Distros

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 21:07 -0500, Andrew Gould wrote:

> How bad do you think OpenSUSE will drag if I install it on a laptop
> with 512MB RAM?

I think the question is more: how bad will things drag if you use
desktop KDE/GNOME/__fill_in_the_blank__. kde is a memory hog. I use it
on a laptop with 512 MB and it does very well. I would strongly suggest
getting an NVIDIA video chip on the laptop. The NVIDIA driver does a
pretty good job of using the hardware to do various effects. The ATI
driver is a day-to-day affair. I have never been very lucky with their
chipsets on Linux.

I use openSUSE in numerous ways, including as diskless OS that boot via
PXE. I think it works great. Most of the development is still in
Germany, so the per-Novell methods are not all lost.

One thing about openSUSE that is really good is the Build Service.
Finding apps for openSUSE has never been easier. I have not been in RPM
hell for a number of years. Their Build Service is also making packages
for Fedora, Ubuntu, and a few others. You should check it out even if
you are not using oopenSUSE.

openSUSE also allows in-place update of releases without the need to
re-install. Staying current is quite easy.

Of course, YMMV.


-- 
Roger Oberholtzer

OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST

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