It's been suggested that Personal is for newbies while Professional is for seasoned hands. I have a different take on it: Personal is for desktop systems (which might very well belong to seasoned hands) while Professional is for servers. Paul

** Reply to message from "Paul W. Abrahams" on Sun, 7 Jul 2002 19:17:59 -0400 **As to books: there's a case to be made for getting the books once, but not **for getting a new set every time you update. unless , perhaps , you are very new to LINUX generally.. in which case, the books do not stay the same for each release either, so buying the box set is still a good idea. Also there seems to be a general getting togetehr of the various distros, in order to define some "standards in the layout and location of files. ( Recall several comments about "I can't find blah, why has SuSE stuck it in a non standard place. ) It just might be worth while to newbies d those who are not yet Linux gods to get the papaer manuals. online help is wonderful, IF you have a photographic memory .. otherwise, it's much easier to follow a string of instructions w/ the book open on desk or knee .... I have a photographic memory , but I seem to have run out of film <g> j afterthought How can I miss you if you won't go away?

On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 22:49, Graham Murray wrote:

"Paul W. Abrahams" writes:

...

As to books: there's a case to be made for getting the books once, but not for getting a new set every time you update.

That is why there is an "upgrade" edition which contains the same CD/DVD media as the 'pro' but only an update book.

I got the upgrade, was surprised by the book actually. Expected nothing, so SuSE ain't bad all the time, even their marketing department! Matt

On Sunday 07 July 2002 06:34 pm, Phil Bridges wrote:

Putting it another way, are there structural differences between Personal and Professional, or is it just the case that Professional has more packages?

Paul

*Is* there a way to easily get the other packages?

I believe that the SuSE website (and its mirrors, which are usually less busy) have a complete collection of packages. The most comprehensive set is usually found in the fullnames subdirectory. (If you have trouble finding the path to that directory, I could reconstruct it from the ftp site.) Paul