Harvey Kelly said: >You could try Debian, but I fear it'll be too much for you (sorry, that >ounded patronising), I would recommend SuSE over Mandrake, only 'cause >my father tried switching to Linux and he found Mandrake to be more >trouble than it's worth, he's now running SuSE 8.0. And this is the man >who couldn't find the menu in KDE - I kid you not - one month ago. > >Stick with it, > >Harvey
General rant by myself: Personally I wouldn't recommend Suse at all. Why? Well, this is just my opinion and i'm gonna flaunt it here. I forked out au $160 for Suse 8 pro a few days after it hit the shelves of the Australian distributor. What a pile of shit is all i'm going to unequivocally say. Installing it onto my Compaq Armada 1750 laptop was a joke. Install wouldn't even work - it would just sit forever on one part of the install! I read the manuals pretty thoroughly, no hints at all on how to get the sucker going. Sorry - the normal end user would have been fucked. Whilst i'm newish to linux, I have some brains, and i'm reasonably good with that other "evil" operating system. A lot of people coming over from winblows to linux are having problems using/configuring it. They would have been lost with the issues I had with Suse. So much for ease of use ;-) For those interested, it appears that the default install kernel on Suse 8 pro doesn't support APM out of the box. At least it didn't on a standard install for myself. The manual did not touch on this at all. Their much "flaunted" Suse database was useless. After a week of floundering with this on a part time basis (I have a life and refuse to spend my entire spare time tinkering with something that is advertised to work out of the box without hassles) I said fuck it and emailed Suse. Well...their replies were curt and what i'd recommend as plain uncaring. The only reply I got was: "Try running the installation with the parameter apm=on". Great - no mention how to actually do that. Installation didn't mention how to do it either. So I fiddled and got it working in the end run. I digress that the reply from Suse was totally insufficient. Now onto my 2nd part of my bitch about Suse - my onboard soundcard would not work. I checked the Suse online database, and to my joy found an article with settings for my Compaq laptop. I immediately tried those settings for the soundcard setup - no go. It just would not work. I checked that I had the correct settings for the correct laptop, yep I sure did. Checked that I was entering them correctly - yep I sure was. Double checked, then got a 3rd party to check it out. I was following instructions totally. Bemused I contacted Suse support. Waited nearly a week for a reply. Then I get a reply and it's some bullshit about "sorry sir we don't support soundcards, if you want that fork out more money". And i'm like, you're gotta be fucking kidding. I just paid au $160 for this pile of shit and you want more money out of me? I don't think so Tim. Just to give you an idea of why I was so pissed off with Suse - if Microsoft tried that bullshit they'd have the Australian Department of Fair Trading so heavily on their back they'd be shitting thru their mouth. Why should it be any different for Suse. I momentarily considered launching a complaint, and then said fuck it, not worth the time and trouble. I just will NOT recommend any Suse product again. Period. I regret wasting my money on what I consider as such a poor product and even poorer support. For those interested, i've had Redhat 7, 7.1 and 7.2 on this very laptop without a SINGLE issue. Install done in 45 minutes. Beautiful. Oh and despite Redhat having some failings, I give it to them, their customer service support is first rate i've found form personal usage - none of the bullshit customer service that Suse offers. Oh and i've heard other disgruntled Suse ex users administer the same complaints. George - if you want a "nice" unix system go buy a Mac running Mac OS X (i'd recommend 10.2.2). Nice shiny PowerMac G4 ;-) Sure it's not running linux under the hood, but it's pretty damn close as far as i'm concerned. And the gui is oh so nice and easy to use and configure. Yes I actually work for Apple Australia ;-) As to mandrake, i've never tried it. I've heard some good things about it, some bad, but generally i've heard its installation is faultless, and it has very very good hardware support. Suse 8 pro apparently has very good hardware support as well. Note the sarcasm on the apparently ;-) George, maybe try Redhat 8, use that for 6 months, get a basic grounding in Linux then come join us at Debian again. The user lists that Debian has are so far in advance of technical offerings that Suse, Redhat can (and ever will) offer it isn't funny. Debian (as already said by Nate) isn't really a distribution for a Linux newbie but i'd recommend it as simply the best Linux distribution bar none (although Slackware is a close 2nd imho). Wow, that's it for me...4 rants so far this month (and I promised only one lol)... Dave -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
