Hi all, First of all, I preface this email with the fact that I am a chip designer, not an IT guy. This mail is about ease of use. Please keep that in mind WRT any responses you might want to provide. If you're interested, please read on. If not, just hit DEL right now. Flames to /dev/null) ;-) 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 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. 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. 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? I appreciate the time you've spent if you've read this far. Thanks. I look forward to any information or views you choose to provide. With best regards, Mark