I've been running Slackware on my laptop and Suse on my main machine for quite some time now. Yesterday i decided to give Suse a try on my laptop too (you know i got a bit tired of configuring ANYTHING by hand in Slackware).
The install went without the slightest problem, then came the point when it identified my graphics as: Compaq Armada M700 (which it really is) and this simply blew me away. All hardware was correctly detected and installed. Only downside was my touchpad which i had to configure manually in Sax. Really impressed I went on to install my SMC 54 mbit wireless card. Guess what? It's just a matter of downloading the firmware (it's copyright protected and thus not delivered out of the box) and copying it into a particular directory... THAT'S IT!
The wireless then could be configured within Yast without a single line in a console. The prism54 module support is already compiled into the stock Suse 9.1 kernel, so this distro is the first which is really plug and play on my laptop. Even ACPI works fine out of the box (due to 2.6.x kernel).
This distro is honestly more user friendly than Windows and in my eyes it's currently the most advanced of all distros out there (please don't flame on me you Fedora and Mandrake and whatever users, no pun intended, i'm just so happy that linux is finally on the right track...)

Greetings from Cologne

Wolfgang

i agree with you, however there are a few small niggly bits. read my post on GTK apps and then also get the packman packages for DVD playback and then you'll be happy!

I have to say I agree. After being thoroughly impressed with the Live Evaluation CD I put in an order for Personal Edition, and after installing it the only problems I could find were that my onboard sound wasn't happy (Abit NF7-S) and my mousewheel didn't work. However, after a reboot the sound problem magically fixed itself, and I recently notice that my mousewheel is working as well. SUSE wins the 'magical self-repairing distro' award from me

However, I would have liked to see either a few more packages included or an easier way to acquire new ones. For example, I'm lacking an FTP program as well as a command-line editor (no pico or nano? For shame.) Firefox also doesn't seem to want to comply with my KDE style choices. But considering the enormous hassles I had getting Debian or Fedora working, I am very highly impressed with SUSE.

you really need this http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ use yast online update for security patches and apt for installing extra goodies and things not included in the personal edition.

I could not agree more with all of you. I have been using various distro's since 2000. This has to be the very best yet. I am still a fan of Debian(sid). But this is really nice to have everything working out of the box. I also have to say that using apt-get for the goodies and Yast for the security updates is the best mixture of update software out there(no flames please). It usually takes me about 1 1/2 to get a Debian(sid) config tweaked to the way I like it. Novell SuSE 9.1 pro , only took me 45 minutes. Including sound, NVidia, printing, my own firewall config and getting a different theme, wallpaper and karamba setup. The only issue I have is with Firefox, I use nightlies which are inheritly unstable anyway. I can not wait for Novell's next endevor, Sundance. It is the next release.

Walt

edit: I also forgot I have lm_sensors setup for system monitoring.

I tried to use that but it came up with a list of dependencies I don't have. Previous experience has taught me that chasing the chain of dependencies is almost always futile...

I noticed you have Nvidia...does 9.1 support Nvidia drivers with no conflict? (Ethernet card, graphics..etc)

My internet connection was hosed twice because of a online update from YOU a couple of times, because I use the nvnet driver for my card. This meant that the kernel was overwritten to updated version, and thus wiped the config settings of that card, the nvnet set up clean. Since that time, I have reinstalled, and shut YOU off from anymore updates until there is a better way of keeping all driver settings in tact without problems via the update.

In short, if the new 9.1 supports the nvnet driver out of the box, or without problems after a download and install, than I am on it.

SuSe by far, in my honest opinion, is the contender to give Xp a run for its money. I used to think it was Mandrake, but SuSe has really proved something with 9.0, so it can only get better.

you'll have to replace the contents of your /etc/apt/sources.list with the list on the apt for suse site. the default sources.list has very few of the actual directories available.

