Ok gang:

It has been over a year since I purchased Suse Linux Personal Edition 8.2 and it is finally time to fish or cut bait.

For several months now, I have been using my secondary computer which has a Soyo Super 7 board with an AMD K6-2 533 Mhz processor.

My primary computers hard drive kissed the dirt and I have been waiting for a really good deal before I replace the 6 Gig primary hard drive on the primary computer. It has a 3 Gig secondary hard drive, but I do my backing up on the secondary hard drive and did not want to blow it up without transferring everything on my new hard drive first. As of right now, I don't know if I will be able to get anything off of my former primary drive, but the really vital stuff is backed up on the secondary drive.

I bought a new 120 Gig Western Digital at Circuit City for $39.99 after rebates. My 6 Gig drive only had about 1.8 Gig being used, so I have storage up the Wazoo and would have bought a smaller hard drive but for the price. It did't make sense to pay more for less.

I am going to Linux because I am tired of Microsoft's prices for software that is always "IMPROVED", yet constantly being debugged. I am tired of upgrades that are averaging $80..00 for "PERSONAL" editions and close to $200.00 for "PROFESSIONAL" editions. I am going to Suse Linux from Germany for $39.99 that I paid for my "PERSONAL" edition of 8.2 which can be upgraded FREE to 9.1 although their tech staff at Suse said the advantages are not that great and that I should stick with 8.2 unless I want the power of the "PROFESSIONAL" edition for an extra $60.00 and they said the average user does not need the "PROFESSIONAL" edition.

For those of you that are interested, the new Suse Linux Personal 9.1 costs only $29.99 + shipping for a disc set or you can load the complete system, minus registration rights and privileges for free over the internet.

Suse Linux allows you to install it and Windows on different virtual drives and allows you to choose which one you want to work with. I currently own Windows 98SE and do not see myself going beyond Windows 2000 if I can find someone to sell me their certified Microsoft disc.

I currently have 9 computers which I will be selling to low income unemployed here in Milwaukee. These have to be software loaded and tested, and I have been advised by Suse that I can copy 9.1 off the internet, and supply the disks to people that buy the computers from me at no charge, so long as I tell the buyers that they do not get ownership registration rights and privileges unless they pay for a certified copy. Can't beat that with a swizzle stick!

I chose Suse's version of Linux because of the research I have heard they put into it, and they are also the least expensive of the 3 major Linux distributors.

As I sit here and write this, I keep thinking of the poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and wondering why I keep doing these dumb challaging things when I could be learning and having fun with an established working operating system, and have come to the conclusion that I may be more nuts than I thought.

So if you do not see or hear from me for a while, it is because I like to go whole hog after a problem until it is resolved or until they put me in that weird white coat where the arms tie in the back. If I am gone more than a month (Rarely happens.), I got frustrated and lost count of the muscle relaxants I took and will probably be in detox for a while <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Into the valley of death he rode---------------------

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I use Redhat more and more, for the same reasons you use Suse. I've found that it's fine for most people to do most things.

Hey, Bounty !
I will feel lonely, if I haven't my dayly dose of puns to decipher, from your posts.
So, come back quickly... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

In the meantime, I will maybe do the same.
I also have several computers, using mainly two of them.
But I have a server, unused up to now. I'd like to use it on my local intranet, to test web sites aso.., so maybe I should try to install a Linux on it. Suze or Mandrake .... I have not yet decided....
let's see......

I decided to fish instead of cutting bait some time ago. I converted my laptop to Suse 8.2 with no Windows partition left. That version failed to support my ltmodem. I found a driver that did the job here . Apart from that I was happy with my choice.
I´d like to add that Suse also offers a free live evaluation version on a CD. You can boot and run the version from CD without installing. That way it´s possible to try it without messing up the original installation.
For those who like to see if Linux is something they might like I recommend the free Knoppix CD . It´s a full distribution that boots and runs from CD. It doesn´t mess with the hard drive installation either.
Linux may not be a mainstream operating system but it sure is established and working. With most distribution it´s no longer a real challenge to install them. I managed to install an intranet server from scratch for my home with a Debian distribution in about 20 minutes of work (actual installation took longer but didn´t need supervision) despite having no prior Linux experience.

