Rating: 
Summary: Comes the way I like it...
Review: After many attempts at installing Linux on an older non-Linux supported Laptop Computer, I find that SuSE 7.3 Pro is the very first distribution of Linux that works. I had attempted Mandrake 8.0 and 8.1, Red Hat 7.1, and there was always something that didn't work, such as sound compatibility (onboard win-modems excluded). Right out of the box, SuSE 7.3 gave me sound and an automatically configured LCD display. I didn't have to do any kernel compiling or driver manipulation as I did with all of the other distributions I tried. Looking to switch over to Linux? Go with SuSE 7.3 Professional, and wave goodbye to that win-box.
Rating:
Summary: SuSE 7.3 Pro Is Great For Laptops
Review: After many attempts at installing Linux on an older non-Linux supported Laptop Computer, I find that SuSE 7.3 Pro is the very first distribution of Linux that works. I had attempted Mandrake 8.0 and 8.1, Red Hat 7.1, and there was always something that didn't work, such as sound compatibility (onboard win-modems excluded). Right out of the box, SuSE 7.3 gave me sound and an automatically configured LCD display. I didn't have to do any kernel compiling or driver manipulation as I did with all of the other distributions I tried. Looking to switch over to Linux? Go with SuSE 7.3 Professional, and wave goodbye to that win-box.
Rating:
Summary: Best distribution so far.
Review: Fast & stable, tons of stuff, great documentation as expected from SuSE /have 6.4 and 7.0 already/, absolutely super price.Installation without a glitch, all fine and running in about 30 minutes /for default installation with StarOffice/ incl. network, printer, sound. I really like it, been on for last 24 hours /minus 5 hours sleep :)/ and enjoying very functional Linux as I never did before. No lockups, no reboot. Only problem for me was time synchronization /was an hour off/, but fixed ntp.conf & rc.config manually for Public NTP servers in CA and it's fine now /I think it doesn't default to networked system?, or maybe I skipped something?/. I'm not too advanced Linux user/prefer Win2k/, and appreciated the entirely automated setup. Some best features: YOU /Yast Online Update - patching without pain!/, over 2000 apps on 7CD's/1DVD, 5 manuals, KDE2, new file system ext3 & crypto file system /didn't try yet/, Personal Firewall /didn't try neither, have a HW router-FW/ and much more. Installed included Opera for web browsing /Konqueror had some difficulties with certain websites (not java/javascript related, something else not sure what/ and all fine now. Recommend to everyone, it really works! /I'm keeping my Win2k, but SuSE 7.3 offers quite a lot/.
Rating: 
Summary: Good disto.
Review: I am giving this product only 4 stars because I needed 5 installs and about a month with customer support until I got it right. The books and the existing info is not clear enough on how to set up a computer that is on a small network behind a firewall/router and that is why I needed 5 installations. The install program YaST2 is very helpful but it seems that some of the terms and their use is translated from German probably and that is why I had difficulties. What was a breeze under WNT/2K it was difficult for this configure. But untimaltelly everything turned to be OK. I needed about a month to get the colors right on a laptop, what Windows has detected without problem, it took some 5 email exchanges with their customer support. But ultimatelly the problem was solved close to my satisfaction. (The install only managed to detect 256colors as opposed to true color. Ultimatelly with customer support I managed to get 16mil colors) Another thing, but this might not be their fault was that KDE died of self inflicted wounds. While trying to play with configuration it died and I had to reinstall the whole enchilada. A note for Linux novices: You do not need to buy the professional edition; all the packages are available on the web for dowloading. First get you Linux up and running and after that you would be able to download almost everything that is in the Professional package. And another thing: Please be advised that most of the documentation on the web and books refers to Red Hat Linux. Suse is configured a little bit different and you may have difficulties getting things done.
Rating:
Summary: The best Linux distribution I have used !!
