Two of the year’s most user-friendly Linux distributions–SuSE Linux 8.1 and Red Hat Linux 8.0–have closed the gap between Windows and Linux. For those who have at least a few years of PC experience, it’s now feasible to switch from Windows to Linux or, at the very least, use both–in a dual-boot environment or on separate machines. So, which of these alternatives should you choose? Read on.
Red Hat vs. SuSE Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I have to say the one big advantage RedHat has is they still make 100% free ISO’s available of their distro. I don’t see way Suse is 99% free and then keeps Yast proprietary. I mean what’s the point of that? Shouldn’t they have made an effort by now to relicense Yast by now? They also are a part of UnitedLinux which I don’t think requires any further commenting. Personally I’m told Suse is a decent distro, but until they change their ways and stop being semi-free, I’ll be grouping them with distros like Lindows et al and also course not using them.
I think UL is a great idea, not because it will help their market share, but ebcause it will encourage more people to develop for Liux, no porting needed.
I also think SUSe is the best
While I think SUSE is the best because of it’s unfortunately ahrd to sue but effective YAST tool, the POR Slsited by zdned suprised me:
PROS
• Weak GNOME support
• Attractive, logical KDE desktop
• Automatically resizes partitions during installation
• Good desktop organization
• Excellent configuration tool
WEak GNOME Support is a pro????!!! I like both GNOME and KDE I thinkt ehy should both be supported well.
Anyway I hope SUSE will sue GERAMik to have a unified desktop in it’s neext version.
If you read the actual article you’d probably realise that it’s just a typo. Quote: “We’d like to see better support for the GNOME desktop environment.”
I do try to like Linux, I really do, but I always end up hitting a brick wall the minute I actually start ‘using’ the system as a desktop machine. Last week I did an online install of RH8.0, and after 5 minutes wanted to reformat the hard drive back to Dano. Why I continue trying is beyond me (must be some masochistic tendancy).
OBOS has all the time in the world to reach Beta – there isn’t a decent competing desktop OS snapping at their heals.
Yeah I have been looking for this DANO for awhile now. I think BeOS is the best desktop, I am awating Zeta and that will most likely blow every desktop unix wanna be out the window. I am a big red hat fan and also a stock holder. But to tell you the truth, I ran Red Hat 8.0 for a month as soon as it came out, then I bought Suse 8.1 and it literally killed Red Hat on the desktop. Although I still haven’t found the perfect desktop. Perhaps I should get a Mac instead. To give you all chills I am writing this from Windows XP (ahhh!) but using Mozilla which I think is the best browser out. Please email me if you know where I could download and check out DANO, there has got to be real alternatives out there. I keep waiting and trying out desktops like the previous poster looking for some desktop paradise. Help!
What are you smoking? I can get the source code for YaST without any problems. The only thing is that YaST isn’t licensed under GPL, but another license.
As for downloading, it is people like you on one hand whindge that there is no free download then whindge on the other hand that Linux companies aren’t making money. Here is a hint sunshine: Product + sale = profit
Neither Redhat nor SuSE have a money tree in their back garden that is producing money they can then donate to linux out of the goodness of their own heart.
If you look at the contribution of SuSE to KDE, XFree86 and the linux kernel, it is a darn sight more than what RedHat has accomplised. All RedHat has done is back a desktop based on GTK, which no commercial producer would touch with a 40ft pole, and fail to develop anything of their own, and instead constantly rely on the linux “community” to provide for them.
bullethead, use GOogle..
Matthew, don’t talk bs like that.. Red Hat did way more than you think.
People seem so quick to “dis” Red Hat and Gnome. What you don’t realize is that KDE is based on Qt, which is licensed out by Trolltech, who at any point, could in theory change the restrictions or even charge a fee. So to answer your question – real commercial companies, like Sun, for example, are the ones who actually have said 40 ft poles, and what they won’t touch – trust me on this – is a KDE based on Qt. Hence, Gnome 2 in Solaris 10.
Red Hat contributes *TONS* tothe open source world, and claims to be the biggest bandwidth hog on the Atlantic Coast. Like them or not, Red Hat is a big part of this community and they treat us freeloaders pretty friggin well.
