Yast makes the Ubuntu installer look like a rock... and frankly... the
Yast
installer is more intuitive, better organized, better automated, and more
reliable... so far in my experience.
This was a big deal breaker for me when I experimented with Kubuntu
and Ubuntu late last year. The installer that Ubuntu uses is nice,
but in the end the SUSE one wins no questions. For example there is a
real nasty installer bug in 6.10 that pops up when you try to change
the partitioning scheme on install (you know how the guessed
partitioning scheme is never what you want). It looses track of the /
partition, and won't let you install because it thinks you haven't
assigned a root partition. The work around is to tinker in some file
somewhere and remove the root partition check routine. Not nice at
all for a new user.
And this is my personal favorite... after I loaded Ubuntu (forgetting
to load
gcc at install time) I went back and installed gcc from the install media...
I ran into the exact same problems with other apps... and with gcc in
Ubuntu. Although it was a lot more pleasing to the eye and brain to
use Synaptic (vs Smart) to find and install software, I often got
broken stuff.. like the GCC thing.
The organization of apache is another one that annoyed me. It is a
no-brainer to setup a basic webserver in SUSE, and was a pain in
Ubuntu.
Also configuring my monitor and video drivers (nVidia) was 10 times
more hassle than with SUSE.
There is more desktop/system integration in openSUSE.
This is a big one. SUSE is simply more "professional" and polished.
Even Mr. Shuttleworth recently admitted one of the big things really
missing in Ubuntu was a nice integrated system management tool (like
YAST).
This is not to say that Ubuntu is a bad distribution. It has some
excellent qualities about it. It's a solid distribution, and if
someone wants to try out Linux for the first time, I have no fear of
suggesting they experiment with Ubuntu. If they want a professional
installation though, SUSE wins hands down.
C.
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