Mad Penguin: First Look at SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0

“One thing that initially bothered me about this release was the
fact that it is built on kernel 2.4.19. I thought that a release
this new would at least come with 2.4.20, which has been out since
last year. This concern was short-lived, as I sat and watched it
load an Athlon optimized kernel during the initial installation. My
eyes lit up a little when I saw that. There was still hope. I
thought that for the few features I would lose on the newer kernel
version, maybe SuSE would make up for in raw speed.

“My concerns were completely squashed when I loaded the OS for
the first time. Performance on the desktop is exceptional in this
release. Everything feels very fast, smooth, and responsive.
Applications launch quickly and without fail. OpenOffice.org
(version 1.0.3) even did amazingly well. This application is
notorious for slow load times but under the new SuSE release, the
wait was minimal. For the initial load, it took a little under four
seconds to fully launch. After the initial load, it took just under
one second. Not too bad for OOo. SuSE thought ahead and loaded the
OpenOffice.org Quickstarter in the system tray by default to speed
things up.

“The next performance area I’d like to touch on is the graphics
system. SuSE Linux Desktop comes loaded with XFree86 4.30, which
was a good move on their part. Keeping on top of the graphics
system is of utter importance when marketing to enterprise clients
currently running on the Windows platform. Version 4.30 comes the
closest to having all the necessary support a Windows user might
expect with the addition of actual stability that is not currently
present in Windows…”

Complete
Story