openSUSE-11.3 RC1 (release candidate 1) due tomorrow 17-June

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’m thinking SuSE-GmbH might be come close to meeting this release date (of 17-June) for 11.3 RC 1.

I note this mailing list post:

Dnia wtorek, 15 czerwca 2010 o 22:34:57 [QUOTE]Stephan Kulow napisał(a):

Hi,

I changed the product string from Milestone 7 to RC1 now, our testing did not find anything new in this release, so I'd would like to ship build 765 as RC1. We just need an announcement ;)

You mean build 675? :)[/QUOTE]from Re: [opensuse-factory] Status: distribution and [opensuse-factory] Status: distribution](http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2010-06/msg00207.html)

… if one looks in the mostly unstable factory iso area, as of today 16-June at 08:30 UTC (approx) one can see iso’s for version 0675 but also 0676. It makes me think we are looking at either 0675 or 0676 for RC1.

2

I downloaded the 32-bit and also the 64-bit KDE version of build 0676 of 11.3 (possibly RC1) and burned it to CD and tried them on 2 PCs:

  1. I tried the 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 build 0676 KDE4 liveCD on my 64-bit Dell Studio 1537, Intel P8400 w/4GB, w/ATI Radeon 3450HD graphics . Sound just worked. The “My computer” icon actually worked this time, and it had one feature I liked, which was an entry noting it was using for 2D the “radeon” driver and for 3D the “R600 classic (7.8.1)” driver. I confirmed the Radeon open source driver by checking the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. Resolution was the maximum expected resolution (1440x900). The graphics came up with special desktop effects and was impressive. I had seen this behaviour before in M4 to M7.

Wireless works (Intel Pro 5300AGN), which was good for me to see, as I had some concerns on that give a recent openSUSE-11.2 kernel update (2.6.31-12-0.2) broke the wireless (I had to use an older kernel to get wireless working again on my openSUSE-11.2). I’ve had the wireless running for 1 hour now, which is promising.
.

  1. I then tried the 32-bit openSUSE-11.3 build-0676 KDE4 liveCD on my 32-bit AMD Athlon-2800 w/2GB (Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard) w/ PCI nVidia GeForce 8400GS graphics. Behaviour identical to what I saw on M6 and M7. PC booted using the Noveau graphic driver at maximum expected resolution (1920x1200). Sound worked. Wired internet worked. As anticipated, special desktop effects with the Noveau driver did not work on this hardware. The “My Computer” icon indicated the 2D driver was the Nouveau driver and the 3D driver was the nouveau Gallium (7.8.1) driver.

One thing I noted was the “artwork” / “openSUSE” branding was in my view superior to what I had seen on the milestone releases.

I’ll probably wait until I get confirmation that build-0676 is RC1 (as it may instead be the earlier build-0675) before I test on too many PCs.

Also the above 2 PCs are not challenging. What is challenging is my sandbox PC (an old 32-bit AMD Athlon-1100 w/1GB (MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard) w/AGP nVidia GeForce FX5200 graphics). My Fedora13 and openSUSE-11.3 milestone release experience has taught me that the noveau driver does NOT like the FX5200 graphics.

Also, our old laptop (a 32-bit Fujitsu-Simens Amilo 7400M laptop w/1.256 GB w/Intel 1.5 celeron, and Intel i855 GM graphics) is even MORE of a challenge. The i855GM graphics are currently a “Linux killer” and I’m not too optimistic there. Maybe this weekend I’ll get a chance to try out those two PCs.

3

Am Dienstag 15 Juni 2010 schrieb Mariusz Fik:
> Dnia wtorek, 15 czerwca 2010 o 22:34:57 Stephan Kulow napisał(a):
[INDENT]> > Hi,
> >
> > I changed the product string from Milestone 7 to RC1 now,
> > our testing did not find anything new in this release, so
> > I’d would like to ship build 765 as RC1. We just need an
> > announcement :wink:
>
> You mean build 675? :slight_smile:
>
[/INDENT]In fact, the live cds are now build 676 as Will found early enough
that the 675 did not boot from USB.

Now RC1 is on the mirrors and factory-snapshot is updated too.

Now it’s time to do the final polishing.

Greetings, Stephan

4

Ooops, I was already running RC1 without knowing :slight_smile: :


Knurpht-Laptop:/home/glosscomputer # cat /etc/SuSE-release 
openSUSE 11.3 RC 1 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11.3
5

It is already here: Software.openSUSE.org
Just no announcement yet.
Just a question - it features which version of KDE 4?

