# Which is better OS? SuSE 9.1 or Fedora Core 3



## naveenchandran (Jan 1, 2005)

I am currently using SuSE 9.1 PRO. As the Digit DVD carries Fedora core this month. I am thinking of changing my OS to Fedora Core 3. I have not yet tested Fedora Core. Plz post ur comments here.


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## arunmvishnu (Jan 1, 2005)

*i also*

Iam also in the same situation. Need help. :roll:


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2005)

Do it you would be surprised at the smoothness and ease of functionality.


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## cnukutti (Jan 1, 2005)

It is said that there is no need to goto the shell terminal in FC3 unless you want ot program 
It is really easy to use. I am waiting for the Jan issue of Digit.


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## pradeep_chauhan (Jan 1, 2005)

The terminal is a big part of the "Total linux experience" so not going into the terminal mode to do things will not give you a full feel of the OS. But yes FC3 is a highly smooth distro and all the routine tasks like wordprocessing office music etc can be envoked through the menu options. Good to start with but mark my words after a week or less you will be tempted to use the terminal mode to do things.


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## cnukutti (Jan 1, 2005)

Yeah true! the true power of Linux is seen only when you use the terminal. 
After a few days of using Linux you will surely use the shell.

I was mentioning the configuration. All the configuration part can be done using the easy to use GUI tools.

For a really powerful OS use Debian Linux. But I warn you that it would be a paint to install the system and configure. Even the most simple things doesn't auto configure. FC3 (or any other distro like mandrake, SuSE) really shines in that part.


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## naveenchandran (Jan 1, 2005)

What about the Development tools provided?

and also does it auto mount Windows partitions as in SuSE?


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## demoninside (Jan 1, 2005)

Come on Buddy 
Wht do u mean by auto mount
Why not to mount the drives images at the time of installing by seting mount point.
any way i hvn't tried SuSE9.1pro so cann't say any thing,
just using debian nowdays a nice Distro,
It worth tring.


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## cnukutti (Jan 2, 2005)

Yes If you want a true GNUish distro opt for Debian GNU/Linux
You can easily configure auto-mounting by adding the entries in your /etc/fstab file.


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## pradeep_chauhan (Jan 3, 2005)

Guys what i recomend take one small step at a time dont jump to other issues.
1. Talk about the partition
2. The boot Loader
3. The instalation 
4. enjoy the setup for few days get a feel
5. Start customising the setup ......................................
6. Enjoy more
7. stop using the MOUSE & VISUAL LINKS
8. Now you are a computer geek

So starters dont get bogged down by high sounding words and fundas. Start one step at a time.


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## tuxfan (Jan 3, 2005)

Perfect pradeep!! You have outlined steps very well.


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## nixcraft (Jan 3, 2005)

Linux distribution question is just like –

_Do you love your mummy or wife more?_

Short answer is depending upon your need. FC is good for home usage and if you are geek then use on production. Other hand Suse enterprise meant for enterprise usage.


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## cool_guy_on_linux (Jan 21, 2005)

FC for home use? Come on. RedHat's boss himself said in one interview that Home desktop users should stick to Windows which was much better ! 

However that does not mean that Linux is not suitable for home users. Try Mandrake 10.1 or Suse 9.2 or Linspire 5 or Ubuntu  or Xandros....... and so on..... Any of these is preferable to Fedora for a home user.

Fedora is just a test bed for RedHat Enterprise. Whereas Suse is also good enough for Enterprise just like Mandrake. But both Suse and Mandrake have survived in the market only on their desktop usage.  So if you plan to use Linux on your desktop, stick to the good distros and Fedora does not come in the top group for this purpose.


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## tuxfan (Jan 21, 2005)

I have been using PCQ Linux 2004 at home as well as office. It is based on FC1 and has all the tools that I require in my office as well as at home! Its not true that FC is not for home users. In my opinion, FC is good for home users simply because there are most number of self help tools (books, articles, etc.) on FC than all other distros combined. Home users cannot be expected to spend much on learning basics.

