Ok first of all excuse my bad english but hopefully you will understand me enough to help me…
I bought a brand new laptop for just some days ago and as a regular linux user i ofcourse want a linux distro in it…
Before i have always been using kubuntu and tried ubuntu and mandriva but these dont give me the full satisfaction due to various reasons so now my eyes have turned to Suse of wich I only have heard good things…
Now to the question…
I really like having all the latest software and for me 11.1 seems a little old (No KDE4.3, Firefox3.5, Kernel) so I want to install 11.2 but I am wondering if this have some regressions in form of harder installing drivers for ATI graphics and such, if i install 11.2 now will it update leaving no or very little “crap” behind so my 11.2 will be as good as a fresh install when its released?
Or do you recommend installing 11.1 and updating in november??
As a note I do not need the system to be production stable just so stable that it dont crash completely with no chance to get it to life…
I’ve been testing 11.2 and it is far from stable, and isn’t scheduled until November. You can find most of the packages you are looking for in the repos for 11.1. You’ll find Firefox 3.5 in the Mozilla repo,
If you want to do it simple then install 11.1 with KDE and then add Factory KDE repos you’ve been given earlier. If you also want it faster then install minimum x server, any web browser and add those repositories and install kde 4.3 with patterns iirc it would be like zypper in -t patterns kde4.3_base or something. You need to check for available patterns with zypper pt
P.S. I recommend that way because it somehow always felt faster for me and i don’t have a weak hardware.
Live upgrading is poor compared to Debian systems.
It had been possible for some time (as I understand it) by removing all software that isn’t part of the standard installation, upgrading, then putting other software back - but it’s unpredictable.
They’ve made a major effort to get live upgrading to work in factory this release, but few people will have tried that yet, and obviously none have tried upgrading to 11.2 proper because it hasn’t been released yet.
So in summary, I’m afraid we don’t know any more than you do.
Enjoy suse though! It’s a really nice distro.
[And use a separate /home partition, and possibly a separate /opt if you install lots of things in there, and reinstallation really isn’t that much of a hassle]
So far, doing a distribution upgrade (zypper dup) isn’t currently supported e.g. 11.0 to 11.1, so the normal recommendation is for a clean install. I believe for 11.2, the development objective to facilitate a full distro upgrade to the running system, remains the objective but no solution yet.
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