i don't really use distro's anymore, but here's what i would do in your situation:

try redhat 7.3 for now since u can download it (if u really like it then buy it allthough that's entirely up to you)

when suse 8.1 comes out, then buy it. I've heard a lot of great things about Suse 8.0 but since u can't download it for free and have to pay for it, i'd wait till a more mature version is released and then pay for that one.

I am having problems with my Mandrake 8.2 Download Edition (CDs 1+2 from a mag). Nothing added seems to work - eroaster/GTK-GNutella, and so on. I'm always missing libs and other files. Would this be solved by buying a boxed set (SuSE 8.0) or will I always get these problems? I don't remember having such problems with SuSE 7.3 (which has problems with my Realtek LAN card.)

buy it . .

NO MORE COMMENTS ! !

Done it! Sapilas - your words acted like mind control - I focused and thought...what the heck am I worrying about? If SuSE 8.0 is rubbish, I'll never buy German again (though I am looking for a VW Golf!!). £59 spent and I haven't got time to play tonight. I'll report on my findings.
Thanks for the points of view people - I really do appreciate it.

ooups . . . £ u said . . u r in UK ???

well I got the prof edition for £48 from www.dabs.com 2 days free delivery..

WWW.DABS.COM is da cheapest in da UK.

SuSE 8.0 was a dream to install and has recognised all of my hardware so far. The only thing that I'm having problems with is IP Masq - I *cannot* get my box to allow others to access the net via my cable connection. It wa easy with Mandrake 8.2 and I'm sure that it's easy with SuSE 8.0 but it's passing me by. And where is etc/rc.config? It doesn't seem to be there in SuSE 8.0 - I want to check whether IP_Forward=yes.
h...e...l...p

Hi;

I just recently installed SuSE 8 and RH 7.2 on four different machines, ranging from a crappy old 166Mhz pentium (I) to a brand new out of the box 1.2 GHz integrated motherboard cheapo. Redhat loaded more easily onto the older boxes, and both loaded easily onto the newer ones, although I succeeded without much difficulty getting both to load on all of them. The main reason I ended up sticking with the SuSE was that everything I could think of came with it, at least it does with the professional version.

The only difficulties I had were:

* SuSE had a lot of trouble getting X up on the crappy old box, where as the RH didn't.

* SuSE had trouble recognizing a common SMC ethernet card in one of the middle boxes, and the onboard ethernet card in the new one. RH recognized them all.

* Neither recognize the SiS 730S video chipset in the new box, but set it up as a 630S which works up to 1280 x 1024 (whereas Win2k runs this box and monitor up to at least 1600 x 1200).

* Both recognized the off-brand scsi card in on of boxes and, while KDE's cdburner software wouldn't work, cdrecord from the command line did.

Hope the info is useful.

Jeff Cunningham

So my realtek NIC eth1 might not be working under SuSE even though it's lighting up?

You're right, it's not there. Due to a new specification in the latest version of the LSB (Linux Standards Base), which SuSE always tries to adhere to, the distribution configuration has been moved to multiple files located under /etc/sysconfig. (Or something like that, I'm still using 7.3 and enjoying /etc/rc.config. :-) ) I hope this helps.

(esteeven)
The light just means the line is alive, not that your o.s. knows how to talk to it. With mine, I think its just a drivers thing. In any event, ethernet cards are cheap: as an experiment, try a different one.

Jeff

jkcunningham - are you experiencing a similar problem with SuSE 8?

esteeven - I did on one machine, yes. Within the last month I went out and bought the cheapest high-powered box I could find to do some signal-processing under linux. At the time, Redhat 7.3 wasn't out yet, so I tried both Redhat 7.2 and SuSE 8.0. A system administrator at Dotcast recommended the SuSE distro to me because of the completeness of its collection of apps and utilities. He has a laptop that he experiments with that will boot Win2k or 3 different linux distros: SuSE 8, Redhat 7.2, and I think BSD. He likes the SuSE the best.

But anyway, this new box is basically nothing but a motherboard w/ integrated video chipset, ethernet chipset, sound chipset, etc. with a 20G hard drive, floppy, and cdrom plugged into it (a deal at $300). The problem is that both the video chipset and the ethernet chipset are apparently too new for linux. SuSE could see that their was an ethernet chip there, but couldn't figure out how to talk to it. So, I grabbed a very old 100/10 3Com card out of a junker box and stuck it in. It showed up immediately as eth1. I configured it the usual way and everything works.

-jeff

SuSE sees the card as Realtek 8139 - but it won't work. If SuSE sees it and names it, does that almost guarantee that the card is working? If it does, I'll look elsewhere for the solution to my problem.

If the card is correctly identified, it probably has a driver for it and you should look elsewhere for the problem.

-jeff

well its not only the kernel that makes the support of the hardware..

All the scripts have to change and the programs to reinstalled or replaced by other ...... pain in the head...!

try to install HP720c in a slackware 8 distro.....
You will discover that after fixing the lpr problem that comes with the distro the printer is still off.....dispite the fack that it is detected in the boot up....

Wellyou have to unistall lpr....install cups . .install new drivers...reconfigure...

ORRR

install suse8 and in 1 minute you are ready to make a test print page..!