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SuSE Linux 8.0 Personal

SuSE Linux 8.0 Personal

List Price: $39.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I love it!
Review: I'm an experienced Windows and Mac user with just a little Linux experience thrown in. I've been thinking about purchasing Linux for several months, and after reading the review of SuSE 8.0 I decided to give it a try. As most other reviews have mentioned, the installation process is very easy and straightforward. I installed Linux on an extra drive, but even if you don't have that, it's easy to install. I had Linux with KDE 3.0 up and running in about 20 minutes.

The selection of included applications is the really amazing part about this distribution. My wife is ready to divorce me because I'm spending so much time on the computer, and I've barely scratched the surface of all the aps. I was a little concerned about installing new aps, but even that has been greatly simplified. I can HIGHLY recommend SuSE 8.0 to anyone, even Windows users :)

So why didn't I give it 5 stars? If you have a plug and play, PCI modem, it will probably not work. That's not a problem with only SuSE Linux, it's a problem for all Linux distributions. Most PnP PCI modems are called "WinModems" because they lack necessary hardware to reduce the cost. Windows takes care of the missing parts, but for Linux it's an issue. My modem would not work (dialup) so I had to borrow a friend's external modem. It's not a problem for broadband connections (I know I know, get into the 21st century).

If it wasn't for the modem issue, I would EASILLY have given SuSE 8.0 5 stars. I have both Windows and Linux loaded on my desktop, and I've been using Linux almost exclusively since loading it. Give it a try!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Incredible - A truly fine operating system...
Review: I've been interested in Linux for sometime but didn't feel like I had the time to install and learn an entire operating system - then my computer decided to go the blue screen of death three times a day. Finally, frustrated beyond belief, I decided to try SuSE Linux. I'd researched the various distributions and decided that SuSE was the one for me.

I like the fact that while they had games on their system they weren't completely family/game oriented like some of the 'game player' linux distributions. At the same time they weren't all business like RedHat (nothing against RedHat, they just seem to be aiming for business users only). In the various reviews SuSE was highly thought of so I chose their distribution.

Once I got the programs - I held off for a week - still a little nervous about the new operating system. I shouldn't have hesitated at all. SuSE takes you through the entire installation process without a problem. The entire process only took a little over an hour. I can now choose with operating system to boot to (Windows ME or Linux) but I have to say I'm spending more and more time in Linux. The system is a little more complicated than Windows but at the same time you have so much more freedom to do whatever you want on your system (screens, colors, setups, etc). And it hasn't crashed once (and I've made some really, really stupid mistakes worthy of crashing). You can also read all your Windows files from Linux to make exhanging files with other people easier.

The package comes with everything you need for your system - games, office programs, utilities and it also updates itself in the click of a mouse. There wasn't even a problem connecting my DSL to the system.

The only downside is I'm not to crazy about the default web browser - Konquerer but I decided to try Opera (a free download) and it's unbelievably fast. The package comes with 60 days installation support but other than checking a couple of how-to articles I never needed it. If you want to try a rock solid OS that won't let you down - just try SuSE Linux.

One final note - if you're running Windows XP you need to get Partition Magic (or something similar) and convert your file systm from NTFS to Fat32 or the installation won't work. The first machine I worked on was Windows ME but a friend and I set it up on another machine using Windows XP and with the help of Partition Magic we didn't have a problem.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: SuSE 8.0 Personal Linux misses the mark...
Review: I've installed various linux distributions on a number of x686 machines. My favorite, so far, is RedHat 7.3. SuSE boasts the easiest installation of available distributions, and this is certainly true. My installation in a dual-boot machine took only the vaunted 3 clicks, and so my complaint is not with the installation. [As a side comment, my experience with installations has ranged from excellent to disastrous. I won't list the latter.]

SuSE chooses to make "configuration" a separate issue from installation, and this is where the I find the SuSE distribution to be annoying, for it is too difficult to find either the proper desktop icons or the relevant instructions in the documentation for the configuration of such things as the network card and its parameters. For Red Hat's recent distributions, important information such as this is part of the installation, and is requested as a series of straight-forward, fill-in-the-blanks boxes.

