11.0 Alpha2 Appears To Need More Work

I downloaded opensuse-11.0 alpha2, burned it to a DVD, and ran the 1st half-dozen or so installation menus, before aborting the install. I'm not ready to do an install yet (I need to do some backups) but I was curious as to the new menu's, so I thought I would run the 11.0 alpha-2 up to the partitioner menu.

The Installation menu's are real neat ... with one having a choice of Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Minimal X-Windows, Minimal Server Selection (Test mode), with a much superior graphic quality for the installation selection.
http://en.opensuse.org/Screenshots/openSUSE_11.0_Alpha2

But I was surprised to see the alpha-2 partitioner have problems with my PC's old Maxtor hard drive, given openSUSE-9.3, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3-alpha2 to GM had no problems. Guess Novell/SuSE-GmbH changed something, and they still have not worked out the bugs.

I obtained the error message: "The partioning on disk /dev/sda is not readable by the partitioning tool, which is used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions on /dev/sda as they are. You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that disk with this tool".

A further error message under "Suggested Partitioning" was: "No automatic proposal possible: Specify mount points manually in the 'Partioner' dialog".

This is not a big issue for me, as an "alpha" release is an "alpha" release. I think when I get my backups done, and when I get around to installing alpha-2, I'll be able to work my way through a partition table. I assume this will be fixed, as for a newbie who doesn't know "/" from "/home", nor from "swap", this lack of a "suggested partitioning" IMHO would be a show stopper.

For info, the partition details (from my 10.3 PC YaST partitioner) that gave this 11.0-alpha2 partitioner problems were the following setup on my drive:

/dev/sda**74.5 GB Maxtor-6L080J4************************************ 0-9731
/dev/sda1 250.9 MB FAT16****** /windows/C****************************0-31
/dev/sda2**1.0 GB**Linux Swap************************************** 32-162
/dev/sda3**73.3 GB Extended****************************************163-9731
/dev/sda5**14.6 GB Linux Native /home/oldcpu/suse102boot********** 163-2074
/dev/sda6**24.4 GB Linux Native /home/oldcpu/suse102root********** 2075-5261
/dev/sda7**14.6 GB Linux Native /**********************************5262-7173
/dev/sda8**19.5 GB Linux Native /home******************************7174-9731

The openSUSE-11.0-alpha2 partitioner recognized NONE of the above. It only detected the 74.5 GB Maxtor-6L080J4, with no reports of Linux, nor FAT16 partitions. [For the curious, the FAT16 mounted on /windows/C, is in fact NOT MS-Windows, but is FreeDOS].

I'll probably go for a custom installation, assigning sda5 and sda6 to openSUSE-11.0 alpha2. Still, I'm surprised alpha2 had a problem here.

I'll have to dive into the bug reports and see if anyone has reported this.

I raised a bug report on this: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=364741

I raised a bug report on this: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=364741
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im downloading 11.0 apha 2 at the moment, and i will look into this bug (and do some of my own testing) in vmware
getting bout 1200KB/s down now. too bad kget isnt reporting full file size.

im downloading 11.0 apha 2 at the moment, and i will look into this bug (and do some of my own testing) in vmware
getting bout 1200KB/s down now. too bad kget isnt reporting full file size.
[/b]

just got arround to moving the file over to laptop to use, and fired it up in vmware, i see the installer is a lot better, but now i notice that "user setttings" is now before the actual install takes place, and root password is after, strange... root password should be before the install, that way ppl cant enter a root password if u step away and come back to finish install...
and i noticed one other thing kpowersave is now part of the laptop pattern, no more crazy kpowersave on a desktop computer, lol

just got arround to moving the file over to laptop to use, and fired it up in vmware, i see the installer is a lot better, but now i notice that "user setttings" is now before the actual install takes place, and root password is after, strange... root password should be before the install, that way ppl cant enter a root password if u step away and come back to finish install...
and i noticed one other thing kpowersave is now part of the laptop pattern, no more crazy kpowersave on a desktop computer, lol
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good, kpowersave was quite irritating on my pc since every time i logged in it told me kpowersave was not running, to run it run ...., yet i tried running it, to no avail....

