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 Software : Suse Linux Professional 9.2 |
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Rating:  - SUSE 9.2 is GREAT
Upgraded to 9.2 from 7.x, very pleased with the product. It found the systems hardware quickly and with no effort on my part. My palm pilot, printer, usb thumb drive, email, web surfing are all 100% operational. Checking for O/S updates is a snap and requires no system admin knowledge. This Novell/SUSE is so much fun! For those wanting to compile code, browse internet, do email in an environment other than with MS, this is the way to go. Plus all your doc's, pdf's, jpeg's all work too. Install was a snap, gui's are great, very high quality product.
Rating: - Best linux Distro money can buy
SuSE Linux is the oldest commercial distro of Linux, and they prove again why people are willing to pay for something that they can essentially get for free. SuSE 9.2 Pro puts Fedora Core, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian and the others to shame in every aspect.
Hardware support I found to be excellent, there was nothing that didn't detect or work correctly. YaST made it easy to choose what to install and they give you tons of options, more than WindowsXP could ever dream of giving you.
While i'm not a big fan of Gnome, Novell makes it look pretty good and surprisingly nice to use. KDE is in it's natural and beautiful state and the easy of use is pretty good.
Don't buy into the people who write 1-star reviews of this product claiming that SuSE destroyed all their data on install. If you don't know what you're doing you should not use this, period. Hold nobody accountable for yourself if you screw things up.
Fantastic distro, perfect for anybody learning to use Linux/UNIX. You won't be disappointed!
Rating: - XP 2 + SUSE removable hard drive = ideal for learning UNIX.
I say that the end of 2004, start of 2005 was the time to get a pimpin' new PC. I booted SuSE 7.2 on a partition with Windows 2000 many years ago and the result was not funny. If you choose to dual-boot a Windows Linux machine, then get two hard drives for it. Take a hint. XP2 should be on one of the hard drives. Better yet get a docking bay installed on your PC, like a ViPower Super Rack IDE for hard drives so you can pull them out and swap them around. As Windows user this is how you want to try out Linux on your machine... and you should, but read more to find out why.
Running Windows 95 and that means Windows 98 is illegal in your country and you are in the land of needing a new computer fast, feeling that you might have a box that looks like it is running windows 3.1 and to be honest now is your chance to move to Windows 2000 for a more solid operating system. Even NT users found more stability in Windows 2000, 98 users mostly gamers or downloaders, seeing the blue screen of death often, while Win 2K users doing something a little more software intensive like multimedia, graphics and servers that 98 could not manage. So came the day of the dual-processor, having an NT Dual 500mhz, upgrading to Win2K and you still had a fast machine, 64mb and 128mb games cards never really impressing you that much to get a better machine, a games console maybe cheaper and better, XP a little slow for you and besides, 2K was compatible with nearly everything and you could dual boot linux for fun. The only reason to buy a computer between the release of XP and now was if you did not have one and even then plenty of second hand units going around.
Year: 2005
256mb graphics cards, LCD monitors on the cheap, DVD-R media, Broadband, now is the time to upgrade your machine. AMD have some nice chips but the hyperthreading Intel P4 3.0GHz is a killer chip. 1GB of RAM, no problem. A pimpin' fast graphics card and you have a machine that can play Half-Life 2 on full resolution. The best games of the 21st century were released before Christmas this year, with 2005 bringing lots more to come. Broadband on the increase, DVD-R media and life might get less expensive if you are into computers and certainly a whole pile better.
Why not Linux? Well XP2 has the games and Linux not, so we can stop there. For speed on an OS, well Linux is a much faster, but XP2 is not bad on a system with half the ram of the above and a 1 GHz processor. ****If you are programming or doing fundamental computer work then do check out Linux because it might be what you need and learning Linux is like DOS with a bit of windows with all the free fundamental software you could want****. Why not Apple? Well the same as above, but you have a better selection of stuff and to be honest multimedia applications work well on an apple, and why shouldn't they since Apple is industry standard for that kind of design work, so what does XP2 have to offer?