I went and bought suse 9.1 pro yesterday after reading how everyone loves it. I was fed up with fedora core 2 and all it's little bugs.

I went to install it last night (spent 6 hours installing it 3 different ways), sound never worked, Printer never worked, and 2 out of 3 times X never worked.

The hardware's not all that unusual, and the fact that everything worked in fedora makes it even worse. I tried it with the updates online and without. The sound doesn't bother me so much, as that sounds easy to fix. But kde not finding it's own directory (yes thats an error message I read) is a little ridiculous. (The only time X worked was when I downloaded the nvidia driver for the Geforce FX card, then it sort of worked.)

Needless to say I'm less than impressed.

Steelgrave, did you use your old /home directory from redhat? There are a ton of hidden config directories/files and even a suse update from 8.2 to 9.0 didn't work for me until i deleted the hidden files/directories. Back then i had to delete the .kde directory otherwise no start was possible.
This is the only explanation i can think of because your experience is extremely untypical for suse 9.1 or even 9.0
I did at least 5 setups of 9.1 including my laptop and never faced such a mess (or are you using Mandrake? lol)

Nope it was a fresh install everytime. Since the fedora install was only 4 days old to begin with I had no issues with blowing it away and creating all new partitions.

And no I've never had this much trouble with a distro before either. Although my distro experience has been limited to Redhat (5.2+) and one version of Mandrake (8.something).

Wolfgang67 wrote:

"Steelgrave, did you use your old /home directory from redhat? There are a ton of hidden config directories/files and even a suse update from 8.2 to 9.0 didn't work for me until i deleted the hidden files/directories. Back then i had to delete the .kde directory otherwise no start was possible.
This is the only explanation i can think of because your experience is extremely untypical for suse 9.1 or even 9.0
I did at least 5 setups of 9.1 including my laptop and never faced such a mess (or are you using Mandrake? lol)"

Please forgive me for hijacking this thread!
Wolfgang67, I had the exact same problem steelgrave and you describe, about KDE not working. I tried to install SuSE 9.1 on my Slackware 9.1 system using a shared /home partition. It was a nightmare! KDE was completely screwed up. DCOP server not working, kdeinit not able to start the session, KDE files not writable...

Maybe you can answer these questions:

If I delete the .kde directory in /home, won't it mess up my Slackware installation?

Is there a problem sharing /home between 2 distros that use 2 different kernels and 2 different versions of KDE?

TIA,
Siri Amrit

My SuSE 9.1 Pro success story:

I'd been running slackware 9.1 with Windows XP on a dual boot. Slackware worked pretty well, except I couldn't use my winmodem, and I couldn't play DVDs. I'd used SuSE 9.0 before and it was slightly worse than Slackware, but I thought I'd give SuSE 9.1 pro a go. Got it all installed. Only one problem, sound was really fuzzy. So I used the KDE control panel to change my default soundcard to hw:0,1, set XMMS to use arts and made a shortcut to xine using arts (xine -A arts). Started up xmms, mp3s played perfectly, started up xine and I could watch videos (I'll get around to getting DVDs working soon). All was well, my winmodem even works properly.

I had decided that now was the time. I stuck in my SuSE 9.1 Pro DVD and went for a new installation. Custom partitioning... I finally removed Windows. I am now no longer a Windows user. SuSE has everything that I needed windows for and more. I love it.

And that's my SuSE success story.

HooRah! Way to go, Dave!

I have nothing but praise for Suse 9.1, but I do not have pro edition, I have the cheap one. What am I missing??

A lot of my drivers are listed as "unknown", but everything still works, is this because I do not have the "best" version??

Also I have noticed that the Suse hardware database is a lot smaller than the other distributions... Maybe this would be a good thing for the Linux community to work on in the future, all distros working with the same hardware.

Example: Biostar is not supported by Suse, outside of a few Via KT 400 chipset boards, but it is by Mandrake(sort of). ha!

This unknown driver business is the pits !!