While everyone around here seems to be anxiously waiting for the upcoming Knoppix 3.4 release, I thought I'd give SuSE a spin; there's a brand new LiveCD available at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/live-cd-9.1. So I downloaded, burned, rebooted and a pleasantly nice looking bootloader was greeting me; I was able to graphically choose the language (english or german), the behavior of the bootsplash (silent or verbose) and the screen resolution, though I think this only applies up to the point X starts.. So, I decided to stick with the standard settings just to see what SuSE 9.1 LiveCD can do out-of-the-box (SuSE is actually selling their LiveCD with 9.1 personal edition), exept that i set the screen resolution to 1024x768; well, the boot process took quite a bit more time than knoppix', the bootsplash was nice looking too and the good news is that SuSE has finally decided to dump their awful "yast2 installer demo" that one had to go through on every boot plus all hardware was automagically configured as SuSE went straight to a KDE 3.2 desktop; I think that is a real step forward for SuSE but on the other hand there might still be newbies who'd like to see how the installer looks and feels like before doing a real install, oh well.
The combination of the KDE 3.2 desktop and the 2.6 kernel made the whole thing quite snappy (even on a slow amd 350), the wallpaper kinda reminds me of the default winXP one (blue and green colors; very easy on the eyes, you know, the menu does not appear to be too confusing for newbies (it actually says "video player" instead of "kaffeine") and the SuSe's default theme is plastik exept that the window decorations have larger buttons and a SuSE-gecko in them One can instantly do productive work in an office environment with SuSe 9.1, all the necessary applications are there, everything's neatly integrated, even openoffice looks like an qt app!
Over time, yast2 has become a very usable configuration utility for newbies and somewhat more advanced users alike, it's always less confusing to have everything configuration-related in one package, and it has gone open source now, too!
Conclusion: SuSe 9.1 is not the LiveCD to replace Knoppix, us geeks would have lots of stuff to complain about; no more saving settings to hd, memorystick, or even hd-installing in general, too bloated and awkward to customize once things get out of reach for yast; kinda makes me think that SuSE is treating their LiveCD as a stepchild and making it as retarded as it has to be for still being able to justify selling their boxed versions But, there's one key area where SuSE really, really shines; and thats usability! Yes, that's right, for the average newbie, usability means less choice in applications, having only the best-of-breed apps available plus naming them appropriatly in the kde menu is a revelation to most newbies! Also, fewer questions that the new user potentionally could not answer and that'd drive him/her away and having all apps looking the same widget-wise is just as important as paying attention to the overall esthetic apperance of the desktop.
Pheew, that said I'd suggest ya'll try it for yourself, it is really refreshing to take a step back and step out of the world of knoppix and its mods and see something different for a while!