On Thursday 27 May 2004 08:09, Silviu Marin-Caea wrote:
To the original poster: you shouldn't have bought SUSE Personal, without looking at the package contents.
I did look. From what I saw, nothing lead me to believe that I would ONLY be getting KDE. The SuSE website is not clear about that and leaves you to infer it at best. Why did I not scrutinize the website harder? What reason would I have to do that? 9.0 (home version) came packaged with more than KDE while giving a great description of KDE and little more. If 9.0 came that way, why would I have reason to suspect 9.1 would be any different?? If the website had been more clear, I would have ordered 9.1 Professional Upgrade. It's that simple. Now that I have 9.1 personal, I think SuSE had a better plan with packaging Gnome with its home version for the extra $10. What you guys who are playing the role of SuSE apologist fail to understand (and is still somewhat of an inherent flaw in the linux community) is that newbie's and basic computer users who switch from Windoze do not want and do not know how to go out and search for file dependencies that certain programs need to operate. Yes, I know that most of that stuff can be found out on the web in various places, but that doesn't make it easy to do. And when a newbie gets frustrated with it, many of you will quickly blame him for not being knowledgeable or understanding how the software works. Now, I have a slightly higher than newbie knowledge on how to get what I want done, but there's no way my wife could use KDE and do all of the websurfing and play the games she likes if I didn't find a way to make it work. She wouldn't even know where to begin looking. My whole point here, is that with the added option of Gnome, you get the ability to run more programs because more file dependencies (libraries, source files, etc.) already exist. It's easier to install and run programs that are available out on the web. Just having KDE means I've got to do some crazy search for the various file dependencies for a few programs that I want and it's a pain. Less is not necessarily more, in this case. If SuSE really wants to make a dent in the Windoze market, limiting the ability of novice computer users to find and install desired programs is not the way to go, regardless of how cheap they sell it. People want functionality AND easy compatibility. Also, don't take this as me implying that SuSE is somehow a bad distro. That is NOT what I'm saying. I'm just saying that one gets better functionality and compatibility with the added option of Gnome loaded with the system. I really like SuSE a lot. I think they've got a great product, except for 9.1 Personal. I will recommend to anyone I know who is looking at trying linux to get SuSE 9.1 Professional (Upgrade since it has the ability to do a fresh install). As for the earlier suggestion that people who prefer Gnome should look to a different distribution: with Novell's purchase of SuSE and Ximian and efforts to integrate, do you think KDE will remain the default desktop? Doesn't look like it to me...