Anyway, I am eagerly waiting for PCQ Linux 2005 based on FC3. It is due to come in March 2005. PCQ's customisation makes a lot of things easier


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## cool_guy_on_linux (Jan 21, 2005)

I suggest you to try desktop focussed distros like Mandrake / Suse / Mepis / Ubuntu ......  You will change your mind when you see their ease of use. You hardly need to learn any commands for anything.

The first thing you will notice is the ability to easily re-partition your Hard Disk. Something that is very useful for new converts who cannot give up their Windows environment. FC and PCQ have too many things for which you have to go to the Shell.   I have been using Mandrake and Suse regularly and I do not see any use of the command line for regular Home desktop functions. 

PCQ has been a well made distro since they include Java, Flash etc but they are based on FC and therefore start off on the wrong footing. They would have been a better choice if they had based on Mandrake. Anyways PCQ has also stated on a number of occasions that they concentrate on the business front and not for home users. Home users for FC and PCQ are a secondary market. 

Personally I started off with Linux due to the good work of PCQ in distributing RedHat but I have been forced to uninstall RedHat after struggling too many times with the CLI. Whereas in Mandrake and Suse, I have never even once gone to the CLI for anything. On any given day, Mandrake has been atleast 6 months ahead of RedHat in features for home and desktop users. I suggest you try Mandrake 10.1 when it comes on the Digit CD next month and then decide for yourself. Better still, try to get a Windows convert and install it on his machine and find out if he likes it.


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## tuxfan (Jan 21, 2005)

cool_guy_on_linux said:
			
		

> FC and PCQ have too many things for which you have to go to the Shell


 I have been using it since quite some time now. And I don't know the ABC of command line. For almost everything there is a GUI frontend in PCQ Linux. I haven't gone to command line to do anything, except to satisfy my inquisitiveness 



			
				cool_guy_on_linux said:
			
		

> Anyways PCQ has also stated on a number of occasions that they concentrate on the business front and not for home users. Home users for FC and PCQ are a secondary market.


That comment is made for the articles contained in the magazine not their Linux distro. Their distro contains everything that a home user would require. For example, it also contains mPlayer which is usually not included in FC.

As for Mandrake, it is based on RedHat. So I feel there will be many similarities if you go a level deep. But I have taken your suggestion seriously and will surely try mandrake  I have 15GB space on my hard disk only for trying various distros  I will remove Knoppix and put mandrake


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## pradeep_chauhan (Jan 21, 2005)

Come On .... FC3 is one of the smoothest distro i have ever seen it has a very good feal good eye candy and very stable and functional I will call it the best and the most  widly used distro today (see the number of books available on it) There is no need for any one o use the command line and things like that . It has fast updates (Kernel 2.6.10 was available within 6 days) So I vote for FC3


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## demoninside (Jan 23, 2005)

Come on guys who the hell says, That for becoming a computer geek u need to leave the visual depart, any way i don't think so,COZ
=> I use IDE's for Rapid Devlopement,
=> Don't use shell untill unless it's do or die condition,
=> I m an DB programmer more then any thing else so using SQL is always command prompt but thinking to devlope some IDE for using SQL in more convenient manner,
any ways i think FC3 is cool if u hv a lot of resource nd very strictly hv a lot of RAM,
=> Run very smooth if u hv a rich configured system


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## tuxfan (Jan 23, 2005)

demoninside said:
			
		

> Run very smooth if u hv a rich configured system


I have PCQ Linux 2004 (based on FC1) on a P III 550 MHz machine with 128 MB RAM, onboard graphics card and it works without problem. Can we call this machine *richly configured*?


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## demoninside (Jan 24, 2005)

Dear Tux

I think u didn't notice I hv talked about FC3, not PCQ2004 coz i never tried it,

I think u all know linux, initiallise all software services at startup, it it's always heavy.