Say whatever you want about your personal preferences, but don’t extend them to us or try to explain how corporations that don’t further your personal agenda suck – and then expect your comments to hold water when you’ve ignored all sound evidence to the contrary.
ok I’m new to the world of linux and i decided to test RH8, SuSE 8.1 and Mandrake 9. Here’s what i think:
-RedHat 8 was very nice install, beautiful gui (Gnome & KDE) but lacked the proper support for media (mp3’s etc) lacked the ability to mount my NTFS partition. These things are easly fixed by download but i’m looking for these straght out of the box.
-SuSE 8.1 liked the install as well, kde looked great, (didn’t try gnome on it) I liked the fact that it mounted the NTFS partition, played mp3’s etc, and wine was easy too. Couldn’t mount my cd-rw drive and couldn’t play audio cds.
-Mandrake 9 liked the install, actually like the simple look, plays mp3’s, audio cds, ect, NTFS Mounted and mounted my CD-RW drive, I like mandrake better it didn’t make me mad.
I got rh 8.0 personal for 30 bucks.
I’ve not used SuSe so I can comment on it. But comparing the boxes for the personal distribution: RH8 personal comes with apache, mysql, postgresql. I’m not sure that SuSe offers these in their personal addition.
I’m on dial up so downloading a bunch of stuff can be tedious. I can sympathize with people that feel that KDE has been … castrated with bluecurve but Gnome2 is the best I’ve used no crashing just a pleasant desktop experience. I did have some issues with the upgrade apache 2.0 installed over 1.3 and broke things.
The other issue with RH8 is the disabling of mp3 players, does any one know how to fix this?
comment some time what’s in the head doesn’t make it to the fingers
How many years did Redhat keep flogging LinuxConf? and even now, they STILL can’t be bothered creating a confguration tool of their own.
It is like their “Professional Pack” – Yeah, great value, considering the only “value added” stuff are once off tools, aka, partitioners and boot manager. Then they have the nerve to whindge to SUN because they would have to pay a piddly $10 OEM for StarOffice 6.0
They are correct – this is a “pro” – unless you enjoy dynamic library hell ala Windows.
> What you don’t realize is that KDE is based on Qt,
> which is licensed out by Trolltech, who at any point,
> could in theory change the restrictions
Haven’t you heard? Qt is licensed under the GPL now.
> or even charge a fee.
They are already doing this for users who wish to create proprietary or closed source software.
Haven’t you heard? Qt is licensed under the GPL now.
—
Its actually licensed under QPL, which means that any LGPL/GPL is exempted from the fee. If you are going to write a proprietary package using qt, you have to pay $2000, however, IIRC, that gives you access to the Windows and MacOS version too.
In the grand scheme of things, $2000 is pretty piddly.
What do you prefer?
Ciao,
Sebastian
What is the problem with Troll Tech charging for QT. The code is open, it is free. Not free as in beer or whatever. You can use it for free, just can’t charge for your software.
You charge -> they charge
You don’t charge -> they don’t
Seems pretty fair to me.
The SuSE reviewer mentioned that the system “crashed” twice on him. Is this really a problem? The only distro where I had a problem with actual system crashes on my system was RedHat 7.2 due to a kernel problem regarding the mobo on a notebook that still doesn’t play really nice with Linux. Is this really that much of a problem? Or was he having a problem with X? It’d be nice to know these things.
I wonder if I should even ask this……a windows user would assume that if the GUI crashes, the OS has crashed, wouldn’t he?
In the grand scheme of things, $2000 is pretty piddly.
No kidding. I could pay for the QT license in just one custom software project for one single company, and still end up profiting from the job.
By the way, just to stay on topic, I like SuSE better than RedHat for two very nitpicky, simple reason. YaST is better than any offering from RedHat and I hate RedHat’s update tool.
The truth be told though, I came to Linux for SuSE, but I stay for Debian.