6

kde4.4.3 is the proposed release version and is currently in RC1

7

There is a bug in 4.4.3 which makes Dolphin crash on big folders. In 4.4.4 it is apparently fixed… Try to create a folder with more than 700 files and folders, and set it’s grouping parameters as “Enable grouping” and “Sort by type”.
Probably this is not the best place for such a “bug report”, especially when I am not an openSUSE user yet ) But I had this problem on two distros with kde 4.4.3 (debian squeeze and arch + kdemod)
See here for more details: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241053

8

Indeed its worth for someone to check, but I think it should ONLY be posted in a thread when its seen on openSUSE.

I just opened /usr/bin on the liveCD with Dolphin, which has 1,598 files (242.9 MiB) and there was no crash. It opened. I arranged by type. It worked when arranged by type. No crash.

9

I just tried the 11.3 RC1 (build 0676) 64-bit openSUSE KDE liveCD on my 64-bit Intel Core i7 920 w/6GB (Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard) w/ PCI-e nVidia GeForce GTX260 graphics. PC booted using the Nouveau graphic driver (per /var/log/Xorg.0.log file) at maximum expected resolution (1920x1200). As expected, special desktop effects does not work with Nouveau driver. In the “My Computer” it reported 2D driver as “nouveau” and 3D driver as "nouveau Gallium (7.8.1) [see pix].
http://thumbnails29.imagebam.com/8481/076ab784809918.jpg](ImageBam)
Sound works. Wired Internet works. Firefox works (unlike M7 where it would crash (although with M7 there was eventually a work around)).

Overall on this PC, the 11.3 RC1 liveCD works very nice.

However this was NOT a challenge, as this is a Linux friendly PC. I still have my more challenging PCs ahead of me to test.

10

So I booted the 32-bit openSUSE-11.3 RC1 (build-0676) KDE liveCD to one of the more “challenging” PCs in our apartment. This is the 32-bit AMD Athlon-1100 w/1GB (MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard) w/AGP nVidia GeForce FX5200 graphics. As anticipated, and similar to what I observed on openSUSE-11.3 Milestone7, there were hiccups with the nouveau driver.

The direct boot of the liveCD (with no special boot codes) ultimately failed with a black screen when loading X. One could see Xorg and the nouveau driver trying to configure, as three times the screen toggled between being black and the openSUSE gecko. Finally, it “gave up the ghost”, gave me a black screen and I heard the KDE4 start sound. Then nothing but a black screen.

Later I used <CTRL><ALT><DEL> a few times in close proximity to restart the PC.

Success: This time when it rebooted, in the grub splash/boot menu, I typed “nomodeset” (which I understand will be the recommendation on the 11.3 Release Notes for handling such problem cases). The PC then booted to KDE, albeit at a limited 1024x768 resolution, using the nv driver. The proper resolution is 1920x1200, but still, no surprises there with 1024x768 as I saw this on previous openSUSE releases, I saw this on Fedora-13, and I also saw this on the latest Sidux-2010-01.

From the “My Computer” one can see confirmation that the 2D driver is “nv” and the 3D is "swrast (No 3D Acceleration)(7.8.1). See pix:
http://thumbnails10.imagebam.com/8482/5cd19f84814398.jpg](ImageBam)
Now with no sax2, trying to configure higher than 1024x768 with the “nv” driver could be a challenge. My recommendation will be anyone who has functioning Linux with the “nv” driver at a high resolution should KEEP that xorg.conf, as it may come in handy later.

Now Sound worked. Wired Internet worked. Fonts were horrible at 1024x768, and I think if one wished to remain with the nv driver, they would have their work cut out for them to improve the fonts.

I note nVidia do NOT yet have a 173.xxx.xxx driver prepared for the 2.6.34 (nor for that matter for the 2.6.33) kernel. On 11.3 M6 and M7 I noted it is possible to use the current proprietary 173.xxx.xxx driver with a bit of command line hacking (for example after blacklisting nouveau driver, then starting with: startx – -ignoreABI). That was the case on openSUSE-11.3 M7 and I plan to install 11.3 RC1 on this PC (to LXDE desktop) and test that proprietary driver on 11.3 RC1 this weekend.

11

I booted the 32-bit openSUSE-11.3 (build-0676) KDE liveCD to my wife’s 32-bit AMD Sempon-2600 w/1GB (Epox EP-8K7A motherboard) w/AGP ATI RV280 (Radeon-9200Pro) graphics.

