On Wednesday 26 November 2003 11:49 am, Pacheco Jason NPRI wrote:
I am mostly of the variety that would benefit from SuSE 9.0 Pro, which is what I will probably stick with. However, I have done a little reading on SuSE Desktop, I was wondering if anybody had any experience with it and some good/bad points on it. I would like to find a good Linux Desktop OS for some Novice users. The only problem is that SuSE seems to only sell it in multiples of 5-user licenses. What's up with that?
Jason, I just put SuSE 8.2 and 9.0 on some machines being used by novices. It was the standared Pro version with KDE as default desktop. I made sure the icons on the desktop looked familiar and required a doubleclick to open. Then I removed everything on the desktop that might confuse them. After a month or two they are estatic. No hangs, no reboots, no problem. One trick I used was to rename Mozilla icon to Internet Browser, OOo to Word Processor so as to unconfuse them. Sure it looks a little different but still is familiar enough for them to accept the change without any grousing. The one thing I havent addressed is the auto mounting of the floppy and cd. The users choke when you start talking mount and umount. Guess I need to figure out how to make them see the floppy and cd just like the OTHER os. The last time I tried it was an exercise in futility. Guess it's time to try again. KDE is neat enough to let them do many of the things they did on the other os without thinking things have changed. And the last time I read the licensing there was nothing to prevent me from putting it on as many machines as I wanted so long as I wasnt charging for the software. Still, I encourage people to purchase a copy of suse cause I want them to stay in business. The users understand there are no books or support with the install but so far havent needed any. Richard