I read all the comments and both reviews of Suse 8.1 and Redhat 8. Personally I use Redhat, but just because i have used it for years. The comments from Mathew about redhat not contributing to the Linux community are a bit far out. However YAST is a nice toold from what I have seen. and if such a tool could be made for RH I think a lot of people would be very happy. Having said that I still agree with the other people though that its not very nice that Suse doesnt provbide downloadable ISOs , sure you can install via ftp isntall but if you dont have at least fast DSL at home you would have to drag your pc to work. With ISOs you can download them at work, burn them and take them home. I understand the concept about business and profit however, a distro is (besides YAST and the installer maybe)) just a collection of opensource programs. So how hard is it to make an ISO image and put it up for download? Its good however to sell only boxes and not provide ISOs for the company, they make money. But then how did RH survive so long and still provide the downloadable version? why is it that Suse is the only major distro that DOESNT provide ISOs?.
my 2 cents
Matthew Gardiner: If you look at the contribution of SuSE to KDE, XFree86 and the linux kernel, it is a darn sight more than what RedHat has accomplised. All RedHat has done is back a desktop based on GTK, which no commercial producer would touch with a 40ft pole, and fail to develop anything of their own, and instead constantly rely on the linux “community” to provide for them.
So so wrong. RedHat have contributed more to Linux than pretty much any other company in the world. They support pretty much every important project, that includes GNOME, XFree, the kernel, the GNU tools and so on. They have contributed huge, vast quantities of code. Go do some research.
No commercial producer would touch? Funny, Sun don’t seem to think so.
Cut the FUD ok, it does you a disservice.
How many years did Redhat keep flogging LinuxConf? and even now, they STILL can’t be bothered creating a confguration tool of their own.
More FUD. Redhat 8 comes with lots of configuration tools. They range from display setup to web serving and runlevel configuration.
Ian D: The other issue with RH8 is the disabling of mp3 players, does any one know how to fix this?
Go to redhat.com and read the redhat speaks on multimedia article. It explains why they removed it, and how to get it back (go to xmms.org to get the rpms). Ditto for NTFS, go to linux-ntfs.sf.net and get the Psyche RPMs.
SuSE tries to make a living by selling support and distro-packages. Therefore SuSE decided not to make the iso-images avaible online…Unlike RedHat, SuSE is still a private company.
Anyway, someone made a comment about taking their pc to their work to do a ftp-install, because there are no iso-images of SuSE. While with RedHat you could download the images at your work and install them on yourhome-pc. I would like to give you an alternative. The ftp-install is pretty much the same amount of work as the normal install. Next to ftp and iso install, you also have the option of a harddisk based install. So what do you do then…go to work
download the SuSE-packages, which are ofcourse avaible at numerous ftp-servers, put them on CD…take them home, put them on a partition on your harddrive and on you go…it’s quite simple. If you are a more experienced GNU/Linux user, you could even save CD-space, by downloading only the packages that you will need.
The next thing is QT and it’s license, according to the Trolltech-company website, QT-Free edition is licensed under both QPL and GPL, so no need to worry here. Even if they decided not to support a Free edition anymore, others could go one and develop it themselves, because of the GPL. Another problem was that QT is maintained by a company…I think that in the example of QT, this has turned out to be a good thing…QT is very well written, if you look at some other projects like GTK, XFree86…then surely you all will understand.
By the way I like SuSE, I’ve been using it since 1995. RedHat sometimes makes too much changes to standard software tools, for exmples gcc 2.96, which then breaks a lot of other standard packages. Just look at readme-files that come with normal packages, exceptions for the installtion are quite often only for RedHat.
The damn firewall configuration thingy (redhat-config-securitylevel). I tried to change my security tool from high to a custom setting or medium security. Nothing appears to change. After poking around a bit, I read something that said that the redhat-config-securitylevel doesn’t have the ability to report the current security setting. So its possible that the tool works (ie changing the firewall settings), but without a PhD in iptables I can’t even tell. Other then this (very annoying) problem, the RedHat tools all seem to work well.
Does Yast have a firewall configuration tool? How is it? Anyone used both?
just one thing, the review sucks.
> Does Yast have a firewall configuration tool?
