SUSE Linux professional version VS Personal

[Eejay]

Which version Of SUSE Linux would be best suited for a beginner
The Professional edition or personal
After searching the web for days and reading some reviews on Linux I finely decided to go with either SUSE Linux 9.2 Personal or professional edition, I was just about ready to purchase the Professional edition until I began to wonder if SUSE Linux Professional edition was made for Professionals to where the personal edition was for Noobs.
I do not want to buy the personal edition if it is too Mickey Mouse and I do not want to buy the Professional edition if the Professional edition is only meant for people with a lot of experience.
Which version should I buy (I am a total Noobs with Linux) the professional version or the Personal version.
The reason I am being so precise is that I am going to buy whatever version is recommended Brand new in the BOX and don’t want waste money finding out that the professional edition is for like… IT pros or meant to be used a web server.

Any advice will be appreciated

:)

[deathadder]

From what I gather, the only real difference between the Pro and Personal editions is the amount of support you get, Personal gets 30day email support, I believe, while Pro gets phone support aswell etc.

Also I read somewhere that Suse are going to ditch the personal edition, and do a cut down, support wise, Pro edition. I'm not completly sure about that though.

[Eejay]

Originally posted by deathadder
From what I gather, the only real difference between the Pro and Personal editions is the amount of support you get, Personal gets 30day email support, I believe, while Pro gets phone support aswell etc.

Also I read somewhere that Suse are going to ditch the personal edition, and do a cut down, support wise, Pro edition. I'm not completly sure about that though.

Thanks
The professional version it will be
Having to choose Between SUSE Linux 9.2 professional Slack ware and especially Mandrake Linux 10 was not an easy choice to make.
Linux has so many Versions (somewhere 200 wtf that is ridiculous. Most of the reviews I have read from google related to older versions, the only reviews I have read that were up to date were about Mandrake Linux 10 and SUSE Linux 9.2 professional edition.
Most of the people rated SUSE Linux along with Mandrake Linux 10, the best new releases as well as the most simple to install.
I do not like buying used items so I am going to Novels website right now to Purchase SUSE Linux 9.2 professional edition, and will assume the version that is displayed as SUSE Linux Professional with 128 encryption is just some sort of update that will do me good.

I am glad that I made this thread because I was just a mouse click away from buying the Personal edition.

Thanks for the reply

[MIRV Griffen]

Eejay -

(This is my first post here)

I'm glad to see there's another newbie out there who made the same distribution choice as me. I, too, went with SuSE 9.2 Pro. No real reason other than it's the one AnandTech.com used to benchmark the latest 3D video cards.

I figured I'd take a shot in the dark and ask my girlfriend to make SuSE 9.2 Pro and a copy of "Linux for Dummies" my Christmas present. :)

I have a ton of questions about this OS and I haven't even done a single thing with Linux as of yet: KDE, GNOME, Samba, root, shell - all of these terms are completely alien to me right now, but hey, ya' gotta start somewhere.

I'm sure the first month will be an exercise in frustration, but I am willing to learn. At this point, anything is an excellent alternative to the Windows (especially, the upcoming Longhorn nightmare) monopoly. I am not willing to migrate to an OS that will not allow me to create an .mp3 from a CD that I LEGALLY own! That's just the tip of the iceberg, but I digress...

Keep us posted on how things go, and I'm sure we can exchange experinces.

[Calipso]

glad to see new linux users.
Welcome to the board.

I thought Id let you know that it most likely will be frustrating to work with linux. Atleast at first. Aslong as you are willing to learn, especially by reading, you should be fine.

Anyway, thats all I have to say....Have fun with Linux.

[frimann]

Professional is just as user friendly as personal, personal is just a cut down version on 1 cd.
Professional is on 5 cds/2 dvds (the same content on both), so professional has 4 times more packages.
You might wonder why there are 5 cds when windows xp is on 1 cd, the answer is that on those 5 cds is almost any program you will need, word processors, multimedia progarams, ftp servers, and all the other stuff im not thinking of right now.

Just do the defult install, its very user friendly, and afterwards experiment with installing more programs from the cds (it is very easy to install and remove programs) and find out if you like them.

[MIRV Griffen]

Thanks for the welcome.

I am certain that there will be a certain amount of head pounding involved in getting myself remotely handy with Linux. It seems that the number of free applications, system stability, and overall options out there are well worth the learning curve.

With that, here's my first set of questions...

1) What is a good boot manager to start out with if I plan on using three seperate hard drives : 1 Windows Primary, 1 Windows dump drive for .mp3 and .avi files that will be used for editing, and one Linux drive for SuSE 9.2 and all of its apps.

2) Can I install the boot manager and SuSE AFTER I already have the Windows drives set up, or do I need to configure Linux first?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[deathadder]

Lilo or Grub, will be installed during the Suse installation, both of these will have no problem bootin your Suse install. I'd suggest that you have Windows setup before you install Suse, Windows has a habbit of rewriting the MBR so only Windows can boot. Also if I were you I'd have Windows on the Primary Master driver, it doesnt really like being anywhere else, the drive that your going to be storing mp3's etc on if you want Suse to be able to write to the drive your going to have to make it a fat drive.

