Hi,
However, my first reaction to SuSe 6.4 is probably not as enthusiastic as most of you would like.
Linux is not for everyone - so best thing to do is try it and see if it can work for you. At least you can do that quite cheaply (well, money wise anyway - it all takes time of course).
Boot to a GUI You need to configure and run xdm on startup.
Enable connectivity to a Novell server using only IPX - Not TCP/IP This may be a kernel option - I don't know if the standard SuSE kernel support IPX 'out of the box' ...
Just out of interest, seeing as Novell supports IPX and IP and Windows supports IPX, IP and Netbeui and Linux supports IPX and IP .... if you are using the internet (IP) would it not make more sense to switch all platforms over to a single network protocol - ie IP ... ? You would still need IP networking enabled on the Linux box, even if you get it to do file access via IPX to your Novell system.
Run JUST an Office suite, a web browser and possibly some extra educational software ie not install all the thousands of little apps and games
In this case, I would suggest you should install the SuSE base system, deselect everything, and then only install the bits you do want ... You should be told as part of the installation if you are asking for something that depends on something else as well. Obviously you will have to perform a test installation somewhere to work out which of the applications you would actually like to use in the first place ...
Authenticate logins from a server (at the moment non-linux) - I don't want to set-up 700+ users on every workstation
Don't know about this one. What are you authenticating against - Windows, Novell ? Kevin.