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Brian Jones wrote:
Just some personal opinions.
I have just moved to SuSE 5.2 from RH 5.0. I like both distributions for different reasons: I guess it depends on your hardware options but I believe that it would be easier for a newcomer to install RH than SuSE because the installation process is more linear. SuSE puts you more in control but requires that you know just a little about what is happening. The tradeoff, of course, is that any post install tweaks are very much easier in SuSE. We should be thankful that we can buy distributions from competitors and move our software between them with such ease.
My philosophy on buying Linux stuff is to get it from the people with the right attitude. I switched to SuSE because of their support for KDE. I believe this has the potential to tempt people across the divide. KDE always looks crisp, clean and professional, and then once you use it you find that it is very well integrated. RH are also to be commended on their adoption of glibc but seem to have got stung for burning CDs a bit hastily. They are commercial and will no doubt learn from this.
When I apply this to office suites I find myself using StarOffice. It has glitches but these are being ironed out rapidly and the company, again, has the right attitude - it acknowledges the help it gets from the Linux community & rewards us (yes, I realise there is cunning marketing in there as well).
Finally, there has been a lot of talk about the added value of purchasing a distribution. I view the extra cost as a subsidy to SuSE/RH/etc. that allows them to polish the product for more general consumption. If I get some tech. support then great, if I get a nice book then great again. Despite it being "free" I will probably spend more money on Linux than I would on Windows but then Linux is nice enough to make a hobby out of.
That's "where I'm at," also Brian. I just bought a copy of StarOffice from StarOffice....not cheap, although less than anything from MickySoft. I haven't installed SO yet because it won't install off the CD without the CD drive being executable. I tried putting "exec" in the fstab file, but it still doesn't work. Startup comes up but the startup.bin dies. 'Guess I'll have to call SO on Monday and raise "hob." Fred -- Fred A. Miller, Systems Administrator Cornell Univ. Press Services fmiller@lightlink.com fm@cupserv.org - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e