I'm very much an ignorant new boy, but there seem a number of big differences to me. First there's the whole open source philosopy - I couldn't program my way out of a wet paper bag, but I profoundly appreciate all the goodies programmers are putting out. Second and related is the whole spirit of co-operative enterprise exemplified on this board - and thanks again to all those who've helped me out. But if all this is a bit cerebral, try this: I work for a small charity that's always short of cash and wants computers to provide free services to the public. We had to buy licences for 10 lots of Windows, for four lots of MS Office, and a bunch of other stuff. The company we work with produces graphical interfaces to their database products, and they're constantly held up fixing things because they can't get access to MS code themselves. Until now, they haven't ported their stuff to Linux - but when (maybe still if) they do, anyone in the position I was a year ago would have a completely transformed set of options with SuSE - less than 30 pounds (45 USD?) for an industrial strength operating system, office software, networking software, security products, documentation, superior graphical interface, the list goes on and on ... and I'm free to put this on as many machines as I please. And my specialist software suppliers would always be able to find out exactly how to write beautiful graphical front-ends because KDE etc are all open source ... Plus I could do exactly the same if I happened to be a company or a university with hundreds or even thousands of users. That's what I call a major advantage, and I save enough money on licensing to buy additional kit, training, or have a party. Plus, isn't Linux essentially far more fun? Cheers all, Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB UK Tel: +44 (0)161 834 7961 Fax: +44 (0)161 839 5797 -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq