is just about to come out, but why should you go from a .2/.3 release to a .0 release? Well here are some main reasons why:
QT4 Installer:
Obviously the first thing you see when you upgrade / install an operating system is the installer screen. openSUSE 11.0 introduces a beautifully designed new QT 4 installer, that runs circles around any current Windows / Linux or Mac OX Installer (in terms of looks).
Package Management (Zypper):
Zypper has gone through MANY changes since it’s time in openSUSE 10.3. Currently 11.0 is running zypper 0.11.6-4.1, and package management is done so much smarter and faster (installing application, updating repo’s everything is much faster on openSUSE 11.0 then it was in previous versions).
Xorg:
Xorg has been updated to 7.3 (upgraded from 7.2 in openSUSE 10.3) and has many updates to Intel / Nvidia based xorg drivers. (if running Nvidia / ATI I recommend installing ATI / Nvidia proprietary drivers). Also note that AIGLX is enabled by default now.
Kernel:
openSUSE 11.0 ships with the pae kernel by default and is version 2.6.25 which has seen many improvements in virtualization, scheduling and obviously hardware support since 10.3’s release with 2.6.22.
KDE 3.5.9:
Has many improvements from KDE 3.5.7 which shipped with openSUSE 10.3. Many enhancements were done to PIM (Personal Identification Manager, ie Kmail, Kontact etc) along with many bugfixes since then.
KDE 4:
Although KDE 4.1 wasn’t released in time for openSUSE 11.0 you can upgrade to it using one of the openSUSE Build Services. With that said, openSUSE 11.0 ships with KDE 4.0.4 and will stay with that line for the life of the product. I honestly think it is on its way to being a very kick ass Desktop Environment, BUT, I just cannot afford to use it as my default DE on my production machines, since there are still some issues (mostly in plasma).
GNOME 2.22:
Pretty much enough said on that. GNOME 2.22 had many many improvements in everypart of GNOME, which can be found here:
http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.22/
There are tons of other reasons and updates that have been done, that I haven’t captured in this quick blog. This is just to help steer the people on the grasps of “Should I upgrade or not” to just go ahead and do it. Many of the other notable updates are:
NetworkManager (although it still has a few issues with communication with YaST configurations)
OpenOffice (2.4.1).
Wine (1.0 rc by default but with the release of 1.0 today, I expect it to make the update repo).
Amarok (1.4.9.1)
If you feel I’ve missed something important please let me know and i’ll add.
The most important things though:
If you have openSUSE 11.0, make sure you seed it
If you find a bug report it http://bugzilla.novell.com
This will help openSUSE mature more, and make 11.x be a great long lasting distribution.
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I put openSUSE 10.3 on my parents PC and they find it very easy. I have been keeping a virtual eye on v11 and I think I will upgrade my parent’s PC as soon as the rush is over
I agree with your comments on KDE 4, once all the bugs are ironed out, it sure will be a kick ass desktop environment.
Ambleston,
I was actually against upgrading my .3 version of a .0 version (everyone knows the quality difference between suse 9.3 and openSUSE 10.0), but when I actually tested it, it blew me away. There are still some minor things that need to get worked out, but nothing big enough to shy me away from the new version.
If nothing else its certainly much prettier looking to install!
I always recomment SuSE linux to all my friends who have a PC. Nowadays I rarely logon to Windows.
Great post!
Thanks!
I’ve translated this post to Chinese.
here: http://swyear.blogspot.com/2008/06/opensuse-10x-opensuse-11.html
The most strange feature in Suse 10.3 was that I had the sound disappearing from time to time without any obvious reason. I hope things will be better in 11.0. My Samsung Syncmaster 940NW was still not recognized correctly, but I wrote the bypass to put in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the hardware database. Thanks for that new version (I stuck to KDE 3.5, however, and shall wait for 4.1 or above to become mainstream).
Hey, man. Wine is still 0.9x version.
I just installed it last night.
vsu,
You can do:
sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_11.0/ Wine
sudo zypper up -t package -r Wine
This will update you to Wine 1.0 (which i hope gets updated via Updates).
One other very important question is – HOW best to upgrade from 10.x to 11? By ‘best’ I mean what is the safest route?
Previously there’s been much chatter about destroyed installations following upgrades, I have several PCs running 10.0 and would like to upgrade them all. Can I just boot from CD and select ‘Upgrade’ and relax?
Hi Toby,
I would add the openSUSE 11.0 repositories (OSS / NON-OSS) and run
sudo zypper dup
However you have the upgrade path with the dvd available to you.
Thanks for the tip. I was mainly wondering about the safety of the upgrade operation vs. the more long winded but safer approach of buying a new hard disk, doing a clean install and dual booting for a while, while moving all software and data over, then ultimately wiping the old install. I’ve used my PC for a few years, have installed much stuff on it, need it frequently and it would be really bad if the upgrade destroyed the installation.
Hi Toby,
Just to put it in prespective.. I have upgraded this machine from openSUSE 10.2 to the current 11.0 release with no data loss.
I use a different hard drive to do my clean installations for mucking around and writing some tutorials
)
I run 10.2 on a tablet and it took weeks for me to locate and fix all the tablet related issues – pen support, screen rotation, etc.
Is it possible to upgrade, keeping all these settings or am I just going to be in for the fun of setting it all up again?
Upgraded two dual boot PCs (one with opensuse 10.2 and win xp and one with opensuse 10.3 and windows vista)
Both PCs cannot boot into windows anymore, the one with the xp dies the horrible BSOD and vista gives a black screen with white letters stating that it cannot find a file in \windows\…
I suppose the same happens on the xp.
On both machines, I am able to access all files in the windows partitions when in Linux.