[TAG] Re: which distribution?

[Tom Brown]

Dean,

    Let me add my two cents to the discussion.

    I've been spending the last few months migrating my home computer 
from Windows XP to Linux. I've tried several distributions. The first 
was Mandrake 8.2 (friendly, but hardware support was incomplete and the 
default distro couldn't handle 1GB of memory), then Red Hat 9 (not as 
friendly, but more hardware support, and is a big commercial distro), 
and finally SuSE 9 Professional.

    I switched to SuSE when Red Hat announced the "end of life" for 
version 9 (due this April). SuSE makes it easy to configure both 
hardware (like setting up printers) and system services (like sharing 
directories with Windows boxes) using Yast. I love it! I found mounting 
my NTFS volumes from XP easy, but had to do a little  finagling with the 
/etc/fstab file to make them browsable and readable by my non-root user 
id (the default is readable only by root). It comes with lots of 
applications, and the default window manager is KDE, which makes it more 
comfortable (IMHO) for the Windows user. I've used a program called Wine 
to run Windows apps, but frankly find it useful for Microsoft Office 97, 
one or two games, and little else. I stay away from Windows programs on 
Linux wherever possible.

The SuSE CD (the DVD as well) not only contains the bootable installer, 
but also has an automated GUI-based system repair tool in case something 
goes wrong down the road (because, like me, you tend to do stupid things 
to your computer).

Of the three distros I've tried, I like SuSE the best. YMMV.

Good Luck.

-- 

Tom Brown  -- There are 10 kinds of people in
              the world: those who understand
	      binary, and those who don't