I am planning to migrate from Windows XP and have chosen Suse Linux 9.1 as my destination O/S of choice. However, I need to know which one to get. Which O/S (Personal 9.1 / Professional 9.1) can both:

(1) Support wireless networking

(2) Share files with Windows machines

I am leaning towards getting Suse Linux Personal 9.1 for now, only if it is capable of performing the 2 tasks mentioned above.

Please advise! Thanx.

A good place to start is with SuSE Personal 9.1 since that is a free download while you have to pay for the Professional version.

I am running SuSE Pro 9.2 and used SuSE Personal 9.1 previously.

The big difference for me was having access to all of the development tools which do not come with Personal. You can download them, but the dependencies are a lot of trouble.

In principle, I know that you can do both (1) and (2) but I haven't done either at the moment.

I will plugin a WiFi dongle tonight and try (1).

As for (2), check out Samba in the 9.1 Personal specs.

Mark

You can get the personal version which should allow you to get the wireless and share files with windoz... You can then update the 9.1 personal to a professional version at no charge via FTP using YAST (the setup program for SUSE)
It might be better if you are planning on buying the software from Novell to get the 9.2 profesional update wich should run for less than 60 bucks... Whch is less than updating an antivirus licence ;-). This "update contains the same CD's as the 9.2 professional but differs on the printed manuals that come with it... either way it is worth it and you will pay way less than any windoze apps.

Good luck and welcome to SUSE

I have been doing some research and from what I have learned it seems that 9.1 Personal does not come with Samba. Therefore, it is not capable of networking with Windows machines within a LAN or WLAN. Can anyone confirm or disprove this? Suse 9.1 Professional seems to be a wiser choice since I have to integrate the machine into a Windows network.

You can add samba.

samba.org