* Mark W. Knecht (Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:33:40AM -0700)

1) Firewalls 2) File servers - Samba 3) Faster DNS service than my ISP 4) Network monitoring tools and better support for low level networking 5) Backups 6) Probably others if I sat and thought longer

What I'm interested in knowing is whether those of you that know much more than I will ever know about SuSE Linux see any significant difference in the ease of use of SuSE distributions vs. RH. As a self-confirmed

Please note that I never got beyond redhat 6.2 The big plusses Suse has over Redhat (IMHO) are 1) ease of install 2) ease of configuration (yast/yast2 is easier to use (for me) than linuxconf 3) more stuff (suse 7.2 is 7 CDs worth of goodies (well over 2000 apps) which apparently is more than redhat has. 4) KDE 2 (not sure if redhat these days ships KDE2, they probably do) 5) no Kutzu however as for the 6 items you list above I don;t think any of the 2 will have a significantly better implementation. I've heard lotsof good things about SuseFirewall, but Im still using a firewwall script I hacked togther (out of a redhat firewall script) a coupld of years ago, an it works fine for me, so I haven't checked out suse firewall yet. Backups I do through amanda, which is part of both suse and redhat . Howeve rif music is what you like best, you might appreciate all the music related stuff that's part of KDE2 (arts and related). Not being a musicain myself I've never did anything serious with it though. If you want ease of use, I would go for Suse/yast2/kde2 If however you are already familiar with linuxconf/gnome/redhats install procedure you'llprobably get annoyed at the fact that familiar items are located at unfamiliair places. Gerhard, <@jasongeo.com> == The Acoustic Motorbiker == -- __O If your watch is wound, wound to run, it will =`\<, If your time is due, due to come, it will (=)/(=) Living this life, is like trying to learn latin in a chines firedrill

Normally On 2 Jul 2001, Mark W. Knecht wrote:

I've been using RH Linux for a couple of years now, and generally I have a pretty high opinion of it, and Linux overall. It runs well, seems fast, almost never crashes, or at least I think most of the problems I've seen over the last few years are more likely hardware than software. At this point, I simply cannot see eliminating Windows due to my love and use of Pro Tools (www.digidesign.com) for recording, but I want Linux in my home environment to serve a large and important part. As a mostly 'home user' I don't think my requirements should be that difficult. The things I have the most use for are:

1) Firewalls 2) File servers - Samba 3) Faster DNS service than my ISP 4) Network monitoring tools and better support for low level networking 5) Backups 6) Probably others if I sat and thought longer

It seems RedHat is working fine for you. I don't see any reason for you to switch unless you're curious. Keep in mind that most distros all use the same tools to provide the services you specify (sendmail / postfix for mail, samba for SMB shares / sharing, KDE / GNOME for GUIs, etc.). Something made you want to switch in the first place, if not you wouldn't have posted this in the first place. The only major differences between distros are the tools that surround the ones that I just specified. For example, Mandrake uses its DraX software and SuSE uses YaST2. What I noticed with other distros that they were very de-centralized with little or no tools from which I could do almost anything. In other words, they didn't feel very "polished", or lack of better phrasing. In Mandrake and Slackware, I had to go through 15 different configuration files to change exactly what I wanted since DraX in Mandrake didn't have enough and Slackware just doesn't have such a tool. The first thing I noticed when I made the switch to SuSE is the organization. The Yast1/2 tools are great, IMO, and the file /etc/rc.config is fantastic (for me, enough to switch). Everything in /etc/rc.d is well organized, and the YaST tools provide access to them all.

However, being that I'd rather spend my time using my computers for making music than learning all the ins and outs of every technology I'd like to use, I find the amount of time I spend first learning what to use, then setting it up and then keeping it maintained to be significantly more than I want to spend.

Absolutely. I would post to alt.os.linux.mandrake / alt.os.linux.redhat and see what they see as the best features of their distros for the home user. Just be sure not to start a distro war. Or better yet, go to http://groups.google.com and read some distribution comparisons that people have already made.

I recently started using SuSE Email Server II here at work simply because it was presented as a packaged environment that would allow me to get rid an old Exchange Server. We're a small company, I got all this IT stuff dumped in my direction after a hack, and I liked Linux. All these reasons pointed me towards some sort of packaged setup. Generally speaking, I found the SuSE product to be professional and good for my application. Heck, it doesn't do everything I want it to do, and I'm not even sure it does everything the box says, but none the less, I managed to get rid of M$ Exchange and move us to Postfix, so I'm happy.

I'm not whether the Email Server is anything like SuSE 7.2, but if it is, it's a great opportunity to learn what's so great about SuSE. Plus buying SuSE profession gives you 90 days (3 months) telephone tech support, which is great for asking all those tiny questions that you can't find the answers to anywhere else.

What I'm interested in knowing is whether those of you that know much more than I will ever know about SuSE Linux see any significant difference in the ease of use of SuSE distributions vs. RH. As a self-confirmed 'permanent newbie' I'm looking for a quicker, less painful, and probably more graphical, way to keep the types of technologies listed above working so I can move on and do the other things I want to spend my time on. I'm curious whether SuSE offers anything better for me?

Sorry, I have yet to use a RedHat system. What I can tell you from my experiences with Mandrake (which is based on RedHat) is that I prefer the GUI YaST tools over DraX as less as the file organization and centralization of configuration. Keep in mind that I have not used Mandrake 8, but am basing my viewpoints on Mandrake 7.2. -- noodlez: Karol Pietrzak PGP KeyID: 0x3A1446A0