Just wanted to say that I have returned to SuSE after a bitter time wrestling with Mandrake 8.2 which i was testing for a some new computer users.(Realtors with a very basic computer knowledge)

It: would not powerdown, no matter what i did. I tryed editing every file.

It would not accept my Geforce 4 card under any circumstances.On a driver update it became only worse.

In root I was not able to open any editor without the screen going blank while running a Nividia tnt card. lots of error and faults.

The Mandrake control panel would on "hardware list" freeze-up and the screen would go blank.
I thought maybe video cards might be the problem, but i swapped those a couple of times.

The online update only works if you log in and out 2 times in different windows. A known bug (so says paid support) and the web site is a loop-de-loop of French madness.I got always 2 versions of Mandrake Expert with no way to administer support issues.

I think the sytem pre-installed like the new Walmart Mandrake ones might be ok, but trying to configure a new Mandrake installation when I could'nt even log on to root was bad.

With SuSE I have always been able to set things right.

Obviously it was probably a hardware problem, but I think there must be some bugs in their distro.

I don't mean to be unfair, but Mandrake is touted as the easiest distribution, and it may be if your hardware's right and you don't touch anything:
sounds suspiciously similar to my Windows Xp experience.

The truth is that distros like Mandrake, RedHat and even SuSE are meant for workstations not for servers. And yes, Mandrake is the "dumbest" distro