I just bought a Linux book with 3 CDs that is supposed to install Fedora. It didn't work.
I wanted to try Linux because I heard so much about it, but I guess I'm stuck with Windows.

Fedora is a joke... Its a 2.5GB mess of RPMS that dont work together nor support needed software. Take Evolution for example.. how many have gotten it to work? if so how much hacking did you have to do to get it to work.. now what other email options are there on Fedora? none packaged with it... Damn i am going back to windows

Never underestimate Novell's capacity to take (or build) something good, then completely run it into the ground. My history with them goes back to 1987 - so I have learned to be very cautious with them.

As a satisfied RH8-9 user, I think I will give Fedora first place for my personal and test machines. The company firewall/mail/web server will run RH Enterprise Entry level. I want to keep that baby up2date and stable. It has been running RH9 for well over 6 months - and has been rock stable, like my other RH machines.

Of course, I wish Suse, Debian, etc. all the best - I do believe in Linux and the power of open source. I am just a little conservative - that's all.

I believe there just a lot of people who can't break the Redhat habit. Redhat left you. Suse 9.0 is supporting the desktop and I have no problem using it. So far it's worked on all the computers that I've run it on. It has a great KDE environment. Yast is the best tool I have used on Linux.
I have tried all the different distributions including Redhat and Mandrake, they're all good. Suse is the best I have used. How many times does Novell have to say they are going to support open source before people start to believe them?
I guess people are just distrustful. I have not tried Suse on a laptop or wireless connection. So I can't comment on that. Maybe I just installed a lot of distributions; I found the install to be easy.

I'm using Fedora now because SuSE 9 would not work with my wireless card and WEP encryption, and, despite being billed as supporting LT Winmodems, refused to work with mine. To add it the misery, after running their update, it would somehow kill my ethernet card too. As it basically became a paperweight, and as SuSE's support sucks, I ditched it.

In addition to the above troubles, SuSE stubbornly refused to use anything other than Konkeror as a web client. I could intall Mozilla using the Yast interface, but SuSE refused to start the program.

The only thing (other than pretty interface) that impressed me was that it required less fiddling to get it to recognize my USB memory key, and it would see and interact with NTFS right out of the box. The rest, though, is downhill from there.

I was very disappointed with SuSE. Although it looks nice, it's a lemon.

My yardstick for evaluating distros is "do they work". SuSE clearly does not for me. Too bad too as I bought the box set. Anybody want to buy it?? Going cheap!!!

I am upgrading from dedrat7.1 to Slackware9.? just as soon as I receive the distribution. I am very tired of being ignored by dedrat.

Hasn't anyone tried Libranet? Easiest install I ever did and it all works. www.libranet.com.

Hi,

I can't say anything about installation, because I have never tried the install wizard for SuSE.

But I can talk about package stability:

I used Mandrake before going for Redhat, and I can say that the packages are _more_ stable in Redhat that in Mandrake.

And just today I have seen the "Gaim" that comes with SuSE 9.0 to miserably SEGFAULT on a laptop of someone who did a standard install of SuSE 9 just after trying to add a buddy in the list and then receiving the call of confirmation of another buddy.

It SEGFAULTed in his SuSE 9 and it worked smoothly well in my Fedora Core 1.

I think that in terms of comparing Linux world with Windows world, it's very important that the packages in the official CDs are rock-solid.

It's the main reason why I changed to Redhat, coming from Mandrake. And for what I have seen today, it's why I'm going to tell people to install Redhat/Fedora, even if they are newbies.

This is from my personal experience, so the sense of package stability is just subjective, but I would like to know if there are any statistics about that or not.

Anyone?

Albert.

My experience with Yast (SuSE 9 Pro) is that it is a lot like linuxconf of yore... it does a lot but a bunch of it just doesn't seem to "take."

UPDATE from Arthur Kevin McGrath: I am installing Fedora on my desktop, a three year old HP Pavilion 6730
with a 256 meg of RAM.

I notice an awful lot of hard disk access **BEFORE** I do any install.
This happens before I even get to the first install screen. It seems as
though Fedora is copying data from the CD to the hard disk. Given that I
am quite a few screens BEFORE the screen that tells Fedora which
partition to use for its install, I am wondering just what is being
written and where.

Fedora does not seem to like being told to install itself on a ReiserFS
partition that was formatted by SuSE 9.0.

I have installed three different versions of RedHat (7 - 8 - 9) and two
different versions of SuSE (8 - 9). Untill SuSE 9.0 came out, I much
preferred the RedHat installation program.

-Kevin

Anaconda....at whatever stage it is is Open Source. Do you think the rest of the world can benefit from Closed Source YaST????.

Think about it. I would rather use a tool which has 2 features less and Open in its use to the community and some "cewl" piece of code we can't really peer into. I really ain't disputing that YaST can't be close source. Things are good the way they are.

But things are good too the way they with now with the communitys involvement with development of Anaconda.