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Suse/Mdk


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Depends how you define difference. Both are european-developed linux dstributions that use kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2 as their default desktop. Both have highly polished default themes and powerful system administrationt tools: SUSE has YAST, Mandrakelinux has Mandrake Control Centre.

 

I'd argue SUSE is a more commercial product thn Mandrake. The 5 Disc SUSE 9.1 PRO pack contains a lot of software, the 1 disk personal edition doesnt contain anywhere near as much. There were some terms and conditions regarding redistributing SUSE but they seem to have gone away.

 

Mandrake has URPMI - SUSE doesn't. It's tool YOU is not as powerful as URPMI, however it is possible to use APT4RPM. There is no equivalent of Mandrakeclub for SUSE. There also doesn't appear to be as many third party RPMS for SUSE 9.1 - although a lot of KDE is developed on SUSE first and foremost.

 

It's really muchness for muchness. Which one do you prefer? I have used both extensively and settled on Mandrake. It's really up to you.

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mousematt

 

Is mdk easy to use then suse?

 

Ciao Mandrake-user

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I have both SuSE 9 pro and Mandrake 10 on my box. Both are easy to use. SuSE installed a little odd because I had to install the base and then add programs with YAST. If I selected the programs ahead of time, the install was a mess. Of course, Mandrake has had some oddities as well. The biggest difference is stability. (I know I'm going to get flamed!) SuSE is not a bleeding edge distro, but is aimed at stability. Mandrake is not necessarily unstable, but it can be because it stays "current" with new rpms that might not be field tested as much as they could be. The reason for this is SuSE has a larger commercial staff, and Mandrake uses us user types to complete the field testing. I like them both.

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can't get flamed for the truth lx :D

IMO, they're pretty much equal in ease of use, but that's only when I consider how long I've used, and how well I know mandrake. If I allow my bias in this then of course mandrake is easier. I'm in FC2 right now and just had to --force the install of an older kernel rpm :o ....it's been years since I've had to --force an rpm install much less a kernel :unsure: .....point is, they're all a little different and all have there little nitches. SuSE is great for n00bs or those that just want it to install and run with minimal to no effort.

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  • 2 months later...
I have both SuSE 9 pro and Mandrake 10 on my box. Both are easy to use. SuSE installed a little odd because I had to install the base and then add programs with YAST. If I selected the programs ahead of time, the install was a mess. Of course, Mandrake has had some oddities as well. The biggest difference is stability. (I know I'm going to get flamed!) SuSE is not a bleeding edge distro, but is aimed at stability. Mandrake is not necessarily unstable, but it can be because it stays "current" with new rpms that might not be field tested as much as they could be. The reason for this is SuSE has a larger commercial staff, and Mandrake uses us user types to complete the field testing. I like them both.

 

So your saying Suse is better then Mandrake? :unsure:

 

Mandrake-user,

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I recently was loaned Suse 9.1 Pro and installed it on my laptop (128mb Dell Inspiron 4000) and Suse was intolerably slow. Mandrake 10 was much faster. Used KDE for both.

I also like MCC much better than Yast. From time to time I've tried Suse 9.0 and alsways come back to Mandrake as my favorite. I think urpmi is better than anything on Suse. While some may say Suse is more stable I have never had stability problems with Mandrake (I usually don't install new versions when they first come out).

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both are good beginner distros, easy to use. but intall of suse takes longer and it reacts slower than mandrake. yast can be a mess sometimes. but on the other hand, suse has commercial video editing apps included (kino). apart from that no big differences.

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Neither is better.... the problem is the question is incomplete.

 

As a commercial distro Suse wins hands down... the packaging, delivery and the fact you get the DVD and CD set and amd64 (CD and DVD) makes it a lot cheaper than the same for Mandrake....

 

Also the faults of Suse are not so applicable to a commercial environment.

 

If you examine what is possible on either WITHOUT the root password then YAST and urpmi don't come into it. Indeed its easier to 'lock down' users in Suse.

