Questions about Suse

M O L8ingN2dust · 10-27-2005, 02:40 PM

Hi, I am currently running Mandrake 10.1. However, I have been hearing a lot of good things about the new OpenSuse that it is out now. I am thinking about switching over, but I would like to ask a few questions first.

1. Is Suse easier or more difficult to use then Mandrake? I am a novice Linux user, so easier is better.
2. Will Suse autodetect all my hardware as well as Mandrake did?
3. Does Suse have a partitioning utility built into the installation utility?
4. Does Suse use RPM's to install programs? If not how does Suse handle installations. Installing seems to be one of my biggest issues with Mandrake, so if Suse has a great installation utility, that would be a big plus!
5. What are some of the features that Suse users prefer that are not included in most other distros?

Thank you all ahead of time for answering my questions!

rshaw · 10-27-2005, 02:46 PM

1 easier or harder, depending on how hands on you want to be.
2. as good or better
3.yes
4.rpm's yes, yast 'can' handle everything if you want
5. apt4suse, yast

M O L8ingN2dust · 10-27-2005, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rshaw
1 easier or harder, depending on how hands on you want to be.
2. as good or better
3.yes
4.rpm's yes, yast 'can' handle everything if you want
5. apt4suse, yast

Okay, so when you say Yast cna handle everything, do you mean it can install tarballs too? That would be great! Some things are hard to find in RPM format. Also, what is apt4suse?

rshaw · 10-27-2005, 03:01 PM

http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/

yast doesn't do tarballs, but ./configure, make, make install, is not all that hard from the comand line

Cogar · 10-28-2005, 06:52 PM

I am a recent convert from Mandrakelinux 10.0 to Suse Linux 10.0 (the boxed version). I am somewhat "new" to Linux, although I have been playing around with it in a very casual way since Red Hat 7.x. I found Suse superior to Mandrake for a newb like myself. Mandrake did not autodetect my hardware as successfully as Suse. Mandrake screwed up the video card, the network card, and both my soundcards (one onboard and one PCI). Suse did not have this problem. Everything worked OK the moment the installation completed. The partitioning utility seemed to work very well. I only used default settings and it implemented everything correctly. Mandrake also installed GRUB incorrectly by default, but Suse installed it the way it should have been. Of course, all of these problems with Mandrake are correctable, and people who play with Linux like to play around with these things. Still, I am interested in Linux as an alternative to Windows, not as an OS I can tweak. I guess this makes me different from a lot of the Linux community.