Kubuntu 10.10 ditched in favor of openSUSE 11.3

Enough is enough...

After a change to Ubuntu 10.04 in begin of June, I switched back to Kubuntu 10.04 in September  due to a buggy Gnome (for example this long-known bug with copy & past not working after you close the software of origin) and other reasons. But Kubuntu didn't look nice either, and felt as well unstable and slow. I nevertheless waited for 10.10 to come out and to do an upgrade, but it just got worse. The software I need for my work didn't function as expected (take Skype for example).

Research

I did some research about opinions from others for a stable workstation Linux. The main contestants were Red Hat or SLED. Fedora, the offspring of Red Hat is cutting etch and therefor object to possible breaks in software. Nothing I can use. So I installed openSUSE in VirtualBox and gave it a tryout. The first impression was more then good, the difference between Kubuntu and it are big.

It's done...

So I ditched this week my Kubuntu 10.10 installation for openSUSE 11.3.
But what i missed straight away was dash (the bash replacement under Ubuntu), it will take some time, but I will get used to it.
What else struggled me was the RPM package management system. It is far from as smooth as the Debian packaging system; mostly I had problems with dependency resolution - or I just do not know yet how to use it correctly. And when talking about the packaging system, I was (and am) quiet confused with the repositories under openSUSE. So what I appreciated much, the first moment I knew about it, is the package search on software.opensuse.org, so no need to search a long time for a certain package in some lost repository (or a PPA for Ubuntu).

It feels good

For now I can feel more stability and cohesion in openSUSE then I felt in Kubuntu for a long time. My Skype worked straight out the box, I got Sun/Oracle Java and VirtualBox installed and can code right away without having the impression that my workstation is an old 486.

Just on my servers I will hold on to Ubuntu, I cannot afford it to have downtime on them just because I messed something up as long as I am not familiar to zypper...

PS: My favorite game OpenTTD did install completely with the necessary content and works great !

My *NIX history

1995 - 1996
First time I got in touch with *NIX was with FreeBSD back in 1995, when it was featured in a PC magazine (I do not remember which one it was). Back then I was young and just attracted by the idea of a different OS, other then Windows 3.11/DOS. But you can imagine that - as a Windows 3.11 user - it was something I couldn't possibly understand nor use.

1997 - 1999
In 1997 I got in touch with Corel Linux, tried it on my PC but still didn't got the idea about incompatibility between Microsoft products and Linux, so I dumped it fast as I couldn't do anything with it. And while in my civil service, a student showed me SuSE Linux on his PC; but my previous experience with Corel Linux kept me on distance.

2000 - 2003
Back in 1999 I got an old IBM laptop and had already 2 PCs with Windows installed. And I had a RedHat Distribution on hand, so I gave Linux another try.
I liked it, and - as I wasn't depending on my laptop as my sole PC - kept it installed. I got in touch with other Linux users on IRC and at this time (like it is still the case today), working in the console was cool.
After some weeks I replaced RedHat with Slackware, because I wanted something "hard" to work with. I managed to get wireless and sound working on my old laptop. The console was my home for a long time, with ncurses there were so many applications perfectly running in it. The same time, when I worked with a fellow webdesigner, we used a SuSE Linux server. I liked very much Yast to keep control over the system.
To keep trying something different, in 2002 I replaced on one of my PCs Windows with BeOS (not quiet a *NIX). It was a nice OS, but unfortunately without a future.

2005 - present
As my life got a bit turbulent in 2004, I did not have any PC until 2005 when I bought a Toshiba Laptop. And at first I started with Fedora. And as usual, I couldn't stay with it and wanted again something different, and so I found Ubuntu.
It should be the beginning of a long relation as my favourite Linux distribution.

Over the last couple of years I tried other OS as well, like MirOS and other BSD derivatives, Solaris, Darwin and countless Linux distributions (thank you dual-boot and VirtualBox).

On the server-side I used for about a year Gentoo, but changed afterwards to Ubuntu Server, because that way I have the same tool-set as on my workstation (call me lazy).

Since I work as a developer for Sudimage (4 years now), I only used the KDE-based Kubuntu, but recently i switched to Ubuntu with Gnome.

Future
Now I keep a closer look on the Elementary OS as my future OS.

Not yet
What I never tried yet (but what I wish to do as soon as possible):

• Debian
• Arch
• DragonFly BSD
• CentOS (as server OS)

Ces derniers heures [suivi]

Ceci est un suivi sur Ces derniers heures.

Maintenant pour du vrai, ces derniers heures ont sonné. Tout à été transféré temporairement vers nos serveurs récent, en attend de créer les hébergements définitif.

Ces derniers heures ont duré quand-même presque 2 ans.

[Screencast] Magento - Création d'un article configurable

Voici mon premier screen-cast concernant Magento et la création d'un article configurable. La vidéo est en cours de édition.



(Si la vidéo s'affiche pas correctement, allez sur www.youtube.com/watch?v=rByeeOHDCw4)

Un tutoriel pour le changement automatique des images après la sélection d'une option est en préparation.