6. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Tuesday 20th December 2005

In response to #5:

See my previous comment!

7. Submitted by Anonymous, Wednesday 21st December 2005

I've been using SuSE for years, and apt, as other people have observed, is available for SuSE. I use it because it the quickest way I know to setup my SuSE installations with fully working audio and video and the latest KDE stuff. However, it only has any merit over having a bunch of CD's from SuSE if you need something that's not provided by them. SuSE provides a lot of stuff on the CD's and setting up Synaptic/Apt to take non defaults is not that easy or safe (get the wrong repository and effectively trash your machine :-( ). So I'm not sure how much it's default abscence is really going to be missed by non technical users.

Overall I think SuSE has it generally about right; it's fairly easy to get into, but then if you want to go lifting the hood what you find is a) it's still possible and b) underneath it's also quite nicely thought out as well.

One other thing, I was a bit baffled by the comment about no autoupdate by default. I can't remember an install that didn't by default put an auto update checker on my KDE desktops kicker bar. Has it inadvertantly been turned off?

8. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Wednesday 21st December 2005

In response to #7:

As said, the auto updater was in the bar, but just sat there doing nothing. This was after a installation that went flawlessly, with pretty much standard settings (nothing that could, or rather should, affect the auto updater). It was only after I told it to check for updates that it ever decided to do anything!

9. Submitted by Joe, Wednesday 21st December 2005

By the way, you can use apt together with SuSE!

Clients like "Synaptic" or "Smart" are available for your pleasure to upgrade, even to a new version!

All Best,

Joe, St. Louis

10. Submitted by dc, Wednesday 21st December 2005

YAST is one huge advantage of SuSE over some distros. Try to configure an OfficeJet, A TV card, a wireless network or set more than one IP address for a network interface... All this can be acomplished by a lambda user with Yast. This is what makes SUSE popular among desktop users (except video watching...).

dc