Yes. Its pretty good coz it allows you to specify which services you want people to access on your machine (http, ssh, etc) and also set other ports as part of ‘expert options.’ My problem with it is the fact that you can specify which interface you have your internal network (if applicable), but cannot configure it differently from the external network.
> Its actually licensed under QPL,
True, Qt is licensed under the QPL…
> which means that any LGPL/GPL is exempted from the fee.
This has been a mater of debate, and that was why Trolltech decided to also licence Qt under the GPL. Word of advice: It’s always a good idea to check your facts before “correcting” someone. All you need to do is use Google, like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Qt+GPL
Otherwise you may end up looking like an idiot.
I don’t know why RedHat got a high market share in the US. In Europe SuSe is market leader, professional, experienced users like Debian. French and Desktop users prefer Mandrake.
I think RedHat is too Gnome-centric.
But what I really would like to see is a knoppix-like Debian distro.
I’ve got both distros, infact i got MD 9 as well. Personally SuSE is easier to use for the newbie and to me thats all that matters for now. IF i wanted newbs to use linux i would recommend SuSE first. RH seems to want to hide important options for the sake of making look easier. Dialing up to the net for example, all it takes in SuSE (after configuration) is one click of the Kinternet icon in the panel. With RH (IN GNOME) its inside a menu option called (Network configuration devices) or something.
RE: Installation, SuSE will resize the windows partition for you while in RH you have to have free space. How many newcomers have “unpartitioned free space”? The other option is to format the HD.
While i am listing the bad points of RH its only because i’m saying its worse for newbs than SuSE. I’m sure it is better than SuSE in other areas but not for newcomers IMHO.
I installed RedHat 7 for dual boot and didn’t really use it.
I installed Suse 7.2 for dual boot and used it some.
I installed Gentoo. Then I uninstalled windows and unstalled Gentoo on my laptop and fileserver.
I have two systems. My main server runs RH 8. My portable runs SuSE 8.1. So, unlike others, I *can* comment on both. IMHO…
Gnome support is relatively unimportant for me in business. I find most of the solid business apps work fine under KDE. SMB support also is more consistent in SuSE KDE. Cups is installed by default! I like its integration a bit more.
RH does seem to handle X fonts better, as OpenOffice under RH looks sweet (especially that Andale Sans UI issue). Even copying the fonts over to SuSE does NOT solve the problem. They’re still a bit off.
SuSE YaST is a true godsend. Linuxconf blows. I have considerable difficulties changing settings quickly under RH, while under SuSE, it’s cake. I jack into about 4 different LANs for my clients, so I’m always changing configs, etc.
RH seems to install fewer things. Just take a look at the menus. My SuSE menu has tons of stuff. RH does not. Why is that?
Partitioning was a biatch under RH. SuSE was much nicer. Granted, I had to create a fun RAID setup under RH, whereas my SuSE system was just for a 60GB portable, but the interface took a bit more to get used to.
Also, I prefer the layout of components in SuSE a bit more. Gnome is integrated into /usr, I wanted it in /opt/gnome. I never liked having content web content in /usr/local/httpd, but RH has it in /var (?). SuSE created a new one called /srv, which I think makes a bit more sense.
Again, comments from a user of both.
With ISOs you can download them at work, burn them and take them home.
So what? Download the packages via FTP, burn them, take them home, set up a FTPD in your LAN, use it as source for the FTP install. I agree it’s laborious, but it works.
RH 8 does not come with a zillion apps because they were trying to keep it simple. I like this approach because I liked the app they choose. If you don’t like the apps they choose by default then SuSE is the godsend if you want simple then RH is the bomb.
Yast2 is easier for server configurations and advance configurations but I prefer the hodge podge of RH8 configuration apps for an end-user because they are easier to use. It all depends on what you want.
The GUI preference depends entirely IMO on what desktop you prefer. You like KDE then throw away RH8 right now. Yes, you heard me throw it away because SuSE is the absolute KDE bomb. Still, if you like Gnome do not even bother touching SuSE. Go for RH8 right away.
