I have two computers sitting within reach of me at this desk. My wife's computer is at another desk just behind me. The one I use the most is a liquid cooled beast of a machine that runs all my games and that does most of my work as well. Next to that machine I have my wife's old computer that we replaced about six months ago with the one she uses now. I have been using it to test Linux distributions and help me with my Linux homework for school. I had Gentoo on it for some time but for some reason it started doing some funny things that I couldn't seem to remedy.

The power likes to shut off here during the middle of the day; I come home and my computers have been zapped and rebooted to the login screens (I really need to get a UPS). Anyway, this repeated reset without proper shutdown caused my Gentoo Linux computer to act strangely; it would not start programs and would need me to issue the command 2 or 3 times before it would start the program, and it would not come out of sleep mode. It was set to start the screen saver at ten minutes then after two hours it would shut the monitor off and once it did that I couldn't get it to return. Nothing would bring back my desktop short of a reset. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try a new flavor of Linux, so I decided to install openSUSE. Also, I wanted to try to get compiz-fusion working on it, I never could get compiz working on the Gentoo one because of driver issues with my ATI card.

So I installed openSUSE and started working with it and let me tell you its like Linux for dummies compared to Gentoo. Gentoo is powerful but it certainly isn't new Linux user friendly in comparison. I have had Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandrake (now Mandriva) on computers in the past and have Sabayon dual booting on my Windows gaming computer so I have had the opportunity to see a lot of different Linux distributions even though, to be honest, I don't use them much because my main use for a computer, gaming, is sort of tedious and difficult on Linux. But my point is, I have tried several different versions of Linux and out of all of them openSUSE seems like the most oriented towards new and non-UNIX/Linux users of any of the ones I have tried, and that's really saying something because Ubuntu prides itself on being user-friendly. I have only had it installed for a day now but it's been frustrating so far because of how dumbed down it is. Maybe I just need some more time using it to learn how to customize it for my preferences.

I mentioned compiz-fusion and for you non-Linux or even non-computer readers compiz-fusion is a window manager for Linux that has some REALLY neat effects associated with it. My favorite part of all the effects you can do with it is the desktop cube. Most Linux versions, with KDE or Gnome installed, allow for multiple desktops to separate your work on, but with compiz-fusion installed you can have those desktops placed on a three dimensional cube that you can spin with the flick of your mouse. It has a bunch of other effects as well but rather then bore you to death with a lengthy description I will just provide a video that shows what I am talking about.



I tried to get compiz-fusion working on Gentoo and could never do it. My first attempt on openSUSE was successful, however, I had problems with my ATI card again, but I think it was my fault for accidentally skipping a few steps and not having the proper packages installed. It worked, it just rendered all of the effects slowly and it was fairly unimpressive. I am going to get it fixed and running properly over the next few days. Its mostly just eye candy and not overly useful, especially for the things I do on it, but dang its awesome eye candy!