Review: SuSE Linux 9 (NewsForge)

Posted Nov 14, 2003 20:49 UTC (Fri) by UncleWarthog (guest, #12337) [Link]

WIndows XP: US$100
Office XP(Upgrade): US$300
Bunch of applications: US$200 (this includes winzip, a fine antivirus and stuff like that)
Total Price: US$500

SuSE Pro: US$79.95

Mentally giving Bill Gates the finger: priceless.

Seriously, though, SuSE Pro for about $80, is a wonderful value. It's even better when you realize that the personal version for $40 ships with everything you would need to have to use it as a Windows desktop (and Microsoft Office) replacement. You can also get an update version of SuSE Pro (box and discs but no dead-tree versions of all the documentation) for about the half the price. Also keep in mind that these are list prices; most retailers selling over the web are selling it for less. I think Amazon sells it for somewhete between $65 and $70 for the Pro version.

As far as compatible hardware goes, I've found current versions of SuSE to be fairly compatible with everything I've thrown it at. I use a SBLive audio card myself and don't have the kind of problems described. (A hint on something to look at if you haven't already: open the Kmix {audio mixer} program and look at how the levels are set. I've occasionally seen them set too low so that it only seems like there's no sound.)
I wouldn't expect it to be compatible with everything that Windows is compatible with; Some hardware is developed only for Windows yet Linux has good support for some of that too.

Posted Nov 15, 2003 9:19 UTC (Sat) by ctg (subscriber, #3459) [Link]

You forgot all the development tools and languages, all the databases, all the mail servers, the web servers, the sound/media development stuff etc.

You're looking at more like $15,000+