In Suse 6.2, the Suse help system displayed in Netscape as a web interface, and it was very good--to the point. Relevant things like the man pages (as a whole list, categories, or search option), the info index, doc on XF86, etc., were right there. On Suse 7.1 I want to find the XF86 Web pages which are installed locally. In the Suse help system, there is no obvious way to get to them. The main page of the Suse help system doesn't show a direct link to the XF86 pages, nor do I find it by following any of the links on this page. Instead most of the links take me to long lists of hundreds of items, marginally useful. Oh here it is, file:/usr/share/doc/susehilf/XFree86/index.html which could only be found by looking up the package description, finding where the docs live, and hand typing in the URL. If I'm going to have to do this by hand all the time, why don't I just delete Suse Help from my panel? The same goes for info pages. I have always hated info, but nonetheless it is the only info for some things. It's horribly disorganized unalphabetic list of topics was a convenient click away on the old Suse help. Where is it now? Type it in by hand again or wade through the filesystem by hand. I get the feeling that Suse is trying to appear cute and approachable as a desktop system with all sorts of fancy cosmetic improvements, but the fundamental disorganization seems to get worse with time. Yast1 and Yast2? Do they configure the same things? Sometimes they do other times they do the same thing different ways! Which one to use when? The manuals are filled with cursory explanations of how to set up the most fortunate cases, but if things don't go as planned, you'd better be an old hand at Linux because you'll have to do it by hand. If I didn't hand copy the modeline for my LCD monitor (without a good autoset) that XF86Setup calculated in 6.2 to my 7.0 and 7.1 XF86Config files, I would have had to hand calculate the modelines! Sax or Sax2 were utterly useless for this monitor. I started with Suse after using Slackware from the early Linux years. Thank goodness, because if I hadn't learned on Slackware, I'd have given up on Suse a long time ago, and maybe on Linux entirely. I kept Suse because they did one thing very, very well, they set up a default keyboard mapping that seems to work well in all my apps without tinkering. It is ridiculous for a modern desktop system to require hours of tinkering to get editing keys to work, and Suse has allowed me to avoid that nightmare, which wasn't the case with old Slackware of course, nor the RedHat 6.? which I tried once before trying Suse. Seriously, how can anybody who needs to do their work consider Linux viable after you tell them "oh, uh, by the way, you will have to spend hours and hours of reading incomprehensible technical texts to get Home End and Delete keys to work." At least Suse has this fixed. I'm sorry I can't offer a comprehensive report on every attempt that I've made with Suse help system to get the info I need, but failed until I went and found it in "filemanager" mode, nor the answer to how it should be. But I can say that it was pretty good in 6.2, and has gone downhill with 7.0 and now it is abyssmal in 7.1 Does anyone else feel this way? I would be happy to listen to alternative points of view, but no hostile criticism please. This rant was not intended to be hostile, only a vent of frustration with the experience of Linux desktop use. I still hold out the hope that Suse has great potential to make Linux useable as a desktop OS. But I have little bargaining power to advocate it to my colleagues, who all use Windows NT and 2000, which simply works. And they also don't seem to have much trouble with crashes. Perhaps my desktop crashes more than theirs! Because while linux may be very stable, X and associated apps are not. They can take out the X server, which kills all apps with unsaved data. And I spend a few hours a day for at least a few weeks after an upgrade or new install of Linux making everything work right, and then an hour or two every week for a year after that trying to figure out the stupid little quirks. They see me doing this. "Configuring Linux again, eh?" they ask me every time they stop in my office. Yeah, they're all clamoring at my door trying to get me to give them my Linux CDs. Not. And we have a Linux computer support technician here. But when he comes to help me, I teach him how to solve the problem I called about. -- _______________________ Christopher R. Carlen Sr. Laser/Optical Tech. Sandia National Labs