Two of the year's most user-friendly Linux distributions--SuSE Linux 8.1 and Red Hat Linux 8.0--have closed the gap between Windows and Linux. But which one should you choose?

Linux fans: we're getting there.

Ever since Linux made its mass-market debut, would-be adoptees have wondered whether switching from Windows would ever be a truly practical option or whether Linux would forever remain a server-side OS for die-hard technophiles. A few early attempts at a consumer Linux OS--remember Corel Linux?--died on the vine, leaving the future rather bleak for this low-cost OS alternative.

Early Linux versions sported an installation routine far too technical and terrifying for the vast majority of Windows users, and getting the X Window GUI up and running often took both time and courage. Even when everything was working, day-to-day Linux applications were much harder to use than their Windows equivalents--X Window's spindly fonts alone made onscreen reading an abysmal exercise.

Things have changed. SuSE Linux 8.1 and Red Hat Linux 8.0 have both markedly closed the gap between Windows and Linux. For those who have at least a few years of PC experience, it's now feasible to switch from Windows to Linux or, at the very least, use both--in a dual-boot environment or on separate machines. So, which of these alternatives should you choose? Read on.

SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional
SuSE Linux 8.1 is an extremely friendly choice for Windows users. If you're switching or dual-booting, make this distribution your first choice.

Red Hat Linux 8.0 Professional
Red Hat remains a solid Linux contender, but Windows switchers or dual-booters should stick with SuSE for easier installation.

SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional

From the get-go, you'll discover that SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional is designed precisely for the would-be Windows convert. Its ultrasmooth installation routine from either CD or DVD--both of which are included in the retail package--offers to automatically resize an existing Windows partition to make room for Linux as a dual boot. It's so well-behaved, in fact, that it doesn't even attempt to hog all the available disk space. Instead, SuSE calculates a reasonable percentage of your hard disk, plus a bit more to ensure room for future upgrades and downloads, and it still manages to leave enough room for Windows to grow, as well. Note, however, that SuSE can resize only single-partition FAT32 Windows installations. If you have only NTFS drives, which is likely if you're using Windows 2000 or NT, you'll have to use SuSE's manual-partitioning utility, available from the setup routine.

On our test system, which contained multiple FAT32 and NTFS partitions, SuSE located the compatible free space, recommended a selection of Linux partitions, and started the installation procedure. From there, SuSE installed flawlessly. It stopped very few times for user input, mostly to ask how many components we wanted, and it booted without incident into a fully functioning graphical user interface (GUI). Red Hat didn't fare nearly as well.

Linux veterans know that the moment of truth with a Linux install is often the moment the X Window GUI starts up--that's when you'll detect any initial video card difficulties. SuSE had no trouble detecting cards on either of our test machines--a Compaq with a 1.1GHz Athlon and GeForce4 Ti 4200 card and an HP with a 500MHz Celeron and built-in video. In fact, it succeeded marvelously at detecting all of our hardware. The only glitch: the GeForce card wouldn't function in dual-display mode (that is, using two monitors), even with newly downloaded drivers from the Nvidia site, but we had the same problem with Red Hat.

Launch SuSE for the first time, and you'll arrive at its default desktop, KDE 3.0.3. Windows users will feel at home here, as SuSE sports a Start button, cascading menus for accessing programs, and desktop icons that open to reveal applications, hard drives, and system configuration options. With its rich colors and stylized icons, the KDE desktop is nothing short of gorgeous. SuSE also lets you switch to GNOME; WindowManager, another GUI option; and a few other less full-featured GUIs, either by switching and then logging back in or by going to them directly from the initial login screen. In addition, SuSE's configuration dialog is superb--well organized and informative, with a wealth of options. If you routinely play around with the configuration menus in Windows, you'll enjoy the even greater control that SuSE offers.

We wish Linux could finally rid itself of ugly screen fonts in word processing and Web browsing applications, but not even the superfriendly SuSE manages to do so. In fact, everybody's favorite Linux browser, Mozilla Netscape, is almost unreadable at times, its fonts look so spindly, thin, and jagged. Thankfully, the Linux development community has created a Web browser--Konqueror--that makes better use of font antialiasing and creates much crisper, more readable fonts. SuSE not only includes Konqueror, it defaults to the browser on start-up--an important decision if SuSE plans to attract Windows folks accustomed to nice, clear text.

