No one in my area knew of UNIX or Xenix and I spent many a night learning the most simple tasks. In ‘86 I could access my office system over the phone lines from the home with a terminal, in the office my admin sent me messages from her terminal to the terminal on my desk, I could go to lunch and when I got back hit a key and look at messages form my receptionist. I spoke to a MS person about this time and he shook his head and I went back and added yet another WYSE 100 to my system. After some 13 years with Xenix and UNIX, I finally broke down and bought a DOS system as I needed it for some applications that were not available for any other system. Hated every minute of the experience each time I had to turn the infernal unit on; nothing but crashes, freezing and it was so restrictive.

Finally retired and moved and went with a Win95 system since my kid was using one. One day he showed me he had loaded his computer with LINUX and told me it reminded him of the stuff I had showed him in my office. I looked at it and tar, uucp, cp, vi, - hey this all looked familiar. vi.profile and hey this is the script I remember from Xenix, even ls |more and cat. By that time though I had been away and forgotten a lot of of what I’d done. Since then been playing with most of the gens of Linux on and off. While I’ve forgotten most of it, terminal mode is well not as foreign as other may find it. About 6 years ago I built my last desktop and at the time went whole hog techwise. Until the dual core came out, it was still near state of the art. It runs a 2.26ghz Northwood cpu, 2 gig ram, had a 120 gig hd (now a 250), 128 dedicated memory ATI video card (only 4x, 8x came out just after but not a problem for what I do), USB is 1.0 but I do not use them except for the printer. 2 dvd readers and a CD burner/dvd reader. 802.11b that has been upgraded to 802.11g. It was built to use in my business but replaced it with a Toshiba laptop. I striped out the XP pro which has been stable and seems to be the best thing MS has put out and decided to try LINUX. Oh, to backtrack, I have been using OpenOffice on and from the time StarDivision had the app and yes, used to Mosaic, Slipknot, Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox. In the end, it is the apps that matter as these are what you use to produce. Switching to LINUX therefore is not a big deal as the production apps I use are in LINUX.

I tried and like UBUNTO 6.10 but with the intro of 7 and having to do an install rather than an update, I decided to try the Suse DVD and replaced the CD burning with a dvd burner. Burnt the 10.3 dvd and booted to install. It installed smoothly and no hangups and the installation questions etc not better or worse than I found with Ubunto. When it came to the internet, it like Ubunto did not recognize the wireless which I had replaced with one that was certified as supported by LINUX. When it rebooted, called Jr. who has been using Ubunto for some time and really liked it. He has tried a number of ditros and seemed to really like the Ubunto. I had him do his magic to get card recognized which he said he did the same way as when he did it when I installed Ubunto. He had not used Suse before and commented he found it more complete and as easy to use if not easier.

In using it other than not being able to view video (thanks for the links, will try), it worked out of the box better on my system then Ubunto. Speed subjectively seems faster and starting apps is faster. Also, it seems more stable. A few times the Ubunto froze or slowed as if chewing up resourced but have not experienced it with Suse. I’ve had it on the system for about 2 months now and it is faster than XP. I’ve decided after all these years, I’ve found my successor to Xenix and UNIX on my computer. Only wish they’d get a good Windows emulator up and running so I could put my specialty software on it that only runs in Windows and I could convert the office over also. I’ve tried Wine and no go.

Sorry for the long missive but have found the following: 1) until there is a way to reliably run Window apps on it, it will have limitations as to broad appeal as tax apps and other applications for many years will still be on Windows, 2) while the installs are definitely getting better as to recognizing and configuring the system, it still is not for Joe Layperson who has little or no computer skills other than pushing the power switch, 3) once set up it is as good as MS for desktop computers but, it needs to shake the geek squad persona and get the public to understand it is not something that belongs in the science lab, 4) if it is to gain significant market share, it needs to think outside the box. Mac markets itself as better than and an alternative to MS and has done so for years, all the while never picking up market share. LINUX will need to position itself as an alternative but find a marketing strategy alternative to what it and Mac has historically done. In some ways it is evolving this strategy. It is finding its way into the low end market segment and as a consequence the public now has access to low cost computer options while MC/Intel looks at the midrange and Mac has positioned itself in the high end. Where Mac tried to capture the youth and have them grow up using Mac, the associated hardware costs and office systems the parents used stifled this idea. With the low end market, LINUX gets around the hardware cost issue and whether we like it or not, as KDE and GNOME mature they are striving to be Windows user friendly. Couple that with apps that feel familiar to Window apps users and the fear or the unfamiliar is removed. LINUX on Intel could succeed where Mac failed.

Lest you think I am critical or anti-Mac as well as anti-MS, I am writing this on an iBook.

It would be great help if I could get some clarity on the real issues…

I have a dual boot with WINXP pro, with 512RAM and two hard disks. One contains the WINXP and the other contains data and Ubuntu.

Is it easier to get on the net with OPENSUSE? I have an AIRTEL ADSL2 broadband connection and the ADSL modem (Beetel ADSL2 220BX) attached via onboard ethernet card. I have tried for several hours/days to get this going in ubuntu but failed.

Will it work in OPENSUSE and how?

Thanks
Mytor

I am a new user of Opensuse and of linux also. Even before reading the review, I had installed it around 3 weeks back and was using it. I am getting hooked to more of the open source now-a-days for just some development purpose, not commercial though. I was trying 64 bit on a vmware and it is working well, there are issues which are mentioned above like configuring NVIDIA drivers etc. buts that’s fine as it is not a requirement. I was trying to integrate eclipse and QT Jambi on it but failing miserably so tried to run netbeans ide instead and it hanged but looks like because of my VMWare configuration so will give it a fresh try to install linux again with a good configuration and this time want to try KDE (last installation was with GNOME), just to compare, will try to post a comparison here.

http://linuxpoison.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/desktop-screenshot-opensuse-102/

here is my e-mail: yrth@msn.com

Thanks a lot!

The best of seven thirty two….

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