Suse Linux 8.1 Professional Edition

Take advantage of OpenOffice.org included with version 8.1, which is fully compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. This package offers not only common office tools such as a word processing application, a spreadsheet calculation, and a presentation program, it also provides an HTML editor, a database, a scheduler, a drawing program, an image processing application, and several other practical utilities.

Use your choice of the graphical desktop interfaces KDE 3.0.3 or GNOME 2.0 for the exact look and feel you want. Linux 8.1 Professional also comes complete with an extensive collection of sound, multimedia, and educational applications, plus many educational and entertaining games. Installation is fast and easy, without disturbing your existing Windows operating system. And you get solid security and reliability with SuSE Firewall 2 and Crypto file system.

- Power Management has changed. APM is the former package that supported power management (i.e. laptops). It is still included in SuSE for older hardware support. ACPI is the new kid on the block, and is installed on newer hardware. It does have a bug that, fortunately, can be resolved easily...

- Star Office is no longer in SuSE. That is correct. The review fails to mention that Star Office is a Sun Microsystems' commercial product. It is based on an open source project named Open Office. The source code and functionalities are almost identical. Open Office 'IS' included in SuSE. So, in essence, all that changed from SuSE version 8.0 to 8.1 with that office application, is the name on the icon.

Now, for my own review: SuSE Linux 8.1 offered me what I wanted, as did prior versions. Since I've upgraded to 8.1, I replaced Quicken for Windows with GnuCash. I had, during my 8.0 upgrade, replaced Photoshop 5.0 with Gimp. As for administering the application, don't take the YaST application lightly - it rocks!!! I rarely update or customize my Linux without it. RedHat, on the other hand, offered (I stopped using it at around version 7.0) sereral little applications to customize the installed base. The problem was to remember which did what!

There are a couple of books bundled with SuSE 8.1. There were 3 in 8.0. In my opinion, they need to reduce it to one. There is some redundant content across the 2. They do work fine though. If you are neither willing to read some software literature and comfortable installing an operating system, then Linux is not for you just yet - if ever. There are a few decisions along the installation process that you must make. Windows, on the other hand, doesn't have as many because the options don't exist. i.e. type of system you want (server, half-server, client, password mgmt, disk layout, users, ...) Don't be scared, it only takes about 30 minutes on a computer that you wish to save nothing, or up to an hour or 2 if you wish to not remove your current Windows installation - mostly unattended installation procedures.

I recommend SuSE to anyone that has installed Windows a couple (few) times in the past, or feels comfortable differenciating beteen an Operating System and an Application. Linux is a bit more complex for the new user, and a whole lot more useable for the experienced. I'd never switch back.


Best as always from SuSE   December 30, 2002
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

While the latest version is not too big improvement over the previous 8.0, it's still nice to work with. There are a few bugs here and there, but overall I don't think SuSE has any serious competition from other distributions.

I'm buying most releases, it's worth to support this company; also, you'll get a plenty of stuff in the retail box. Looking forward for the next version (SuSE 8.2 Pro?), which should be out hopefully within a few months....

Fast installation, online update, no registration necessary, use it on as many PC's you wish, some 4GB of software and 3 nice manuals....not bad compared to pretty bare WinXP. While XP is overall more polished and in my opinion works smoother with multimedia and has way better hardware support, SuSE, on the other hand, NEVER crashes or locks-up; rock-solid OS ...the choice is yours.

Owners of some newer hardware may want to wait for the next release, since 8.1's kernel 2.4.19 doesn't have of course support for some of this year's later chipsets, graphics cards etc...but you can still either patch, or install new 2.4.20 kernel if you feel up to the task and need the SuSE distro right now.


SuSE is going downhill   December 27, 2002
21 out of 27 found this review helpful

SuSE 8.1 Professional is a good product but at the same time, having been a SuSE advocate, I am a little disappointed by a few things that I consider this to be a "downgrade". here are the lists of pros and cons over the SuSE 7.2 and 6.4 distributions I have.

Pros:
- nicer and easier to use install program (almost flawless hardware detection)
- more multimedia apps (like DVD players)
- SSH included
- great KDE and GNOME support
- improved software package conflict resolution

Cons:
- StarOffice (MS Office clone) not included anymore (that's because Sun does not make the latest version 6.0 free,
but SuSE could have included an older version, like 5.2)
- mysterious disappearance of octave (clone of the math software Matlab) and no inclusion of the popular statistics freeware R (S-plus clone) which I suggested them to include over a year ago
- new installation program lost the ability to load/save configurations (thus it is a pain to setup say, two computers with the same config./software selection)
- still does not include MP3 encoder(s) (due to some software export law because is SuSE is based in Germany)
- APM (power management) is de-supported -- the SuSE kernel (and source code) simply does not have it anymore (you need to grab a new source)! So you can't put your laptop to sleep, let alone find out about the remaining power.

Given that I don't regret getting SuSE 8.1, I always thought that the greatest strength of SuSE Linux is that it is so comprehensive (including say 95% of all Linux freeware) that I don't have to be bothered with finding RPMs and source code to compile around the Internet. But SuSE 8.1, despite the eye candy and the ease of installation, forces me to go back to the good-old-day practice of RPM/source digging/compiling. I would hesitate to buy the next distribution of SuSE -- I was using RedHat in 1998 and moved to SuSE because I found SuSE far superior. But I now have doubts about SuSE 8.1 (and its future releases) so I should evaluate other distributions again -- perhaps I should try Debian first.