Suse V's Red Hat (or fedora)

suse enterprise versus an equivalent RH or RH fedora distro

Suse desktop versus its equivalent RH or RHF

which is the best in terms of usability and industry standards, also who bundles the best software with its distro's and why?
Bearing in mind Novell backs suse so they are big players in the network industry but so are redhat

 

being backed by an enterprise does not necessary mean that the OS is better fedora is free and it is really flexible, maybe it depends on what you want to do with the OS if you are new to Linux Ubuntu is worth a try it also supports industry standards and has a complete desktop environment....
I tried the Redhat for a while after that I tried fedora and I found it to be the same as Redhat
I only tried SUSE to see if it would work with my computer at that time I must say that fedora seemed more flexible....
I use debian and slackware both as desktop and server OS

 

rayson is right. it depends on what you need.

it also depends on what kind of computer you have. unless you like to compile your own kernel and stuff. i can say that Fedora offers Legacy stuff in the repositories. Legacy is support for old hardware.

to be honest, i dont like RedHat 10v4 near as much as i like Fedora Core 6. i would say that FC6 is both easy, and flexible. slackware is fast like BSD. Ubuntu is probably the easiest to install and configure. Debian can be any but you will NEED to do a lot of modifying. Suse is good but i think they minimize your ability to install the non-free stuff (like win32 codecs).

it is really easy to get FC6 going as a multimedia desktop as long as you use repo's. the Livna repo is easy to install. just copy-paste a command as root.
i googled around a bit for you and found some links to some decent material. this first one is pretty strait forward and gets what you need. i have many many other things than this though.

post install notes:
http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2533

livna repo:
http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/UsingLivna

then jump in here for some cool Gnome themes:
http://art.gnome.org/

there is so much out there for free on Fedora Core 6 as long as you can find it. hope that helps.

 

The reason I asked is because if I install via a graphical install proocedure, then there is really not much control over the packages in Fedora or RH. In Suse there is an enormous amount of finetuning that can be done preinstall, even down to things such as fully setting up kerberos and other things needed for networking and security. I must say I usually only run linux under kde and use the command line if I am forced to. I have always thought RH and fedora wasnt as user friendly as Suse, mainly because I really love the yast inyerface on suse. But I know you guys dont really bother much with KDE etc so its probably a more academic discussion to you.

Now I come to think of it i dont know whether its suse linux I prefer or am I talking about the addons for things like KDE - erm, ha - I'll let you decide

 

i prefer Gnome. KDE is just as good. it really depends on what you like or need.

personnally, i use Gnome and a lot of KDE applications. it is very possible to run any KDE application under Gnome. i have 1.5Gb RAM so i dont get any thrashing or slowdown from using the KDE libraries in Gnome. i would recomend 256mb RAM (in most cases) to run KDE and Gnome libraries together on the Gnome desktop. with 256 RAM, you should not experience any thrashing or slowdown.

it is very easy and very possible to have both KDE and Gnome installed on a system. i would recomend that you install both if you have the hard disk space for them. you can log into either one you please or even run them both at the same time in different tty's. on my FreeBSD system, i run OpenBox on tty9 and Gnome or KDE on tty10.

-- -- -- --

about the graphical installing:
you can choose your individual packages from the initial graphical installation. here is some images so i can better explain:

Custom Installation

Customize Software Packages to be Installed

(came from this site here)

post install package managing:

if you want to manage what packages you have installed on your system you can do it graphically with many different programs. here is two of them, with the second being my favorite.

one is called Smart Package Manager. it should already be installed from default. i think it is still available if you dont install Gnome. in the Gnome menu, it is located under Applications >> System Tools >> Smart Package Manager. this program is essentially an easy one to use if you dont know what each lib does and only want to install whole, default packages.

for fine tuning, i like Yumex. it is basically a graphical front end for Yum. it will automatically install any dependancies for you but still allows the most fine tuning of individual packages. it is not installed by default but only takes one command to install (as root):

yumex is a little slower than what you may like if you have as OS containing 20Gb of program and system files like me. i think the reason it is so slow is because it is always updating the headers for your installed packages list and keeps the available packages list as up-to-date as possible. after the program has started up, it is just as fast as anything else.

it is very starit-forward about letting you pick EXACTLY what you want to install. you can select individual packages or whole package sets. you can also remove stuff with it.

give yumex a try and tell me what you think.

ttyl,

j