water cooler :: Suse seems to be everywhere!



Local mag APC spit out DVD with Suse 9.2 for about
AU $ 9.00, "FTP" version.Lots of take-up by Win users.
Tried it for the first time, infuriated by very crippled,
as supplied, Xine engine.Free advice- don't even install
media players initially, get Thee to packman.links2linux.org
and get your shopping done there.
XawTV was hard to install, as was nVidia through Yast
online upgrade, but the later is down to my complete lack
of familiarity with Suse.
X-org was unfamiliar to me also.
Apart from that, it seems a polished, newish userish friendlyish
distro.
Anyone else bombarded with Suse lately?
SuSe = RPM based = EVIL
I've been using Suse as my main distro since version 7 (other than a brief period with Slackware, to which I'm currently returning).

In my experience it is a bulky but very useful distribution, particularly for those uncomfortable with manual configuration.  Yast is somewhat buggy and slow, but it makes setup easy as pie.  For example, I've been struggling with my ltmodem in Slackware for hours...Yast detected and configured it in seconds.

RPM-based != RPM-dependent
I installed a base graphical system + dev tools, and install everything else from source.  Once or twice I found I had problems mixing compiled apps with the included RPMs, but generally things work fine.  

I agree about Xine in Suse.  The included release is crap.  Go to mplayerhq.hu and download the MPlayer source instead (plus libdvdread, libdvdcss, etc).
SUSE is also a good distro if you need to install non-GPL drivers in order to use some special hardware inside your computer system.

Basically, when it comes to "Enterprise grade" closed-source drivers, your options become (a) SUSE or (b) Red Hat Enterprice Linux

All things being equal, SUSE is the lesser of two evils.

For example, if your server has a special Adaptec HostRAID SCSI controller SUSE/Red Hat are your only chocies for download from the closed-source Adaptec download site.

If you are not easily intimidated and don't mind spending an extra half-day or so just getting your installer to the point where it can see YOUR HARD DRIVES, then you can tweak Debian or Slackware or LFS to work with these drivers but most people will just either get SUSE/Red Hat or buy different hardware.
Truly, I have now seen dependency hell.
Saidin was right.
It's not a "happy place".
And 2.6 kernel has a lot of new tricks, too.
Or new to me, at least.
Suse is pretty nice, but I see what people say
about rpm based distro's now.
I had never known anything else until DSL,
'cos full Debian install was too hard/installer too
ignorant.

Ah well, you live and and you learn....
or, you know, just...live....
 :)
*stolen from Red Green Show
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