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.


Polished and Complete desktop OS   November 30, 2002
Manas Kamal Bhattacharya (Newark, CA USA)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful

When it comes to reviewing an OS, I do not believe in writting a "first impression" review. I have now used SuSE 8.1 on two systems for 2 months and this review is based on my expreience.

I installed SuSE on a PC and a laptop. On both the systems I had SuSE 8.0 running prior to that.

Installation:
Its time people stop cribbing about linux installation. Yast2 installer makes life really easy. It tales care of HDD partioning, default selection of packages for installation, configures your hardware with very little user intervention. It does not need to restart the system N number of times during installation. If U R a power user the installer has enough juice for you to customize the installation to your hearts content. [ Full 5 starts for YaSt installer]

--User Experience ( PC, Athlon 1.1 20 GB + 60 Gb dual HDD, Promise ATA controller, SB Live 5.1, Geforce 3...)
First time after installation you will be greated with a new login window. Login to KDE and u get all the eye candy of Keramik ( Only Suse has back ported Keramik to KDE 3.0). All desktop icons and menus are well thought out, apps are easily located. SuSE includes a good choice of www apps, like Mozilla, Konqueror, GAIM, Evolution. All these apps are stable and one of the best in their breed.
For multimedia, XMMS shipped with SuSE comes with a full suite of sound enhancemnet plugins. Also included is MPlayer that can play most of the Video/Audio formats including wma files.
It also includes Open Office suite , this more or less takes care of documents and spreadsheet.
It includes a full suite of development tools, in fact i have been doing a lot of development on this system including running a cvs server.
Post install configuration is the easy with Yast2, in fact KDE control center also has Yast2 embedded to it.

I have this system running since since the day I installed SuSE 8.1, I havent had any instability and have seen no degradion in preformance.

--User Experience on Copmaq Preserio 702us laptop.
So far I had seen linux and laptops are dicy thing. But SuSE 8.1 is special. Eariler I had 2 major problem on this laptop
1. ACPI support, SuSE 8.1 is the only distro i have used that has ACPI support built into the default kernel. With other distros the laptop becomes too hot to be used for a longer time.
2. Sound Support: Earlier to make sound work on the system I need to rebuild the kernel with a patch for the ac97 codec. But with SuSE 8.1 sound works smoothly with the default kernel.
[BTW i have tried Mandrake 9.0 on this laptop also, sound works, but no acpi by default].

One thing I would like to see SuSE doing is replacing Blackbox with fluxbox desktop.

This is the first time I have given 5 STARS to any Linux distro, SuSE 8.1 deserves it.


Great Product! Much better than Red hat 8!   October 2, 2002
21 out of 32 found this review helpful

I don't know waht the previous reviewer is talking about, SuSE 8, has far better configuration tools than Redhat 8,a more powerful add/remove programs thingy and it actually ahs multimidia apps. Redhat 8, not only couldn't run UT2k3 but I can't even play an MP3!! SuSe also detected all my hardware, Redhat didn't detect my sound card well.


SuSE is going downhill   December 27, 2002
21 out of 28 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.