which one is more newbie friendly?

I haven't tried the latest SUSE, but am going to install over
Mandrake 9.2.

Mandrake 9.2 installed beautifully for me; however, the first time I ran
MandrakeUpdate it:

1) Correctly and cleanly updated the distro;
2) Completely and utterly trashed (wiped out) the desktop
configuration including menus.

I was able to eventually restore the menus and desktop appearance, but the
experience was unnerving (and unnecessary ... why should a desktop
config be affected by updating SSH or somesuch?)

So .... I'd look at SUSE. I will be (soon).

Sorry about the '10 answers from 10 people' ... but when you have
choices (like distros & desktops) there will be favorites.

An equivalent question, btw, in the Microsoft world: do you prefer
Windows 2000 or XP? Or XP Home? Or XP Media? OR
XP-<name-the-next-release>?

Charlie

From my point of view only:

Mandrake for plain install. After gaining some experience with Linux in general.... then Suse
Mandrake sure helps with the learning curve, especially if you get into the inner workings of linux.
Plan on READING, READING, READING!!!!!! Docs, man pages, howto's, ask your friends,,, lose sleep, scratch your head, cuss, kick and scream!!!
But it's FUN to learn this stuff......
I only us "MS" when absolutely necessary.....
Pick one then enjoy!

i'm using mandrake 3 months now... I'm reallyyyy pleased. Only against is the problems with my serial ata [sata] disk it couldn't detect it..

I use Suse and it works perfectly fine (though not at the moment), however I like using Gnome KDE just doesn't appeal to me. A plus point for many users is how intergrated KDE is with suse, but that can cause problems for gnome users, especially in nautilus.

Another way to try them without thrashing around with your hard drive is the "Live" CD distribution route. Both Suse and Mandrake have available as an ISO download a full distro that runs off of the CD. You set your BIOS to boot from CD, stick the disk in, and away they go. It's a great way to check hardware compatibility and getting a feel for how each distro runs. I refurbish old PCs part time and they work great as diagnostic disks also. I've used Mandrake primarily (since version 8.2) but have tried out the Suse Live CD, and also Fedora and College Linux. Each distro has their good points and weak ones. The live CDs let you get a good feel without marrying one.

I've tried Mandrake 9.2 and it seems cool at a glance but was pretty buggy (at least on my hardware) and fixes and rpms in general were hard to come by. Honestly there isn't a distro out there that will work perfectly out of the box. I'm using Fedora at the moment for a couple reasons. First, it jibes with my HP Pavillion hardware for the most part once the Lucent Modem and Nvidia Graphics Card are setup. Second, I think it has one of the biggest followings so its easier to get answers about the inevitable problems you'll have using Linux. The biggest cons I've run into is that the updating (Up2Date) doesn't work at all so you have to pretty much keep track of your own updates and download them manually from an ftp site and also there is no DVD player so you have to find one like Ogle and download a bunch of rpms and install them. Linux is like a big jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces are scattered in not one but in millions of boxes around the world. You don't need to be an expert to piece it together though. I have found it challenging and fun as well as frustrating to where I wanted to throw the friiggin thing out the window. I think that if everything works well on your setup then use Mandrake, if not then maybe give Fedora a try. I'm not a big Novell fan and suse seems a bit less "open" and more corporate so I don't use it on general principle.

Good luck and don't give up,
Scott

I've tried Mandrake and it was very very easy to install but I didn't like it much. GO SLACKWARE! I haven't tried SuSE but I think I'm going to soon

I'm used to Mdk & can't really appreciate it (in comparsion to other distros,excluding Knoppix). But most of the Linux freaks I know have an opinion that Mdk is the best choice for newbies.

ok well i guess ill have mandrake then, thanks all

Yes. When you first install Mandrake, it'll use diskdrake (a supercharged partitioner that make fdisk look like its just playing ) to partition your drive. If you hit the "auto" button, it'll give you a root partition "/" a swap partition and a "/home" directory. All of your user files and and configurations will reside there (akin it to the /stan03 folder in your Windows "Documents and Settings" folder). If you accept that configuration you get the best of both worlds. You have a seperate directory for your user files and you also have one system folder to keep booting simple (some would argue that more partitions would be better, but you're not running a corporate server, right?). I don't know if Suse has an easy and effective partitioning tool like Diskdrake or not. The nice thing is that if you have a big drive and the "/" has been made too big, you can easily resize it before the partition table is written.

