I haven't done anything with Mandrake 8.0 0r SuSe 7.2, but I have set up Mandrake 7.0
an SuSe
7.1. The Mandrake installs easier. Partitioning was a little strange after Caldera but
easy to
do. It found all of my hardware except the printer. Checked printtool after an found
that
Mandrake supports very few printers compare to Caldera. That may have been one of the
improvements in 8.0. On the positive side it installs both Gnome and kde desktops so
you can
fool around with Gnome if you like.. The kde uses kppp which is a dream to setup. If
you try to
setup through Gnomes linuxconf get set for heavy rolls. It's cumbersome an creates
error
messages without any meaning but fortunately if you setup your internet connection
with kde
there is apparently some sort of sticky function between that also setups up your
internet for
Gnome.
SuSe 7.1 was a little more complicated to install. Partitioning was plain weird and it
also
gives you 4 different choices to boot from. Which are three places you can make
mistakes. Or
you can tell the thing to use the entire hd. That solves most of your partitioning
problems,
but SuSe likes to install the swap at the head of the linux partition. I prefer the
end that
way I can later increase without too much trouble. Although you can add later swap
through the
terminal window command an modifying the boot up files. Once you have done everything
on the
install SuSe 7.1 loads packages. At the end of that though your not done. If you don't
know
what type of video card ou're running you can log in as root and give SuSe the
superprobe
command. This can lock up your system, but if it works you stand a pretty good chance
of
getting your video card ided. Then you have to go back to command line an order yast.
This
allows you to determine if the driver for your card has been loaded. If not, and one
exists,
you can load in yast. Then once again back to the command line order Sax. Sax allows
you in
Graphic format to configure your mouse, keyboard,monitor an desktop. Unfortunately it
doesn't
always work. I have an S3 compatible video card on one of my dual Mandrake systems.
Mandrake
identified an set it up with no fuss. SuSe, on the other hand, identified the card as
an S3
compatible, but would give me no better 250 colors with the same card that Mandrake
was running
thousands of colors. Hint. doing Sax setup there is a test button on the desktop
setup. Use it.
Don't assume that because you have set the card and desktop up correctly that it will
run. You
may have to fudge things a little. Once setup SuSe is fairly easy to operate and it
does a
fair to middling job of installing system hardware. But, as I said this comparison is
for
Mandrake 7.0 and SuSe 7.1 they may have improve all this or even made it worse.
Lee
Mel Roman wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I'm using a Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 system now. I never
> bothered to upgrade to 2.4 (deciding instead to
> wait for the next generation Caldera distribution
> which would have the latest kernel, KDE desktop,
> etc...). I've heard mixed reviews about the new 3.1
> product and am finding my present system is getting
> dated, so I'm considering other distributions.
>
> I'd like to get a distribution that has all of the
> productivity/internet desktop stuff set up already so
> that I can immediately get productive without spending
> hours downloading things, installing them, and getting
>
> them to work. In particular, I need a good browser
> with JAVA support, 128-bit encryption, Adobe
> Acrobat, various plug-ins ,etc... ****already set
> up**** so that I can immediately do just about
> anything
> on the internet that I can currently do from IE in the
> Windows world. Although I'm a newbie currently
> playing with Linux as a home desktop system, I see
> myself eventually setting up my old P166 as a
> file/print server for the household. It would also
> host a relational database (such as MySQL ) . As a
> developer, I'm also interested in the development
> tools.
>
> I've looked at the websites for various distributions
> and the two new ones that have caught my eye are
> Suse 7.2 and Mandrake 8.0. I've seen some positive
> first impressions of Suse posted on mail lists, but am
> also looking at Mandrake because of its reputation as
> having very intuitive/easy install, admin tools,
> etc... Another issue might be availability of RPMs for
> new applications (are there more application RPMs
> developed for one distribution than for the other?)
>
> It occured to me that some of you out there may have
> had an opportunity to compare the two. Perhaps there
> are other factors I should be considering. Would
> anyone out there care to share their
> opinions/experiences?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mel
>
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