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Red Hat 8 or SuSE 8.1 for the desktop user?

I will be taking a quick look at both operating systems to find out which is easiest for the following:

• Getting a copy. <liInstallation.
• Configuring.
• General day to day use.
• Distributions website.

For many years, Red Hat Linux has been the market leader for many reasons, but it is only recently that Red Hat has put more work into the desktop side of its operating system compared to the work put into its server side. Getting a copy of Red Hat is very easy. You can either download the ISO images from RedHat.com or purchase the personal edition from sites such as Amazon.co.uk for around 31 Pounds. The biggest advantage of purchasing the boxed set rather then downloading is that you get the manual that can be good for inexperienced users.

SuSE has never been as popular as Red Hat. However, in recent years SuSE has spent a lot of time and money developing its desktop side of the operating system. Getting a copy of SuSE is slightly harder then Red Hat because SuSE does not provide ISO images for its operating system, but you can do an FTP install or purchase the personal edition from Amazon.co.uk for 25:99 Pounds. The boxed set comes with CDs, a DVD, and a manual.

Here Red Hat 8 shines over SuSE, since many more people can get it by downloading ISO images from the website.

Installation of Red Hat is fairly painless. The installer takes you through a number of screens, each asking you what you want to do and providing a bit of simple help on the left hand side. In total I spent about 45 minutes installing Red Hat 8 compared to around 35 minutes for SuSE 8.1, but this depends on how much you install and the speed of your computer. Installing SuSE 8.1 was even easier then Red Hat 8, as I had a large Fat 32 partition, and the installer was able to automatically split this and create the partitions needed for SuSE. Of course I checked that it wasn't doing anything stupid, but it pretty much did what I would have done manually.

Next there is configuring the distribution after installation. Red Hat does this straight after installation and gives you options such as network and xfree86 configuration. Red Hat failed to pick up my monitor so it took me a while playing around in the console and xfree86config to get the right settings for it. While this would be easy for an experienced user I doubt that an inexperienced user would have goten this far. He or she would probably have booted back to Windows by now.

Configuration in SuSE I found easier because of SuSE's configuration program, YaST, which cut out a lot of the playing around in the console that an inexperienced user may have found daunting, and displayed an easy way of configuring hardware. While half the fun for many people is using the console to solve problems, some less tech-based people may find it unusual compared to Windows.

For configuration SuSE has to be the winner because of YaST. It not only makes things easy for the inexperienced, but can also save time and effort for the more experienced user. Sadly, neither distribution could properly configure my Conexant ADSL modem. SuSE detected the modem but could not configure it, while Red Hat could not detect it at all. (In the end, I had to set the modem up on a Windows 2000 machine, then access the Internet through the network)

Red Hat has good support for both KDE and Gnome, which is good because like many people I like using KDE but also like to use programs for Gnome such as Evolution and Gimp. SuSE's support for Gnome is not as good, and Evolution crashed when I was trying to install it in SuSE. I noticed that both distributions had poor font support. Sometimes I could be using Mozilla and I would have to squint to read the text. This seemed slightly worse in SuSE, especially when web browsing and word processing.

After a quick download from Nvidia I had Unreal Tournament 2003 playing nicely in both SuSE 8.1 and Red Hat 8. Hopefully, in the future more games will come with Linux installers.

My pick

It was hard to pick a winner for day to day use because both distributions did pretty much the same, but Red Hat won, for me, because of better Gnome support.

One of the important parts of a distribution package is they support and help you can find on the the distribution's Web site.

Redhat.com has an extensive support library covering all features from installation to configuring to troubleshooting. SuSE.com has a much smaller support area, and I was more disappointed by what the site what had to offer,but this may be because of the way SuSE is distributed compared to Red Hat.

Overall, despite my personal preference for Red Hat's Gnome support, I think SuSE 8.1 is slightly better for the inexperienced because of its simple installation, stylish graphics and simplicity of configuration.

SuSE seems more geared to the desktop market than Red Hat at the moment. But both distributions are making it a lot easier for people to convert from Windows to Linux.

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