Which One Should I Run ( Personal Or Prof.)

I am a UNIX developer and I am running 9.1 personal at home. I have noticed that personal does not come with alot of development tools that other distros or professional have. Is there a way to install all the development tools that come w/professional? Should I use a different distro that is geared towards development? Is the ftp personal different than the personal CD you can buy at stores?

As far as I know, the Personal edition of SuSE is no longer being produced. If you're any type of developer you're going to want to install Professional. I've had great success with 9.1 and 9.2 Professional for Java and C/C++ development. You should be able to upgrade a Personal installation to Professional.

Why does suse charge for what other distrubutions offer for free? Atleast the other distros appear to offer similar packages. I am relatively new to linux so correct me if I am wrong.

This is a point that a lot of people don't understand. With Linux you can choose to use a completely free (no cost) distribution or pay for it. The price charged is completely up to the person who sells it and can range from just the cost of burning the media to as much as $100+USD.

What you get with commercial distributions is usually specially-designed drivers, manuals, official tech support, and other little nice plusses. Xandros for instance comes with Crossover Office, which allows you to install Microsoft products on your Linux machine. Turbolinux offers PowerDVD for Linux, and Linspire offers their ClickNRun Warehouse subscription which gives you one-click installs.

These are value-added programs that "justify" the price paid for the distributions. I say "justify" in parentheses because what someone considers worth paying for will vary from person to person. SuSE retail offers some commercial applications (though honestly I've never used them), but the vast majority of the distribution can be downloaded for free.

For me, the reason I buy SuSE is because I like the distribution and want to support the company that makes it by paying for their product. The packaging is nice too, but not the main reason I buy it. I buy SuSE because I like it and believe the OS to be worth my money.

As to why SuSE charges money for GPL software, they don't. SuSE charges money for their programming staff that puts packages together and makes them work as a complete, fully-functioning operating system. You pay for the whole package, not the sum of its free parts. I look at it like this: I could cook a pizza by myself with publicly available ingredients, but I'd rather just pay the delivery guy to make it for me and deliver it to my door.

Its a bit like selling bottle water... ( not quite the same )

David

What does suse offer that I will not find anywhere else? YAST, OUT, ....
Anything else?

I don't look at it as what SuSE has that others don't; rather what SuSE does with what everyone else offers. I've tried several dozen distributions that offer similar or identical collections of software, but one thing that SuSE does for me that none of those do is that all of those applications work. You can easily collect the 4,500 packages SuSE comes with off the net, but there's no guarantee that installing any one of them won't break the entire system. With SuSE, everything I install works without a hitch.

Originally posted by mack@Nov 10 2004, 14:15
What does suse offer that I will not find anywhere else?* YAST, OUT, ....
Anything else?

If it is that much of a problem to spend a little cash then go find a distro that is free. Or wait until 9.2 comes out for ftp install. I don't see why people have an issue with companies selling a product. Linux is free, as in freedom. It doesn't mean free as in beer (although I know of no free beer either...lol). If you like a product, buy it to support the company is how I see it. I like running Gentoo on one box. That is definately free but I still donate because I like the product. It is out of respect for the people developing.

On a personal note, if you need us to try and talk you into using Suse then maybe it isn't the right choice for you.

I think you misunderstood my questions. I simply am trying to learn more about the distros available. I am running suse 9.1 personal. I just wanted to learn what the profressional version does or has that other distros dont. I never once mentioned that money was a issue. I was interested why some are free and some cost money and differences between them.

why would I buy something I know nothing about?