“It has been several months since we began our quest to find the best desktop GNU/Linux distribution of the Fall/Winter 2002 batch. We have considered lots of distributions that attempt to innovated and streamline the Linux experience and now we consider who succeeded to push beyond the rest and win our award.” Find out the results here.
Who Will Win ofb.biz’s Shootout?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“…And, as always, SuSE beats the competition concerning documentation, with a very hefty box full of manuals, including a 450-page guide that should cover almost any basic issues you may want to know about. SuSE’s inclusion of a DVD copy of the distribution is also laudable and rounds out an already very nice package…Eduardo Sánchez and myself are both avid Mandrake Linux users, and while we prefer the Free Software philosophy and licensing behind Mandrake Linux, we agreed that this was not MandrakeSoft’s round to win.”
SuSE would seem to have exactly the right formula for seriously taking Linux somewhere on the desktop – packaging it like a solid, professional product rather than some kind of cobbled together freeware toolkit for hackers. I don’t know much about Linux distros in general, but based on this review (and others) SuSE, and maybe SCO, are the only distros I would actually consider buying and installing.
Actually, I may avoid SCO because everyone seems to hate them now and I can’t see the justification myself for the lawsuit they have enacted against IBM and support that…
http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=216
Otherwise, I do have a biased fondness for SCO just because I was a Xenix user once upon a time, back in the day, and I liked it.
Its too bad that they didn’t consider Libranet. Its debian based with an easier installer and graphical configuration tools. Its default desktop is Icewm, which not please everyone but other desktops are a click away or you can apt-get them. Stellar.
I’m not bashing Suse. Its a fine distro and deserves the award. I just wish more distros were considered.
I personally liked Suse for the in depth documentation-in dead tree! very good when you want to learn what your doing before you start messing up the HDD. Unfortunately, most of the App documentation (apache, mysql, etc) was still in manpages in the version I have (7.2 maybe it’s better now!) making it very nice and pretty, but still not too useful to a newbie. For $80 I shouldn’t have to search around the web to set up and use standard Linux Apps (apache, MySql, PHP, etc) If you know enough about Linux to search out and plunk down the $$, they shouldn’t be telling you to look stuff up they include in their distro. I think that’s why a lot of people try Linux and can’t stick with it–cause they can’t get enough of the right answers in the time they allocate to get productive with it.
True desktop distros are nice–I’ve have Suse 7.2 & have tried older versions of mandrake and slack…but Knoppix takes the cake. I say that partly because I have an older goofy monitor that Suse (Be too) could never make work correctly–Knoppix hit the very first time..with no editing anything. Mostly, because there is very little hardware config on fairly standard hardware. No partitioning, no config files, just plug ‘n play. True, it’s very limited, but it “Just Works!” Freeing you to learn Linux, not hardware config.
Maybe the problem is that there are two different markets–those who want to plug-in ‘n just get going, and never really know what goes on [MS & apple make a killing off them now]; and those who want to get in the nuts and bolts of the thing. The reviewers typically already know what to do for apps, so user training gets brushed under the rug. The distros have a good hold on the first group [Linux is more-or-less like windows for your typical secretary], but it’s the later group that will speed it’s adoption [the Windows sys admins, IT guys, etc..] but they need direction to rip out all that VB installed [& other MS crutches] all over the place! Most boxed distros don’t provide that direction. If they can’t have confidence to accomplish all the same tasks as on windows, then they can’t relpace the desktops without fearing for their jobs.
Ehrm.. heello??? Linux is like 15 years away from the desktop market.
User friendly installation and some ad-on software seems to be all that matters… how about simplicity to work logically on the box for a year without ever having any hazzle whatsoever when updating anything or adding/deleting software… browsing the web and need new codecs etc.
Linux is for the servermarket and for geeks… I just don’t understand why somebody would even try or want to move it to the desktop, it’s just a step back in evolution…
And I’ll bet XP gets an A.
I dunno. They had very intelligent things to say in their earlier shootouts, but I cannot understand how they had all their problems with installation of the various Linuxes. I am no fan of Red Hat, but what kind of computer did they try installing it on? And the Mandrake 9.0 problems they cite may be true, although I’ve been running it for several months and I would it argue that it has improved since 8.2. But SuSE? What kind of user experience is it when you try to update your software and YAST2 just hangs, and no servers can be reached? Wouldn’t that be a BIG problem?
I liked SuSE 6.4 when I started using Linux about three years ago, and I may return to it again. I am holding out for Mandrake products, though, because of the company’s policy of making ISOs downloadable and its sizable support community.
I think that’s why a lot of people try Linux and can’t stick with it–cause they can’t get enough of the right answers in the time they allocate to get productive with it.
I don’t understand your argument here. I am not disagreeing with you, but are you saying that when you buy Windows (for a much greater price than you paid for SuSE) that MS provides the necessary documentation and software to get you set up with a webserver easily?
Apache was one of your specific examples, and while I agree that it would be good if SuSE had good docs to help you set it up, I don’t know that it makes historical sense to do it. Apache is an independent app. Sure, it happens to ship in SuSE’s distro, but there are many books about setting up and running apache that would be far more effective than what you will find in a manual that comes with your distro.
How much documentation is the right amount? Well, I LOVE documentation, and I think that they should make as much as possible, but it doesn’t surprise me that they don’t give a total explanation of every single app. Maybe that is something some of these “newbie” distros should look at doing though.
I questioned the Redhat thing myself.
I am using a USB mouse right now and Mandrake 9.0 would not find it. Redhat finds it no problems and it works super. No single bit of my hardware was unsupported. Including my sound card which XP will not find. Am about to upgrade to soundblaster live though.
