Definitely NOT ready to use AT ALL.

This felt more like an alpha than a beta.

However, if they follow the usual release quality as they have since I've evaluated suse since before it's 8.x days, it will be something like this:

xx.0 = buggy, more like a beta.

xx.1 = fix previous bugs, but invoke new ones that are even worse and slower.

xx.2 = finally get a decent working version that is decent speed, rasonably stable and greatly reduced in bugs. Now worth trying out for the general public (maybe).

xx.3 (if needed), significant speed improvements, bugs fairly minimized. Good to go.

The speed statements are relative to Suse's usual bloatedness of course.

My eval of 11.0 beta 1 installed easily, but very little of the hardware worked out of the box. This is the same system that pretty much everything worked out of the box for 10.3, my hp dv9000t (custom). There were things like the network manager wireless applet, when clicking ont he properties, the heading said "form 1" instead of something useful. They definitely should NOT call it a beta, only an alpha release.

Wireless did not work btw.

it is basically a dead release, can't recommend anyone not helping them out with development directly, to even consider trying it out yet.

KDE 4 was slick but buggy as heck (KDE 4 under Suse 10.3 worked far better, and that's not that great either).

Next I'm trying out (half a dozen people have kept asking me to in the past few months), PC Linux OS 2007 (free).

Cheers!

-Hawke