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## sreevirus (Jan 24, 2005)

from my experience with fc3, i've got one word that describes it - bloated. (if u have an average 256 mb ram 2 ghz proc)
damn its too slow and its a pain on the resources...especially when u r in KDE...and likewise in GNOME...it was a bit stable on XFCE, but XFCE didnt appeal to me too much...
my experience with fc3 was pretty bad...for some damn reason, i cudnt play mp3 while in kde, but cud do so in gnome, but everytime i restarted the pc and logged on in fc3, i cudnt play the mp3s again and i had to install the mp3 rpm again and again to play...i got the ntfs partitions mounted with the rpms from sourceforge, and got them to automount by modifying the fstab, but i cudnt automount the fat32 partitions...i had to mount them thru the terminal each and everytime i restarted...
so i got back to SuSE 9.1 pro. i'm saying this from the point of view of a novice home user....KDE is stable, there's less load on resources and performance is pretty smooth...and there's the support for mp3, videos play fine, fat and ntfs partitions can be mounted in no time...so, my preference for now is SuSE 9.1 pro.....dunno how SuSE 9.2 wud be like 

well this was performance on my pc - p4 2 ghz, i845 chipset 256 mb ram....maybe fc3 wud've been smooth if i had a better rig.


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## GNUrag (Jan 24, 2005)

tuxfan said:
			
		

> As for Mandrake, it is based on RedHat. So I feel there will be many similarities if you go a level deep.


Mandrake * was * based on RedHat, but that was 4 years ago. Now they have done everything inhouse from scratch...



> But I have taken your suggestion seriously and will surely try mandrake  I have 15GB space on my hard disk only for trying various distros  I will remove Knoppix and put mandrake


I got a complimentary copy of * SuSE 9.1 Professional DVD * from Novell a week back... what say??? 
SuSE is the best eye-candy filled distribution IMHO. For others you have to install some themes/apps to make it look smooth...

RedHat/Fedora is a true bloat. But this cannot be a parameter to judge about PCQLinux .... Its an inhouse work and they have done a nice job indeed. PCQ Forums had a thread sometime back saying that they are thinking about migrating their base distributuion from RedHat to Debian... 

The point about self help books being available for RedHat/Fedora is quite a vicious circle in itself... Authors write about the distro which is widely used, and people use the distro for which there is maximum amount of books available...


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## GNUrag (Jan 24, 2005)

sreevirus said:
			
		

> my experience with fc3 was pretty bad...for some damn reason, i cudnt play mp3 while in kde, but cud do so in gnome, but everytime i restarted the pc and logged on in fc3, i cudnt play the mp3s again and i had to install the mp3 rpm again and again to play...


What exactly happened?? Possibly that could be an issue with your sound driver.. Did you have ALSA installed?



			
				sreevirus said:
			
		

> i got the ntfs partitions mounted with the rpms from sourceforge, and got them to automount by modifying the fstab, but i cudnt automount the fat32 partitions...i had to mount them thru the terminal each and everytime i restarted...


What did your fstab say? fat32 partitions should get automounted with no probs at all...


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## sreevirus (Jan 24, 2005)

GNUrag said:
			
		

> Possibly that could be an issue with your sound driver.. Did you have ALSA installed?


nah, it cant be that...ALSA was installed, soundcard detection was ok in GNOME, and i cud play ogg files...what bothers me is that why did i have to install the rpm again and again everytime i restarted. and why didnt any sound play in kde? soundcard detection failed in KDE. the window crashed and i had to force quit.
.


			
				GNUrag said:
			
		

> What did your fstab say?


the usual code.
added these lines to fstab:

```
/dev/hda1   /mnt/C:     vfat     defaults    0 0
/dev/hda5   /mnt/D:     ntfs     ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/hda6   /mnt/E:     ntfs     ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/hda7   /mnt/F:     vfat     defaults    0 0
/dev/hda8   /mnt/G:     vfat     defaults    0 0
```
and used this command to mount

```
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/C: -t vfat
```
and i had to do this everytime.

and all this worked perfectly fine in suse...but this time, i didnt mount them in /mnt, but i created a directory /windows and mounted the partitions here and modified fstab appropriately...no problems faced.

anyway, i've got rid of fc3 now, it was a horrible experience...but if u have any solutions, pls post, might help others who may be facing similar problems.


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## tuxfan (Jan 25, 2005)

GNUrag said:
			
		

> I got a complimentary copy of * SuSE 9.1 Professional DVD * from Novell a week back... what say???
> SuSE is the best eye-candy filled distribution IMHO. For others you have to install some themes/apps to make it look smooth...


