[LUG] SuSE 9.1 Personal

[Keith Abraham <keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My VERY FIRST impressions of SuSE 9.1 Personal (received yesterday).

Clearly aimed at Windows users who wish to try Linux. In this
regard it might succeed as it's very easy to set up and includes the
OpenOffice suite. (I suppose that's what the slogan "Just change" 
means.) I'm can't to say how it would cope with with a dual
Windows/Linux installation as I haven't used Windows for several
years but a pure Linux installation required almost no user
intervention. All the hardware was correctly identified and setup
with little user input and even the downloading of updates required
only one click (admittedly using ADSL).

But for a Linux user it has little to recommend it.
My impression is that it seems a mere toy in comparison
with SuSE 9.0 and 8.2.  Merely 2 CDs one of which is a
Live Eval and one doc (the Installation Guide) which contains
a mere 76 pages on cheap looking paper and giving minimal info.
What you have on the Live-Eval is what you will get after
installation. In fact the only difference between the 2 CDs is
that one installs and the other doesn't. IMHO this is a waste
of a CD.

There is a limited range of applications in comparison with
previous SuSE Personal versions and seems to be directed
mainly at the multimedia user, ie no Gnome, no Mozilla
(although Firefox is included), and no sources.
Linux and Windows users with an Nvidia card would find the
latter a major hinderance as the Nvidia 3D installer requires
the kernel source and downloading the kernel source for
those with dial-up is hardly a viable proposition.

Hopefully the missing applications and utilities will be
available from the SuSE site but not until the 4th of June.

Lastly an important point for existing SuSE users:
Although the Installation Guide states that you can upgrade
an existing SuSE installation this didn't work for me. In fact
booting from the CD explicitely states that only an installation
can be made from this product. Even trying an update via Yast
on an installed SuSE system failed at the last hurdle with Yast
attempting to write to LILO although a GRUB bootloader was
in use.

All in all a reasonable introduction of a Linux desktop to
Windows users ie it's cheap and familiar (neither of which,
I suspect, will be enough to make them change) but offers
little if anything to previous SuSE Personal users.

Keith




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