Novell SUSE Professional 9.2

Having got all this up and running, a quick check of the package list on the side of the box said the product also supports the popular GNOME desktop environment. Although it hadn't been selected during the initial install, YaST came to our rescue and after a few clicks and a few CD changes, we had GNOME installed as well - including the Firefox browser.

So is there anything wrong with the distribution? If there's one criticism that could be levelled against it, it's almost too big. If you set up Windows, you have to make a choice about where to go next and you gradually build the software collection you need. Here you get it all in one go, and it can seem a little overwhelming. And when you've looked at all the packages and realised that they're all open-source, you might ask why you should buy it rather than just download it all. The reason? Everything is here in one easy-to-install and maintain package which, quite simply, works.

Author: Simon Brock & Ian Wrigley