SUSE vs Mandriva 10.1

[ExpertBeginner]

I downloaded and installed Mandriva 10.1, and as a Newbie, I’m not really getting very far very quickly, mainly because I’m still learning how to use Linux and install apps and getting stuff to work etc.

The more I use Linux, and look around forums etc the more I’m tempted to change to SUSE. I did install a free version of SUSE from a magazine CD (think it was personal 9.x), a while back and used it occasionally for a month or so, and I remember liking it very much, but don’t remember it coming with as much free software as Mandriva.

YAST is one thing that I like about SUSE, and I understand the distro may have more point click/desktop GUI utilization than Mandriva? (Is it easier to use for a newbie?)

I’m very tempted to change, but at the moment my main problem with ‘Linux’ is that as mentioned above I’m not getting anywhere very quickly. Now perhaps I’m trying to use it like a WinXP system, which is probably not going to help, however the fundamentals of using a GUI is similar across platforms?

All I want to do at the moment is get a mirror version of my WinXP installation but in Linux running on my PC.

Should I stick with Mandriva? (Which is fine at the moment until I learn and understand more), or would SUSE be easier for me to get to grips with in the long run?

I need the following functionality and support:

Graphical (photoshop, jpg, psd, gif, bmp, tiff, psp,)
Audio (sound recording, editing, wav, mp3, mid, aiff, mod, eax)
Video/DVD playback/editing (divX, mpeg, avi, qt, wma, wmv)
Office (doc, xls, ppt)
Games (nvidia 3D acceleration, quake3, wolfenstien, etc)
Web Developing (dreamweaver/flash, html, fla, swf)
A comparable amount of free software and features as Mandriva 10.1 (powerpack), as a free download. I understand openSUSE is a free version, however it has been claimed it is a beta release and not as stable or bug free as SUSE?

Mandriva has a lot of alternative apps included in the package I have installed, and for free. Most of my productivity has been hampered by problems with mounting drives, and worries about NTFS rw support/reliability, perhaps I can overcome this once I’ve decided what distro to stick with!

Please either feed my temptation with your knowledge of SUSE, or tell me that I’m doing ok with Mandriva and RTFM!

[bigtomrodney]

I myself switched from Mandriva to SuSE recently. SuSE is released as an Eval version after a few months which has the equivalent amount of software as the free Mandriva. I should note though that Powerpack is not the free version of Mandriva. I found SuSE to be just a little bit more polished and seems to support more hardware. Though having said that Mandriva was one of the better distros IMO for detection anyway. I think I'm a convert now to SuSE. There is some minor trouble setting it up to play all media due to license issues but rpms are all available from the Guru repositories.

I found that Mandriva had far better urpmi repositories than SuSE has YaST repositories. Plus the multimediamedia support is better in Mandriva. Overall I would still go with SuSE just for the polish and the fact that Mandriva is going through so many changes at the moment (Recent Connectiva and Lycoris acquisitions and inclusion of their own systems). Though both SuSe 10 and Mandriva 2006 look very promising.

[Dapper Dan]

I'm sure others will have sound advice as well, but here are a few things I think are good to keep in mind as you decide:
1. When learning any distro of Linux, you must have patience.
2. Most Linux distros have pretty easy package management systems, once you learn how to use them. With Suse, it's Yast. With Mandriva, it's (still I presume) urpmi. Fedora - yum or apt-get rpm. Debian - apt-get. Slackware - slapt-get, swaret and others.
3. It's gonna take a while to figure out which Linux app is the equivalent to the Windows apps you use. Again... patience.
4. Underneath, all Linux distros are essentially the same.

My advice is to stick with Mandriva, learn it and learn how to use urpmi. Say you want to install gedit, an editor. From a terminal become root and go...

urpmi gedit

...press enter and follow the instructions. It's really that easy. Once you feel you know your way around Mandriva, you can then try other distros to see if there is another more to your liking. Each one you try, you will arm yourself with better knowledge to move on to the next. If you jump from Mandriva to SuSE to Fedora to Debian and so forth without taking the time to understand them, you won't stay with any distro long enough to learn much of anything about Linux. Good Luck.

[ExpertBeginner]

I totally believe you when you say that Powerpack is not a free version of Mandriva, and I've read this myself, however I downloaded the ISO from HERE, and chose the 10.1 Official Mandrake- Install DVD, 2047MB, which I installed and use, with out paying a penny.

Now correct me if im wrong, but if it wasn't the powerpack version, it wouldn't say POWERPACK down the side of my main menu? Also the download is titled '10.1 Official Mandrake', it is however the repackaged 'Mandriva'. Weird.

[bigtomrodney]

Sounds like it was redistributed. I'm not sure that it's a problem, certainly not with me Just wanted to draw comparison so you knew what to expect from the free versions.

[ExpertBeginner]

Hey Dapper Dan,

Thanks for the info, very helpful, i didn't know about the urmpi feature, so that should make things easier in future! I think i'll stick with Mandriva and learn it as suggested, and perhaps play with SuSE on the side. I suppose the only thing holding me back is the NTFS RW issue, as all my documents are in this format, although there is THIS.

[Dapper Dan]

Unless something has changed that I don't know about, writing to NTFS partitions from Linux is a very unsafe thing to do, and could irreparably screw up your files on said NTFS partition. The best way to access files back and forth is to create a fat32 partition you can copy files to and from Windows, then when you boot to Mandriva, there they'll be accessible as well once you've mounted that fat32 partition. You can do it the other way too. A word of caution: To be safe, never move files to a fat32 partition unless you have a back up either in NTFS or in a Linux file system. You can loose everything on a fat32 file system when doing this. I once lost a half a year's worth of radio logs I stored in a fat32 partition, and tried to cut and paste to an ext3 partition. I know better now...

[oldcpu]

The best way to access files back and forth is to create a fat32 partition you can copy files to and from Windows,

I do the same, but I confess large files ( > 2GByte) cause a problem with fat32. With Windows I can use a feature in Winzip or Winrar to specify a maximum file size in a .rar or .zip file (and hence one gets multipe files that fit on the fat32). Then with Linux I can read/copy these multiple .rar (or zip) files and decompress them to one large file.

But, what program could I use in Linux, to do the reverse. ie. when in linux chop up a very large file into compressed smaller chunks (with a max file size that a fat32 file system can handle), and then under windows copy from fat32 to ntfs, where I decompress? Part of the complication, is many windows decompression programs won't handle a linux compression format.

[Dapper Dan]

I know you can unzip a .zip file in Linux so maybe one can be zipped up too and re-opened in Windows, though I've never tried this. I'm pretty sure there is a Windows program that will unzip, or untar a .gz file that, of course CAN be done in Linux. Interesting.. I'm gonna research this a little more...

EDIT: Found this so a .gz file can obviously be "unzipped" from within Windows. I wouldn't think this is the only utility that can do it.

EDIT 2: You can easily zip files in linux with, what else, zip! I just installed it via apt-get. For directions do:

man zip

[bigtomrodney]

Winrar will manage all of your formats. Although for the best of everything in FOSS on Windows - use 7zip. It's great. It's on sourceforge.net