Obviously stability (not to be confused with security). XP2 is a very stable operating system. It is more stable than Windows 2000. For that reason, I made the upgrade. I have not found XP2 doing much annoying or something that I could not fix with Google. Installing is a big deal because you need Internet for verification; however it is fast on a high end system. There are obvious things you must do after you install it like download Firefox and use it instead of IE and try to use realplayer instead of mediaplayer, use Microsoft's AntiSpyware, don't use the firewall, use zonelarm free instead, spend on a good anti-virus software package, turn off the preview pane in Internet Outlook mail or try to find a free mail browser, make sure you get all the latest windows updates, careful what you put into your machine or extract, careful what mail you open, change passwords every week, and you can achieve a secure on-line machine that can do anything most computers can do right now with a company that has admitted that it has a security problem that will be addressed with future updates, but overall one should be impressed with the OS for stability, not speed or security, but for not crashing, as long as there are no hardware configuration conflicts, that do happen, get someone else to build your machine and blame them when it doesn't come together (and it wont come together because things are now cutting edge so get it done elsewhere; if your task bar hangs this is because of routers or USB hubs that are not compatible). The machine like the above is a 5 star experience but God help those who don't address security issues the moment they go on-line with it which is a bit like just driving your car off a cliff. Expect to loose everything to a virus and have your address details stolen with all your VISA card info.
XP2 PRO is 5 stars if you visit a place on the web called Gibson research incorporated and test the vulnerability of your PC on-line. LINUX and UNIX are there for SECURITY if that is your main concern.
Extra hard drive = no installation hell if it goes wrong, ready for Linux, comes packed with all the documentation you could need, you will be learning KDE (the interface) and LINUX/UNIX SHELL commands. Learn Linux.
Rating:  - Overcrowded
Not bad piece of software ,but has problem with forest of
programs , lack of playing DVDs , monitor runs of 70 Hz instead of 100 what is very annoying , real player needs refurbishment
and you'll need crossover definately
Rating: - Like WinXP Pro? You will like SUSE 9.2 Pro
I've used several older versions of Mandrake Linux (9.1, 9.2, 10.0, and 10.1) and this is my first SUSE 9.2 Pro purchase. I was glad the installation process was easier than Mandrake's. And even though it can take SUSE 9.2 Pro longer than WinXP Pro to install (60 minutes instead of 45 minutes?) when you are booting up for the last time, your system will be completely UP-TO-DATE.
Why? Because the install program asks you if you want to update SUSE 9.2 Pro from the Internet. This updating process includes nVidia drivers, if your computer need them. [Try doing that with WinXP! It takes another 30-60 minutes downloading "security patches" and "driver updates", before you are REALLY up-to-date.]
Also, during installation, you don't have to worry if your computer's BIOS is set to boot from the CD-ROM or the hard drive, because SUSE 9.2 Pro gives you a simple graphic menu in front of the bootup ("Grub") that allows you to select "Hard Drive" -- even if the BIOS is set to CD-ROM. For those of you who install Operating Systems often, you will really appreciate this! Less rebooting means less time wasted, no matter how fast your systems is.
The best thing about using Linux is that you don't have to buy and install so many third party software packages. It comes with just about everything anyone needs to work or play.
Or, maybe the best thing is (when used on desktop computers) that Linux is basically NOT vulnerable to viruses and worms. To give you some idea of how important that is: I have never added anti-virus software to any Linux installations. Try running Windows without anti-virus, anti-spybot software... and additional firewall software.
I have to maintain several Windows systems also, and the most awful thing about them is the need to keep up with the OS patches, spybot updates, virus scans, etc etc.
With Linux, you boot up, and you are good to go "foreva". Till you want to turn off your computer, maybe to give the fan a rest? When you reboot, SUSE 9.2 Pro will automatically update itself (yes, OK, like later versions of Windows). But in my experience, the patches are not as frequent, and not as URGENT, either.
I look forward to buying SUSE 9.3 Pro, which is due out April 2005. It will include "Xen", allowing you to run multiple instances of the OS on "native" virtual machine setting - that promises to be faster than VMWare.
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