Hmmmm that is very interesting! So they just charge you for packaging and I guess some LIMITED support huh?

This is a very strange thing...this Linux business model...lol

Ok...I think I have the whole picture now.

Thank you all very much for yor assistance and patience.

Let me stress again how confusing all this is to someone new to Linux. and your participation and patience is a tremendous benefit!

Thank you for that and remember this when you come across the next NOOB!

Oh, I am sure I will be back too...lol

A bit late maybe, but I'll add my vote to Suse...especially since it has tweaked KDE very well, and Yast works like Windows Configuration Center. It's easy to learn, and flashy, but rather slow.

So now I'm trying Ubuntu, a great, fast, simple distro, and you can learn about Gnome. It's still beta though, the first official realease is scheduled late October.

Not late at all. I am going with Suse 9.1 but I plan on trying Gentoo, Fedora again, Ubuntu....and who knows what else.

Thanks for your input.

Oh, what did you mean when you said Suse was kind of slow? Slow how?

He means YaST can be a little slow to load... but that's because it encompases the configuration of enarly the entire OS.. from networking services (DNS, WebServer) to package management, allowing it to pull updates from an update CD or snatch 'em up from the web... It's not bad though... And SuSE itself isn't very slow... It ran better than red hat and fedora did on my notebook...

About the cost... Yes essentially you are paying for the packaging and support... A good rule to follow (which I always exceed) is to purchase a boxed copy of a distro of your choice, at least once a year... this is not very expensive... and it helps to support open source...

Sure there's people out there using linux for 10 years probably who have never bought a copy.. but that doesn't help to support development does it?? Of course those people probably ARE the developers... lol... Anyways.. good luck to ya.. and I'm sure you'll enjoy SuSE!!

Ok...cool.

Thanks guys for all your help.

I think I will support Linux and go buy Suse 9.1 Pro this weekend.

It is not a bad price and there are tons of free distros I can experiment with at no risk.

I went to the book store yesterday and read about 6 articles in various mags on Linux distros for NOOBS.

They pretty much recommend Xandros and Redhat for new business users. For home users - Suse, Mandrake. The freebies they recommended were Suse Personal and Fedora Core 2 Final.

They recommend Slackware, Gentoo, Debian ONLY after you have a solid grounding and they cannot agree on which one since it depends on your desires.

I find all of this fascinating. In some ways I like just buying a program like Stardock to customize Win XP...but toying and finding a distro I feel is "who I am" is certainly a unique experience that I cannot wait to explore!

Ok..this topic is closed. I have decided and I just want to say thanks to all of you that guided me!

Yay!

Congratulations and thank you for supporting the community...

BTW... just so you know: by purchasing the box set of 9.1 Pro you can still install it on as many computers as you want... because unlike with the Red hat updates.. you are getting a user log in name for support.. not a machine identification tag...

FWIW - although my favorite distro is Slackware, I am definitely impressed with Suse and have it installed on one of my machines. It's a solid distro, no doubt, and I think you're making a good choice.

Regarding installing Suse via FTP I think this article does a good job explaining it. Additionally, this link to the Suse documentation online is excellent.

Lastly, I applaud your decision to purchase Suse. What I would encourage everyone to do is that once you've settled on a distro, to support it by purchasing rather than downloading the subsequent versions that are released. The more support the distros get, the more time their developers can devote to them. -- J.W.

There is of course MEPIS, a live distro allowing for testing etc before installing, or not. you can download or purchase from mepis.org.

Suggest you check it out before you spend your hard earned.

Free to D/L $10.00usd to purchase the disk.

Info screenshots here.

HTH

Mathew

One More Vote For Slackware, it tends to work vary well and has pretty up to date packages. Tho stuff like abiword is a few versions behind (i think slack 10's in 2.0.6 and 2.0.10 is out), but you can normaly find packages for stuff like that in the slackware-current area on slack mirrors. Anyway, if you ACTULY want to learn how to use linux and not just have a GUI stuck in your face (SUSE uses YaST to configure everything......). My Recommendation is learn the basic commands, get the hang of emacs, vim etc and then move to slackware.

Gentoo is the way to go...nuff said

I'll throw in a pitch for Mepis, too. I've introduced 8-10 now ex-windows users to Linux using it this year alone. It is very simple to install, and, while maintaining a fairly simple menu list of apps, has plenty of power for you to explore as you learn. It is based primarily on Debian sid (unstable), but well tested. It's worth checking out on your search for the perfect distro* - http://www.mepis.org




(*There is no perfect distro. That's why you *have* to try a bunch of them over the years. It's The Law. )

No personal exp with SuSE 9x, but ran 8.2 awhile back and was sorely disappointed with the un-Linux like interface, packages (no smtp, webserver, sendmail, etc). However, for a cherry popper distro, I guess its not too bad. YaST makes things really manageable for people not warmed up to command line (BASH) interfaces. Installing Gentoo 2004.2 on an old laptop right now, emerging like mad and waiting for that to finish so I can compile my kernel. A few things about Gentoo for the 'noobs', of which I am an 'advanced noob':

1. Don't let the mysticism and awe surrounding this distro scare you off. Its not really that difficult on the condition that a) your'e reading comprehension is above a 5th grade level, b) you know how to google, and c) you know how to ask intelligent questions or at least stupid questions in an intelligent fashion.

2. I am on my second install of Gentoo (scrapped the first one using default kernel, partitioning, etc from the Gentoo Handbook) and it only takes about as much time to install as say Windows Service Pack 2 - one caveat however . . . you have to do the work.

3. There is extensive and I mean extensive documentation, so if you can read and are willing to prepare, just jump in and do it right the first time. . . Get Gentoo

I SuSe a good distro for a web and mail server? I'm looking for a new server distro. Thanks.

Every distro is good for server. Choose the one you like or know.

Actually, depends on if you are using SuSE personal or not. Last experience I had with SuSE personal (8.2) there was no apache server included with the packages. I might be wrong, but if you are familar enough with installing your own packages you should be ok. And despite the fact that I no longer use SuSE as my personal distro (don't like the gui or YaST that much), I still believe it is a solid product and should suit your needs.