Product Reviews

Around since the frontier days of Linux, SuSE has changed from a small bunch of dedicated enthusiasts into an organised and focused company. This is fairly evident in that it's set its sights on desktop and server domination in Europe as well as the rest of the world. As with the other Linux distributions on review here, SuSE Linux 8 Personal Edition very much provides a stepping stone for existing Windows users. It could also be considered a step up for existing Linux users who would like access to the state-of-the-art features afforded by this release.

SuSE tends to provide well-packaged and well-supported products and Linux 8 Personal Edition is no exception. It comes on three CDs with two manuals (Basics and Applications) and 60 days of installation support. As with the other distributions, the installation is very straightforward. SuSE's installation mechanism, YaST2, is simple to use, as is the configuration of the machine post installation.

SuSE 8 comes with the usual suspects - KDE 3, GNOME 1.4.1 and a host of mail clients and browsers as well as StarOffice 5.2. The kernel is also a recent stable release (2.4.18), supporting the protocols and peripherals mentioned in the other reviews here. As an example of configuration, I hot-plugged my USB scanner and then used the YaST2 Control

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Center to activate it - the job was completed in under a minute.

As an aside, like all of the major players in the Linux community, SuSE actively supports development and extension of open source software. The fruits of some of its labours, not to mention cash, are evident with the inclusion in this release of the latest sound architecture called ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). Now a stable and ever-growing set of sound drivers, ALSA exemplifies the ethic of distributed labour and combined effort that spearheads and drives forward the Linux and open source community. To the user, ALSA brings a huge range of supported sound hardware. To the developer, it brings a sensible and stable sound API for development of music software. And to the hardware manufacturer, it brings a new market and a new window of opportunity. It's good to see this level of faith coming from one of the major players in the Linux game.

SuSE Linux 8 Personal Edition is particularly well integrated with the KDE 3 Desktop. Applications are easy to find in the KDE menu system and there's a good range of other software available for this and the other distributions reviewed. You'll find Internet connectivity, mail tools, file and Web browsers, games, multimedia applications, support for CD ripping and CD writers, DVD playback, development tools, educational software and much, much more, all in addition to the excellent office tools we've already mentioned.

While all three distributions have many features in common and offer great value for money, it's probably SuSE that has the slight edge over the others. SuSE's documentation and support is excellent and it also embraces, enhances and extends the beautiful KDE 3 Desktop. Finally, with YaST2, SuSE provides an excellent - and above all, consistent - configuration tool, making it just too high quality a distribution to overlook.

Richard Bown