Following a previous attempts to run the SuSe LiveDVD, rjlee suggested it could have been a bad burn. This time I used a manufactured copy off a magazine . . . same result.

After trying to load, SuSe ends with kernel panic - no killable processes.

I have 256Mb of ram, and the suggestion to press Scroll Lock and enter mem=256 is a non-starter because SuSe can't be stopped until its crashed, and then it you can't enter anything. I've tried the nodma method with the same result.

Knoppix works fine, even in an old 128Mb PII, so is SuSe 9.2 screwed or what?

The death is probably occurring as SuSE attempts to autodetect hardware. Make sure you select a non-Plug-n-Play OS in your bios. If that fails, it's failing due to an inability to detect the hardware on your system. It's not the first time I've heard of this, but it is the first time with SuSE...

I switched off the Plug-n-Play in the BIOS . . . same result.

If this is meant to be a serious alternative OS . . . dream on, it sucks big time.

I had the Knoppix CD to check my systen could run Linux; I think I'll run the install and stay with it.

Just because this particular Distro will not run on your particular machine, it does not mean it sucks. I can't run Mandrake 10.1 Official on a machine I have, but the distro itself does not suck, just the combination.

You should demo several different distros anyways when first getting into linux. They will all have their own problems. The ones that are best for you might not work for some one else

Although there is a huge range of PC configurations, one of the things they all have in common is RAM, and any OS or application that cannot see it is seriously flawed. I ran SuSe in text mode; it's not easy to see with the speed of the text scrolling but one recuring line I did notice begins Badness in out_of_memory.

This thread and those like it, is Linux's greatest weakness. Most peoples problems with Windoze start after they've installed it and started using it, whereas Linux, like
bluesman2333 experienced with Mandrake, can be a non-starter.

When people go to a car dealer they expect that all the cars being offered will at least have an engine that will run when you turn the key. If some of them don't, then they would very likely tell you that dealer sucks. How many people walk away from Linux because the first one they try dosn't run? That in essence, is the problem that Linux has to overcome.

As tamoneya suggested I did try another, Knoppix, which could suck SuSe up and blow it out in bubbles. It is said that if something is repeated often enough it becomes the truth, and describing Knoppix as a try-out/rescue disk, as so many experienced users do, seems unfair to Knoppix. Its hardware complience is a country mile ahead of the rest, and that to my mind makes it rather more than just a try-out/rescue disk.