Fedora and the System Administrator -- are my assumptions on SuSE incorrect?

[griffisb at bellsouth.net]

> Whoa whoa whoa whoa ... wait a second!  Now I understand my query here on a Red Hat list about SuSE might not be appropriate, but I'm going to go ahead and 
make it -- prompting for any corrections to my assumptions.
> 
> I am currently very much under the belief that SuSE CDs (at least through 8.x) are very much _not_ redistributable!  Yes, you can pull down 
a "redistributable" version via packages from the Internet, but I have _never_ 
seen a SuSE CD (or CD image) that wasn't either a "commercial shrink wrap" for 
a single (or finite number of) system, or an "evaluation."
> 
> SuSE's distro relies on non-100% redistributable components.  Now you _may_ be able to install it on a number of systems with your purchase, but that is also the case with Sun StarOffice as well -- you can_not_ simply "redistribute" it freely.
> 
> Am I mistaken on SuSE???

I am running SuSE 8.2 Personal (also tried Mandrake 9.1 and briefly tried Debian Woody). I may be wrong, but I believe that YaST and YaST2 are not redistributable. Since YaST is the installer for SuSE, you end up with something you can not freely load on other machines. I -MAY- be wrong, but I think that is the whole reason behind not having downloadable SuSE ISO's, and why on the few occasions you DO find SuSE ISO's on a public FTP server, they are pulled quickly.

That's part of the reason I am here. I am looking for a desktop distribution that is freely distributable, easy to install, and that will have good user guides. I would hope with a community project, you do not pay for up2date - but use a similar tool - although I'm often wrong. I feel that with the backing of RH, Fedora will meet all those requirements. Since I'm downloading Severn ISO's right now, take my above comments as a rank amatuer newbie.