[QUOTE]Originally posted by xbaez
[B]How can I install/download SuSE 9.2 Professional from the web?
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There is a FTP install. It will be available on the 10th. You need to download a small iso

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So is this like RedHatEnterprise, a distro forbidden to be sold?
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It is forbidden to sell a copy, but not to resell an original or to share for free.
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What if I will buy/sell it at Ebay (full 5 CD set), will that be piracy because of the Novel logo?
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See above

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Is there a 'Whitebox' like SuSE 9.2 distro?
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There is a two CD distro called kmLinux, but the installer is in German and it is based on SuSE 9.1
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I have WhiteBox Linux (RedHat Enterprise clone without logos) and it's 100% legal and works fine.
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It is a different matter altogether. Novell is a lot more liberal. Even if you downloaded, say, via bittorrent, it wouldn't be illegal. You only pay a very fair price for the media (5 CDs, 1 double-layer DVD, one source DVD), two huge manuals and the boxing.
If you don't need the printed user manual you can buy the the Update Edition for around 50 $ (you still get the printed Admin manual, quite big)

My linux experience has been a bit mixed. I first tried it by downloading RH 7, Mandrake & Debian but was frustrated by various hardware problems - most serious being that the drivers for my alcatel USB modem were unreliable (and as a heavy internet user, this was a big issue). I wasn't entirely happy with Gnome or KDE, and I didn't like it that a lot of the programs which were equivalents of what I was using on M$ required constant updating, and finding information about problems was far too time consuming. For one thing, a solution on one distro doesn't necessarily work on another. Or even the same distro on different hardware.

So, I went back to M$.

Recently I was hit by a couple of viruses, despite having up to date scanners and firewall software. This was bad enough (business accounts files corrupted) to make me think about Linux again. This time I chose Suse 9.2 (I used to be a Novell 4/5 sysadmin, so I trust their products) and decided to buy, rather than download - mainly because I now live in an area where broadband has yet to be switched on (roll on Feb!), and also because I wanted the option of support. The installation was simplicity itself, but as luck would have it, my modem wasn't supported so I had to reload XP, download the driver, burn it & start again.

What do I think of Linux now? Much better, much more 'grown up'. I still have minor issues, but the informational websites, such as this one, have matured too, and I expect I'll find the solutions soon. I haven't yet become desperate enough about anything to use Suse support.

Download or buy? Well the buying aspect was enforced by my modem speed, but I think that first time users should certainly buy. There is the support when you buy. The manuals help you to understand things and make the experience better. You could read on-line manuals, but books are, IMHO much more comfortable. If you have more than one machine (I have 3) then isn't it only fair that you buy a copy? You can, I believe, use it as many times as you like.

Hmm.. I have so far bought a SuSE 5.1 and a SuSE 7.0 and have downloaded the rest, currently using a 9.0 ftp install, will probably buy a 9.x set just to keep my odd-numbered version-buying going as soon as SuSE can get the siliconimage onboard controllers 311x support (I need RAID1) during installation, (SuSE do have a driver for SuSE9.0_x86-64).

But so far i am very happy with SuSE and have not regretted buying it previously

I have 9.2 and I'm on an install on a SATA dsk using a Silicon Image SiL3112...

I've bought Suse 9.2 too, and I must say that it's one of the easiest distros I know.
It has super hardware recognition and installing on SATA was no problem whatsoever.

The only thing is that annoys me is the fact that it takes ages to boot (Mandrake was super fast here)

@Riddick, hi ... erm is your install on a raid config or on a single sata disk?

@others, i know that you can detect and install on SATA disks using the sil3112 from 9.0 onwards at least which i am using, however i ran into problems trying to install suse when i had my 2x200gb seagates (urgh! as some seagate drives have been reported to having problems on SATA sil3112 ) in a RAID1 setup, windows had no problems even the plain old win98se detected it as a single drive and i could partition it using the DOS fdisk, but suse 9.0 and 9.1 was seeing the RAID1 drive as two separate drives. Currently suse is on an ide drive, but i would really like to have suse on the raid1 drive, so if 9.2 cant do it, i will just wait for the next available version that could do what i want and install it, for the time being i am thinking of switching the raid1 to normal and just do a normal install.

I would buy the next suse version or 9.2 if can do the Raid1 install though to save myself a lot of time as any other way to do it might involve too many things or would be too troublesome for a lite user like me