I had a friend ask me why I switched to Suse and here is my response to him. I thought it might be helpful for those considering openSuse.
I just needed to try something different to expand my horizons after 11/2 years away form Microsoft and strictly using Gnome based Ubuntu, and not even aware that KDE was it’s own Desktop environment. It has given me a much better perspective on linux distos, Gnome versus KDE, hardware functionality, forum advantages, and the like.
I had been wanting to try others for a while, and what prompted me was 2 things sent me back over to Windows lately (Dragon Age, a cool new game, and my TV Tuner Card) and I was ****ed if I would go back to Windows 7 (though sadly I do like it), without giving the other distros a try. And after reading a bit i wanted to give KDE a run, though it was only disappointing on all the distros, but that is another story and I have yet to give it a fair shake.
I tried Mint, then, Mandriva, then Suse, then Fedora, and finally went back to openSuse.
Why? you might ask.
- free and seems to have a lot of hardware support (mint was good there too)
- good installation format (though actually formatting to my existing partition system proved very troublesome)
- a relatively slick appearance, with compiz coming preinstalled (though it caused a lot of headache, when I added features), cross repository installation is a problem specific to openSuse and needs to be avoided, weird!
- wine and other apps seem to use relatively recent versions, and they are functional (Ubuntu is too safe for me), I finally found a way to patch wine, and if I couldn’t it was going to be the deal breaker for Suse.
- and the biggest GOOD/BAD is the incredibly different forums, the search leaves a lot to be desired (especially getting hits through Google - Ubuntu TOTALLY has this wrapped up amazingly)
… BUT!!!
the Suse forum responses are consistently fast, intelligent, considered, and incredibly thoughtful … they CARE, and have been over the top helpful! and you know demanding I can be.
lol!
which is such a surprisingly great blow to the Ubuntu stronghold