Hello. I’m new to OpenSUSE. I’ve used Ubuntu, but haven’t done anything fancy with it. I installed OpenSUSE 11.1 on an old Gateway Solo 1450. It works great in Failsafe mode. When I try a normal boot, I get my background with a beautiful resolution, one or two of the icons in the lower right corner appear and that’s it. Nothing else shows up on the screen!
These are my machine’s specs:
1.2 Ghz. Celeron CPU
128 Kb. cache
256 MB RAM PC-133 (why I went with an older version of OpenSUSE)
10 Gb. Hard Disk
Intel 830-MG chipset
Phoenix Bios
Intel 4X AGP Graphics core
Are you aware of the fact that openSUSE 11.1 is out of spport since 31 december 2010? The current levels are 11.2, 11.3 and 11.4.
It could be difficult for others to help you (not haviong 11.1 themselves) or for you to install needed software (the repos are vanishing here and there). Also no security updates will be provided any more.
In any case you need to provide more information. After boot (in runlevel 5) there is normaly a login screen. What are the missing icons there? (I ask because I have no icons on my login screen).
I don’t get a login screen. I get the fist screen in which I choose between regular and failsafe mode. If I choose the regular mode, the background appears and maybe one or two icons from the lower right corner of the screen, and nothing else. If I choose failsafe mode, then I get the full desktop with all the Icons and everything works.
That would mean you have automatic login I assume, because normaly you get:
the Grub screen (where you choose what to boot);
the bootsplash (during which the system is booting and the system services are started);
the kdm or gdm (you did not tell if you use KDE or Gnome or even another destop environment) login screen where a user can type his username/password for login;
the KDE or Gnome splash during the startup of the desktop environment;
the desktop (most of which hae panels, icons, etc.).
When you have automatic login 3) will be skipped and a default user will login automaticaly.
You could specify better what you exdactly see/do. I know it is not allways easy, but things like “the background appears and maybe one or two icons from the lower right corner of the screen” do not tell us much. Which background, what icons. To make it easy for you, you could make a picture and post that on an image host service, providing the link here.
But I repeat that when you have 11.1 and you are using KDE (still a question to you) that is KDE 3.5, which almost nobody here has anymore.
Well I have KDE3.5 and I still use it. System is a Lenovo X200 so very recent and I changed the Kernel. But the KDE system runs flawlessly.
I would like however to ask:
is this a “normal install” or did you use some unofficial kde repos?
did you take over from ubuntu your home partition? Did you use in this case the KDE3.5 environment? Did you try in this case to create a “virgin user account” to see whether it works O.K.?
Try to be as specific as possible about up to where you do arrive. What is your exact graphic chip?