passwd question

Hy, having installed my first SUSE system [BTW 6.3] (and against my will) finding it much better than i expected of a "user-friendly" instalation. When browsing the new system i found something that i thought i would never found in a modern linux setup, the passwords were using only the first 8 caracters of a password, that is using DES, why doesn't it uses MD5 crypt. I may be wrong, and i hope this isn't the default. It it is, then i consider it a bug. My question then is: how to install a better crypt or how to setup a better crypt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- See you in the battleground Jose Araujo aka "Forever Young"