To the experienced, why YOU chose SUSE?

This is quesiton is to those who tried more than a handful of distros for a longer enough time to evaluate each one. If you're only used suse or just suse and a couple others, you can't really make a good judgement about whats out there. =)

I'm wondering what in the end made you chose SUSE. Did you just "settle" for it cause it was a little better? I'm not really interested in whether "so-and-so hardware works with SUSE better than other distros". I'm talking about the actual OS, it's organization, visual appearance, packages installed, features, VS the other OSs.

I think the worst part about this battle of the distros is that people become too attached to what is theirs and become very narrow-sighted. It's hard to really read an honest evaluation =\. From my perspective, the only differences between all these is the software it comes with and the visual appearance. It seems like i can disguise any of them to look like any other distro and you're barely know the difference.

Originally posted by alphster I'm not really interested in whether "so-and-so hardware works with SUSE better than other distros". I'm talking about the actual OS, it's organization, visual appearance, packages installed, features, VS the other OSs.

This is a very subjective issue and I'm really only replying since you didn't phrase it as to ask why SuSE is "better", but instead why it might be preferred. That is a substantial difference and allows people to express their likes without having to chop down someone else's choice of distribution. IMO that is wrong to do and does absolutely nothing to promote Linux. Choices that are different are good and should be valued, even if they are substantially unlike what another would decide upon.

So, just some very quick thoughts:

- Organization: I like how I can literally manage the entire system in SuSE with their YaST application. Many times I will be installing software in one module, doing some system configs in another module, and making partition changes in still another. When I started running SuSE I made a point to not command line everything that I was accustomed to doing, but instead take the time to learn the GUI that was provided. This method does sometimes take longer than just opening a terminal, but I can see the advantage of using a single interface to control and manage all the hardware, software, and configurations. The way that YaST is organized makes more sense to me than other packaged system tools.

- Visual Appearance: KDE is very polished in SuSE and just looks great. With the 9.2 release I can also say the same for the Gnome desktop. I suppose that some people might just prefer the default menus and so forth, but it's nice to see what can be done visually when the effort is made to produce something different.

- Packages installed: I really think any of the larger distros will have most of the desired packages. SuSE does a great job of working them into YaST, and as a result their package management system is top notch, with sections that are not overly interpretative or hindering to someone who is just learning, while not being too basic for the more experienced users.

- Features: Really the best feature is the SuSE community itself IMO.

I would tend to agree with Xian. After having tried many distro's (still do. I'm rather into the "flavor of the week" os), I settled on SuSE as my daily desktop OS based mainly one one piece of software-YaST.

Why? System setup and configuration are a breeze with YaST, saving me a lot of time and effort. Maintainence is just as easy.

As this computer serves as a desktop PC for the entire family (when I'm not using it for coding or hatching evil business schemes ), the ease of being able to quickly get things running without much tweaking is a god-send, allowing me more time to work at achieving my goals.

That's pretty much why I chose SuSE. Although I prefer different distro's for various reasons, I can't afford the time needed to get everything setup and running stable manually.

SuSE for work, Slackware for play.

Why I like Suse:

* it just works - the amount of work "assigned" to the user in order to have a working Linux desktop is minimal. Other distros require a significant amount of time/effort from the end-user to properly configure the system, Suse handles that for you
* YaST - keeping up with security updates isn't hard, but it is time consuming. The fact that YaST checks for updates, and seamlessly installs them is a bonus in my book
* KDE is the default - KDE is my preferred desktop, which also happens to be the Suse default
* Control during installation - Suse gives you huge flexibility during installation, ranging from automatic choices based on system-detected settings to fully manual installation.
* Very good laptop support - I installed Suse v9.1 on my laptop with zero issues. It just works, I'm stoked. (Laptop is a T40)

I will probably always be a Slack guy, but as time goes I continue to be impressed with Suse. Just my 2 cents -- J.W.

1. YaST. I have never seen any app that has as much power and ease of use as YaST does.

2. It's so easy. I'm a big Slack fan, enjoy using the command line. But when I've had a long day I don't want anything to do with the command line. I just want to click 1 button to do everything. I guess, again, this is mostly due to YaST. If ever anything goes wrong, YaST is sure to fix it.

