>>>>SuSE 8.0 arrived by UPS this afternoon.
>>>>
>>>>As a reminder, SuSE 7.3 came with 7 CDs and 1 DVD, 5 books and 3 floppy diskettes (boot and 2 module disks).
>>>>The 5 books showed their heritage by being very technical, even nerdish.
>>>>
>>>>SuSE 8.0 comes with 7 CDs and 1 DVD, but only three books and NO diskettes.
>>>>The three books are definately NOT nerdish, but explain in newbie terms how to install and run SuSE and its applications. SuSE is relying totally on the power of its latest version of YaST2 to autodetect and install any and all hardware.
>>>>The one caveat: since there is NO boot floppy, the target computer must have a bootable CDROM. A few pages are devoted to the common BIOS's in most computers, explaining how to configure the boot sequence to enable a bootable CDROM.
>>>>
>>>>SuSE 8.0 is targeted right at the masses of average, non-technical WinXX users. YaST2 now includes a very graphical HD partitioning program that specializes in automatically taking as much of a defragged WinXX partition as you want to spare, and converting it into a Linux partition. Fully weaned WinXX users will, of course, have no difficulty in giving their entire HD storage to Linux. With either ReiserFS or ext3 protecting the software against hardware and power failures, and a Personal Firewall protecting against cracker intrusions, SuSE has become the most reliable and secure Linux distro available. (I haven't used recent versions of Mandrake, but their 8.2 release may be equal to SuSE according to some users.)
>>>>
>>>>The installation process for SuSE 8.0 has been speeded up considerably, with some configurations taking as little as 15 minutes, according to the documentation. When I install my copy this Sunday I will choose the "almost everthing" option. and let you know how long it took. The main reason I purchased the 8.0 release was to get the 3.0 version of KDE, which includs data-aware widgets. SuSE 7.3 was a VERY good release and 8.0 will have to go some to improve the hardware detection and automagic installation features. I'll let you know if it made the leap.
>>>>JLK
>>>
>>>Does it come with any internet-connection-sharing tools? How much does this package cost?
>>
>>At least a couple dozen, including the latest Samba. Personal Edition is $39 and Pro is $79 direct from SuSE. If you wait until it percolates through the marketing channels the street price is usually about $20 and $40. But, I can't wait...Computers are also my hobby, and we never wait long for our toys. :-)
>>JLK
>
>Samba has ICS? I thought it was only for connecting to Windows networks. Right now I am using Windows Internet Connection Sharing feature.
>
>Thanks.

Oh, you mean allowing two or more networked computers to share the same internet connection..... Sorry about my confusion. I don't keep abreast of WinXX buz words.
ICS is a Piece of cake. In my wife's Sony VIAO I put two ethernet cards. Her PC acts as a firewall and connects via eth0 to a Cisco 675 router set up as a dhcp server for my ISPs DLS service. Eth0 gets its IP address from the Cisco dhcp server. Eth1 has a fixed IP address and used to connect to a passive HUB to which my PC and my son's PC were attached. We both had fixed IP addresses. The Sony was setup with IPFORWARD turned on, and /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/network files on all machines were set with the respective hostnames and IP addresses. From any box I can telnet or VNC into the other boxes and do maintanence,etc... So, not only to we share the internet transparently and simultaneously, we also share apps and files. The email and newsgroup services work transparently too.

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/network/eznetshare.html
http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/linux-share-internet.asp
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/clientcfg.htm