I have overall been satisfied with Linux 6.4 and 7.0. here a short report. THE GOD ------- a) the install was easy (6.4 from CD, 7.0 from DVD), my video card (TNT based) was detected and installed ok, modem, printer,sound, browser and StarOffice work fine. Booted fine, worked fine, excepted the little things (see below). My system: K6-III 450 Mhz, Diamond Viper 770, 128 MB SDRAM, external modem: Compaq, printer HP LaserJet 1100. b)Software used: kmail, Netscape 4.7, StarOffice, among others. (Xemacs, gv, games...) THE NOT SO GOOD --------------- 1) The documentation: is thick and confusing, I wish that SUSE subcontract this task to O'Reilly! (Books ".. in a nutshell") it needs to be entirely re-written, or at least much better organized. Use it you will understand... Red Hat did a better job there. So installing dual boot with NT and my SCSI 1542 Adaptec took me much more time than should have been. THE BAD ------- * A clear up to date list of supported hardware is necessary: I would like the web site or the CD ROM to list the version number of each included applications: this criticism goes for other Linuxes also, for example kmail and Lilo were too old, and I had the bitersweet privilege to have to download them after I installed the system. I also would suggest that the box has a clear list of the version numbers for at least the most common applications. * The support is actually quite good... if you can reach someone on the phone: I talked to a very knowlagable and effective lady. Email support was very slow and the answers not too good. (Early 2000). * Some of the RPM's need to be specific to SUSE, the one for RedHat or Mandrake do not always work. Could it be because they do not put files in the same places? WHAT DOES NOT WORK (7.0) ----------------------- * xmms (worked just fine on the same box with 6.4) * Staroffice: cannot use the GUI to navigate through a mounted FAT partition (/windows/D), obviously a privilege problem, that I have not worked on yet. * CD-ROAST: just dies no msg/nocomment. (SCSI CD ROM writer), no success after trying a few things. WHAT COULD BE ENHANCED ---------------------- a) YSAT2 should be the only one, because YAST1 is buggy, and will not work witout saying a thing if the CD is not there, among other "features". b) KDE2 should be included in the distribution, as soon as practical. I had troobles trying to install the download version. c) Most of the install is geared towards an install from scratch, but updating an existing system was very difficult, and did not work too well. CONCLUSION ---------- Overall a very good value. Install:I had much more problems to install WINDOWS 2000 than SUSE. Even NT takes longer to install because you have to install each driver manually from a separate CD-ROM (video, modem, printer). Speed: On the same system almost everything (boot, shutdown, GUI's programs) is significantly faster than NT, maybe twice faster. Only StarOffice which works well is slow to get started, and the fonts are very poor. You may be able to add your experience with USB peripherals with SUSE Linux. Thanks. Andre

A few problems with you report that need to be commented on: * The HW list is available online. * RPM's are really just specific to RH;),I never have had this problem and I run 5 SuSE boxes (at work and at home.) * KDE2 IS bundled with both 6.4 and 7.0. But why would you want to use it? It's broken. * My experience with other distro's tells me their written support is either as op- aque or worse than SuSE's. On the other hand SuSE bundles all the man pages and info you could want along with package docs. * Dual booting NT and SuSE:lilo or ntloader? Ones a no-brainer the other could be a pain. *Again I have the displeasure of disagreeing vehemently with someone about yast: Yast2 is more flawed. Yast offers overall system configuration options and functionality while Yast2, while decent, does not offer nearly the same range of options. Also you have no options but to install with yast if you are installing on an older box: say an old 586 with 32 megs of RAM. Furthermore, configuring some options in yast2 will leave you unable to change them later(net) in yast,which is a major pain. *Again untrue: and an example of what yast2 does not do well: Updating an existing install is crystal clear with yast!!!! I use my SuSE boxes as servers primarily and network workstations secondly so i'll take your word on staroffice..I have never used it. Is it worth trying? Finally , USB: I have never had any luck with SuSE usb support... Thanks for the report!!!!