Amazon.com: Suse Linux 9.0 Professional Edition: Software

This operating system has all the benifits of windows: easy to use, autodetects almost all hardware devices, is compatabale with NTFS (the windows file system) and using certain applications (like WINE) you can even play windows games on it. The difference is you also have the extrememly powerful LINUX operating system at your disposal...

Even logged in as the administrator with windows it will still prevent you from performing a huge variety of tasks, but with Suse you can log in as "root" (linux's version of administrator) and do whatever you deem necessary, then log back in under your normal profile...

its a win-win situation at less than half the cost of the current version of windows xp.. (not to mention the incredible variety of applications that come with suse, which I might add are almost entirely free!) I know some other distrobutions of linux are free (almost all of them in fact) but I've found suse to be more user-friendly (especially since I myself am switching over from being a long-time windows user)

If you're asking yourself "does he sell this product seperately or something" nope.. I'm the network admin for a small company and I do a lot of tech support, I've simply found this operating system to be better than all those I've tried before...

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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent - but with a few areas for improvement, October 30, 2003

By	"rickwright01" (Baton Rouge, LA United States) - See all my reviews

I switched from RH 9.0 to SuSE 9.0 Pro because of a few concerns/frustrations with Redhat. (1) Difficulty with configuring access to the Windows network at my workplace, (2) RH's failure to recognize my new box's graphics card (Radeon 9200), (3) Redhat's shift in emphasis/philosophy away from developing and supporting directly Linux for the "average user".

So far SuSE 9.0 is doing well on the above concerns plus many others. YaST is overall an excellent way to control bootloader configuration, important for someone like me who messes with several OSes. (RH does not make it so easy.) Or network access/configuration. And many other issues. I am browing our Windows network with no problems. And SuSE 9.0 has supposedly added excellent support for accessing numerous dialup ISP's - a feature I admit I have not had cause to try yet. (Our family uses Netzero, which normally one cannot access under Linux.)

Installation was not as easy/smooth as Redhat. Choosing software packages is a bit clumsy the way YaST is set up - I had to search for Evolution, Mozilla, GAIM and then "check" them for installation. I prefer Redhat's partitioning - although I admit SuSE does give more control. (Primary or extended? Ah!) My new Athlon box had trouble reading the software packages on the DVD - had to use the regular CD's, which defeats the whole point. And I am still having trouble getting it to work on my DELL Inspiron 8200 laptop, my main machine - so far SuSE boots to a blank screen. That's not very helpful and pretty much hoses the reason I bought it.

That having been said, SuSE is still excellent. It seems much faster than pokey RH 9.0, much much better selection of software packages (Pingus!!! OpenOffice.org 1.1! KDE 3.1! and so on!), hardware detection/compatibility is stronger (whither Fedora?!?). Redhat (now Fedora) can learn some lessons - but frankly the reverse is also true. At least I didn't get a blank screen when using RH 9.0 on my laptop.

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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid, complete linux for the power user and linux geeks, November 23, 2003

By	FERNANDO CASSIA "-Writer and Computer Geek-" (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

SuSE 9.0 Pro is everything every knowledgeable linux user could want. And this is precisely its main disadvantage, as converting new users from Windows with this distro is going to be a bit difficult due to the learning courve.

The documentation and the OS in general follows the original trend of using linux acronyms instead of "plain english" in several critical places that leave the begginer confused. For example: why the need to label the Video Configuration editing program "sax2"?. If you tell a windows user just beggining with Windows "You just need to run Sax2" do you imagine the look on his face?.

Don't get me wrong, SuSE 9.0 pro is a great linux for the linux connoisseur. If you are "into" Linux and you are looking for the best distro (specially after the news that Red Hat is leaving the retail space and end-user market), get SuSE 9.0 pro. Installing it from the dual-side DVD-ROM is a pleasure!. This is a good excuse to get a dvd-rom drive if you don't have one already.

Instead, if you are trying to convert someone from Windows to Linux, you will have better results by introducing him/her to something like LindowsOS 4.0.

The only "bad point" I give SuSE 9.0 pro is that the default config is too "kde-centric". For instance the default browser is Konqueror with is highly annoying (for example you try to bookmark a web page using the familiar ctrl-d and you get a Duplicate browser window opened). Once you switch to Mozilla 1.4 as the default browser, everything gets useable again.

I think one of the first things Novell should do with this product is to remove the reliance on half-baked KDE utils and use the "best of breed" tools for every area. (For example: why include KDEMail at all, with decent email clients already in the package in the form of Mozilla Mail and Ximian?).

OpenOffice 1.1 is okay, yet I would like to see them including the full StarOffice 7 suite from Sun, instead of the "free" opensource version.
A cd-burning and dvd-burning program is included!.