~Toughbooktalk~

Anyone try these Distros on Toughbooks?
What's the difference between Open Suse and Suse?

CF19 mk4 dual touch
CF30 mk3
CF31 mk1 standard, no ATI
CF52 mk3 High Performance, ATI

They say Suse is very polished and stable. It's recommended as a desktop OS..

Tails seems interesting for a "on the go" Toughbook that uses free wifi a lot. Maybe just use it from a usb stick vs full install??

SUSE is the paid version of openSUSE. the paid version comes with support from SUSE (previously Novell) and used to come with some packages that free version can't distribute due to license issues.
Apart from that, they are the same distro under the hood.

Thanks.
How does it compare to other distros?

The main differences in distros are always related with customization in the kernel, package manager (SUSE uses zypper, a really good one), packages installed by default and UI customization.

TAILS is good for what it is designed for. Read the website and determine for yourself. I can say that you will have problems with wifi access that requires "accepting" some sort of agreement prior to access and will have to break the cloak of anon with separate access via non-secure browser to accept before TOR access can be secured.

That being said, the fastest method of data access is best experience, but this usually means "not a DVD" for obvious reasons. It also means, if you are looking for the hardcore anon status, that your media is subject to compromise where a single write DVD cannot be altered. Again, your profile and aims guide decisions. An option is to utilize a well-secured Linux distro to support a virtual machine fielding of WHONIX. If you are simply looking for fairly secure browsing and presenting a harder target for simple data theft and compromise of personal information, TAILS on a stick drive (or encrypted, password-protected partition you overwrite each time a new version is released) should suffice. Please read the first time user section to ensure what you want is what you are getting.

droppointalpha wrote:TAILS is good for what it is designed for. ......... If you are simply looking for fairly secure browsing and presenting a harder target for simple data theft and compromise of personal information, TAILS on a stick drive (or encrypted, password-protected partition you overwrite each time a new version is released) should suffice. Please read the first time user section to ensure what you want is what you are getting.

Section in red is what my goal is.

droppointalpha wrote:TAILS is good for what it is designed for. Read the website and determine for yourself. I can say that you will have problems with wifi access that requires "accepting" some sort of agreement prior to access and will have to break the cloak of anon with separate access via non-secure browser to accept before TOR access can be secured.

Captive portals are a bit of an annoyance. You can't even setup a VPN connection without going through their authentication. But I doubt anyone here actually needs that level of paranoia where you need to hide from your ISP or whomever runs the network connection you're using

Shawn wrote:

droppointalpha wrote:TAILS is good for what it is designed for. ......... If you are simply looking for fairly secure browsing and presenting a harder target for simple data theft and compromise of personal information, TAILS on a stick drive (or encrypted, password-protected partition you overwrite each time a new version is released) should suffice. Please read the first time user section to ensure what you want is what you are getting.

Section in red is what my goal is.

That's why I am into heavily customizing my installations to suit my needs instead of subscribing to someone else's vision of how to achieve that goal. It's an obvious but true cliché to say knowledge is power in this instance. There is little that TAILS does that you cannot do on another distro if you tweak it. But my main security concerns are to not get pwned by every damned zero-day or have my traffic sniffed on an unsecured network. I'm not a Chinese dissident hiding from government spooks or a cyber criminal. So I tend to know how to apply just the right amount of security measures without resorting to a full-blown TAILS distro. And yeesh, TOR is a pain in the ass to use on a daily basis anyway.

Shawn,
Concerning openSUSE: Check this web page out: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Distribution
Current releases listed are 13.2, 13.1, 12.3, Tumbleweed (rolling release), Evergreen (extended life releases)...
I tried 12.3 awhile ago, and although it worked on a CF-30, it was a pain (learning curve) to add touchscreen calibration.
I would have to download and try again, but I believe how you add software is not like how it's done with Zorin, Makulu, Mint, etc...
It uses YaST software management: https://en.opensuse.org/YaST_Software_Management
Concerning your security concerns (above), I would think any distribution that runs "live" on a usb that does NOT use persistence, meaning it does not save any information to the usb would work for browsing, etc.