You don't have to install everything from SuSE.
SuSE's major strength that I see, and the reason I installed SuSE over my RedHat
Linux setup is that they are involved not only in bundling software, but also in
preparing the drivers. SuSE wrote the drivers that support my video card under
X. I would have waited another month to get it from RedHat.
It is also nice to only need one distribution package to get all the Linux
software you need. You are right that you only need a certain small percentage of
what is there, but remember, everyone has different needs. SuSE, with its massive
distribution size, caters to pretty well everyone that could ever have an interest
in the operating system. With RedHat, you buy the regular distribution, and then
the other stuff. You may end up purchasing 3 different sets of CDs and still end
up downloading software to get what functionality you need. SuSE, having supplied
just about everything that works under linux (a slight exaggeration, but still, 6
CDs of software is a hell of a lot!) means you only have to buy once.
SuSE provide a lot of drivers that don't appear anywhere else -- such as for my
video card.
RedHat's strength is that their distributions (which are rather small) come in a
single package for several hardware platforms.... intel, Alpha, Sparc and the Vic
20. Kidding about the Vic, though, but I suspect you knew that. ;)
Laters,
Karsten Johansson
Dan Tudor wrote:
>
> Being with Linux for quite a short time now, I heard others talking about
> setting up pieces of hardware under Red Hat a lot esier than under SuSE. On the
> other hand, people talk about SuSE being "the complete OS". I am using SuSE 6.0
> and indeed I have hundreds of applications on my HDD put there by the standard
> installation - but I realize I don't need about maybe 60% of them.
> I was wondering if anyone could tell me why (if) is SuSE a better choice than
> Red Hat? In fact what are the differences between those two leading (I guess)
> Linux OS's? Of course SuSE has YaST, but also Red Hat has a System
> Configuration tool which is pretty cool (so far as I've seen). Can you convince
> me that I made a wise choice betting on SuSE? ... (by the way, what SuSE
> initials stand for?)
>
> Dan.
>
> PS. By the way, I've seen programs like Matlab which is said they're made for
> Linux, in parantheses added RedHat, Debian, Slackware for instance. Does this
> mean there is a posibility a program made for Linux not to run on SuSE?
> --
> To get out of this list, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
> this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e
> Check out the SuSE-FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/ and the
> archive at http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html
>
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