openSUSE 10.3 on an HP Pavilion dv2000 (dv2058ea)

I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my laptop from  openSUSE 10.2 to the new (just released) 10.3. I downloaded the ISO image and burnt an installation DVD. The installation was very straightforward (as it was for 10.2). I use the GNOME desktop, and there was some KDE documentation package that didn't install properly, but I didn't worry about it as it doesn't affect me.

The colour theme is back to traditional SUSE green, away from blue; some people like the new colour scheme, but doesn't make much difference to me. I guess everyone wants to be “green” at the moment, though, but this is green as in Kermit. Some of the icons are prettier, and the gory text details are now hidden by a graphic when you hibernate or resume.

Sound works on my dv2000 (dv2058ea), which it didn't out of the box with 10.2 (ALSA has been improving; with 10.2 you can use ALSA 1.0.15 RC1 to get sound on a dv2000). That means I can use Skype (etc.) when travelling, which is a big consideration these days. Still no support for the webcam, but that's not a big thing for me.

A big nuisance is that my wireless connection stopped working. It seems that there is a problem with the new version of the NetworkManager applet; it can't seem to log in to my wireless network (and I'm far from the only person with this issue). I reverted to “ifup” control of the network cards, and I now have a wireless connection, albeit without the useful desktop applet that shows me which networks are available (you could use YaST to flip between the NetworkManager and ifup to see which networks are available and then connect, but you wouldn't want to have to do that too often).

The clock/date desktop applet now supports world time – you can add cities from various timezones around the world, and the times are shown in a dropdown with the calendar. Very useful if you do a lot of teleconferences across timezones. There is also a new search desktop applet that combines results from various sources: program names, file/directory names, file contents (using Beagle), Yahoo! Search, and more. As I use Opera for Web browsing and e-mail, I've become very used to its use of search to find things quickly (much better than only having hierarchical filing and navigation), and this new search applet takes the same kind of approach, so it could turn out to be rather handy, even more so that the Google Desktop, potentially.

YaST, which control most of the system settings, has had a makeover and now resembles the main menu that has been in openSUSE since 10.2. It's hard to say if it's better in any practical sense, but it does look a bit snazzier, I suppose.

10.3 supports the new Skype 1.4.0 for Linux, which 10.2 doesn't (only support 1.3.0). The new Skype client also seems to eschew categorisation; you now search for contacts from a big list, with no obvious sign of contact groups any more.

Otherwise, most things are much as they were in 10.2, there aren't any obvious fundamental changes. I'm still undecided when I'll update my deskside machine and/or my main VMware guest session to 10.3; I'll wait until I have more experience with 10.3 on my laptop.