The graphic behaviour on openSUSE-11.3 RC1 was OK, but as I anticipated it disappointing in terms of what I know Linux is capable on this hardware. In essence, on 11.3 RC1 I saw the same as I saw on 11.3 M7, reported here: openSUSE Forums - View Single Post - 11.3 milestone-7 intial look on various PCs I say disappointing, because I know from openSUSE-11.0 (not 11.1 which is also a bit disappointing on this PC’s graphics) and I also know from Fedora-13 that this PC is capable of 3D graphics with good cube rotation, transparencies, etc … with the radeon driver. The SuSE-GmbH implementation here is simply lacking in comparison to (1) the past on openSUSE, and (2) the present on Fedora-13 (with its 2.6.33 kernel).

I previous wrote a bug report on this here: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=608256 … in that bug report I noted that it worked on Fedora-13, and did my best to provide a list of the patches that Fedora had applied to their kernel and Xorg related apps to get the superior radeon driver performance. … But its clear sorting this is LOW (putting it tactfully) in priority. Its not new hardware, and new hardware tends to get the packagers focus/attention. I think they wish old hardware would just go away! :\

Anyway, as a summary, when I first boot this PC, it boots to the radeon driver with no special desktop effects. Sound works. Internet works. My computer print out here:
http://thumbnails4.imagebam.com/8483/cde83e84821708.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/cde83e84821708)

I then rebooted the PC and this time specified “nomodeset” in the grub splash/boot menu. It booted to this black background (which was still partly functional):
http://thumbnails32.imagebam.com/8483/ddef4b84821709.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/ddef4b84821709) ie one could launch applications, etc … I noted special desktop effects enabled, and if I disabled them, I obtained a proper desktop background. Here is the “My Computer” output (with a nomodeset boot):
http://thumbnails10.imagebam.com/8483/0b51bd84821710.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/0b51bd84821710)

So clearly Fedora-13 are doing something good here for graphics, clearly openSUSE-11.3 lags Fedora here for graphics (with this hardware), and hopefully the Fedora fix (what ever it is) makes it upstream so that openSUSE-12.0 benefits. Seriously, I say openSUSE-12.0 as I would bet against openSUSE-11.3 implementing anything to address this - there are just too many other things that the graphic packager has to put their time attending to. Things like the headaches that WILL come with 11.3 because of sax2 being gone.

12

I still have one more PC to test. … thats my “Linux killer” with the 855GM, so I won’t hold my breath there on anything special. I can not see anything that happens there changing my current view.

My current view ?

My current view is I like openSUSE-11.3, but then I tend to be a non-pushy fan of openSUSE.

BUT I predict openSUSE-11.3 will get a ROUGH RIDE due to 2 reasons, 1 of which will NOT be addressed: [ul]
[li]removal of sax2 or any other SuSE special wizard. In my view sax2 was one of the tools that gave openSUSE an edge over other distributions. That piece of the edge is now gone. [i][/li][li]inability to hot plug USB devices. This is a major faux pas. It has me second guessing myself now on installing openSUSE-11.3 on my laptops (where fast hot plug mounting in meetings is ESSENTIAL) and also on my main PC where I hot plug between over 2 TB of external hard drives (about 1/2 dozen). No hot plug? Thats a major limitation given what other distributions can do.[/li][/ul]I hope my prediction is wrong. I like the look and feel of openSUSE. I like the community. I am very familiar with it and hence most things on openSUSE are easy for me.

But as someone who volunteers support to users who struggle, I foresee a rough time ahead in supporting 11.3. A rough time.

13

Following your (oldcpu) lead I downloaded build 676 last night and installed it this morning. As expected it did not recognize my graphics. Ubuntu doesn’t either. I had to work from a partial screen display. With sax2 missing, the solution was to copy a working xorg.conf from 11.2. During the installation I noticed that neither MBR nor root partition were enabled for the grub location. I enabled root. Then when it did boot into X it did not recognize user’s password. It did recognize root’s password however even though they are the same. I corrected that immediately and rebooted into user. My biggest disappointment came when I plugged in a USB stick and nothing happened. I think this is a big step backwards. Hopefully it will be resolved soon, As for the missing sax2, it’s going to cause problems with new users without a working xorg.conf on hand.

14

Sorry oldcpu but I am holding you completely responsible! After reading your posts I rushed home from work and installed RC1 from a kde4 live-cd. Very very very low sound - which made me chuckle to myself after your various test computer installs with sound working fine!

All the mixer settings were high, so I tried sound on kde 3 and that was fine. Worked out that the setting ‘master front’ was not shown and was set to zero. Easy to correct.