If you want to jump right in, do so. The water's not that cold If you're still a bit unsure, get a copy of the live cds and run from them for a bit to get the feel of the os's. Just remember to speed your perception up about 10x, as you're running from your cdrom with those, and they're not gonna be nearly as snappy as a hard drive install.

To fix this, just execute "update-menus -v" and the menus are fixed

Good choice

Wait 'till 10's released. Woohoo. The beat is the most capable OS version this machine has ever seen.

Hi:

I have a virtual machine running Linux. I install several distribution in this virtual machine: Red Hat. Fedora Core 1 and Mandrake. The most important that you need to decide the distribution, is:

1. What type of application i plan run in my linux machine?

If the anwer is a server for files, a workstation that don't need use sound or games or entrainment programs, the answer is easy: Red 9.0 or Fedora Core 1. But remember, to update this distribution you need pay! (you can only update 1 time). Second is very stable.

If the answer is a desktop machine with games, music and entretaiment apps, the right distribution is Mandrake, but wait for mandrake 10, i see very good thinks in the kde 3.2 (Mandrake 9.2 use kde 3.1.3), and with this version you can enjoy of Kstars (this application is very good, is like starry night and it's free). Second, you can play your MP3 (in Red Hat and Fedora Core 1, you can't because you need licenses to play). Third, the updates are more easiest!!, you can download many programs and new stuff from update servers. I am using Fedora Core 1, but i am waiting for Mandrake 10!!.

2. How many experience you have in computers?

If you have lot of experience: Red Hat or Fedora, if you are new in Linux, is better Mandrake, because is more user friendly.

3. I have money to pay for good license?

If the answer is yes: Red Hat or Fedora, if not Mandrake.

4. What distribution have more programs and drivers designed?

Mandrake and Red Hat are the first in the list, both use a packages called RPM, and are to easy to install. In another distributions you obtain files tar or tar.gz that you need decompress, configure, compile and install to get a program running (a good advice is install all devolopment tools, compilers, you will need it).

5. Suse don't offer a real distro, only a demostration, running in CD, for me it is not a good form to work, if you have money to pay, is better. I don't use Suse, but i know that is very good, i don't recommend use a Live CD, if you can, pay for the distro.


Finally, i think that the most important is how look the distro, red hat can work perfectly like suse, but the more nice interface is the Fedora Core 1, but with the update problem i think that the best distro is Mandrake (wait for the version 10!!!)


Simon

As a fellow noob, that has tried both, here's what i've found:

flaws:
mandrake 9.2 was NOT ready for release. I had to manually install several packages, like wine (didn't work out of the box), menu items randomly dissapeared (fixable using update-menus command, but still...), and my printer, which even lists mandrake on the box, didn't work.

Suse doesn't like my radeon or my printer or my cheap sound card (does work with the sound blaster)- i got drivers for the sound card, but they point to a directory that does not exist. It doesn't come with any wine at all. In fact, while it comes with everything you need, it doesn't have nearly the variety of software that mandrake has.

advantages:
aside from my cheap hardware problems (most of which probably stem from me being really new at this) suse just seemed to be ironed out more. all the little things are accounted for, and the desktop is better integrated with the os. While suse doesn't come with wine, you can buy the wine rack, (at a whopping $60 or so ) which includes crossover office. And you have the security of knowing they will work out of the box.

Mandrake has tons of features, software, and supermount, which i like. there are updated iso's for 9.2 now, but i'd probably wait untill 10 is available for download (usually 6? months after release). Mandrake almost has too many software packages! It can take you an hour or so to go through them all.

I use suse right now, it seems just to work when mandrake doesn't. When i download games and programs online, they just work... it took me weeks to get stuff working with mandrake.