With the new releases of SuSE and Mandriva imminent I was curious what people think of the two side by side. Strengths, weaknesses, etc.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I don't know SUSE but Mandriva behaves well.I configured it for a couple of hours on next day admit some bugs in application settings disable them and now I use it for 5 -th day without serious problems.Internet is OK ,DVD,Divx,mp3 are OK.Printer(Canon i455) and my GSM works fine,bluetooth too.Almost full hardware support.There are some little problems but it is normal for beta.

I think their both bloated, but that's just my opinion. Mandriva seemed a little slow to me.

Suse doesn't come with DVD or MP3 support, but you don't need club membership for NVIDIA drivers, etc.

With distros, people who claim they're bloated:

1. Didn't customize the install
2. Didn't select the minimal install
3. are elitists who think that all Linux users should be forced to download 3,000 packages and resolve all dependencies by hand

Pick at least two of the three above.

(hint: do a custom install, don't install what you don't want/need and stop whining)

I totally agree with you. People complain of bloat but they are not forced to install everything thats on the distro.

Anyway I think that Suse and Mandriva are both excellent distros. Try both and then pick your favorite one.

I ALWAYS do a custom install. Nonetheless their slow, even after you disable unneeded porcesses. But maybe it's just me.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use them, just what I think...
I also agree with what you said about the "elitists", I generally us the built -in package manager.

I've run SuSE on lowly dual Celerons (Celeron 300A overclocked to 417Mhz) and it's far from slow. I did take the time to compile a kernel with optimizations and of course do NOT turn on the composite extensions in Xorg. The system ends up being at least as responsive as Windows XP, only with Linux I have full control over the system, a total absence of fascist DRM, and full application suites for free - LEGALLY. Microsoft can't beat that!

Also take the time to make sure that DRI is enabled so that you get video acceleration. If it's still slow, turn off eye candy like animated toolbars, etc (I always turn those particular features ON since they actually require minimal CPU time).

I'd agree with that sentiment - I've got a "minimal" Fluxbox-based custom install of 2005LE taking up around 500-600 mb of disk space....... I've also got Fluxbox-based Gentoo, Arch and Debian (Sid) installs using a very similar initial app set - ie very little other than Flux/Rox/Eterm/Nedit/Firefox etc......and strangely enough..... they're all very similar in terms of desktop responsiveness and general snappiness - Mandriva certainly holds it's own.

Incidentally, I've got custom installs of both SUSE P.E.R and a 2006 beta - 2006 boots quicker (by around 10 seconds - both stripped services) , and for me, is a fraction snappier in terms of desktop responsiveness (both based on a stripped-down "KDE").

Regards a choice between 2006 and SUSE 10, ideally you should try both, and see what you like - very few, if any "FREE" (as in, not buying) distros do everything you want them to "out of the box" - in almost every case you'll probably find yourself adding certain capabilities and features to your distribution post-install........ as ever, it's a case of getting a good solid distribution to start with (ideally with a good package management system) and then start adding capabilities to it, post-install.

Good luck, and as ever, try a variety of distributions

I'm going to have to go a head and disagree with you there. . . mmkey.

Well think of it this way, there is a trade off for fully custom vs hand holding... as a system admin you don't want to sit at each station and custom each box so it runs well. No, you want something that runs well out of the box.

As well, the average person who does not know that much or cares to learn that much about computers just want's it to work.

Yes, you can trim Fedora, SuSE, or Mandriva down to a lean mean desktop... and it bloody well rocks as a desktop at that. But were they are bloated, they shines at management. I can't stand YaST2... bloody slow to load and go through... but for a mass deployment it's kickstart ability is very useful.

So it boils down to this...

It's your box, it's your choice... we have been afforded the choice to use what we want how we want it. So use that choice and have fun.
if Fedora is too bloated for your liking and you want to do things by hand... COOL! Power to you.

I myself use Ubuntu and Slackware... They work well for what I need.

So in other words, even the almighty Microsoft Windows wouldn't fit the bill there, because out of the box Windows is useless and requires manual intervention, and roll-out tools are a nightmare at best. Scripting languages are weak, or if you want to go vbs, extremely time-consuming, whereas distros such as oh, SuSE and Novell Linux Desktop are designed with corporate deployments in mind from the get-go. So I'm sorry, I'll have to disagree with ya there, mmmmmkay?

Don't you love it when an argument can be flipped upside down and be applied against the original, and be 100% correct? The truth is, EVERY platform is going to require tweaking be it Linux, Windows, OS/X, or {foo}.