For the last year we have had the habit of summarizing the latest release cycle of Linux distributions, and let the fall of 2008 be no different. This time around the decision was easier than ever and I must say that there isn’t even serious competition to which distro shall the award go to.

As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

What went wrong since the spring of 2008

In my opinion the the ongoing half year period has been a disappointment as many distributions have been rolling out rather medium or even bad releases that don’t earn many recommendations.

In September our guest starring editor Siku raised concerns about the KDE4 desktop. The birth of KDE4 has been a lengthy process and even now, in December of 2008, we can’t say that the next generation a PC desktop is ready or even a contender to the other alternatives. Even thought the stability and features are improving release after release, the basic problem of KDE4 still exists – what is the additional value it delivers to the end user? Sure, it does introduce new features and changes some of the traditional desktop environment fundamentals, still to me it looks like it complicates things rather then resolves any usability issues. All KDE4 distros I have tried appear bloated, cluttered, more complex and slower than their KDE3.5 or Gnome alternatives. No killer applications or improved use-cases have been found.

Mandriva 2009 shipped the KDE4 as the primary desktop, but unfortunately with poor results. This release had more bugs than their 2007.x or 2008.x on release date and even though most of them may be now resolved via updates I simply don’t see the point of making beta quality releases. All they do is generate negative feedback towards the distribution and Linux in general. As release cycle of 6 months is short and the distributions come with very short support for updates (12-18 months), it is crazy that the first few months of the support period are wasted for making the release even stable!

My old favorite PCLinuxOS seems to have encountered the resource problems, as in many times is the case with small distros that focus on just a few or even a single developer. The 2008 MiniMe release was awesome and they managed to release a preview of 2009, but otherwise the updates of this rolling release distro seem to have stalled. I wish all the best for the PCLinuxOS project but at the moment their star is going down rapidly.

Ubuntu’s Intrepid Ibex we had a look at just a couple of weeks ago, and found it to be intermediate at best and definitely short of ‘intrepid’. Very slight improvements from the 8.04.1 Long Term Support version released in the spring and most Ubuntu experts still recommend the 8.04.1 edition as the primary choice, unless the newer software components are absolutely required for hardware support.

OpenSUSE 11.1 is ready to rock!

It seems that this release cycle is no different from the previous ones – openSUSE v11.1 is simply the best desktop Linux distribution out there. With the failures of the contenders during this fall, the openSUSE wins with a huge margin. The openSUSE 11.1 will be the baseline of the next commercial SLED release, so Novell and SUSE have put of huge amount of effort to this release. Our evaluation is based on the RC1 release candidate.

SUSE is often seen as a KDE minded distribution and some consider the 11.1 release to be the ‘make it or break it’ release for KDE4. Unfortunately it seems that even capable developers of openSUSE and Novell can’t get any real improvements out of it. Luckily openSUSE also has the best implementation of Gnome desktop out there – a very polished and usable desktop out-of-the-box with great attention to detail. The single bottom panel configuration with SLAB menu just works and keeps the most used applications at your fingertips.

openSUSE comes as Gnome or KDE4 LiveCDs with a very fast and easy installer. The hardware support is top notch, and it has the latest upstream improvements from Gnome v2.24 and Linux kernel 2.6.27. YaST configuration tools offer an excellent set of GUI based tools for managing your system. The Zypper package management seems to improve in every release as well. They have excellent repositories and good availability of backports which prolong the life-cycle of their releases. The community offers one-click installation links to typical end-user needs, such as restricted formats.

It is often asked that ‘when Linux is ready for the desktop?’ and I don’t think it can get much readier than this. No matter what operating system you are currently using I highly recommend you give openSUSE a look once the 11.1 stable release is out.

Go get it: http://www.opensuse.org