#10 – Artwork – openSUSE 11.4 ships with ‘Stripes’ artwork. I love specially the console terminal which offers very good contrast. The boot splash images are visually attractive and provide a pleasant boot experience.
#9 – Wine – openSUSE 11.4 ships with Wine 1.3.10 which works very good for me. I’ve tried Lord of the Rings Online (flawlessly out of the box) and World of Warcraft. From the tested products, I feel that openSUSE promotion needs a bit more of effort on highlighting Wine. Marcus must be proud, and I’m for sure thankful for his great work!
#8 – Repository Management – One of the main reason why I love openSUSE is because it works like “Lego”. You can keep adding/removing software repositories and have a hell of a kick ass experience. Success on this tasks require some brains, but an expert tinker can perform great things with openSUSE repositories!
#7 – “Out of the Box” Factor – It just works… even with my problematic ATI. This is one important point for me. I don’t really like to install a Linux distribution and spend hours tinkering it for my needs. With openSUSE it’s done fast and clean.
#6 – Default Software Patterns – The default software patterns on openSUSE are awesome and they fulfill all the needs for my daily computing tasks.
#5 – Security and Stability – Without doubt the calling card from openSUSE. There’s isn’t really much to say, except it inspires trust!
#4 – YaST Installer – Not being a technical person, I have to remove my hat before openSUSE installer. It ‘speaks’ normal user language, it provides outstanding features for advanced and starters. It inspires total supremacy of man over machine!
#3 – Featured upstream Projects – The most known upstream projects are present! GNOME, KDE, LXDE and friends, even IceWM made his way into 11.4. Banshee, VLC, you name it… Everything can run on openSUSE, even community repos such as GNOME:Ayatana! Whatever software you are looking for, it’s for sure in a openSUSE repository!
#2 GNOME – Does it need an introduction? NO! It’s mature, stable, rock solid and will provide a powerful Desktop experience for any user! OpenSUSE 11.4 is a must for people who want to hang around with GNOME2 for a bit more, and for all the GNOME3 fans through an additional repository. GNOME3 is something you can’t miss! openSUSE 11.4 will enable you that feature later on!
#1 Community – A strong and helpful community in which our users can rely. Swift on bug fixing, helpful when one is in trouble and commited to bring our users the best Linux experience possible. It’s all about faces and human interaction, it’s all about being human in charge of the machine! And most of us will speak your language!
DISCLAIMER: Based on personal preferences, and deeply personal. Other people might have different views, this is mine.
