Rating: 
Summary: Best distro for use with a Notebook PC
Review: When I first got my Sony Vaio I ripped MS Windows off of it and got to work installing RedHat 8. But after two days of fighting I was only marginally successful at getting it to work. Even then, features like ACPI support still had to be compiled into the Linux kernel that came with RedHat 8. After asking on some mailing lists, I was told that SuSE would be the way to go. Those who recommended it were right. I installed SuSE 8.1 and in a couple of hours I was up and ready to go. As soon as I was able to order from Amazon.com, I got SuSE 8.2 and it's stability and robustness on the Vaio is even *better* than 8.1 was. ACPI power management is more robust, KDE is better and the whole OS seems to run even faster than before. Sure, you can go and get a 'free' distro from a website, but SuSE Professional is *worth every penny you'll spend* in the headaches it'll save you from in getting everything installed and configured. SuSE really works hard to make a distribution that you'll be satisfied with.
Rating: 
Summary: Best graphics; worst performance of any distro...
Review: Where do I start? I have 11 computers in my home and a variety of hardware. Suse's past releases--8.0, 8.1, 8.2, failed to work properly on any of my machines. There was always something buggy.The latest debacle was installing Suse Profesional 8.2 on a HP Pavilion with the sis650 chipset. "Oh, glory!" I thought. A distro that finally supports this chipset. But the network card (which is listed as supported) was detected but didn't work with the driver. I tried others to no avail. So, I had a system that looked good, void of networking capability with faulty sound, to boot. So, what to do? I email Suse and guess what? Networking is not supported with the basic support plan. Oh, great! So, I call Suse in California and ended up speaking to someone in merry ol' England who wasn't much help either. Suse's version of Linux never ran right on my laptop, either. Mandrake, Red Hat and Libranet Linux all ran on my machines in a very stable manner and supported most of the onboard cards. You would think that Suse would do the same but never have I had any success. The only thing Suse has going for it, in this writer's opinion, is the slickest graphics of any Linux desktop offering. But I'll take stability and a working system over a pretty paperweight any day. One Caveat: your mileage may vary depending on your hardware. And I guess all of the reviews are based upon the individual experience of the users. But, when other distros work and Suse does not, then it has to be something with Suse--not the hardware.
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