[tlug] Re: Has anyone bought boxed distros in Japan?

[<Keith.Wilkinson@example.com>]

SuSE 9.3J costs only 10,800 yen from Plathome 
www.plathome.co.jp/detail.html?scd=20921736
and doesn't include paper documentation (except 
a few pages on the Wnn FEP which is bundled). 

All the English and Japanese documentation 
comes as PDF / HTML files on the disks. 

You can select the installation language 
as Japanese or English, and change the 
desktop language on the fly. 

The desktop is very convenient -- when the 
language is switched to Japanese, it defaults 
to English data entry;  you hit Ctrl-Space 
to pop up the FEP and enter Japanese. 

I find the bundled Wnn FEP very good, 
though I'm not a native speaker. 

Just Systems has "Just" released a new 
version of ATOK for LINUX (PC or Mac), but 
maybe it would be a PITA at least for a newbie 
to install it in place of Wnn... And its cost 
is almost the same as the SuSE distro ;-)  
www.justsystem.co.jp/software/dt/atokx_l/

I'd thoroughly recommend SuSE 9.3 for SuSE's support 
and for the wealth of the latest stuff included in the distro. 
www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ 
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0406/novell.htm
It plays nicely with Windows if you want to install it in a 
dual boot configuration. 

It feels a bit sluggish compared to 9.2J -- but is comparable 
to, or faster than, Windows XP on the same hardware. 
The new distros (SuSE 9.2 or 9.3 with 2.6 kernel) are compatible 
with a very wide range of hardware (compared with RH 9 and 
the 2.4 kernel) and feel more snappy.  However you may need 
256M RAM if you want to run the flashy new GUIs with reasonable 
speed.