Overall a fantastic and polished distro. YaST for configuing is just fantastic as usual, and the KDE menu is really intuitive to work with. Better than the GNOME version in this distro in my opinion, where you have to load a seperate window to load aditional apps. The default GNOME install was really Buggy on my machine, but fixed after update. And updates, and installing software in YaST is a bit rubbish, due to the marriage it has with zmd, but from 10.3 this will have totally changed, and got a LOT faster!

Definatly worth a try for a real alternive to windows.

No point installing it.
After downloading 4GB worth of crap it still wants to download the packages one day after release!!!
There are real boobs working on Suse now, once a great distro is now just a piece of total junk.

There are many other better distro to use .. not this one for me anymore.

I have tried them all.. this distro is going down faster than any I have seen.
After 4GB of download it still wants to download packages "BEFORE" the install.

Really this one used to be a great package but I guess Novell finally did them in.

It's no wonder small teams like Mepis and PCLinuxOS are doing a much better job.

My suggestion .. stay away from this one till they improve ...

Happy SUSE user since the 8xx releases. I have always found SUSE/openSUSE one of the best operating systems, not just one of the best Linux distros. Do you all know the great repair feature? (boot from CD1/DVD). No other OS has something quite the same.

Hardware: Intel Bad Axe 2
Intel Q6600
4GB RAM, Crucial Ballistix
XFX GeForce 7900GT
3 Seagate Barracuda HDs

I have been using suse on my laptop as a desktop OS for about one year, it was my migration factor from win to linux for the desktop.

I love it, it is easy and smooth, but some small problems appear from time to time, yet still better than win, for one year, I used it and counted the times it crashed, amazing for one year as a desktop it crashed 3 times only!! I experienced 3 crashes a day when I was suffering with windows.

thanks LINUX alot!

I've tried and used lots of Linux distributions, but Suse is the only one I could never recommend to anyone. It's very pretty, with lots of lovely animations and nice themes, but all of this prettiness makes for a slow, heavy system. I don't want my distribution to be beautiful - I want it to to be flawless, and for me Suse just simply doesn't work. Unpredictable things happen frequently, crashes are common place, downloads and updates are painfully slow and, what's more, Novell signed a pact with the Devil. For me, Suse is hardly better than Windows: it has the same 'eye candy' philosophy and is no more reliable. In fact, I think this is the only Linux distribution that is less reliable than Windows. OK, you don't get the viruses, but you sure get a load of system break-downs. It's true that Suse has a great repair feature, and it's a good job really because it's needed. In Debian there is no repair feature because once Debian is up and running it never goes wrong. I much prefer Debian dullness and reliability to Suse prettiness and unpredictability.

So Novell fixed the damage done by 10.1., but still has not addressed many of the lingering problems with installation and configuration that have plagued SUSE variants for the operating system's entire history. It's still a decent desktop operating system, and has one of the industry's best configuration frameworks (YaST), but it just doesn't compete with commercial GNU/Linux distros like Xandros or Mandriva. It has a hard time competing even with the free-of-charge Ubuntu Linux. Indeed, openSUSE is in danger of losing relevance in a rapidly evolving market. You can't have poor quality releases anymore -- those days of leniency are over. Desktop GNU/Linux is now a mature market, and companies like Novell need to start treating it like such.

------------------------------
Fashion

Since 1998 I use SuSE Linux now on 8 different laptops ( incl 1 PC ) for my full time web publisher work - the 10.2 install from original DVD on my

Acer Ferrari 5000 was smooth from A-Z with zero problems. All features I needed worked perfectly from beginning and ever there after. While I also have 10.3 for another laptop, I saw no reasons to upgrade my current 10.2 as all runs smooth and no wishes open so far.

I also run SuSE on my dedicated server with same satisfaction. Thus I definitely can recommend this fine Linux OS.

pretty dang good!

Another problem is that you can't update online to 10.3 if you've installed 3rd party softwares, and it's nearly manditory since zen-installer doesn't have quite enough...

What was REALLY annoying was that I had to manually modify a bunch of stuff to made ndiswrapper work with my card. I even had to manually write the device config. It took forever.

pretty dang good!

Another problem is that you can't update online to 10.3 if you've installed 3rd party softwares, and it's nearly manditory since zen-installer doesn't have quite enough...

I have used Suse on and off for several years, from version 6 or 7 I think. It always impresses me in that it seems very polished, in both the installer and in adminstration. What bothers me is the inconsistency of the "one click" installs, which I think are a great idea. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Also, it seems to be one of the slowest distros I have ever used, both in boot time and application launch, even when I have gone in and killed about 60% of the unneeded startup services.

That aside, I would easily recommend it for a new user because it is feature packed and seems to be quite stable and easy to update.

it is good overall except the performance. the mouse seems to move around very fast...

Good performances on a AMD 800 Mhz 282Mb machine