I am not sure that ‘no’ sax2 will be a problem. I have not used that now for many years now - ever since they removed the facility to select the graphic card.

Trying to think like a novice - would you have found the ‘help’ sequence when first running amarok and the warnings that mp3 support was not included helpful? I think that it would leave me completely confused.

First impressions (after an hour) are very positive and I do like the artwork.

15

When I plug in a usb stick I get a nice pop-up message asking me what action I would to take (open with file manager etc). I did have to add device notifier widget

16

@oldcpu

Still pretty much a novice. I’ve been running openSUSE since last November after following GNU+Linux for a couple years by reading blogs and forums. Any way…

Two things you mentioned concern me. Right now I’m using the nvidia driver with twinview for my multi monitor setup. Been working great since day one. Knowing that the driver has to be for the proper kernel. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to upgrade. Is that right?

Also, seriously no hot plugging USB devices? Isn’t that what USB is about? I will no longer be able to plug flash drives and USB hard drives without rebooting for them to recognized?

I was really hoping to upgrade to get some of the new KDE features. Sounds like I’m stuck.

17

oldcpu wrote:
<snip>
>
> oldcpu;2177163 Wrote:
>> … if one looks in the mostly ‘unstable factory iso area’
>> (http://download.opensuse.org/factory/iso/), as of today 16-June
>> at
>> 08:30 UTC (approx) one can see iso’s for version 0675 but also
>> 0676. It makes me think we are looking at either 0675 or 0676
>> for RC1.I downloaded the 32-bit and also the 64-bit KDE version
>> of build 0676 of
> 11.3 (possibly RC1) and burned it to CD and tried them on 2 PCs:
</snip>

I just downloaded what I think is 11.3 RC1. I downloaded from
software.opensuse.org/developer/en where id says DVD is RC1. It
brought down 675. Ran MD5 and sha1 successfully but gpg2 fails:

gpg2 --verify openSUSE-DVD-Build0675-x86_64.iso openSUSE-DVD-
Build0675-x86_64.is0.asc
gpg: [don’t know]: invalid packet (ctb=00)
gpg: no signature found
gpg: the signature could not be verified.
Please remember that the signature file (.sig or .asc)
should be the first file given on the command line.
finemanruss@linux-7utx:~/Temp/suse11.xx/11.3/RC1> gpg2 --verify
openSUSE-DVD-Build0675-x86_64.iso.asc openSUSE-DVD-Build0675-
x86_64.iso
gpg: Signature made Wed 16 Jun 2010 02:34:16 AM PDT using DSA key
ID 9C800ACA
gpg: Can’t check signature: No public key

…asc file has:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQBMGJqYqE7a6JyACsoRAiGoAJ41Z22YY/TXLB3NBZ5kGc+6HBZzYwCe
Mh/wQfN/Eclex7YyEkZuL3cQm+k=
=4GS5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I’m not sure if I have 675 so I’ll hold off making DVD and see if I
need to download again in a few days.

–
Russ
| openSUSE 11.2 (2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop) x86_64 | KDE 4.4.3 | Intel
Core 2 Dual E7200 | 4 GB RAM | GeForce 8400 GS | 320GB Disc (2) |

18

With rc1 my intel gme945 chip set works with the i915 driver. unless I try a gl screensaver then my system hangs. with milestone 6 and 7 I had nothing but. grief. While the i915 driver isn’t perfect yet it show a lot of improvement.

No problem with hot plugging usb sticks.

Although I am running kde4.5 beta on this system I have very limited desktop effects with kwin using compiz for he window manager desktop effects are working smoothly

Network manager is working both wired and wireless

sound works no problems

19

The fact that this works for some, but not for me, makes me think I have to go about this in a more statistical manner, as opposed to just the odd random check. I have many USB sticks/hard drives. I may just select 3 or 4 of them, that I know work under openSUSE-11.1 and 11.2, and then try them in 11.3 RC1 on 4 or 5 different PCs, and see how many (if any) work. … I also note I only tested from a liveCD, and maybe this is a liveCD limitation, as opposed to an installed system limitation?

20

oldcpu - I suspect that the problem with usb is that the necessary package is not installed initially (from the live-cd). As a first step on installation I usually install the packman multimedia rpm’s. I had downloaded these at work today and had put them on a usb stick. When I plugged this into my p/c - nothing.

I then downloaded some extra kde packages that normally use and would guess that these dragged the necessary package for usb sticks to be recognised. Certainly it is working without any problems now.