Yes I tried 3.1 Knoppix to hard disk, dual booted with Win98, and for some reason or other one day I just had one very badly corrupted disk, after a failed windows session. What I saw of Debian I liked very much. In fact I bought a Knoppix 3.2 disk, and whilst I learn Linux, I will stick with SuSE, when my experience grows I probably will go back to using Knoppix and Debian. Love apt-get!

By the way what's the equivalent of apt-get for a single package in SuSE?

The closest thing to an equivalent of apt-get in SuSE is to use the Yast or Yast2 installation tool. SuSE uses the RPM package format, as do all United Linux companies and anyone who follows the Linux Standard Base (LSB) --- ironically enough, including the Debian project. Debian uses the alien tool to convert between Deb packages and RPM packages. Mandrake and SuSE packages can SOMETIMES be exchanged, but RPM packages tend not to be very portable because vendors ADD IN dependencies to their own features, so often you end up having to get srpm packages (source packages) and rebuild them to remove vendor specific dependencies. But to answer your question, Yast has tools that enable you to install individual packages.

Back to my thing about installing Knoppix on disk, I really liked the 3.1 release, but the 3.2 release totally impressed me, and it has a much improved hard disk installation routine. Here's a snip from the HTML page about installing Knoppix on disk:

Harddisk Installation Procedure

Boot the Knoppix CD. Wait for the boot prompt to come up.

Choose your language. Most of us speak English, so we'll type "boot: knoppix lang=en" then press ENTER (you don't type the 'boot:' part, of course) This is not necessary if you get the english .iso.

Wait till the system is fully launched, including the KDE desktop.

Start knx-hdinstall Script. Press CTRL-ALT-F1, to get a root console and type knx-hdinstall OR you can click the black/blue terminal with shell icon at the bottom of the taskbar, which opens a the terminal, and enter sudo knx-hdinstall.

because my friend's here trying desparately to install Win2K Advanced Server on a known working P3 1.1/512MB (the old original multiboot) and it keeps rebooting on him without completing the install. failure sux, eh billy?

I'm not sure they should be called secrets .
as much as the "normal" user, like the ones in the other threads,
just want the OS to come up and do what they want
"auto-magically"
not secrets , just in the background ,...... unexplored .............

I always have a legal copy of windows and it's free
windows comes upi faster for me
always more upgrades then I want
you got me on that one
my hardware always works
it turns itself off
windows has wizards wizards wizards

And Linux has druids, druids, druids...
depending on your distro/Desktop

dhcpcd is gone, /sbin is trashed... howto fix a bad FS error:

boot from knoppix 3.2 CD.

reiserfsck --check says bad node can only be fixed with --rebuild-tree, so...

partimage the whole thing, 7GB packs into 5 CD-R sized files.

reiserfsck --rebuild-tree fails, aw darn!

partimage, restore the broken fs.

mc, copy the whole thing file-by-file to another reiserfs. write down all the failed files, each on one line of a text file.

mkreiserfs-- a new fs erasing old. mc again, copy the whole thing back.

goto another slack 9 install, cd /sbin, then restore all missing files from bad node:

for file in `cat /missingfiles.txt`; do cp $file /otherpartition/sbin; done

chroot /otherpartition, run grub-install, it fails, reboot, grub still works. who cares? back to normal, try THAT in ANY M$ product.

i used to use the evil micro**** creation called win****, but it got so unstable, i even reinstalled the OS, and it froze during install. i tried 10 times. so now i use linux (mandy 8.2) and i just love it, but there is only one reason that i want to use windoze (not that i can nemore ). SOLDAT!!!!! that game, that awesome $9, multiplayer, supercool, like quake in 2d but it rocks, nice and bloody, incredible game!!!!! its so awesome, i think ill go beg to icculus

Just one word : OPEN SOURCES !!!
When Mr. Bill Gates will make it possible for someone
to access the sources of Windows ...
But once again, it is related to the fact that Linux is free
and Windows not

I use Mandrake 9.1 for my work at home. It comes with Open Office suite which can do everything I want to do in an office suite. It comes with Mozilla browser (which has more features that IE like tabbed browsing and blocking javascript from opening more windows. I haven't found any feature like this in IE). It has all the software to listen to music, watch DVDs, VCDs, etc write CDs (CDR, CDRW). Recently I wanted to use Prolog for an academic assignment. If I wanted to use windows, I would have to get some Prolog implementation. But my Mandrake had GNUProlog installed. I use Netbeans and SunOne studio IDE for developing Java applications on Linux. They perform better on linux than XP. (My experience)

The only thing I could not do was I could not get Rational Rose up and running (I did not put enough time to get it done yet.) and dictate to my word processor. ( like Dragon naturally speaking.)

