SUSE 9.1 an alternative to the Windows operating system?

SUSE is a commercial version of Linux, it is designed to rival Windows, by being easy to use and featuring applications for just about every computing need, in the basic installation.
I got my copy of SUSE 9.1 cheap in a book shop sale, this is because the latest version is 9.3 (Price £64.95), but if you don't mind using the older version, it is available on the web, for a few pounds, if you search around.
SUSE 9.3 comes either on a DVD or five CD's, but the version 9.1 that I used, came on just one CD. Even so it still features all the software needed for office work, surfing the net, music and video playing etc.(Although it could only play a few of the formats I tried.) It even has software for playing TV on your computer, if you have the correct hardware.

The installation is quite straightforward, providing you use the default settings. If you already have Windows installed, SUSE will create and resize partitions for the installation automatically, although it was fairly greedy about the share of the drive it took.
It is possible to alter most of the installation settings, but this is quite technical and although setup help files are available, they are not a lot of ....help!
I would have liked to have altered the partition setup, but I wasn't certain as to what was what, so I had to stay with the defaults and this is despite my having used partitioning software previously.
Once the installation is under way, your input is not needed until the very end.
In the documentation it says that the install will take 15 to 30 minutes, well it took a whopping 1 hour and 7 minutes on my computer. You can watch what is happening during the install if you wish and it didn't seem to have any problems, it was just slow.

Once installation is over, you restart your computer and you are given the choice of booting Windows, or SUSE (Default) during startup, via the excellent boot manager.
I found that SUSE normally took about twice as long as Windows to start, but once loaded, you are presented with an attractive desktop, with menu and icons that will be familiar to any Windows user.
SUSE does work on a single mouse click system rather than the Windows double click, but this can be changed in the Control Center if you wish.

SUSE comes with a very good help file and most basic options are easy to understand and if you have previously used Windows, you will hardly need the help to set your preferences and use the main applications.
An online support service for installation problems, via email or phone is also available for the first thirty days after installation.
I used the email support (via my Windows connection), as I had problems with setting up my modem. Unfortunately despite a lot of suggestions, nothing seemed to work and searching on the internet revealed modem problems to be very common, the best cure seems to be to buy a USB or serial modem, but not wanting to splash out on a new modem, when I already have a perfectly good one, I decided to do without the internet.

While the SUSE menu displays a wide selection of popular software, there is still more available by using the console, I think in many ways this is better than Knoppix, which displays hundreds of software items in its menu, but a large amount of them are too technical for most of us to use.
Further software can be easily installed from the installation CD, it is also possible to install software from other sources, but despite having used Windows to download the Linux version of F-Prot as a test installation, I was unable to figure out from the help file how to install it.

One of the most surprising things about SUSE was its speed, it was very slow, even with all the fancy effects turned off, it still only ran at about half the speed of Windows. This was strange, as both SUSE and Knoppix use the Linux system, yet Knoppix when run as a CD from the hard drive, matched Windows for speed most of the time, even though it has to unpack all its applications on the fly.

Stability was good in SUSE, it does still crash, but not as often as Windows 98se and most of your work is recovered after a crash.
SUSE seemed very secure, with root privileges needed to alter any important system settings, which helps protect against viruses, trojans etc and also stops other users altering your settings.
A firewall is provided to secure you on the internet, although having no connection I couldn't try it.

Recommending SUSE is difficult, if everything sets up properly, it is a good looking, secure, fully featured, operating system, that needs no external drivers or software and after the initial installation is ready to go.
But it relies on several factors, you need a fairly powerful modern computer to run it at a reasonable speed and your hardware needs to be detected properly straight out of the box.
If everthing doesn't setup automatically, you will have problems, as SUSE is a lot less helpful than Windows if a device has a problem. Also help available on the internet seems to be deliberately technical, a holdover from Linux's origins.
Inexperienced users may also be unsettled by SUSE's tendency to occasionally display console messages about an applications workings during normal use.

In conclusion, if I had a new computer and needed an operating system, I would first test the Suse Live CD, to see if everything worked alright, if it didn't I would rather pay the higher price of Windows XP (Or 98se.), safe in the knowledge that I would have a much more user friendly experience, with lots of help on hand if I needed it.

Due to the poor performance of SUSE, I prefer Knoppix, as it offers virtually the same features, but with less hassle, it is also much more suited to those of us with older computers.
I have deleted SUSE from my drive, (It was very easy to remove.) but it hasn't put me off Linux based systems, I think I just need to find the flavour that suits me.


Web Site: http://www.novell.com/

Rob Goldfish Web Site

Copyright 2005 Rob Goldfish.