I've installed and used both, so I'll give you a bit of insite. INSTALL Mandrake 8.0 -- 45 minute install with basic configurations added SuSE 7.0 -- Almost 2 hours to a login prompt I don't know anybody personally that could not isntall Mandrake. I was the first out of a group of 5 people to install SuSE. Mandrake is 2 CDs downloaded, and 4 CDs for an install if you buy it. SuSE is 6 CDs to buy, I have no idea about downloading ISOs. CONFIGURATION Mandrake has it'd Drak(e) series. DrakConf, HardDrake, mousedrake, and the like. Most people find them very easy to navigate, and basically like the interfaces. (Personally I still like linuxconf.) SuSE uses it's own configuration tool, called YAST. They actually had YAST and YAST2 in SuSE 7.0. They may have gotten rid of YAST in 7.1 and higher. There's another config tool they have as well, but I can't recall it's name right now. YAST, will get the job done, but is a bit combersome if you ask me. I found it easily to edit config files manually over using YAST, but I have the knowledge to do so. A "newbie" would need to use YAST, and may not fully appreciate the tool. SECURITY Mandrake is pretty secure "right out the box." Firewall software is already installed, just needs to be configured. OpenSSH is installed, and all you need to do is disable telnet. Use ProFTP instead of WU-FTP and you're pretty set. SuSE you need to install OpenSSH, but FTP is locked down pretty well, it uses ProFTP by default. I didn't run into any of the prostfix/sendmail mess either. Security is just about what it is in Mandrake. As far as firewall software, I'm not sure. WORKSTATION Mandrake makes a very good "newbie" workstation. It has some kewl games, it has a lot of apps that you will never know about let alone use, but if you need to do something, it probably has something that can do it. It has a broad choice of windows managers and windows environments to use, all optimized for Mandrake. Especially KDE and GNOME which seem to be very popular. SuSE has access to can install a lot more windows mangers/environments but there are still others that you'd have to install manually. Enlightenment comes to mind. Some of the windows mangers/environments are tied to each other, some people like that, others don't. With a SuSE install, you'll need more configurations to just use the machine as a workstation then you would with Mandrake. But once you get the hang of it, it's really very sound. OVERALL I must say that Mandrake is for everybody. It's a solid workstation for the user that's new to Linux, as well as a very solid machine for a more advanced, power user that run a lot of servers in the background, install lost of apps, recompile test kernels and the like. It can, and does, handle each user very well. I'm an advanced user, and I beat my machine up. There are currently 32 "user" on my machine, I have monitoring tools, and a boat load of mess running. My machine handles it with no problem. (I do have very good hardware as well.) SuSE once configured and setup the way you want it, is very solid. But a brand new user, the "newbie," may run into some problems trying to get it setup that way. ----------------- So in the end, it comes down to what kind of users you are, and what kind of experience you'd like to have for your first Linux distro. Caldera is a distro for a "newbie," I've not used it extensively, as I have other distros, but it's good for a "newbie." Well that's my couple of cents, hope that helps you a little. tdh -- T. Holmes ----------------- UNIXTECHS.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------- "Real Men Use Vi!" Uptime: -------------------------------------------------------------------- 9:07am up 11 days, 20:02, 7 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 -------------------------------------------------------------------- | Hi to everybody, | | I'm deciding which distro use: Mandrake or SuSE. | Does any of you know the strengths and weaknesses of each one of those | distributions ? | | Thanks in advance, | Aldo | ------------------------------------------------------------------
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