I wanted to know whether there is any differences between the paid version of SuSE from http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/ and the SuSE version available for free download at http://en.opensuse.org. Besides the free vs. paid, is there any differences in terms of the software?

Thanks.

Usually the free version does not include poprietary stuff (or includes just demos of proprietary apps) although it quite easy to add it on later if you wish. You also get technical support from Novell if you buy the boxed sets.

I believe that at least in the past the commercial version was available earlier than the download version. I'm not sure if this will remain so.

You get support.. And a pretty box, printed manuals and the media on pretty cd's.

They are the exact same OS. Buying a box off of the shelf gets you a box, a manual, and support from Novell. The boxed DVD is also a dual layer one and holds more packages than the DVD or CD iso's you can download for free, but the same packages can be added easily via the opensuse repo's.

BTW, there have been reports from people having difficulties installing based on the downloaded ISO's. It's not that the ISO's have been defective, the problem for those people was that the installation stopped with some obscure error message.

Yes, I for example wasn't able to install openSUSE from the net (net-install CD).
I tried entering several servers either as an IP address or directly.
I never got it to work so I just downloaded and burned the complete DVD and that one worked.

is it better to use SUSE ?

Different only packet bundle. If its free usually you don't get DVD or CD version and manual book. For enterprise it's very wisely to chose paid version, cause usually they have support for maintenance, etc

Most likley fulty DL... Check the media with the media checker...... This is common on all big ISO DL's

True, faulty download or burn was the most common reason. The blame went on opensuse at first though since the installation error message didn't help.

If you want a smoother ride and you can spare the money, the paid version could be helping. It may also be worthwhile to consider that it can help us all if companies actually make money with linux products.

My company allows me to expense every version of SuSE..

I actually used to buy SuSE from Amazon. The later manuals have been a bit dumbed down in my opinion but one set of manuals were very good - 8.2's I think.

The last release I bought, as in paid for, 9.1, the DVD media flaked out after the first install so I downloaded the iso's for 10.1 and 10.2. They've both been fine.

If you are already on a Linux distro then you can use wget or a piece of torrenting software and burn using k3b.
If you are on Windows then I guess you need to buy something that can burn bootable media and use a torrenting software.

If you are on a really slow connection then it's probably less painful to buy the disks in or get someone else to download it and burn it for you.

Regards

L.