I converted an obsolete 486 DX 100 machine to a Linux intranet server. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance. I selected Debian for it. The age of the machine narrows the choice a bit.

Hey,

I've been dual-booting for a lot of years, Debian, Mandrake, Lycoris, Suse, and now Fedora Core 2.

My "home" machine has gotten really old and obsolete, and in that process, much to my dismay, my "linux" drive bit the dust "stranding" me in Winows for a few months. Really painful, if you're used to software that just works, and tons of free applications.

Since then I've become legally self-employed again, meaning hardware is deductible again, and two new replacement machines are currently in the middle of my home-office floor being configured. There are some REALLY sweet deals on Dell 400SC servers these days if you know how to go about it, and they're easily converted to very good desktop machines. Both of these will still be dual-boot, but the plan is, sometime in the next 6 months, to retire one to dedicated server use, and build a MS-free/Intel-free box for my own desktop (about half the parts are already at hand).

I used SUSE for a bit, but found it a bit clunky. I would recommend taking a look at Fedora. It's a fork off of Red Hat, and has taken on a life of it's own... and it's mainstreaming, in that you can take advantage of really huge numbers of Red Hat RPGs out there, plus apt-get. And it's free. Really. Not just a trial version. The recipients of your efforts won't owe anyone.
______________

No matter which defintion of "free" software you use, it does mean that there's no Bill to pay.

I made the switch about a year ago and this has been the first year I haven't had to reinstall clean since windows 3.1 in the early 90's. I've created and kept a lot of documents since the late 80's and early 90's that I have transferred from computer to computer, OS to OS and XP with its activation and the DRM stuff that has the potential to be in the next version of MS office and the annoying bugs in XP helped me make the switch. I spend so much more time now actauly using my system to do things I want and not installing updates, and keeping the spyware removal and antivirus programs up to date (I used to spend an average on one hour per day just on computer maintenance)

nope, your just fine, i wish i could dump xp for linux but maybe i will experiment on this one when i invest in a new pc.

i personally do not like MS windows because xp is such a terrible program (anything based after NT is actually, same vulnerability).
but what offends me the most is the price they gouge you for because most people dont feel they can go elsewhere for a operating system.
when i bought this pc i didnt even get a win xp operating system cd like i did with past computers, they want you to buy another are they nuts?
if i paid FOR the os i want the disc of that os its only fair and logical.

this is the same as the vcr VS. betamax situation in the past. betamax was a superior system quality wise but the vhs people convinced the public that there was "just something wrong with betamax its too different etc" and crushed the product and consumed the market.


that goes for browsers too, most people use IE or netscape, but theres alot of people moving towards new browsers like opera and others.
i used to be a die hard netscape user untill too many problems made me start using IE.
if anyone uses opera or a new browser give an opinion about it.

NY Rat rightly points out that I typed "Red Hat RPGs" when I meant "Red Hat RPMs", sorry if I confused anyone. Didn't we have more time to edit these things in the past?

Second retraction in just a few days, I'm batting zero here, time to shut up. At least I managed to resist flaming that Flipper troll...
<img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Opera was much quicker than IE, but it's proprietary, closed-source, and the free version has ads.

FireFox is a fork off of Mozilla, it's been very stable, has tabbed browsing, pop-up suppression, better security and control than IE, it's about as fast as Opera (as far as I can tell), is open source and free, and runs on multiple platforms. As a professional programmer, that last is important to me, as it means that I can use the same tools in Linux at home and Windows in the workplace. You can get it at mozilla.org- be careful to get a stable version for your first experimentation, not the latest Beta. Most people are up and running with it in 15 minutes, and in 15 days won't go back.

There are some sites (notably those composed with MS FrontPage extensions, that is, MS proprietary "extensions" (lock-ins) to HTML), that seem to only work with IE... but the only way we're ever going to get away from that is to get away from IE and complain to the people who put up such sites.