>Hi Jerry,
>
>I've been using RedHat Linux now for about 10 years, so I don't have any experience with the other makes of Linux. However, I've heard that the operating system of choice in Germany is Linux like the OS of choice here in the US is Windows, so I would assume that SuSE would be the most common OS in Germany. Since SuSE is so widely adopted in Germany and probably used as much by the ordinary home user as by the commercail business, It may be that the makers have assembled it to appeal more to the ordianry user. One thing I like about RedHat is that MySQL and Postgres are fully functional with any full install of the package, at least through version 7.1 which is what I'm running. However, SuSE is probably more on the cutting edge, since much of it target market is non-commercial.

You've got me beat in Linux experience by 5 years!

SuSE is the most widely used Linux distro in the EU, from what I've read, but is always first in Germany like Mandrake is always first in France. It is interesting to note that SuSE had a 38% market share in the USA but that Mandrake has now replaced SuSE as the #2 Linux distro in the USA. With RH's corporate entrenchment in the USA it will really have to make a mess to lose that, IMO.

Prior to 8.0, SuSE had an "Install almost everthing" option which included PostgreSQL and MySQL. Both come up preconfigured and functional. What SuSE is apparently doing is decreasing installation time by installing only what is necessary for a standard office workstation environment. Ergo, only "Standard workstation + KDE3 + StarOffice" as the most comprehensive install option. On my Athlong 1GHz with 512MB that option took only about 15 minutes. After the intial install I went through the list of apps and selected all the ones that I would have normally wanted, like KDevelop, XEphem, Glade, PostgreSQL, etc... That additonal install took 3 hours! If the SuSE upgrade hadn't used my existing configurations I wouldn't have had such a good upgrade and I wouldn't have glowed so enthusiastically about it.
SuSE corp really hurt themselves releasing this distro without enought testing. SuSE 7.2 was a dog, but that was after a ling line of excellent releases. 7.3 made up for it. 8.1 has a lot of making up to do, but I may be dating another distro before the 'I'm sorry's reach me".