I raised a bug report on this: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=364741
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I provided some kernel screen shots and some partitioning information, based on suggestions provided to me by SuSE-GmbH (I believe from them), and they noted:

The kernel screen shot 2 shows some ATA bus errors and states that the partition table cannot be validated. Parted reports some partitions on sda but /proc/partitions not. Looks like a kernel problem.[/b]

This quote from SuSE-GmbH immediately made me think that I should have (and I did not) try a "No ACPI" install. .... In hindsight I should have tried that BEFORE I raised the bug report ..... Anway, I tried "No ACPI" install, and the partitioner worked fine in identifying the partitions. I did not proceed to complete the install, but I likely will later this weekend, after doing some additional backups. I also tentatively marked the BUG as "FIXED" as I see no need to keep the BUG open if there is a real easy work around.

If I later have ACPI problems (because of the "No ACPI" selection) I can write another bug report. But I'll cross that bridge IF and WHEN I come to it.

I raised a bug report on this: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=364741
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Checked the link and it seems the bug id fixed

/Geoff

Just a further note - I'm checking out 11.0 alpha3, and it does not appear to have the problem alpha-2 had on my test pc.

Hello,
I installed the 32-bit 3rd Alpha this afternoon on my Athlon64 with nForce3 chipset and nVidia 5200 graphics with the KDE CD, and I must say that the installation went smooth and fast (only 1.7GB installed, though).
I only noticed few minor issues:
- at the moment of the packages choice, simply no choice is available, and it is not possible to add the factory repository from the very beginning;
- after the first reboot, before asking the hostname, the installer turns irrimediably to command line interface;
- if you choose to manage your network adapter with network manager, it makes you install the gtk one, and by the way it does not work, too. I had to turn it to ifup;
- starting konsole produces a SIGSEGV 11 error, and xconsole is open from the login but does not seem to work (I must kill it);
- YaST does not update immediately the packages database: if you install a package, then decide to install another one which depends on the former, without closing the package manager, it will install again also the dependence;
- the kernel-headers package is stuck to 2.6.24 version;
- sometimes I cannot open the network devices window in YaST because of a device access error;
- Kcalc is not all there: with the decimal numbers, it will add randomly many dots (10/3 = 3,,33,333,33,333....);
- I cannot turn the pc off from the KDE buttons;
- okular does not seem to display properly the image at first, but if you click, zoom or do something with it, it solves the problem;
- arK cannot extract tar packages.


These are the "biggest" problems I found. Just my two cents, hope they can be useful.

Cheers

Just a further note - I'm checking out 11.0 alpha3, and it does not appear to have the problem alpha-2 had on my test pc.[/b]

Looks like I spoke too soon. The install had blocking problems on my old test hardware, which I reported in this bug report.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=373012

I only noticed few minor issues:
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Some things I noted during the brief time I had KDE running..... I didn't like the desktop. I missed my applet panel and start menu. I was able to get a start menu (it was not there by default), but not the applet panel.

KDE-4 appears to be a regression, in terms of the limited functionality. If I wanted that I would go to Gnome. Hopefully this is only until KDE-4 gets all the classic KDE features back.

On openSUSE-11.0, they have dropped "smart-gui", dropped "checkinstall", and also "scid". Now scid is a chess database program (so most people probably don't care), but "smart-gui" and "checkinstall" being removed are things I really don't like. ... disappointed may be a better word. Hopefully a 3rd party packager picks up the ball for "checkinstall" (I found a factory rpm for "smart-gui" that works).

Also, KDE automounting of USB devices did not work on my PC. I was able to mount them manually via a konsole, but I doubt the average newbie could do that. ...

To run a konsole was irritating since there was no start menu. I had to press <ALT><F2>, get a command line, and type "konsole". Again, not a problem for me, but likely blocking for a newbie who doesn't know anything about KDE.