After several months of not using Linux I recently installed Suse 11.2 on my home PC.

Rather than download the file and chew up a month’s worth of data I bought the DVD on eBay for about $10 including postage, and obtained a bonus copy of Ubuntu as well.

The great thing about Linux is that you can get a complete operating system for nothing, or just the cost of a disk.

Having not used Suse for a couple of years I was pleased to see the improvements. All my hardware was detected, including a Logitech webcam and Lexmark scanner. Windows 7 had trouble with the scanner, so that was a notable achievement.

Everything worked except my USB phone for Skype and there was a glitch with the graphics card (see below).

The easy search and one-click installation of software was a significant enhancement since my previous experience.

Google Chrome installed easily and several other Windows programs also have native Linux versions, including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, FileZilla and Textmaker.

SoftMaker is currently offering free copies of its office software for Linux and Windows and they are donating €0.10 for every successful download to charity. There had been 30,337 downloads last time I looked, raising €3033.70.

I’m still exploring some of the latest Linux software, but one interesting program I discovered is Choqok. It’s a microblogging client for KDE that logs into multiple Twitter and Identica accounts.

It’s as good as any similar program I’ve seen on Windows (screenshot below).

I had two problems setting up Suse 11.2 that may deter novice users. The first was lack of recognition for my graphics card (ATI Radeon HD4350). I had to login using the standard Intel graphics and download a driver.

The other glitch was scratchy fonts and that required some fiddling with various settings to get it right.

Overall though I’m very pleased. If I can get the USB phone to work I will hardly have to use Windows at all, especially if I can get Photoshop and Illustrator to run under the Wine emulator; that’s my next job.

Screenshot showing Textmaker and The Gimp.

Screenshot of KDE microblogging client Choqok.