openSuSe is another Linux distribution worth looking at. It’s listed as the second Major Distribution at Distro Watch so it must be raising more eyebrows than you think. With an easy to use installation that requires little to no previous experience and a better visually appealing boot loading screen by defaut, OpenSuSe is something you should try out. I currently use it on my laptop to do some OpenGL programming, and to be honest, it’s great.

openSuSe at a glance

openSuSe at a light glance seems more driven towards eye candy with the more visually appealing boot loader, login screen, start menu, and ease of adding visual effects. It also has excellent management tool that lets you install software from large repositories, in other words; no need to hunt software down. You can also use YaST Control Center which lets you control Hardware, Network Devices, Network Services, Security, User, and as well control more type of options.

My openSuSe experience

As for every linux distribution, getting your system’s hardware to work seamlessly with the distro can be a pain. Luckily, I have an ATI card on my Toshiba laptop, and openSuSe had an excellent ATI How To Documentation that got my video card drivers installed with a simple click.

I then got some visual effects and have windows exploding when I exit, have them wobble when I move them, be able to use a cube, and so much more. Hit F9, F10, and F11 and you’ll get that nice task switcher visualization that is notable on Mac these days.

So far I haven’t gotten my Atheros Wireless Chipset to work. Why? Simply lazy. I’ve gotten around by simply using an ethernet cable but I plan on fixing this in the future. I’ve tried it but it hasn’t worked as of yet.

Programming is simply great. With the ability to switch Desk Spaces with CTRL+ALT+LEFT or CTRL+ALT+RIGHT, working on large programming files is easy. I simply loved it.

This is so far my distribution as of yet. I haven’t found a need to get rid of it. So for awhile I’ll be sticking with openSuSe.

Your openSuSe experience

YouTube is a good resource for finding videos of a linux distribution and what can be done with it. Check the following one out and see for yourself. There are hundreds of different things you can do. Don’t ask me how its done. I don’t know. :)

So please, don’t tell me you’ve only tried Windows! If you don’t, then tell us what you’ve tried on our forums! If you have a video, why don’t you share it?