Review: I have been using Suse since the 6.x versions. Earlier I have Suse 7.2 on my desktop. I moved to Suse 7.3 about a week back. I did a fresh install and not an upgarde as I had heard that upgrade option had cuases some problems. The installation was real smooth. If you are not comfortable with manually creating partitions, Suse 7.3 can do it for you. However I choose to create my own partitions. On the root partition I used reiser file system. After installation, Suse 7.3 was able to detect all my hardware, except my modem. Post install configuration was the easiest ever. Sometime back I had nightmares with red hat while configuring video and sound. But with suse, life can be real easy. Moreover I used the DVD for installation, no more idling around the PC to change CDs. I installed the professional version of Suse 7.3. With all the applications, Mozilla, netscape, Star office, Xmms, Kdevelop, Gvim ..., I had all the application I ever use. I no longer need to boot to Windows to browse the web. I also got Opera and Yahoo messeger dowloaded later. This distribution has almost everything you'd require in a desktop OS. Even changing your network settings does not require a reboot, unlike some widely used OSes. If you are looking for a great look and feel, fast, stable , easy and feature rich OS for your desktop Suse 7.3 is the one. Even if you want to keep Windows , lilo can take care of it. My System config: Windows 98 + suse 7.3 dual boot, Amd Athlon 1.1GHz, 320M Ram, 20G HDD, Nvidia TNT 64 video, Creative Sound Blaster Live, with 5.1 speakers, creative Wingman , Logitech Navigator keyboard and logitech optical mouse, DVD and CD-RW drives.
Rating:
Summary: The best distro overall
Review: I have installed Linux servers for many customers, but with SuSE 7.3 ANYONE with some unix knowledge can easily install and maintain his own server or workstation. My son recently bought and installed RedHat, and had many problems setting up Apache as he wished, getting usb devices to work, and he still can't get his TV tuner card to work. All of these problems are easily solvable, in fact do not even appear with SuSE. Intel's usb chipset does require a tweak, but it is documented at SuSE's website, and is easy to apply. Overall, this is the easiest Linux distribution to set up and use that I have ever seen. I judge it easier to setup than Windows 2000. Now, if only more applications were available, and the TrueType fonts were handled a little better .....
Rating:
Summary: SuSE has had the best distribution for a long, long time.
Review: I have used Linux personally, and more recently, professionally since it was started. SuSE Linux has always been very consistent in how things are done within the system, like keeping libraries and system paths the same. Other, hat wearing distributions, seem to change, and force change, on a whim. SuSE makes it easy to integrate Linux into your environment, and stay up to date... both with super easy tools, but also with consistency, attention to detail and a lizard... apparently.
Rating: 
Summary: 7.3 half baked - 7.2 is better
Review: I loved 7.2 of Suse, I have it installed on 3 PCs (P3 Laptop, old P1, and P4). It installed on all 3 without any problems. So when 7.3 came out I ran to the store and got it the week after it was released in the US. I cannot get 7.3 to install on the on the old P1 with out it crashing after the install. On the laptop the disk has to be fsck (scandisk for you windows users) for every re/boot, 7.3 thinks the computer crashed and the drive was not dismounted correctly. This never happens with 7.2 on the laptop. And does not occur in the P4 with 7.2 or 7.3. On the 2 that I can get 7.3 to boot the xterm forgets to clear the screen when you exit an application. This does not happen all the time but when it does you have to log out and restart X to solve the problem. Support just stinks, they can not answer any questions and they take 2-3 weeks to get back to you and tell you that they do not know the answer. They seam to not be very interested in improving the product. If you do a full install if 7.3 Star Office locks up when a user starts Star Office for the fist time and selects install. This happens for all new users created after the 7.3 install. I called suse support and they said Sorry your 90 days of free help has expired. I call one other time and support could not help me. 2 button mouses paste does not work in 7.3 the way it did in 7.2 My solution was to buy a new mouse for the laptop. The way I solved the star office problem was to install 7.2. Create all the needed users. Run the office installer for each user and then upgrade to 7.3 8-( I found several other little things that work in 7.2 and just do not work in 7.3. The 7.3 version of Suse has some very nice eye candy, but under the candy is a half baked product. If you look at most commercial software like Oracle and IBM are certified on Suse. If you look at the support matrix they say 7.2 NOT 7.3. I wonder why? My recommendation is get 7.2 or try your luck with 8 and skip 7.3 at all cost.