SuSE 8.1 runs on the 2.4.19 Linux kernel and includes support for USB 2.0 and FireWire devices. Plus, SuSE ships with a seemingly endless supply of programs, ranging from sophisticated graphics and video tools to utilities and servers galore. It also includes the OpenOffice 1.0.1 office suite.

From a stability standpoint, SuSE is good but not great. In our casual tests, it crashed twice-- not unusual for any Linux distribution running on a PC with the latest hardware. The first, noncrucial crash occurred during a lengthy download from the SuSE Web site. The cause of the second, however, is related to SuSE's only significant problem: its GNOME support. Specifically, GNOME's feature-rich e-mail program, Ximian Evolution, crashed several times and once took the operating system down with it. We didn't have any similar problems with Red Hat 8.0, running precisely the same version of Evolution, so the conclusion is that SuSE doesn't play well with the GNOME environment. That's not too serious, since you can switch back to the KDE desktop, but you will miss out on Ximian and other powerful GNOME-only applications.

Red Hat Linux 8.0 Professional

Red Hat 8.0 Professional's installation procedure hasn't changed a great deal from that of earlier versions. In other words, it's not as smooth as SuSE's, and it suffers from a greater number of interruptions and a less intuitive set of setup dialogs. Red Hat's extremely informative help panel offsets some of these difficulties, however, by walking you through choices such as how to partition the disk and which packages to install. Still, we greatly prefer SuSE's method, in which the OS automatically partitions your drive for you--no input necessary.

Unfortunately, on both of our test systems--a Compaq with a 1.1GHz Athlon and GeForce4 Ti 4200 card and an HP with a 500MHz Celeron and built-in video--the graphical user interface (GUI) failed to load on the first boot after installation. We've encountered this problem before with Linux distributions, and the glitch is almost always related to the PC's video card. In Red Hat's case, we had to boot twice on both machines before we could select the desired 1,280x1,024 resolution. Until then, we were trapped in 800x600 mode, where the fonts are truly unreadable (more on fonts later). SuSE 8.1, in contrast, handled both video cards without a hitch during setup.

Where SuSE 8.1 offers the KDE 3.0.3 environment by default, Red Hat 8.0 opens with the leaner, more elegant GNOME desktop. GNOME's configuration tool offers fewer options than KDE's, but the options that it does provide, such as fairly simple display, audio, and networking choices, are very similar to those you'll find in Windows. Red Hat 8.0 hides the huge range of configuration options that Linux is known for, so it's much more palatable to anyone who's used to tweaking Windows, which also hides some details for the sake of usability. But Red Hat does let you set up the GNOME configuration tool to show more options, and you can switch to the KDE environment at boot-up time if you'd prefer to run KDE's more detailed configuration applet.

If you're used to Windows--especially if you use Microsoft's ClearType display--Linux fonts may appear appallingly thin and jagged. Red Hat, however, uses strong antialiasing to make desktop and application fonts look much smoother than in other Linux distributions, including SuSE Linux. Furthermore, Red Hat's Font Preference dialog lets you set the font rendering precisely as you wish and even offers a subpixel-smoothing option for LCDs. It's still no ClearType, but it's much closer than it was before. Fonts in Mozilla, however, still look as if they were written by someone shivering with cold.

Although KDE supports far more applications than GNOME, GNOME has some powerful programs. For example, Red Hat's default e-mailer, Ximian Evolution, includes a feature set that's comparable to that found in Microsoft Outlook and has no real equivalent in KDE. Nor did Ximian crash under Red Hat as it did in SuSE Linux 8.1.

Also, Red Hat 8.0 takes full advantage of GNOME's rich display and organizational capabilities--GNOME is known for its elegant, uncluttered display and easy-to-navigate menus--and it includes numerous graphics, audio, video, and other multimedia tools. In fact, like SuSE, Red Hat ships with a seemingly endless supply of powerful applications. Red Hat offers the increasingly popular OpenOffice 1.0.1 as its productivity suite, with KOffice 1.2 (SuSE's default) available for separate installation, as well. Beyond that, you'll find everything from strategy games to advanced server packages, as well as development tools and every conceivable type of utility bundled with the OS.