phreak0ut
The Thread Killer >:)
This is my first review on anything. Also, I'm pretty new to linux and I'm just getting started with. So, the experts, please spare the flaming 
I've installed a 32-bit version as I've heard that the 64 bit linuxes are a bit of a pain. Had bit of a trouble on 10.1. Well, lets not go to that now.
Installation
The animated boot menu which started was simply fantastic. Tuxs moving around in Christmas mood. There's one more thing which I found out about this menu, which I'll be writing later. The installation was a bit of a pain with Add-on chosen. It would ask for the Add-on media. I insert it, then it asks for CD1 again. I insert into drive, but it again asks for it. Tried disabling CD drive as it was popping out /hdb for CD1. So, the installation was aborted and reinstall starts again. Tried with Add-on again. Same result. Installation aborted. So, I decided to go ahead without installing anything from the Add-on media. One thing noticeable during the install is, that the partition is formatted in ext3 as opposed to the usual ReiserFS which was used till 10.1 due to some issues. I read somewhere(don't exactly remember) that its got upgrade issues and they will be discontinuing with that. I don't know if that is good or bad. Install went super smooth
Post installation
Again, you see the animated boot menu which is quite different from the usual which you see from SuSE. I found one thing 'strange' about this boot menu. I installed SuSE in December and the animated boot menu was present. From the 2nd of this month, I was surprised to see that the animated boot menu was replaced with a non-animated one, but it still is good. A cool blue one with smooth lines. Very well designed and easy on the eyes. But yesterday, I was again surprised to see that the animated boot menu was back. I boot my machine today, the simple non-animated screen is back. I don't know if there is some kind of calender which is being followed so that it keeps tab of the holiday season or special days and an appropriate screen is loaded or its a bug. Either way, both looks nice
I logged into GNOME and was really surprised and awed by the face lift it has got compared to the previous versions and other distros. I usually prefer KDE, but this time I think I'll stick with GNOME on SuSE for a long time to come. The Control Center is beautifully done and well laid out. As soon I saw the Desktop Effects icon, I wanted to try it out immediately and that's the reason I wanted to try out either SuSE 10.2 or FC6, but SuSE landed on my hands first. But, I was dissappointed to find out that my hardware still doesn't have the driver support and I need to wait for a long time for ATI to write one for my Xpress 200 One thing I noticed in GNOME was, in the Run application, the text entered shows up with a bit of a delay. Don't know the exact reason, but trying to find out.
Logged into KDE. Again, I was surprised to see that the menu was revamped compared to the default KDE which you get to see in most distros. Its designed as a pop up, nearly squared box. Its got everything inside it. From Favorite applications, My Computer, Applications all rolled into one but in a well designed manner. It takes sometime to get used to it though. There are lots of applications bundled which SuSE is quite good at I first tried out my hands on the media players. Somehow Banshee couldn't play my mp3s like the rest of the audio players. I installed Smart and installed all the codecs and installed VLC player as well and voila! SuSE can handle just about any codec. Sound is really good compared to Fedora. I don't know why this happens. Sound seems to be a bit distorted on FC. SuSE always has delivered smooth sound and its done it again. Installed Google Earth, but somehow it never moved further from the splash screen. I gave it enough time, but somehow it refused to start and had to force quit it all the time. KDE is still buggy and it hung once when I had to wake up my computer. I think those bugs will be resolved once KDE 4 is released.
The software update is a very nice thing and it notifies if there are anything new available in the repos which is good to keep your system updated.
Well, this was my short review on SuSE 10.2. Please do let me know if I missed out on anything and I will be glad to respond.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
EDIT: Well, the 3D Desktop Effects runs on my hardware after all!! Thanks to JGuru's wonderful post, I got it running Please do check it here for people who find it difficult to run Desktop Effects with my configuration.
I've installed a 32-bit version as I've heard that the 64 bit linuxes are a bit of a pain. Had bit of a trouble on 10.1. Well, lets not go to that now.
Installation
The animated boot menu which started was simply fantastic. Tuxs moving around in Christmas mood. There's one more thing which I found out about this menu, which I'll be writing later. The installation was a bit of a pain with Add-on chosen. It would ask for the Add-on media. I insert it, then it asks for CD1 again. I insert into drive, but it again asks for it. Tried disabling CD drive as it was popping out /hdb for CD1. So, the installation was aborted and reinstall starts again. Tried with Add-on again. Same result. Installation aborted. So, I decided to go ahead without installing anything from the Add-on media. One thing noticeable during the install is, that the partition is formatted in ext3 as opposed to the usual ReiserFS which was used till 10.1 due to some issues. I read somewhere(don't exactly remember) that its got upgrade issues and they will be discontinuing with that. I don't know if that is good or bad. Install went super smooth
Post installation
Again, you see the animated boot menu which is quite different from the usual which you see from SuSE. I found one thing 'strange' about this boot menu. I installed SuSE in December and the animated boot menu was present. From the 2nd of this month, I was surprised to see that the animated boot menu was replaced with a non-animated one, but it still is good. A cool blue one with smooth lines. Very well designed and easy on the eyes. But yesterday, I was again surprised to see that the animated boot menu was back. I boot my machine today, the simple non-animated screen is back. I don't know if there is some kind of calender which is being followed so that it keeps tab of the holiday season or special days and an appropriate screen is loaded or its a bug. Either way, both looks nice
I logged into GNOME and was really surprised and awed by the face lift it has got compared to the previous versions and other distros. I usually prefer KDE, but this time I think I'll stick with GNOME on SuSE for a long time to come. The Control Center is beautifully done and well laid out. As soon I saw the Desktop Effects icon, I wanted to try it out immediately and that's the reason I wanted to try out either SuSE 10.2 or FC6, but SuSE landed on my hands first. But, I was dissappointed to find out that my hardware still doesn't have the driver support and I need to wait for a long time for ATI to write one for my Xpress 200
One thing I noticed in GNOME was, in the Run application, the text entered shows up with a bit of a delay. Don't know the exact reason, but trying to find out.Logged into KDE. Again, I was surprised to see that the menu was revamped compared to the default KDE which you get to see in most distros. Its designed as a pop up, nearly squared box. Its got everything inside it. From Favorite applications, My Computer, Applications all rolled into one but in a well designed manner. It takes sometime to get used to it though. There are lots of applications bundled which SuSE is quite good at
I first tried out my hands on the media players. Somehow Banshee couldn't play my mp3s like the rest of the audio players. I installed Smart and installed all the codecs and installed VLC player as well and voila! SuSE can handle just about any codec. Sound is really good compared to Fedora. I don't know why this happens. Sound seems to be a bit distorted on FC. SuSE always has delivered smooth sound and its done it again. Installed Google Earth, but somehow it never moved further from the splash screen. I gave it enough time, but somehow it refused to start and had to force quit it all the time. KDE is still buggy and it hung once when I had to wake up my computer. I think those bugs will be resolved once KDE 4 is released. The software update is a very nice thing and it notifies if there are anything new available in the repos which is good to keep your system updated.
Well, this was my short review on SuSE 10.2. Please do let me know if I missed out on anything and I will be glad to respond.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
EDIT: Well, the 3D Desktop Effects runs on my hardware after all!!
Thanks to JGuru's wonderful post, I got it running Please do check it here for people who find it difficult to run Desktop Effects with my configuration.
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