For server installls, SuSE has better server configuration tools and more of them. However, you cannot forget that every 3rdparty vendor supports RH very few support SuSE. We use SuSE at work and I use RH at home so I know this all too well. Translating instructions for SuSE and re-compiling drivers is not impossible but annoying.
linuxconf I have not touched unless it is used for the backend of all the individual gtk2 configuration apps that RH uses.
“RH does seem to handle X fonts better, as OpenOffice under RH looks sweet (especially that Andale Sans UI issue). Even copying the fonts over to SuSE does NOT solve the problem. They’re still a bit off.”
Actually i find its better with SuSE and alot easeir with the font installer. Just point it at the windows partition and bam! You have windows fonts, turn AA OFF and hey presto!
One thing people have forgotten to mention in the difference between SuSe and Redhat is the online updates. Even though you may have to buy SuSe to get an installer on cd-rom, they offer for free, online updates for as many computers that SuSe is installed on. The same can not be said about Redhat however. In Redhat you get online updates for one computer and only for a limited time when you purchase the OS. What does this mean in the end? Both companies end up making money one way or another. If you don’t mind manually finding and downloading patches, Redhat is free, but I find it a real pain. The fact that I can just pay the money up front and get unconditional online updates is what I like SuSe.
…online updates in RedHat… I have a coworker who automated the security updates for his system. Perhaps he doesn’t get all the system updates, but at least he is getting something for free from RedHat. I gave him the RH8 CDs after downloading the ISOs, so I know it didn’t come with an OS purchase. But I can understand charging for online updates. That’s costing you extra bandwidth to offer as a service. The better option would be to offer P2P updates, which I wanna try to implement sometime if no one else does it first.
I found RedHat better to install and configure than Suse.
A couple of days ago, i installed Sus 8.0.
God damm it!
Its horrible!
Too slow, integration with KDE is ugly, teh installer is not so flexible as RedHat( with RH u can configure and select only the packes that i need), no gnome support(in my IMHO, good distros let choose both KDE and Gnome), in fact i prefer choosing anyone of them (KDE or Gnom) but i stick with RedHat because they support bnoth well.
RPMs: Suse develops rpms incomptble with redhats default, another thing that i really dont like.
Ok, Yast2 is a piece of cake, but sometimes i prefer manually edit scripts by hand, and know what i am doing.
Another issue is that i found JFS on Suse was too slow.
Finally, Redhat as told before, try to make things simple, but its not the ideia of suse, that everything has to be done “automagically”
.
This is pathetic ! Come on! i am not Dustin Hoffman in ” Rain Man” . This suppose to be installed by my grandmather.
I have been using RH 7.1 for some time and had no problems with that untill today, and even if rh 7.1 its quite old, i liked that version (fits very well for me, because nowadays they are ” bloated”) and wouldnt chenge it untill RH 8.1 0r 8.2 comes out
Until that time, i have been playing with slackware(fantastic, but u have to know exactly what u are doing and configure things may could be a bore – but i like challegers hehehe).
BTW, until suse 6.4 they have based the distro on slackware. and after that, they start to develop by their own.
RedHat is a great distro, and i think they are giing the rigth way.
OKDOK ….
While I appluad RH for their efforts, the last time I installed RH8 for a friend it would appear that to install it you need all three ISOs since most of the core OS is spilt up over the CD’s. You have no choice but to download them all.
I don’t quite understand SUSE’s policy of only making the previous version available for download and making the current version ISO only available as a “system”. If they want to encourage people to try it out, why not make a current release installable on the HD and maybe remove some apps to encourage purchase.
Regardless, its great to see all distros making regular releases and making each better than the previous.
I think there are some confusions on the licence of Qt.
Qt is DOUBLE-licenced : GPL and QPL. It means that ou can use Qt in a GPL software, and even CHARGE for the binaries (but you must give the code source with your binaries, as stipulated by the GPL). You can also fork the code without the consent of Trolltech, charge for the binaries again, but you MUST stay GPL, like any other GPL software.
Now Trolltech offers for people who are allergic to the GPL a way to put it in a proprietary program (this can’t be made under the GPL licence). This is not GPL anymore, and in that case you have to pay for it.
