I should note that yes, SUSE does do a reboot after installing the contents of the first of five CDs. So if you start the install and come back to a black screen it's probably because SUSE rebooted while you were away. No harm done but it surprised me that the install didn't seem to say that would occur.
In any case, the package that was corrupted is not part of the default install so things went find all the way to the end.
However, that's not to say everything went well. SUSE failed to detect my plug and play monitor and also did not detect the motherboard's built in sound card.
It surprised me that when I went to configure the monitor, the particular model I have (an old Mag DX17F) wasn't on the list. Both Mepis and Xandros did have my model so I have to wonder why these distributions have it but not SUSE.
For the sound, the configuration wizard didn't detect it during installation but did fine when I ran it manually. Why that would be I don't know.
For things that did work, I like the package update application that automatically checks for security updates (of which there were two already). I like a distribution that takes security updates seriously (Xandros does maybe one security update every six months, unless it's a commercial application that does their own updates).
I recently signed up for the Debian security list and, over the last two weeks, I've received notice of at least a dozen Linux applications (including the 2.4.x kernel) that have been updated to patch critical security vulnerabilities. In a world of zero day exploits, it is important to patch your system as soon as possible. Yes, I know, some patches can close one hole while opening another (or breaking something else). But we don't live in a perfect world and I, for one, would install the patches.
Other than that, my first overall impression is that SUSE seems to run slightly slower than the Mepis or Xandros distributions. But since I have not run any benchmarks, this could be just my imagination. I haven't used SUSE for very long so I don't have anything else to report. More when I know more.