But it seems these people are fans of KDE and any distro that uses GNOME by default won’t cut it for them.
I really think that Redhat should automatically find and mount all partitions whose filesystems it recognizes. It makes life that much simpler for the newbie. But then again, they do not seem to focussed on the newbie, but the corporate desktop whose focus is far different from that of hobbyist users. I find Redhat a pleasure to work with. All the stuff they romoved in KDE I had no use for anyway, and I think it is pretty newbie proof, i.e, newbies cannot go installing kernel modules or configuring the kernel without really knowing what they are doing.
I’v installed Lindows, Suse 8.1, and Redhat 8.0 and 8.1 beta, and Mandrake 9.
Suse was the most stable and the best video driver support, but all the gnome apps were versions behind, and since their rpm was also versions behind I couldn’t upgrade anything. I couldn’t even install apt-get. Also, it had problems setting up the optical drives and sound also dissappeared once. How it could get to the top of the list, I don’t understand.
Red Hat 8.0 was the second easiest to install, and worked off the bat. I don’t understand why people complain about bluecurve; they can change it if they don’t like it. KDE worked far better on RedHat than Gnome on Suse.
Mandrake 9 I liked but I dropped it in favour of RedHat because there seems to be much more online support for redhat.
Lindows was the only one to get all my hardware set up properly.
I can’t understand why people complain about the price of the click and run. The support ( they will email you responses to questions ) and commercial software included more than makes up for it and so does the ease of installation. More and more I get the feeling that a lot (but not all – I’ve paid for all the distros ,except for the betas ) of Linux users are cheap buggers who resent being asked to pay for anything, no matter how useful it is to them, or how trivial the price.
As for me, I resent the fact that these packages charge me as much as Windows, without offering commensurate ease of installation and driver support.
I’ve only had to install Windows XP once in the past year and that was only when I first bought this PC, and all those versions of linux I’ve installed in the past month alone.
Damm, I’ld like to wring the necks of the people who told me that the nvidia drivers were an easy install.
I don’t want to bash anyone because I did like the review very much, pleasent reading etc. But what cheap alien hardware is this guys and some other Linux-reviews using?
I have installed Redhat on atleast 5 different computers and just come up with ONE hardware issue since version 6.0!!! That were an obscure soundchip, the onboard type.
It’s just not like everything fits the PC and works with Windows so it should work with Linux too. Please quality doesn’t cost much. The soundcard issue were solved by buying a PCI Soundblaster 128 for 10 USD. When I buy an modem I buy a well knowned brand.
hm… just can’t get it why people buy shit when they buy a new ULTRA FAST computer. A PC is more than just Mhz and Ram, the quality is the whole box.
Great that SuSE did win, they seams to get some pieces right and the update problem will be solved on next releases if we should belive the big guys!
I have to agree with the conclusions in the article. I tried Suse 8.1, Mandrake 9.0, and Redhat 8.0. Mandrake 9.0 never got my scroll mouse to work without tweaking. My digital camera was a pain in the neck to setup under Redhat. But under Suse, all that works without any problems. And I absolutly love Yast2. Hands down, it is the best setup tool for available on any Linux distro I’ve used.
But, as we’ve seen before, everyone has there own opinion. Infinite diversity due to Infinte Combinations (IDIC), and all that.
Disclaimer: My opinion is only good until the next version of my distro of choice is released. Or until something better comes along. Which ever comes first.
😉
I can understand their Red Hat problems. I tried installing it on a nForce based mobo and I could never get X running. No fix that I could find either.
I like Mdk 9.0 but the 9.1 RC looks even better. By the time Oo.org releases their bibliography manager I will trully have no reason for my XP partition.
To answer the questions posted here, we used two Dell Dimensions, both with genuine Intel motherboards. One was a PII 450 one a P4 2.6 GHz. The fact that most distributions had no trouble with the basic hardware seems to indicate to me that it was not a hardware problem that killed off Xandros and Lindows. The others only had minor — and varying! — problems.
For $80 I shouldn’t ?? have to search around the web to set up and use standard Linux Apps (apache, MySql, PHP, etc)
Those aren’t standard Linux Apps like KMail or OpenOffice.
Those are server oriented Apps (therefore, very technical).
Still on 7.2 (I mean 7.3 for sure, I’m posting this on a SuSE 7.3) you can install detailed online (html +/or PDF) documentation and nice GUI like kmysql/mysql_navigator or .And you have good backwards compatibily (KDE 1 and KDE 2 Applications) to install software like Kylix2.
SuSE was my first distro here (Europe, it disappointed me later but I still like it. I’m glad they won (nice judgement about redhat and xandros at ofb.biz).
i agree with that article. i really think that suse is a great distro, in fact its been my favorite since version 6.4 professional. go suse! although i do think they should have included libranet. and screw SCO! i hope SuSE gets away from them
None of the testers personally chose Suse as the best distro and yet, in the end, it gets the top prize. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t explain this nonsense.
>> Unfortunately, most of the App documentation (apache, mysql, etc) was still in manpages in the version I have (7.2 maybe it’s better now!) making it very nice and pretty, but still not too useful to a newbie.
SuSE has included Apache’s very complete manual for ages, though not in dead tree format. It is a while since I have used SuSE 7.2, but I am almost certain that the copy of Apache on the install CDs/DVD it is preconfigured (works out of the box).
I have to say that I am surprised SuSE 8.1 won this. I have used SuSE for years (since 6.1) and I have to say 8.1 is the buggiest release I have ever used.