 

Personally I detest YAST but at least it works, Mandrake's wizard equivalants are the real poor cousins but then what sysadmin is going to let secretaries and accountants etc install and configure there own work machine?

 

the difference is that with only a few small exceptions third party standard tools like webmin can be used with mandrake... this is changing though... and is a reason I am moving away from it in favour of open distro's. (open in terms of the choice of config tool)

 

urpmi is a winner hands down for mandrake over Suse but again in a professional environment this has little use. OK it might simplify finding the deps for a package or upgrade for the sysadmin but then if the sysad sticks them all on a nfs share and upgrades each machine the overall differecne is not important for say 300 users.

 

more importantly individual software is not a normal unix professional environment. My Solaris box has only solaris on it, everything else is on nfs.

 

The default desktop issue is only an issue if you are too lazy to change it!

The fact Suse needs special rpms's to install new themes is somewhat of a negative for a home user IMHO...

 

Suse is the strangest distro Ive used.... its the least similar to other distro's ...in terms of configuration

 

Both suse andmandrake are RPM based meaning they are Redhat derived but I find debian closer to mandrake (and just about any other distro) than suse.

I might even say I find Solaris and IRIX closer to a common *nix, INCLUDING FREEBSD....

 

In other words Suse is a linux but what you leanr is less applicable to other distro's.

BSD might have a different paradigm to linux in terms of disks etc. but the KDE stuff is still left where it should be whereas Suse feel they know KDE better than KDE and move it all to /opt....

 

My personal opinion is I hope Suse go out of business before they pervert liunux any further but the Novel buyout makes that unlikely. Im all for lots of choice but Suse seem not to be... it seems YAST and the strange way its configured are all to prevent users ever changing distro....

 

This is IMHO a bad move becuase people tend to go through distros like clothes... growing out of learning ones unti;l they get a comy fit for them. Suse thinks it can provide all.....

 

Unfortunately MDK is following in this path... which is why I now only have one PC of 5 with mandrake....

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As a commercial distro Suse wins hands down... the packaging, delivery and the fact you get the DVD and CD set and amd64 (CD and DVD) makes it a lot cheaper than the same for Mandrake....
My personal opinion is I hope Suse go out of business before they pervert liunux any further but the Novel buyout makes that unlikely. Im all for lots of choice but Suse seem not to be... it seems YAST and the strange way its configured are all to prevent users ever changing distro....

Interesting point. I am leaning towards suse for my server simply because it seems a more commercially orientated product and I need one that is going to be around plus I can get local technical support if I need it. I would try building my own computer and have done so with somebody watching but I need to get up and working. As a business user there is a limit to how much time I want to spend becoming an It expert. On the other hand this forum is great which tends to make mandrake attractive for that reason alone. Initially I bought one of the mandrake box sets and found the manuals etc from a newbies point of view completely underwhelming and little use. I had a very basic problem setting up the software that evenually I got sussed with the help of this forum despite some numpty telling me to RTFM which was a bit difficult as I couldn't get beyond initial set up.

 

From a purely personal point of view I want a commercially successful linux distribution that I can depend on. From a small business point of view any alternative to windows has got to have access to something like the range of manuals etc you can get with windows or if necessary some method of training staff.

 

In a way linux has quite a good business model, try for nothing and if you like it buy it with more bells and whistles if that's what you need or keep the basic and keep playing. I also need to make sure I pick a file format for storing scanned files and other information that will still be accessible ten years from now. kind of rules out ms office :cheesy:

 

It's a different concern when you are planning that far in advance future proofing comes in to it a lot.

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Interesting points gmac...

 

One thing which strikes me is Suse do actually have a decent forum now.

Believe it or not they wouldnt have one or anything to do with one for a long time since they preferred the mailing lists... I once found an old mailing list where someone suggested a forum and 90% didnt even sem to know what a forum was...