Rating:
Summary: Server - yes, office and multimedia - NO!!
Review: I must admit, I did get further away with this distro than with others, and I see all the good server side goodies that are good indeed, but the claims that this thing can [replace] Windows, that's more of a wishful thinking than the matter of fact. As a desktop system for a general public, Linux does not get even close to Windows and especially Mac, and this distro does not change it much. Yast2 is certainly quite innovative, but it's buggy, hangs all the time and downloads packages it has downloaded already, and makes quite dumb and ridiculous decisions about which package to install and how. Let's review some facts. Few years ago as the Linux hype wave started rising, some were looking for total demise and annihilation of the evil empire Micro$oft, calling Linux as much as "Windows killer." Even some big name companies bought that, Dell started shipping laptops with Linux pre-installed, Corel rolled out an office suite for Linux (Wordperfect suite 2000 for Linux), I remember IBM announcing a wrist watch that ran Linux etc etc. When this Suse 7.3 distro first came out it initially topped Windows in sales and was #1 sale item in the Software section here at Amazon and elsewhere. Things changed since: Dell dropped their Linux line about a year ago; Corel discontinued their Linux line of products about the same time, Windows are back further and further above Linux in software sales etc, etc... With all those hideous, draconic Microsoft licensing policies and mile high prices, people are buying that and buying it more, AFTER trying out Linux, and Microsoft is getting more shameless about their licensing and prices. Oh, yeah, and have you seen anyone wearing one of them Linux wrist watches? Any Linux desktops anywhere in the office space for accuntants, secretaries, CEOs?... Support? Let's do some math about it. How much you pay for that box with this distro? How much an hour of a good engineer's time is worth? Well, an average Unix problem may take a few hours to understand and fix... And indeed, as I am trying to work with Suse about the problems of my installation - it takes a few days to get a response, and the response is almost random - if it accidentally solves your problem you are lucky if not, you are just out of luck. Some responses are quite ridiculous. For instance, my sound card does not work and the Suse guy says, why did you install that alsa sound syste, why don't you use kernel sound drivers... Well, it's not me who installed these, it was the Suse's child named Yast2 - their self-lauded installation system. The guy sends me some cookie cutter instructions but they don't work etc... With Linux, you pay less of money but you are signing up for wasting MUCH more of your time and frustration than with Windows and especially Mac. The Linux graphics environment runs MUCH slower on my Pentium II 233 box than WIndows 98SE runs on the same machine. I am able to do TENS times more in Windows 98SE than in Linux on the same machine TENS time faster, and something that Windows does right out of the box (such as multimedia and multilingual word processing) Linux does only after MONTHS of work. Probably this review may hurt the feelings of some Linux ye faithful, but I write it to save some frustration of the user who does not want to sacrifice all his/her personal time to become a Linux guru but just wants to get things done. Buy a Mac if you are a musician or an artist or buy a Windows box if you want it for your office...
Rating: 
Summary: Overkill
Review: I run SuSE at home, and have found it to be quite useful in the past. I've especially found their online KDE support section helpful, as KDE is making leaps and bounds ahead of where it was.
That being said, I can't help noting how top-heavy this distibution is. My major reason for looking into Linux in the first place was the fact that it was free. Free of cost (except distribution costs,) free entirely of legal strings. SuSE has changed both of those with its policies. If you want an update to your Redhat or Mandrake distro, you generally download it. Your friends want copies? Give them copies. Nobody complains, because it's free! If you don't want to go through the manifold hassles of compiling source code every time you want to install a new piece of software, you can generally find pre-built Redhat or Mandrake etc. packages in various locations. None of this is the case with SuSE. You want updates, you pay. You want software packages, buy the update and hope what you want is there, or build your own dang packages. Let's not forget, they're bragging about 2,300 software packages. You can practically fill your hard drive with a SuSE installation, and not know what half of it does! On top of all that, they're steadily raising the prices on "their" software. How much of that is overhead is something I can't say. What I can say is this: SuSE is not helping to bring Linux to the user level. I'll give them 3 stars for the sheer number of apps.
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