An author of a GPL program may behave like that, as well : use my program under the GPL licence, but if you want to close it in a proprietary program, you have to pay for it, and you will have it on another licence (this case is extremely rare, since all authors of the GPL code need to agree with that, which is the case with Qt which belongs to Trolltech). Even the GPL says that the authors can allow the code to be in proprietary programs.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, a programmer has always the freedom to licence his code with several licences, even if he releases under the GPL. The GPL code remains free, of course, but he can also release the same code under other conditions that are not free, for people who do not want to accept the conditions and constraints of the Free licence.
Now for Yast2 : Matthew, the fact that you can have the source code does not make it free. The article 3 of the Yast2 licence prevents redistribution of changes without the consent of SuSE. Nobody said that it was not “Open Source” but it is not Free, since there is a restriction on redistribution.
I hope my explanations clarify the status of these licences.
I have SuSE 8.1 personal, upgraded from 8.0, & SuSE was my first linux. The only trouble I had was I had a winmodem, I solved that by getting a External sereal modem works great. SuSE is easy to use to, I basicly set everything up with out any real trouble, if more apps. would come out fore linux. That would make more people switch over. I still have windows, but only for a game I play.
After using both, all I can say is Suse really is leaving RedHat behind.
Just install Suse and start digging around. Suse gives you k3b for burning CDs. They give you a non-castrated XMMS. They include RealPlayer. The list goes on. If you want something for home use, Suse is going to be it.
As for contributing back to the community, I think both Suse and RedHat are pretty even on that point. The only thing I’d probably add is that Suse contributes more to *community* projects (KDE, XFree, etc.) than RedHat does. Look at how many distros are KDE based as opposed to GNOME based (which is RH’s baby).
——————————————————
By Fabio Ribeiro
BTW, until suse 6.4 they have based the distro on slackware. and after that, they start to develop by their own.
——————————————————
Well this is kinda not very thru Fabio, SuSE started in 1992 when there were only two distro’s(to the best of my knowledge)…Slackware and SLS. They started selling Slackware floppy-sets, completely translated into German and with a lot of Bug fixes. Being fed up with the many bugs in slackware, they started creating their own distro which in the begining was based on the distro “Jurix”. At the same time they started to develop Yast en SuSE 4.2 was their first own distro.
Matthew I have to address a quote of yours:
“If you look at the contribution of SuSE to KDE, XFree86 and the linux kernel, it is a darn sight more than what RedHat has accomplised. All RedHat has done is back a desktop based on GTK, which no commercial producer would touch with a 40ft pole”
The Solaris 8/9 have betas of Gnome to replace CDE and Solaris 10 is dropping CDE all together in favor of Gnome. HP-UX plans the same for a future release.
Where can I install SuSE from over FTP? http://ftp.suse.de seems somewhat lacking …
I’ve never got around to trying SuSE, so I can’t comment (yet), but having started with RH5.1, I’m impressed by RH8.0 (though my aging laptop can’t cope with it as a desktop, so I’ve stayed with LFS, but the firewall runs RH8 happily in runlevel 3. The RH toys I can play with thanks to X; I second an earlier poster about the IPTABLES tool being write-only -it’s useless in that configuration!
I get the impression from the pro-SuSE posters here, and SuSE users I have spoken to before, that it’s just a desktop distro – the nice thing about RH8 is that it’s great as a firewall. The bad thing about RH8 is that it slows my 3yr-old laptop to a crawl – as would a recent Windows version, I’m sure – Win98SE just about manages to run, whereas with LFS I can edit multiple graphical documents simultaneously (StarOffice6) without too much pain (takes a while to save modified documents, but I don’t worry about the whole thing dying, which Win98SE would for sure, and more slowly!)
SuSE mainly for the desktop??? I think not…I use it on a server and desktop, at my university SuSE is being used as a desktop, server and on all cluster’s. For your ftp-mirror near you
have a look here: http://www.suse.com/en/private/download/ftp/int_mirrors.html
I generally update my own linux systems 1 to 2 times a year. Each time I re-evaluate whats out there for a week or 2 on each major distro. Every time I keep coming back to SuSE.