A more minor complaint about this distribution is the supposed inclusion of a boot floppy, referred to in the documentation. There was no boot floppy in my box. Unless your computer can boot from the CD, there seems to be no way to start the installation process for SuSE's distribution.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easiest OS Installation you'll find
Review: Installing any new OS in the past has been scary, and most average users probably think installing linux is even scarier. Not any more. SuSE 8.0 is amazing. It automatically detected all my hardware and I was even on the internet on the very first boot-up. It partitioned my hard-drive without a hitch and I can dual-boot into Windoze if I ever really need to. So far, I've been running on SuSE for 9 days straight without a reboot, crash, blue-screen-of-death, or any serious problems. It's amazing, considering my old Winduhs machine crashed about nine times per day! This is the linux product that even your mom can figure out how to use and love. It's finally here!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Time to leave Windows for good!
Review: Let me start off by saying I have been looking into Linux distributions for almost a year now. Since MS came out with XP and their registration process that makes you ask permission to download the operating system more than once. Yes even if you have gone out and paid for it!
I was looking for a Linux distribution that would enable someone new to partition the hard drive and get it loaded with minimal troubles. SuSE 8.0 did this for me. I was able to put the disks in and make a few choices and the new OS was up and running. The YaST2 was great because I did not know how to get my printer, scanner, and sound cards to be recognized by SuSE. YaST2 did it for me and everything was immediately recognized. There was one exception though with the modem. The modem that Dell gave me with my computer was a Windows modem so it does not work on any other OS. This was a little bit of a pain, but I went out and purchased a new modem (under $60) from Actiontec that as soon as I installed it YaST2 recognized it. Now everything is running great.
There are so many programs with this distribution that I have not even downloaded them all. There are two offices each with word, excel, and power point. Everything (and much more) you would want on a workstation is here.
One last thing the few questions I had were answered quickly by the support desk. You get a free month of installation support with SuSE 8.0 and from what I've been hearing from other new Linux users SuSE's is the best.
I would recommend SuSE 8.0 to everyone that wants a great operating system!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Suse 8.0 fails to install
Review: Suse 8.0 fails to install on my Dell laptop. It hangs up in a part of the installation where the company knows there is a problem since it mentions this on its support web page. The remedies they suggest on their web page do not work. I have not received any response from their email support on how to install their operating system. It has been nearly a week with no reply from them. I have loaded several types of operating systems on this computer and this is the only one which fails to load. I do not recommend this sytem to anyone. Neither the system or the support service measures up to what Suse Linux claims.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: SuSE 8.0 Is the BEST
Review: SuSE Linux is the best distro of LInux I have ever tried. I have tried RedHat and Mandrake but they both don't compare to SuSE. SuSE even detected all of my hardware which is an up because RedHat and Mandrake could not.
Buy this if you are a newbie and want to get your head and hands into something new.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Get the professional version
Review: The Suse distribution is good, but the personal edition is missing many things that I needed for a Laptop, like wireless tools, and a good number of developer libraries and utilities. These all seem included in the professional version.

Check the Suse products page first for a full listing of what comes with each version before getting the personal version. I was disappointed with the personal version, next time I would get the professional one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Version of Linux - with some minor issues
Review: This is the first version of Linux I've been able to install and have it work correctly.

Since I am experienced with computers, it's difficult for me to say how easy this will be for a novice to use. The KDE desktop is very similar to Windows 95/98 - with some nice additions. It comes with most of the software you'll ever need for a personal PC - internet software (Kinternet, Kmail, Konqueror, Netscape), productivity (StarOffice 5.2, GNUcash, Korganizer, Adobe Acrobat Reader), and games. There's much more than I listed above. AOL and Yahoo offer Linux versions of their messenger software on their web sites. The version of Netscape included allows you to check AOL email accounts and includes AOL's Instant Messenger in its interface. There is no access to the main AOL service. I am using a different ISP so I don't know if AOL might have a PPP dial-up. I doubt it.

It automaticly installed KDE and WindowMaker as desktop options. Gnome is included.

SuSE Linux automatically added desktop icons for my Windows drives which was very nice. An older version of Caldera's OpenLinux did not do that for me.

Installation was almost as easy as installing Windows 98. If partitions have to be resized, the installation software will allow you to take care of that. (I had 3GB of space that I could never get Partition Magic to add to my Windows FAT32 partition so Linux grabbed that space.) It is unable to resize NTFS partitions at this time. Be sure to read the warning at the beginning of the installation instructions.

My TV tuner (very old ATI All-In-Wonder) and my sound card (Turtle Beach Montego II) were the only hardware I could not configure to work properly. I knew my TV tuner might not work, but I was surprised by the sound card. Other products from these companies will work. Just be sure to check the compatibility lists on SuSE's web site. There are web sites with some solutions for many hardware issues including both of mine. They are not always for novices though. This is one advantage of open source. There are individuals working on drivers that the manufacturers don't write themselves.

I did have one major problem with the boot manager, but I got the solution from the SuSE web site within a few minutes. (Microsoft rarely has the answers I need, or it takes me an hour to find them.) If you plan to use both Linux and Windows on one system, I'd recommend going to the SuSE web site's support area and do a search using "boot manager" - without quotes. At the time I'm writing this, only one article came up. What happened was the boot manager selected the wrong partition to boot Windows from. This might have to be corrected on your installation. Even though the article mentioned Linux and Windows being on separate drives, they are on the same physical drive in my system. The article still had the correct fix for me. Overall, I've found my problems easy to correct with this version of Linux.

Linux is a wonderful OS, and this is the best version I've found so far. You need to decide what your needs are and make sure this version of Linux will support what you need. Even with my problems, I still love this package.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best os I ever used
Review: This linux 8.0 is great and way faster than Windows. I got it last week and i have not even had a problem yet. So i will recommed to people don't know much about windows and linux is easy to use


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