Have fun!

[retsaw]

Originally posted by MIRV Griffen
1) What is a good boot manager to start out with if I plan on using three seperate hard drives : 1 Windows Primary, 1 Windows dump drive for .mp3 and .avi files that will be used for editing, and one Linux drive for SuSE 9.2 and all of its apps.

If you are going to be editing .avi files you should be aware that there is a 4GB file size limit on FAT partitions, if this isn't a problem for you use FAT, if it I think the only other solution is to use NTFS and install the captiveNTFS drivers, captiveNTFS actually makes use of the drivers from Windows so should give reliable read/write access, but probably won't be a part of the SUSE distribution so you may have to install them yourself.

[leonpmu]

Originally posted by frimann
Professional is just as user friendly as personal, personal is just a cut down version on 1 cd.
Professional is on 5 cds/2 dvds (the same content on both), so professional has 4 times more packages.
You might wonder why there are 5 cds when windows xp is on 1 cd, the answer is that on those 5 cds is almost any program you will need, word processors, multimedia progarams, ftp servers, and all the other stuff im not thinking of right now.

Just do the defult install, its very user friendly, and afterwards experiment with installing more programs from the cds (it is very easy to install and remove programs) and find out if you like them.

Sorry dude, need to correct you, it is 3 cd's for personal, and 5 CD's and 2 double sided DVD's for Professional.

But go professional, because there is less chance that you will need to search for apps, becasue the chances are good that they will be on the discs...

[MIRV Griffen]

Originally posted by retsaw
If you are going to be editing .avi files you should be aware that there is a 4GB file size limit on FAT partitions, if this isn't a problem for you use FAT, if it I think the only other solution is to use NTFS and install the captiveNTFS drivers, captiveNTFS actually makes use of the drivers from Windows so should give reliable read/write access, but probably won't be a part of the SUSE distribution so you may have to install them yourself.

Thanks for the heads up!

My average digitized video rips come in around 40-60GB, so FAT is not an option.

However, with that said, my Linux drive will be a dedicated IDE, while the Windows drives will be dedicated SATA for the time being. Even though I know it's slower, Linux will reside on a single partition (OS and apps) for simplicity's sake. I have no clue how much a dedicated OS partition for SuSE Pro would need to be with room for updates, so I will save myself the future headache by keeping just one partition.

Since Linux is more of an experiment for me right now, I will keep it on an older IDE drive until further notice (i.e. I get good enough with it to merit buying another SATA drive). With that in mind, will a boot manager have a problem giving me the Windows/SuSE boot options if the OS's reside on different drives?

Another question: how isinstalling software in SuSE 9.2 Pro going to be different from installing things in Windows? Are there any cute, InstallShield type programs that keep things simple, or is it more complicated than this?

Thanks for all of your help folks.

[Choozo]

MIRV, please don't 'hijack' threads. Start a new thread instead. Or rather threads.

[MIRV Griffen]

My appologies - will do.

[Eejay]

SUSE 9.2 professional edition is on its way, should arrive in about week
I found a tech willing to install SUSE 9.2 professional edition for a $100 bucks. When SUSE 9.2 Professional edition arrives, I will leave a message on this thread with any problems that I will most likely have with using Linux.
I used Linux the last time it was duel booted on my desktop ( everything but the internet) as well as purchased numerous books to teach me how to use command lines so the learning process shouldn’t be to difficult since I’ve read numerous books and WebPages. The hard part will be duel booting (I decided to duel boot) doing a duel boot install will be no problem though because I am going to have the tech do the hard work, after Linux is duel booted the rest should be easy. Again thanks for the help I really appreciate it
:cool:

[MIRV Griffen]

Yeah, definately keep your issues posted here. I will do the same if I run into any snags along the way with my install. It will be a month before I return home from my miltary assignment, but I'll do my best to share info when I can.

Hopefully, we can help each other out with some support from the folks here.

[saikee]

I have installed 32 Linux in my box. Suse 9.1 prof is my first one and also the only one I ever purchased. Yes it came with 5 CD and 2 double sided DVDs plus 2 manuals too. The only bit I should add is I think the professional version supports the 64 bit processor.

My 32 Linux plus 3 versions of Winodws and a DOS is currently booted by Suse's Grub.

I think Red Hat series, Fedora, Mandrakes and Slackware are all good big guns. There are other distros difficult to install but may be good for learning. However speaking from my 5 months experience so far I have to say Suse professional is the most thoroughly built system among the systems I have installed. These are the things I have found from Suse 9.1 professional

(1) It has no fear of large hard disk. My biggest is 200Gb. Many distros still can't cross the 137Gb barrier.

