How is 'SuSE 9.1 personal' distro broken?

[CodeRoot]

Some time ago, I went out and bought 5 off-the-shelf boxes of SuSE 9.1 personal - with the idea in mind to give them to people who would be willing to try out Linux. I had trouble installing it (don't even remember what, but it was enough that I tossed it aside and went for the 'professional' version). Later, I read somewhere - that particular boxed version "left the factory broken" (which, of course, was easy to believe...) -- after that, I did not want to give them to anyone because - well, I wouldn't want to give someone a "broken" Linux distro... (It's hard enough to get people to try a good one.) I still have them - 4 of the 5 boxes have not yet been opened...

So, the question is --- can anyone tell me exactly what it is about this particular boxed version that "left the factory broken"...? I researched it awhile back and came up with nothing. Right now, I don't really have time to mess with it to try to figure it out.

Thanks!

[budman7]

The 9.1 personal didn't have quite a few packages, like gcc.
I personally didn't have any problems with it.
As a matter of fact, it was a very easy distro to install.
One of the problems I have when installing distros is that my monitor isn't correctly sensed.
When I installed 9.1, I literally had to install it blindfolded, because the monitor was so messed up.

[CodeRoot]

Thanks for your info, budman7...

[cayalee]

i used it extensively for everything for about a year and half. was an excellent distro once gcc and multimedia packages were installed. thats all that was left out of it. (many free and non free distros still dont include dvd and mp3 support tho its not hard to fix this)
i personally found it easy to install, but many people have resolution problems with allsorts of distros

[CodeRoot]

(also, thanks to cayalee for responding...)

[CodeRoot]

So -- what all this means is, any user who either does not plan to compile anything or is willing to download and install the missing packages - would be a good candidate for receiving one of these?

I suppose these are only worth something to someone who has dial-up (or no internet connection at all) AND cannot obtain any boxed distros off-the-shelf?

[cayalee]

wow, you dug this one up i think your hitting the right spot with that, if your willing to download a few bits and bobs its a good distro, though really quite old now. may not have much support for new hardware.

[CodeRoot]

EDITED:

I dug it up (it is only 3 months old) because I still have all 5 boxes (4 still un-opened) and I continue to wonder who could I give these to who would actually get some use out of them -- I'll figure something out eventually...

I will now consider this thread SOLVED - thanks for the input!