First, let me state that the subject of my post here is not to imply in any way that I was not having fun with my computer under Windows XP. On the contrary, I love XP. I know, I know, I know, this could be viewed as somewhat of a conundrum. How can someone love both Linux AND Windows XP? Based on what I've read here, you either love Linux and hate MS or love MS and hate Linux (notice the deliberate leaving-off of the $ and actually using an "S" in the MS). I think such a situation is potential for a paradox that could end up destroying the universe, but I'll take my chances.

So, the truth is, yes, I like both Linux and XP. I have SUSE 9.1 Pro on my laptop. My wife has XP on her desktop. We're both happy, and I have absolutely no intention of trying to convince her to move to Linux. She's quite content, and so am I. Works perfectly.

So what, then, do I mean when I say my computer is fun to use again?

It means I've finally found a Linux distro that let's me be productive in Linux instead of trying to fix problems with the OS. And yes, folks, there are problems with Linux. Let's not kid ourselves. But I'm not here to bash on Linux or XP. I'm here to praise Linux, because I'm loving my eXPerience with it.

When I first dabbled in the world of Linux, I played with Red Hat. Why? Well, it was supposed to be the best. It's not. I had problems with it, enough that I couldn't do any productive work because I was always tweaking, updating, and working with the OS to get it stable. I started With Red Hat 6 and then went to 8 and finally 9, then they stopped supporting the desktop. This last go around, I decided to try Mandrake because it was supposed to be the easiest to configure and make work.

It isn't.

Course, I was using 10.0 Official, which is purported to have problems. I hadn't had any experience with the (allegedly) more stable 9.1 (or is it 9.2?). Anyway, for some reason I have a distain for moving backward with my technology, even it if works better. I can't explain it, so don't ask me to. I figured it's better to try a different distro all together than move backward. I know, it's kind of weird.

The problems I had with Mandrake primarily dealt with my video driver and KDE not being very stable. I don't like Gnome too much, and I'm really not partial to the other GUIs. Yes, I have to have a GUI - I HATE command line. Anyway, I have an nVidia GeForce in my Dell Inspiron 8200 with 32 MB RAM. I had to reinstall the drivers for the card every other reboot, under Mandrake 10. That on top of KDE not being stable was enough to drive me to nearly the point of putting XP back on my machine.

But I really didn't want to do that. I was not feeling particularly compelled to go back to XP. I really wanted to make this Linux thing work for me, so I tried a different distro.

I had heard how good SUSE was. I had tried the personal edition and really liked the layout and the apparent stability, but I needed the development packages and I wanted to work with MySQL and possibly Rekall. I have a database application under Access that works very nicely to help me track my student's grades at the local college. I wanted to rebuild a similar app under Linux. SUSE 9.1 Personal wasn't going to cut it. After a bit of researching, I found out how to install Pro without having to buy it. So I spent the 6 hours online downloading the stuff over FTP and installing it on my laptop (now I'm wishing I just downloaded the entire tree to a DVD-R disk. Oh well).

Let me tell you, I have had so much fun with this distro! It's worked flawlessly for me, except that I'm having trouble getting my wireless card to work. I'll figure that out, though. The most important thing is that I'm productive, and my laptop is letting me work on my regular stuff, again. I'm loving my Linux experience, and really not seeing a reason to go back to XP on my laptop for the foreseeable future. I've even invested in some new books to help me work with MySQL for my database app. I'm really looking forward to this adventure.

Linuxquestions.org has been invaluable to me on this journey, as well. Thanks to you all for your generosity in vomiting up the knowledge you all have for us newbies trying to make this stuff work. I'm having a blast, and Linux is no longer "The OS That Must Not Be Named" in my household. And who knows, maybe someday, my wife will be willing to give it a try. But that's not important right now. Everything works!

On top of that, Knowledge Vomit might even be a good name for a rock band!

-Schadeboy

Moved - this is more suited to the Success Story forum.

Congratulations

Cool, and Knowledge Vomit is an excellent name for a rock band

Yeah I like Knowledge Vomit too

Cheers and have fun(in Linux).

I'm so glad that somebody has reviewed a Linux distro with the statement 'everything works' included. I too have tried Red Hat and Mandrake and I too have encountered numerous frustrating problems. I have downloaded SuSE 9.0, but I have not yet installed it anywhere. Now I think I will.

Well, I'm still trying to figure out a few things. The only real caveat is that the wireless card doesn't work, yet. Oh it lights up, and acts like it makes a connection to the access point, but it doesn't receive an IP address and I can't force it to get one. Not sure if there's a configuration problem, driver problem, or just something funky going on with my AP, but I'll figure it out.

There are a few other tweaks that need to be made, but for the most part, they are personal settings issues. Nothing that I wouldn't have to deal with under Windows XP. More or less, I'm up and running, and having a blast. And the most important thing is that I can be productive and do what I need to do for my students and other things. I look forward to developing with MySQL. I'm not a programmer, but there's something about making databases that really appeals to me. Go figure.

-Schadeboy

do you have DHCP enabled?

Yes.

To give more details (although it's not really the scope of this post), I have a Linksys WPC11 ver. 3. My Access Point is also made by Linksys.

-Schadeboy

OK. I've just installed SuSE Linux 9.0. Please see this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=206603 if you want to know how I feel now.

I certainly feel your pain, Baryonic Being. I won't go into any theories about why SUSE worked for me, except that I'm just lucky. I happen to believe that the main reason most distros have problems is due to hardware related issues. One of several situations can occur; (1) One doesn't have hardware that is compatible with a particular distro, (2) one has hardware that is made by obscure manufacturers who don't use supported chipsets , (3) The drivers provided for the hardware are bad, or (4) any combination of the previous three.

I think I'm lucky. I happened to hit upon a distro that has decent drivers for my hardware built-in, and my hardware happens to be name-brand enough and on SUSE's hardware compatibility list (which I never checked out to begin with).

For my next trick, I plan to do more research on any distro I plan to work with, if I choose to move away from SUSE. I've heard good things about Gentoo and Slackware. But like I said, my computer is working and I don't have any problems. Why deal with moving to another distro and all the headaches that could involve?

-Schadeboy

SUsE 9.1 is the only one that configures my gigabyte PCI on the FLY, and the Hauppauge WinTV-D card (that was a tough one for all the distros) Try the rest then INSTALL the BEST!