3. When long time Windows users come to my house proclaiming, "Linux is too dificult to use" I can say, "Have a seat my friend, enjoy the ease of use brought to you by Suse." After pointing them in the direction of (once again) YaST, they pretty much have no difficulties what so ever. Suse greatly aids in my attempts to convert all of my Windows loving friends. I can't say the same about my Slack machines.

From what I've heard FC3 would also be a good canidate for a newly converted Windows user. But I havn't used FC since release 1, which in my opinion was a big disappointment. I am looking forward to getting a copy of release 3 and taking it for a test drive. But unless FC3 just blows my socks off, I think I will be sticking with Suse.

just four reasons:

one, though you don't want to hear it, suse was about half a year the only linux distro that fully supported my pc's hardware. to that time, i wanted to have a new computer with a new linux release installed on.
much earlier than other "famous" distros like redhat supported the whole computer, suse did without any problem, including a US visioneer scanner!
this summer, i could set up a fedora installation with all parts working for the first time, of course without that scanner. suse had perfectly worked more than one year sooner. that twelve months was time enough to check out suse's features.

two, while other distros like debian and slack (to that time) weren't completely up to date with the newest ooo, mozillas and so on, as well as with security issues, suse had regularly updated its releases. the way from 8.1 to 9.2 was just a short period to go, but contained five (!) releases.

three, the yast2 installation is one of the easiest ways to achieve a fully installed linux system, in my opinion even better than fedora's comfortable anaconda. plus, upgrading has never been so smooth like updating suse.

four, it makes linux as easy to learn as with mandrake, for example. distibutions like gentoo, slackware, and debian do require basic linux knowledge, while suse doesn't. it can be recommended to linux cracks (if they shouldn't already know it) as well as to complete beginners as i was.

right know, i prefer fedora3, just to check it out.

greetz
bavarian

I'm an IT Manager for a company of about 100 souls and I chose SuSE for the following reasons.

1. Having tried Red Hat, Mandrake and Gentoo, I found that SuSE was the best distro for recognising hardware components in our Compaq desktops and IBM ThinkPads.

2. Everyone else has mentioned YAST and I will too. It is fantastic to be able to have one program to configure, maintain and update hardware and the OS. Dependency Hell is a thing of the past.

3. I manage 8 NetWare servers and these will shortly be upgraded to SLES when it becomes available and my budgets are confirmed. I will be in the enviable position of being able to replace a number of Win98 and XP desktops with Novell Linux Desktop which as you'll be aware is really SuSE badged as NLD. The integration between servers and desktops should be flawless.

4.It's a user friendly distribution which my staff can readily support and users -even those who are not technically adept - can with a modicum of training get to grips with FireFox, GroupWise, and OpenOffice. I will be saving my company a shed-load of money that would previously have gone to Microsoft as licensing fees!

5. The stability of Linux in general and SuSE in particular means that support calls will be lessened allowing my dept. to concentrate on infrastructure and research.

6. I trust Novell's intentions as they become an open source company. They have a long and admirable record when it comes to protecting good ideas and software from proprietary and agressive companies. I think we all know who I mean. Novell's input into Linux and SuSE has so far been a great move and I can only see it providing even more benefits for the open source community and users of its products.

I hope that helps.

Regards

dkpw

Because I have a life and don't have time for other Distros. I can install SuSE and set up everything in under and hour, and be done with it. Its as simple as that for me.

1st reason is YaST

2nd reason is YaST

3rd reason is you guessed it YaST

I chose SuSE (on the desktop) because while I love tweaking the crap out of servers, I want my desktop to be convenient. As stated before, SuSE is a breeze to install and configure. And with the packman sources, I'll take YaST over apt any day. And, while I know it is blasphemy for "old schoolers" I dig KDE, and SuSE's implementation of KDE is the most polished I have found.

YaST is fantastic - on-line updates and reconfiguration are so easy.

I prefer KDE - there may be slight performance hit on loading but usability far outweighs any disadvantage.

Software installation with YaST - either off CD/DVD or from RPMs is so easy.

Overall it takes a heck of a lot of pain out of the admin - I keep forgetting command line syntax so anything GUI that works and makes my life easier is a plus.

I have tried *BSD*, redhat, solaris and a bunch.. I picked up SuSE9.1 one week ago and loved it right now. It is not hardware picky and user interface friendly. Yast is a very good utility in case you are lazy to poke the command line option.

Since Sun solaris X86 will become linux binary compatible, I am interested to give it another try.:-)