I only paid $69 for my Linux distro + international shipping and handling. If I used Windows I would have to pay atleast $300 for all that software.

OK you can do almost everything that you can do on Windows but why I don't like Windows is that I don't like wnybody (or any company) dictating terms on things I do on my computer if it doesn't harm anybody. If Mandrake does something I don't like I can easily switch to some other distro.

Linux networking seems to be faster.

I work for a company who only uses MS products, but I have found a few Linux programs run faster and more reliable than MS.

Lets just say I can do some basic computer checking - whos on-line and when - in Linux far faster than windows has been able to.

Many people have made all kinds of claims about what Windows software can and cannot do and also about what Linux software can and cannot do. I'm a real Linux software advocate, but I'm also a practical person, and I try to be as fair as possible in my personal assessment of software (and of things in general).

Though many of us seem to have no love of either Microsoft or Windows, I would assert that Windows software is generally easy to install, runs on virtually any known software, is familiar, and works better than some people here care to admit.

At the same time, because of it's simplicity, Windows software was not originally designed with any thoughts of security at all, instead, it was designed for easy access. Though that is changing, Microsoft and Windows software are continually under attack for various security holes. The situation is much improved, but even recently, Windows systems have been the subject of various attacks.

In contrast, though Linux systems are not completely immune from such attacks either, they tend to be significantly easier and quicker to repair, and the frequency and incidence of attacks, though on the increase, is markedly less than that of Windows systems.

The other big area where Windows tends to lose is in the trade offs between simplicity, ease of use, and extensibility and flexibility. Typically (though there may be a few exceptions to this) Windows systems are designed to work one way and only one way. This, on one hand, makes them extremely easy to set up, configure, and use, but extremely difficult to fix or modify, should a problem ever arise.

In contrast, Linux trades off a bit more complexity with an infinitely more flexible software design. You can plug in your favorite window manager, desktop manager, no manager at all, a huge number of different text editors, word processors, Web browsers, and applications in many different categories.

Windows offers more applications, Linux offers more application and system flexibility. At the present time, Windows has a big edge in commercial applications. That edge, however, is beginning to soften as Linux begins to move into the mainstream in all market segments. One could successfully argue that Linux server software is already mainstream and that embedded systems are strongly moving toward Linux software, too. The Linux desktop is maturing the most slowly of the three major categories (server, desktop, embedded systems), but it also shows signs of maturation.

I view Linux software as workable and usable in all market segments and the leader in the server space, certainly the one to watch there, above both UNIX and Windows in the next three years. In the desktop space, I still see Linux software as being small and somewhat immature, but growing at a more rapid pace than any other space. I see the embedded system space as evolving but already viable and growing at a pace similar to the desktop space.

Each person and each company needs to evaluate what benefits they get from the software they are using and evaluate the cost of those benefits. Linux has some compelling benefits, the question for each person to ask is whether those benefits are worth some of the costs - the biggest cost is the cost of change. The best time to evaluate such change is when a new system or a replacement system is under consideration. In such situations, I believe that Linux software is well worth considering. Personally, it's what I prefer to use whenever possible.

I think the only great thing windows have is MS Visual C++. I think this is the best IDE for C/C++ developing. Actually the great feature in MSVC is the debugger. This is the best debugger I have ever used -> fast, stable(well... how could be a windows program stable??) and really user friendly.
I have tryed Linux's Anjuta, but its debugger is rather slow and buggy. Yes, I use Anjuta when I write some simple app, but for large projects MSVC is the best. May be this program is the only reason I keep my Win2K (except some games)

I don't know KDevelop (especially with QT-Designer) is kinda nice...and nothing beats the feel of coding in Vim with a bunch of term windows

I've been able to develop, debug, read news, compose Email, and even browse the Web from Emacs. It really is an operating system environment except for the kernel interfaces to the system devices. I use other tools besides Emacs, but for an IDE, Emacs is what I use with great success. It interacts with CVS, too, so you can check out and check in code modules into a software repository.