This time around I tried Mandrake 9, RH8 and SuSE 8.1. I started with Mandrake 9 and didnt care for it a whole lot. Im not gonna get into that cause this thread was about RH8 vs. SuSE 8.1
….Anyway, I tried RH8 for 2 weeks. I really diskliked the way theyve raped both gnome and kde. I really dont care for gnome a great deal. Its got much less features than kde and dear lord is it slow. Nautalis is a big pile of slow unstable crap. Aside from that, I was still willing to give it a try. Since RH8 has virtually ZERO multimedia support i started by compiling mplayer and xmms etc. I had a great deal of trouble getting winex and wine working properly if at all. Then I got the nvidia kernel and glx drivers compiled. Now, minus wine and winex, I had a useable system. After 2 weeks of running, it was my conclusion that RH8 makes windows look stable since I got everything from hard locks to kernel panics nearly every damn day. Only other thing that RH completely lacks is a nice centralized configuration tool. Come on guys….stop screwing around and just make one.
Format….SuSE 8.1 goes in. Beautiful installation etc. KDE and the keramik theme look great. SuSE 8.1 comes with mplayer (you need to recompile for win32 etc support), realplayer, k3b, xmms(with mp3 support), Kopete(best universal IM client Ive used) wine, and about a bazillion other big name apps tested for this distro. I loaded up the nvidia kernel drivers etc and winex. Got WarCraftIII running without incident. Got KazaaLite running under wine within minutes. I had some trouble with the IDE cdroms and cdrecorder drives not getting scsi IDs setup right. One trip to the support database and a google search took care of that. (this was fine for me…but may be troublesome to newbs….I expect SuSE to fix that nonsense in their next release). So far SuSE 8.1 has now been running my desktop and server(web, email, irc, ftp) for months now without incident. No crashes, no hickups…just flawless 24/7 operation. YaST is the best config tool ever to grace Linux in my book….nuf said. I also love the new package manager built into YaST…rough around the edges but still very nice. One thing about SuSE is that they always provide just about all major linux apps out there on their 7 cds or 1 dvd. In 8.1 theyve gone a step further to add single click installation of any program on the cds to the SuSE menu within the kde menu. And whats even cooler than that, is that theyve structered the single click install to look exactly the same as the actual KDE menu so you know exactly where the app youre installing will appear in the KDE menu.
Needless to say, my opinion is WAY in favor of SuSE. They just do it better. Outa the box RH8, in my opinion, is half the distro that SuSE is. After doing all my own setup, customization and compiling of proggies I wanted, SuSE -> 100% perfection and fast….RH8 -> still cant get several things to work, system is slow, unstable and its only hope would be for me to build my own kernel for it.
With regard to some other posts: SuSEs contribution to the linux community is ennormous compared to RH. Dont flame me for that…its true. SuSE also employs the largest linux development team in the world. As for no ISO downloads….bah…I have no problem paying the $49.99 upgrade price for their new distros complete with the latest and greatest linux apps. $50 bucks a year is the least I can do to support a company producing such a great product. Its worth it….especially when windows costs over $100 and comes with squat.
FIrst of all YAST, the most powerful configuration tool out there, it migh tnot be as easy as WInControl Center, but it’s way more powerful in some areas.
WINE, is also automatically setup in SuSe which i really like.
My windows partiton is aslo an icon on the desktop which ic an copy and read files from, aslo convinient. IT would eb even nicer if Ic ould see my windows netoworka dn print like in Xandros though.
Multimedia support is also fantastic, all the majro apps are in it and I can play mp3’s.
I do like Redhat’s integration overall a lot ebtter though. They jhave doena great job, and do you really need the about KDE in every app?
Their fonts also looking great, too abd there isn’t any installer for them though.
I also have to say that their Add remove programs is much easier to use,even though less powerful. I really like that Redhat doesen’t install a zillion apps, IMO this is a good thing and I like the fact that all the apps had icons. Too bad many multimedia apps are misisng though.
Redhat also has some very easy configuration tools adns oem SuSe doesen’t like the services one. However overall, YAST is way more comprehensive.
OVERALL I THINK SUSE STILL WINS BY A SIGNIFICANT MARGIN.