I have a dual booting ( OpenSuse 11.4/win xp) Samsung R528 laptop.
Last sunday I decided to reinstall Winxp sp3 as it refused to connect my new Samsung cellphone as mobile modem (model Wave 525 with BADA OS)
As usual after winxp reinstall the grub menu was lost. and try as much I could not get the Grub menu back.
It looked like I had to reinstall Opensuse. With the new release still a month away (I tend to follow user OLDCPU’s preference of waiting for a few months after new release before upgrading) I was not inclined to load the RC1.
But i took courage and downloaded the*** openSUSE-GNOME-LiveCD-Build0379-i686.iso***
I should mention here I had run into intel graphics problems with 11.4 on this machine ( solved “Boot Freeze” “Bug: Soft Lockup” problems on Samsung R528 Laptop) Apart from that the sound control/screen brightness/wifi function buttons never worked.
So it was a pleasant surprise that the Gnome LiveCd booted without any intel graphics driver issue and came up with correct display resolution and all hardware detected including wifi and sound and i was able to connect straightaway to internet . Encouraged I decided to install to hard disk.
The installer suggested that I reformat the ** /** partition and keep the** /home** Partition of the previous 11.4 installation. I accepted this and without any further issues the system was installed (and at the end I got the grub menu with multiboot option back).
The 12.1 rc1 booted from harddisk without any trouble and the booting appears to be faster and smoother ( I understand what is called systemd is controlling the init process now)
The problems the Laptop earlier had with the intel i915 KMS graphics driver appears to have been resolved in this release.
The sound volume control buttons working correctly.
The Display Brightness control Buttons are correctly detected and the launched applet seems to work, but the increase/decrease doesnot actually has any effect on the actual brightness.
But on setting acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor parameters on the grub boot line the buttons appear to have some effect actually at last.
Gnome 3.2 seems to be more polished and appears to be O.K. other than some minor differences from the Gnome3.0 i had with 11.4
From all indications this release is good and positive (for me at least) as it seems to have resolved most of the issues I had earlier with 11.4.
Great work from the OpenSuse developers and the supporting community.
I am expecting this release is definitely going to be a success.
Some info from my installation
cat /etc/SuSE-release
openSUSE 12.1 RC 1 (i586)
VERSION = 12.1
CODENAME = Asparagus
uname -r
3.1.0-rc9-1-default
gnome --version
/usr/bin/gnome-session 3.2.1
lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 09)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 09)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: i915
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 09)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 [8086:2946] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller [8086:2919] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002b] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:e025]
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller [11ab:4354]
Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c06d]
Kernel driver in use: sky2