 

Also they seem 'prickly' about giving help/links to other forums... there is the official one and thats it... thats one reason for the conspicuous absense of suse on mutli-distro forums like linux-questions etc.

 

However the forum is quite good so thats a plus....but obviously not so good as MUB..:D (seriously)

 

The downside to me is if you get Suse what you learn is not transferable as much...

well in the end its all just text files, except no becuase suse are starting to use XML... but what i mean is if you wanted to invest lots of time and learn the real basics ground up and dirty hands then yep it is all transferable but if you instead commit to a level of using YAST then you need to relearn lots if for some reason you ever want to change distro....

 

For example I bet if Linspire/Xandros came with a scanning and OCR professional quality with all bells and whistlres you'd jump at it...

 

I find the mandrake manuals a waste of paper... they are mainly the manual equivalant of someone doing a presentation when they just read the bullet points...

 

Hmm pressing set up graphics card opens a dialog to set up your graphics card...

sorta thing... like I didnt know...then they miss the real nitty points like If you have a TFT monitor then XXX or if you have DSL but its conneted to a modem with password/username already in then select LAN connection, not DSL...

 

 

I see the best place for Suse in a large office... with mainly unskilled (at least computer wise) people using it... (Probably the old Windows NT arena)

 

Its worth noting that Mandrake do a corporate server which I havent tried!

Its also worth pointing out its $799!!!!!! and still kernel 2.4

 

 

link to mdk store nor does it seem to add much if anything????

 

Have you read the Debian manual....?

It is of course written for Debian but its comprehensive and FREE.

The FreeBSD book is also very comprehensive and good...

80%+ of stuff is common from the CLI...

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  • 2 weeks later...
As a commercial distro Suse wins hands down... the packaging, delivery and the fact you get the DVD and CD set and amd64 (CD and DVD) makes it a lot cheaper than the same for Mandrake....
My personal opinion is I hope Suse go out of business before they pervert liunux any further but the Novel buyout makes that unlikely. Im all for lots of choice but Suse seem not to be... it seems YAST and the strange way its configured are all to prevent users ever changing distro....

Interesting point. I am leaning towards suse for my server simply because it seems a more commercially orientated product and I need one that is going to be around plus I can get local technical support if I need it. I would try building my own computer and have done so with somebody watching but I need to get up and working. As a business user there is a limit to how much time I want to spend becoming an It expert. On the other hand this forum is great which tends to make mandrake attractive for that reason alone. Initially I bought one of the mandrake box sets and found the manuals etc from a newbies point of view completely underwhelming and little use. I had a very basic problem setting up the software that evenually I got sussed with the help of this forum despite some numpty telling me to RTFM which was a bit difficult as I couldn't get beyond initial set up.

 

From a purely personal point of view I want a commercially successful linux distribution that I can depend on. From a small business point of view any alternative to windows has got to have access to something like the range of manuals etc you can get with windows or if necessary some method of training staff.

 

In a way linux has quite a good business model, try for nothing and if you like it buy it with more bells and whistles if that's what you need or keep the basic and keep playing. I also need to make sure I pick a file format for storing scanned files and other information that will still be accessible ten years from now. kind of rules out ms office :cheesy:

 

It's a different concern when you are planning that far in advance future proofing comes in to it a lot.

 

Your saying that you build your own computer,I build my computer and before I started I try to get all info. about hardware that will work with Mandrake Linux.

When just get a computer I don`t know what I get for my Canadian $,so I talk into me to build a computer. :thanks:

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SuSE 9.1 Personal ISO is free, while SuSE 9.1 Professional ISOs are not necessarily free; although I may see Novell has more intention to free those ISOs later.

 

I just received my "Novell linux toolkit" with 3 DVDs worth of Suse goodness and it was aoffered free by Novell a few months back (althoug I only now received the package). Unfortunately that free offer seems to be over.

 

I haven't tried Suse yet ans I'm not sure the comments in here really make me want to try it as it may (sligthly) be less in line with what I'm looking for in Linux.

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