Rating:  -
It's been several years since I looked at a Linux distro, but I bought an old Gateway machine at auction a few days ago and needed a current OS. I downloaded the free evaluation edition of SuSE from one of the mirrors yesterday and it is incredible! My old Gateway rocks now! Some background: I own several machines fitted with WinXP Home, but with SuSE as a viable alternative I am *not* upgrading to Vista. It's very cool to surf with an OS built with security in mind. Consider what I spend on third party programs to keep WinXP safe: Norton AV on one machine and EZ AV on another; ZoneAlarm Pro; ProcessGuard; PestPatrol; WindowWasher; etc., etc. With SuSE, OTOH, all the security stuff is included! I'm still running my evaluation of the OS, but I will probably pony up for the retail deal.
Rating: -
This was by far the easiest install I have ever done (yes, easier than WinXP). I installed it on a Dell dimension 5100 and had absolutely no problems. It recognized all the hardware out of the box. In regards to the other posts, I can only hint that there are a lot of components out there that are win*, like winmodems that lack certain hardware capabilities so the windows drivers take its place (so obviously Linux can't make it work without a custom driver). So, don't skimp on the hardware.
Rating:  -
I can only recommend this product to those of you who have too few problems in your life and need more. I am not a "computer illiterate". I have years of experience on Unix machines. I really wanted to get away from Windows. I bought the Suse Linux Professional 9.3 and tried to install it on a Gateway laptop. My sound card and dial-up modem would not work. When I tried to call Novell for my "90 days of free installation support", I was told that the "free support does not include sound cards and modems". I would have to pay $39 for 20 minutes of support. Furthermore, the support center was obviously not in the United States and I had difficulty communicating due to both our language differences and the quality of the connection. I spent over 15 hours trying to find a solution anywhere I could and never got the sound card or dial-up modem to work. I had to go to a Windows machine to get internet access as I killed my laptop internet access with the Linux installation.
Rating: -
Suse/Novell would like for you to believe it works out of the box. It does not!
I have run many Linux distributions since 1995 and Suse/Novell is just another distro and still not quite ready for the desktop.
I currently run multi-boot systems which most distros handle very well. Not Suse! The install is only geared for existing windows or a blank hard drive. In order to load Suse, I had to unload three other systems (the Suse install actually removed them itself without letting me know).
After install I had to tweek the video and network card, and the sound system just barely works with only a few of the `installed' packages. Fortunately I know how to adjust scripts to `make things work' but sound is still an issue. Some things do work nicely but for the cost of Suse I suggest going with Fedora download and save your money, you will be much happier. While reloading Fedora and my favorite: slackware, Suse did not handle the partition re-size very well but the system recovery worked. I did have to re-tweek the Suse system again after recovery.
I had my hopes up for Suse/Novell because Novell had such a nice OS but I am still disappointed.
The books that are included with Suse are useless, even for a newbe. No much real useful information contained within the books and the books are not included in an electronic form.
Rating: -
I installed both Win2K and Suse Linux Pro 9.3 on my laptop, and for every hour I spend in Windows, I spend 12 hours in Linux. If I were to pay for and install all the software for Windows that's comparable to what's included with this OS, I'd have to shell out at the very least several thousand $$$. I think this was the smarter option.
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