Hi all,

I am pretty much a novice at Linux to be honest, not exactly all that new. I first started with DamnSmall Linux at the end of last year then Flonix and then a few monthes ago began Mandrake. I am considering another distro change and am wondering, is it too big of a step for someone like me to move from Mandrake to Suse Linux? I hear it is great but I don't know a whole heckuva alot about it. Does it cover hardware alot better than Mandrake? I appreciate the input Thanks guys *~

I have used Suse 6.4, 7.1, 9.1 and Mandrake 6.5, 7.1, 8.0.
The answer to one being better than the other will depend on your system, your wants and needs, and which side of bed you get up on in the morning.
They do use different administration tools.

for my money i'd go with suse.mandrake 9.0 and 9.1 had more hardware issues for me.
just be sure to install ogle with the okle front end for dvd playback if you need it

I just installed SuSE 9.1 personal edition...

I used MDK up to version 9.0 when i moved to an independent distro , ArchLinux [www.archlinux.org]....

Until now, i have had no problems with SUSE, except that installing packages is quite a pain in the butt compared to MDK, and waaaay more painfull when compared to the almighty Arch Pacman (Arch's Package manager). But all in all, the detection of hardware works flawlessly, and everything works quite nice (although not as fast as in Arch, but, thats until i set it up a bit better i guess), and besides an issue im having with Firefox --which im also having in Arch-- , its been quite a nice expirience till now...

Also i was looking for some other SUSE related sites.. as there homepage is quite... boring and not interesting at all --not to say useless--.

I would say, give it a try... if you dont want to install, or have the space to do it in a try stage... use the LiveCD.. its in the FTP alongside the Personal ISO.

I used Mandrake for many years and am now trying out Suse. I like Suse's polished look and it runs faster than Mandrake. Mandrake tends to use "bleeding edge" software, so it can be unstable at times. Suse tends to use more stable releases. I have had fewer problems with Suse so far.

I use SuSE 9.0 Pro, and Mandrake 10 official, and I like both of them. Neither one had any problems with install, and both have good package management software for updates, etc. SuSE has Yast, and Mdk has DrakeConf. I think that DrakeConf is a little easier to use, but it essentially does the same thing. If you're into things like command line updates, etc, then Mandrake is the way to go. They use urpmi which is built in to the system. SuSE has apt-get which is nice, and can integrate with a gui-style interface, but it has to be downloaded and installed.

Both are good distros, but if you're going to download one, I would go with Mandrake because it's more complete from the download (comes with all of the development software so you can install other programs, etc.). If you're going to buy one, then I would suggest SuSE (but get the professional version).

Either way, you get a very good distro.

Good luck.

Thanks for the input everyone. I think I will try Suse but may wait awhile because I'm not sure if SuSE would work with an older system like mine (p3 400 mhz processor, 64 mb ram, 5 gig hd, that will definetely change as soon as I scrape together enough cash for an AMD 1.5 or 1.8 ghz system, whichever's cheapest and pretty good at that with about 256 mb of ram at first, then upping it to at least 700 mb and a 40 gig hd). I plan on putting different Linux distros on the new system to try. It will be several monthes before I am able to get my new comp but maybe it's worth it. Thanks everyone.

I have been using SuSE for a little while now, since the release of 9.0 to be exact. Previously I had been using Red Hat Linux, but when 8.0 came out and the Red Hat developers broke KDE and made the default theme Bluecurve (couldn't install any other themes because of the way they custom developed the KDE packages hence KDE being broke) I became disgusted with redhat. I know it seems like a silly reason but all the machines I run Linux on are decent machines (a PIV 3.06 GHz w/HT, 512MB ram, nVidia video card, the works and a HP Compaq nc6000 laptop[runs slackware]) so I like to be able to have things pretty and fast and I fell in love with KDE.

I checked out a bunch of other distros
Debian, not cutting edge enough
Slackware, too hard to learn (back then but not now )
Mandrake, oversimplified... hated it
and then I came upon SuSE

I ran over to the U of I at Chicago FTP mirror and got the boot cd ISO and performed an FTP install (the agonizingly long but free way to get SuSE) and have been using it ever since. Package managing couldn't be easier than with YaST, plus YaST's ability to easily and graphically manage just about every aspect of my system was a big plus. The XFS bug in the early 2.6 kernel series ticked me off a little bit, but I could settle for a reiserfs partition for the time being (the bug was XFS partitions were unable to be mounted as root "/" partitions, and I like to use XFS for my filesystem... so I couldn't do the FTP install when there was nothing mounted!)

Other than that SuSE has been nothing but good to me and I would recommend it to beginners and old linux pro's