(2) Its has no fear of large partition number. FC, Red Hat and Mandrake truncate partition list after 16. Depending on the kernal version many of them can't mount partition higher than 20. This is very common among distros. I have Suse installed in partition 41. It can mount any other partition, change root into it to rescue any Linux in distress. Thus it is the most versatile

(3) The Suse bootloader I use is Grub version 0.94. It is superior than other bootloader too because it can reach the end of my 200Gb hard drive and boot anything I want. I made a Grub bootable floppy, the one with only the stage1 and stage2 files, and it can boot Linux with Grub as it should be, Linux with Lilo, Windows and DOS manually. The one made by Fedora can't cope with large partition numbers.


With so many choices I haven't been able to spend enough time to learn anything but as far as the booting capability is concerned I haven't found one better than Suse professional.

[Eejay]

Originally posted by saikee
I have installed 32 Linux in my box. Suse 9.1 prof is my first one and also the only one I ever purchased. Yes it came with 5 CD and 2 double sided DVDs plus 2 manuals too. The only bit I should add is I think the professional version supports the 64 bit processor.

My 32 Linux plus 3 versions of Winodws and a DOS is currently booted by Suse's Grub.

I think Red Hat series, Fedora, Mandrakes and Slackware are all good big guns. There are other distros difficult to install but may be good for learning. However speaking from my 5 months experience so far I have to say Suse professional is the most thoroughly built system among the systems I have installed. These are the things I have found from Suse 9.1 professional

(1) It has no fear of large hard disk. My biggest is 200Gb. Many distros still can't cross the 137Gb barrier.

(2) Its has no fear of large partition number. FC, Red Hat and Mandrake truncate partition list after 16. Depending on the kernal version many of them can't mount partition higher than 20. This is very common among distros. I have Suse installed in partition 41. It can mount any other partition, change root into it to rescue any Linux in distress. Thus it is the most versatile

(3) The Suse bootloader I use is Grub version 0.94. It is superior than other bootloader too because it can reach the end of my 200Gb hard drive and boot anything I want. I made a Grub bootable floppy, the one with only the stage1 and stage2 files, and it can boot Linux with Grub as it should be, Linux with Lilo, Windows and DOS manually. The one made by Fedora can't cope with large partition numbers.


With so many choices I haven't been able to spend enough time to learn anything but as far as the booting capability is concerned I haven't found one better than Suse professional.

Oh, crap
I think my system is a 32 bit… Not 100% sure though, I knew something would go wrong that is why I was asking so many questions, never fails hopefully SUSE Linux professional edition will run on a 32 bit, if not I’ll have to send it back and look for a distro that will run on a 32 bit
:confused:

[bensdomain]

omg, dont let the tech fool you, installing linux is not worth 100$.

Instead, money can be better spent to buy partition magic, install it on your windows xp or whatever, then, create a partition for linux. it's all graphical and wizard. nothing hard.

installing suse is a piece of cake, again, it's all graphical besides things like log in names and password, all you do is click next.

pls do not spend 100 to get suse installed

or we will laugh at you:)

btw, i installed suse 9.1 pro before, it supports 32 bits, 9.2 should also support 32 bits.

[MIRV Griffen]

Originally posted by Eejay
Oh, crap
I think my system is a 32 bit… Not 100% sure though, I knew something would go wrong that is why I was asking so many questions, never fails hopefully SUSE Linux professional edition will run on a 32 bit, if not I’ll have to send it back and look for a distro that will run on a 32 bit
:confused:

By reading what he said, I think he meant that SuSE 9.2 Pro simply supports the 64-bit chips, not that you have to have one to run it.

I don't think you're going to have a problem, but hopefully you'll get a clear reply.

[saikee]

Yes. That was what I meant.

Aslo there is absolutely no need to worry because Suse's double-sided DVDs haves two systems; one for 32bit and one for 64 bit.

To be honest I am not even sure which system I have installed as the label is so small and I was excited during the my first Linux installation(remember it is double sided so the label is tiny engraved near the centre hub).

I installed my Suse in a 64 bit machine but later took the backup hard disk and force-fed into a 32 bit PC and kick-started all 16 Linux. Suse is among them. It has been working fine ever since. The only thing I notice is Suse is a bit slower in natively duplicating partitions. My 200Gb hard drives can be cloned by Kantotix or Mandrake in 2.5 hours but Suse took 3 hours. When I have a bit of I shall have a look if I am running a 64 bit code on a 32 bit machine.

I don't suppose anybody has a tip to check this out quickly?

[mmills]

the suse 9.2 pro edition is backwards compatible in the since it will detect your cpu, so dont get hung up on if it will work with your cpu, I ran 9.0 for a year, I love suse but I left windows becuse I was tierd of purchasing software, hence the thought I would use suse pro if I could DL it. I use UBUNTU, it comes with all the goodies.

if you need a copy of Partition Magic, I have an older copy, that I can upload to ftp or something.

goodluck with linux, windows is in the past.