I am ready. When are you coming? Sunday could be a good time, but Sat evening could be better because on Sun some restaurents around here are closed 



			
				GNUrag said:
			
		

> RedHat/Fedora is a true bloat. But this cannot be a parameter to judge about PCQLinux .... Its an inhouse work and they have done a nice job indeed. PCQ Forums had a thread sometime back saying that they are thinking about migrating their base distributuion from RedHat to Debian...


I agree. I am really happy with my PCQ installations. I am waiting for PCQ Linux 2005. Based on FC3, coming up in March 2005. They may shift to Debian for their next version. But this one will surely be on FC3



			
				GNUrag said:
			
		

> The point about self help books being available for RedHat/Fedora is quite a vicious circle in itself... Authors write about the distro which is widely used, and people use the distro for which there is maximum amount of books available...


I entirely agree. But then it always take a lot of effort to break out from vicious circles. Novell  and Mandrake may have to take lead for the benefit of their distros. They will have to find out and fund authors and publishers to make books on SuSE and Mandrake available. However, when will we see a good book on Debian? GNUrag, why don't you start writing one? 



			
				demoninside said:
			
		

> Dear Tux
> 
> I think u didn't notice I hv talked about FC3, not PCQ2004 coz i never tried it,
> 
> I think u all know linux, initiallise all software services at startup, it it's always heavy.


Dear Demon,

The way you've never tried PCQ Linux, I've never tried FC3.  PCQ Linux is based on FC so I though all FC boxes will work like PCQ Linux boxes. But as GNUrag said, PCQ is not just forwarding the distro, but doing quite a bit of work on it. So lets not argue further. We both know only one side of the story.   BTW, go for PCQuest in March 2005.


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## pradeep_chauhan (Jan 25, 2005)

Gentoo users look down upon the world.

Some Day All You Guys will "GROW UP" To use GENTOO. Its the best and the fastest distro till date.


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## h4ck3r (Jan 25, 2005)

Many experienced users say suse9.1 and debian are very good distros.


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## demoninside (Jan 25, 2005)

hey as far as i know SuSE is very nice distro

nd i m using debian now,
man it's working great for a new one like me.


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## neerajvohra (Jan 27, 2005)

_Linux is open source!!!and it also needs command to remember,I too installed feodra3 from digit dvd,but telling you the truth,i am very lazy man,so I dont think Its my type!!!!so much to learn for like for playing mp3 you have xmms plugins,for players you should have real one
  and to mount ntfs or fat drives!!
  so better stick with your os which you"re using!!!
_


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## GNUrag (Jan 27, 2005)

sreevirus said:
			
		

> nah, it cant be that...ALSA was installed, soundcard detection was ok in GNOME, and i cud play ogg files...what bothers me is that why did i have to install the rpm again and again everytime i restarted. and why didnt any sound play in kde? soundcard detection failed in KDE. the window crashed and i had to force quit.


I dunno... might be an isolated case... I didn't face such wierd case yet.. 



			
				sreevirus said:
			
		

> the usual code.
> added these lines to fstab:
> 
> ```
> ...


This looks very okay... the *defaults * parameter takes care of automounting .... dunno why it didn't work for you..


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## demoninside (Jan 28, 2005)

Hey Tux buddy,

I never mean to argue about things that's why i said i hv never used PCQ,

and i wrote what i find is there so no ofence nd no hard feeling pls........


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## tuxfan (Jan 29, 2005)

demoninside said:
			
		

> so no ofence nd no hard feeling pls........



Of course not. No hard feelings 

How can I ever get into a fight with someone who uses GNU/Linux? Remember, I am TUXFAN  So all fellow tuxians are friends forever


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## demoninside (Jan 30, 2005)

tuxfan said:
			
		

> How can I ever get into a fight with someone who uses GNU/Linux? Remember, I am TUXFAN  So all fellow tuxians are friends forever


                  
That's what i call a real cool person, I realy liked ur style buddy.


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## tuxfan (Jan 30, 2005)

demoninside said:
			
		

> That's what i call a real cool person, I realy liked ur style buddy.



Thanks. And I must say I really like your choice of OS


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