[Techtalk] RedHat - Fedora Linux - alternatives?

[Rasjid Wilcox]

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On Monday 29 September 2003 16:13, Eeva Järvinen wrote:
> Hmm.  Fedora having mailing-list-only support means I'll switch.  Any
> opinions on SuSE?

I recently installed SuSE 8.2 (being a long time RH user with a brief look at 
Debian) and I must say it is one of the nicest Linux setups I've used.

>  I've understood it has something similar to up2date,
> called YaST2.  Is it any good?

Seems okay, but I've only been running SuSE for about a month.  I only trialed 
up2date on RH for a month too, so I can't give much of a comparison.  
However, there is a little red icon in my system tray telling me that there 
are important updates at the moment (I've been away from home for a couple of 
weeks) - which IIRC is similar to what up2date did.

Also, you can 'Configure Fully Automatic Update' which will install updates 
once a day without any need for user interaction.  This is just a cron job, 
so could almost certainly be edited to run more often if desired.

>  Are SuSE's servers well available?

I believe in the past they had a reputation for being hard to connect to, but 
recent reviews and my personal experiences suggests that this problem has 
largely been fixed.

>  How's
> the Gnome support?
>  SuSE's website lists Gnome 2.2 as being supported, but
> does it have hidden problems?

No idea.  I run KDE.

> What I want is some sort of commercial backing; I'm sure I could work my
> way through slackware, Debian or perhaps even GNU/Hurd, but I don't want
> to; there're more important things in my life.  I'm willing to pay some
> money for a good quality update service; I don't need the very latest
> software (but I do want Gnome 2 or newer+new or backport-security-patched
> sendmail+mutt), I dislike very bleeding-edge technology (too much work).

As it currently stands I am seem to be using the Yast2 update service for 
free.  A few months after a new release, SuSE make that release available for 
free install, but as a FTP install (no iso images) only.  The only things 
missing are a few packages that cannot be redistributed in this manner due to 
licensing restrictions.

I would rate SuSE 8.2 as my best Linux experience yet, although this could 
partly reflect that I've been using KDE on Redhat for quite a while, and as 
far as I can tell Redhat never really put the same effort into KDE as they 
put into Gnome.  But my fonts look really good (except in OpenOffice - anyone 
else using SuSE find that?) and GPG integration with KMail works like a charm 
(could never work that out under RH).  And in general is 'just works'.

Since you have a Gnome focus, I don't really know how SuSE will be for you.  
Personally, if you have the bandwidth for the free (other than ISP charges) 
FTP install, I'd suggest giving SuSE a go.  If you were in Australia, I'd 
offer to burn you some CD's and post them to you.  Since (based on your email 
address) you are elsewhere, perhaps someone closer to wherever you are may be 
able to offer the same (assuming you are interested).

Cheers,

Rasjid.

- -- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +10 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net
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