SuSE Linux Personal Edition 8.2 Complete package

SuSE Linux 8.2 – Personal Edition


How I Became a Linux Fan…….well, who wouldn’t?

I decided to change over to Linux after hearing great of the great stability, reliability and what other people had said about it. I read reviews, guides and opinions on just about every distribution of Linux that I could find.

I had almost given up my search, thinking about how much I don’t like windows and its ...
...ones to get apparently was SuSE Linux 8.2, not 9 or 9.1 since they are not as good and host less features than 8.2.

I decided that I would but it, although you can get it totally free of any of their mirror ftp sites that host and you only have to pay for your connection charge obviously. Well, anyway I managed top pick up SuSE Linux 6.2 Personal Edition of Amazon for only 8.99 (11.97 including the postage charge). I didn’t bother ... more

SuSE Linux 8.2 – Personal Edition

How I Became a Linux Fan…….well, who wouldn’t?

I decided to change over to Linux after hearing great of the great stability, reliability and what other people had said about it. I read reviews, guides and opinions on just about every distribution of Linux that I could find.

I had almost given up my search, thinking about how much I don’t like windows and its annoying blockish feel to the whole GUI, I still kept searching and decided to go for one of the mainstream Linux distributions. I found that one of the best ones to get apparently was SuSE Linux 8.2, not 9 or 9.1 since they are not as good and host less features than 8.2.

I decided that I would but it, although you can get it totally free of any of their mirror ftp sites that host and you only have to pay for your connection charge obviously. Well, anyway I managed top pick up SuSE Linux 6.2 Personal Edition of Amazon for only 8.99 (11.97 including the postage charge). I didn’t bother buying the newer ones for reasons listed above.

When the box finally arrived, which did take along time to come to me, I was satisfied with what I had brought, feeling he weight of it. Contained in the box was the following;

One very large guide/Manuel
3 CDs for the hefty amount of software shipped with this version
Some other reference manuals

The manual was very useful as I did need some help during setup since I am very used to the bog standard windows installation (after having to reinstall it every full moon) I was already running windows XP professional at the time, in the case the setup did fall short; highly unlikely.

You have to install direct from the cd, which makes sense seeing as the installer obviously can’t upgrade from windows xp for obvious reasons. The Cd booted up with the GRUB boot loader giving you a few options on how to install the operating system. I just picked the Install as normal option.

When you install it, it starts the new YaST configurator and installer, much easier, but I think, somewhat missing in extra options that previous installers SuSE had. I was pleased that the hardware that SuSE had detected was already installed for me, I have a very simple hardware configuration set up just because you don’t need things like Web cams and extra scanners, and I have never bothered with digital cameras

Linux Installs On a new partition, so you can still use windows if you want to, i dont know why, this is very good since you can still reach all of your files, settings and documents from your last installation of windows if the need be. SuSE Comes with native support for NTFS, so thats not a problem at all.

You have the option In YaST to install specific software for the OS, but one thing that I did notice was that when you selected all of the software to be installed, it doesn’t actually install all of the software, you have to manually choose the software that you want to install that YaST won’t let you install.

I continued to the next step, this bit was when the files were copied and put into the right directories. This was virtually quick and painless to even the most novice of Linux ,“n00bs” as some would say (pronounced newbies for those of you who don’t know), anyway, you are meant to put in the cds as you install this OS, the third, on my configuration, was not needed.

After you install, it either restarts or most commonly just carries on with the current configuration. I had to restart, I found that SuSE took quite along time to boot up, well it beats windows xp anyway. The new YaST control centre takes literal control from here on. You can customise anything from the “eyecandy” to the configuration of Networking Clients and Domains. The YaST starts up with a simple wizard for basic settings such as, The root password, or as some would say the administrator password for the windows to Linux newcomers, and other users and now onto Network settings, unfortunately networking with any version of windows in SuSE is not a easy as the windows xp wizard makes it out to be to network tow computers on the most simple of networks, it turns out that you need a router to share a connection, although if you upgrade to KDE 3.2 then you can network windows and Linux through LiSA, but that doesn’t support connections unfortunately.

After you finish the main Install program, you have the option to customize more personal options, such as specific network settings and the user interface. SuSE Uses the KDE 3.1 interface as its main Gui, but still hosts a vast array of other GUIs including the other mainstream Gui, gnome(not sure which version), I myself prefer KDE for the most common of functions. I decided that I must update KDE in order to get the most out of SuSE and its vast array of programs, again this was quick and painless fro anyone to have done.

There are too many programs included with SuSE to name and give a description for all of them, but I have to talk about open office (not sure which version), its very good for a program that supports Microsoft office document and common file formats, other miscellaneous formats and still manages to cram this into one of the smallest office suites I have ever seen (I am sure this program is going to explode with all the features included with it one day!)

When I fist logged onto SuSE Linux again, I was evermore surprised my the vast amount of customizing that you can do for such a productive operating system, which even with the highest graphics settings and eyecandy, still manages to impress me with simple tasks such as word processing. Oh yeah and I have to comment on one small program (can’t remember what its called, but its great!!)it makes little penguins run, dance, skate, swim and loads more across the screen. But I still haven’t worked out how to close this program.

After using Every Windows version from Windows 286 all the way to the newest Windows 2003 sever and even The alpha code named “longhorn”, I am still trying to get used to this alien atmosphere, as some windows users would call it, even logging on still feels different, you feel relieved when programs don’t crash about five minutes after running them. SuSE even manages to incorporate Wine and VMWare into the main operating system so that you can rum windows programs, such as internet explorer and Microsoft word.

I think that everyone should use SuSE, just because of the reliability, stability, compatibility and productivity within working, leisure and productive environments. I would recommend this Operating System to anyone who is just about to buy new computer, maybe they might even learn how to use the computer properly before considering themselves “a Wiz-Kidd”, to put it nicely.

Even for tasks that some would consider too simple such as using the internet, how hard is it to use Netscape or Mozilla, hey? There are several browsers included with this os, very useful for those of you who cant stand not changing settings and customizing everything in sight every ten minutes(me namely) of using it. Why, SuSE even manages to host a dos emulator that still works fine for even novice Linux users, you can even compare this dos emulator to the Linux kernel, even though not a as good in functionality but compatibility.

Even little details, such as when you logo off, it saves all of you windows that are open , similar to window xp , but not copied, but you can restart and do all sorts and still have the windows open. Small GUI changes that can make the world of difference like changing where to main buttons on the title car are, like you can move the close button right into the middle or not have it at all.

There are, though, few things wrong with SuSE, that, I, as a educated windows still think lack in SuSE, such as the complicated drive layout, which I still, even now, am still getting used to after using the old, C:\ and D:\ and so on and so forth, which I think makes working a lot more productive in the stead of routing through folders in the vain hope of finding he right drive.

Altogether SuSE Linux Personal Edition Version 8.2 Has its strengths and weaknesses over windows and competing operating systems, although not perfected yet as not all Linux distributions are, SuSE showed my how an Operating System should work.

You can pay for Linux, or spend hours downloading it of the official mirror sites or pickup copies of it in hand books for around ten pounds. I would recommend SuSE Linux Personal Edition version 8.2 to anything and anybody whether cat, dog or government official, you will still get to do hours of work in under no time at all whe you use SuSE Linux.

 

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