For those of you that think SuSE has gone totally graphical, I'm happy to report that they still retain the ncurses text-based YAST2 installation tool in version 8.2. While a graphical installation tool is a great help for the user that's new to Linux, being able to use text-only based tools are a time saver for more advanced users and system admins. Of course, some gurus still set up everything by hand, on the actual configuration files. What do you know, an operating system that is friendly for all levels of expertise.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV (Brooktree BT848 chip) card in this machine, so I can keep up with news, particularly when my children monopolize the family room TV. I had been using MoTV to display the picture, but on this installation SuSE used KWinTV as the default. So, I tried it out. Since it was a new installation, I had to scan channels again to see anything. You scan channels with the Wizard under the Program tab. After that step, it worked great. As expected the picture couldn't really be used at full screen because of the 2 MB of video memory, but in small windows the picture is pretty clear. KWinTV has a nice interface and is easy to use. I paid $20 for the WinTV card, after rebates. See Figure 5.

The Gimp is another old favorite that I tried out under SuSE 8.2 Pro. I use it for photo touch up and graphics resizing. All the functions seemed to work well.

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