I cannot compare. Sorry. Never got to try Suse, and untill I decide to actually pay money for it, I won't likely either. Its too easy for me to get a free download of Mandrake ISOs and go from there. Its not Mandrake/Suse that tears me. Its Mandrake/Debian. One thing that I did notice about Mandrake is that files are found in the same places as other *nix's. And I include the *BSD's in that group. Other distros seem to place files in their own directories, making us look harder when something may need fixing or tweaking.

Mandy seems to be on the edge more than others. New stuff seems to end up there first. It handles wierd hardware better as well. It ain't a comparison, but its a plug for the one I use (and it seems to be a nice home for the 2.6 kernel )

Without starting a flame war, I think it's very much horses-for-courses! I personally use SuSE for all my servers and it is also my preferred choice for workstations. This is probably partly out of the familiarity that comes with using the same distro for several years through the various versions, but it is also because while being incredibly feature-rich, it is also unbelievably easy to install, setup, and configure, but still allows you do anything you want.

I've also found the hardware support to be excellent and I've had a large array of hardware over the years! Yast2 I think is second to none as a system configuration tool, and unlike the system tools in the earlier Redhat versions, I've never had a seg-fault yet. Another aspect worth mentioning is the brilliant YOU (Yast Online Update), this is great for anyone on broadband and just seem's to work flawlessly everytime I've used it on my many machines!

But on the other hand, if I was to recommend a linux distro to a family member or friend, I'd definately suggest Mandrake if I wasn't setting it up and maintaining it myself, as although I've had problems with hardware support, it too is excellent for newbies, and I think comes a reasonably close second to SuSE in terms of friendliness and usability.

If you partition a seperate /home directory, you won't have a hassle. You can distro shop all you want and your data will carry over between them, providing you don't overwrite or hose it when you install a new one.

Ive used Mandrake 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0beta 2, suse 9, tried fedora core 2. And Ive heard bad things about 9.2, but its the only distro period that had all of my periphials except my Radeon up and working out of the box. That includes my sata card, with 2 drives attached, my wireless ATMEL usb adapter, and my audigy2. Its been the least troublesome distro for me, personally. Every other version, and suse, and redhat, would either give me sound, no wireless or sata recogniton. Or I didnt have sound, but could see my sata drives, but couldnt run ntfs. Or no wireless access or sound, which was 9.1 mandrake. Even 10.0b2 goes back to no sound on my audigy, just says cannot start sound server. I would go mandrake 9.2. But your hardware is probably way differnt, so try 1 or different distros, cant hurt.

I'll try to give you a reply as objective as possible.

I have used and I still use both, altough Suse now has become my favourite.

Suse, contrary to what most people say, isn't all that newbie friendly.
The reasons:
Too many features don't come out of the box: Nvidia drivers, DVD playing, Bittorrent... For me downloading and installing the Nvidia drivers is not a problem, as it is not using apt4rpm to install Mplayer, Videolan, Ogle, Bittorrent...
The installer can be quite temperamental: it might not like the geometry of your HD, the configuration of X can be a pain, even the printer can cause trouble...
All this issues are really minor for anybody slightly more advanced, but can make a newbie's life difficult.
On the other hand once you have solved the above mentioned issues Suse is BEAUTIFUL! Suse's Kde is the most integrated, fully featured working enviroment I have EVER seen.

Mandrake is a lot more newbie friendly, IMHO, and you get almost everything out of the box.
However: it is quite buggy and it tends to break more easily than Suse.
Is not quite as fully featured and well integrated as Suse.

Mandrake, contrary to Suse, is freely downloadable, and therefore it makes a good bet as a first linux distro.

My recommendation, VERY IMPORTANT: don't download the official edition. Download it from this link:

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/people/bluehawk/iso/

Here you'll get all the updates included plus ALL THE COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE.
They are at release 7 now, release 8 should be out on 2004.03.01

Good luck!

The thing i notice is that Mandrake seems to be in the forefront for those of us who have things like new computers. Eventually almost all hardware is supported everywhere, but Mandrake is really concerned about things like wireless [I have a Dell 5150 with a 54g built in wireless card]
and stays right up there with the kernel [currently on my mandrake 10 i am using 2.6.2-3].

It's easy to install and configure and comes with lots of fun stuff, maynard!

IM with Suse all the way because i didnt have a good time with mandrake as a noob. I installed Mandrake 9.2, only to not beable to get my radeon to work with it, then i got 9.1, and after some time, i got my card to work. With SuSE on the other hand, X started the first time i booted up my machine. then it took 15 minutes to install the drivers properly

Just to let you know, even though suse doesn't offer ISOs, you can order Suse 9.0 professional off of ebay for less than $10. that's what I did and they work great. I have numerous machines and am running both mandrake and suse. As a beginner, I don't think you can go wrong with either one. I prefer suse over mandrake. They are so inexpensive that you could get both for under $20 and try them out. You can answer your own question that way. once you decide, then get some books for your particular distro. best of luck...

Like I said, a seperate /home partition will save you any headaches.

I tried Red Hat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.1. I much prefer Mandrake.

It was easier to work with for a single home user. Both installs were pretty easy. I bought the Mandrake 3 CD setup from the free isos from a local linux oriented computer shop for AUD10.00 The Red Hat was AUD 17 with a booklet on Linux and Setting up Red Hat 8.0. I did not try Suse because I didn't have access to disks and didn't want to download over a 56 kb/sec dial up connection.

I would try whatever you have easiest/cheapest access to, and would try two or 3 distros just to see the difference.

The main problems I have had have been lack of hardware compatibility with my winmodem, hp120c digital camera, Acer Vuego Brisa USB scanner and the time it took to get my Montego soundcard with aureal chip working using ALSA drivers.

The main reasons I liked Mandrake over Red Hat were:
1. The Super User mode for the file manager with a desktop shortcut.
2. The automatic mounting of my windows partitions on a physically separate drive.

Hope this helps.
Cheers
Paul

whoa what? i like this idea, but can you clarify for me?

If you make your home user directory on a separate hard drive partition, then if you change distributions, then you will not loose your stuff, e.g. downloads. Mandrake 9.2 does this automatically.

will i loose settings and things like vid card drivers and such?

Oh yes. If you install another distro, it'll overwrite everything, but you should have no trouble out of the box, as that type of configuration usually takes place during setup anyways. These things should be detected and you should be able to go as soon as its installed (most distros don't even require a reboot).

If you want to try before you buy and you have a fast internet connection and burner, you may want to go to www.distrowatch.org and pore over the various 'live cds' and try a few. There's no commitment and you can get an idea of what you're in store for. I would recommend that you get Mandrakemove and Suse live eval. And for good measure (if you'd like the easiest package management - less admin) perhaps you could try a Debian-based distro, like Knoppix, Gnoppix, or Mepis (I have tried Mepis and I may reinstall it when I have replaced my final Win32 app and kill XP for good. Its that good - I'll let it duke 'em out with Mandy for front spot)

Having used Suse and Mandrake for 4 years now does not make me an expert, BUT, I like Mandrake.... I love Suse!!
Recent Mandrake (9.0 and up) appear incompletely tested out before release. Suse 9.0 has not given me a problem either in installing or configuring after the install. In fact on Suse I have not found any of the GUI programs which configure operating system features such as printing, networking, sound card, video, to be crippled or not working as they often are on Mandrake.
Good luck......