Currently I’m using Linux Mint 17.3 and the KDE 4 desktop. I very much want to switch to OpenSUSE but I’m a bit nervous for several reasons and would appreciate any advice:
Due to my Radeon card, the live USB won’t boot properly unless I use the radeon.dpm=0 kernel parameter. The installer then seems to work fine, but might this be an issue post-install? After installation, will it be easy for me to boot into a text-only mode to install fglrx before switching back to graphical mode if necessary? Without fglrx, my current Mint install doesn’t boot either.
Do I need to indicate during installation that there’s an EFI partition on the disk? The installer does recognise it, so I’m hoping it will take care of that for me without me having to explicitly format it and add it as a mount point or anything?
I want to preserve my current /home. I understand that Plasma and KDE 4 keep their configurations in different places, so will I be OK to do this or do I need to find and delete a load of my current KDE config files first?
How is gaming? Most developers, especially on Steam, seem to support Ubuntu only, which isn’t a problem for me currently as Mint is derived from Ubuntu. Would things be very different running OpenSUSE?
I doubt it’ll be harder than with Mint. Just read the current info on fglrx installation in LEAP (or 13.2 if you want something very, very stable).
The installer can deal with this. Just remember to boot the DVD (or pendrive) as UEFI, else it will boot as legacy and install like MS-DOS. Notice that, IINM (sometimes it happens), the partitions can be DOS style or GPT. As you are preserving /home it may be legacy.
Obs: if you’ll create a separate root partition and intend to use BTRFS snapshots, it should be at least 40GB.
No need to delete anything. If you want to avoid any problem at all, just rename the hidden ~/.kde* directory to something else, so you can reinstate it or part of it’s settings.
I’ve no problem with steam since about a year or more, have a bunch of light games installed. No AAA titles, thou.
Note that I’m running oS 13.2 64-bit KDE. LEAP is still recent, and there are some issues, most Plasma5 related - but it has been improving enormously, so much that I’m considering switching from a VM to my backup work desktop.
What I do find useful is to save some stuff from /etc (exports, fstab, smb-conf if you use it, etc.) as a new install will erase all system-wide configurations.
Also try to use yast, it’s a brilliant system configuration tool.
If you booted the install media in UEFI mode, then the boot menu will be a grub menu (really grub2-efi). Otherwise it will be a syslinux menu. You can probably tell the difference. The syslinux boot menu has notations for function keys (F3, etc) on the bottom of the screen. The grub boot menu doesn’t.
If you get the grub boot menu, then the EFI setup should be pretty much automatic.
You added a parameter to the kernel boot line. In my experience, opensuse adds that to the default boot command. So you should be okay after install. But you might want to install the proprietary drivers.
When you get to the partitioning page, I recommend that click on “Create Partitioning”. Then select “Custom partitioning” on the next page. That way, you can select your existing “/home” to be used and mounted as “/home” (do not format). However, if you do it that way, you will have to ensure that the EFI partition is mounted at “/boot/efi” since you are overriding the defaults. Basically, you get a screen listing current partitions. You can right click and select “Edit” to change how a partition will be used. You can also right click on a device (the full disk) to add a partition if needed.
Opensuse use “.kde4” for the KDE settings files (for KDE4). I think Mint uses “.kde”. If you want to pickup the old settings, it might be best to use CTRL-ALT-F1 at first, and rename “.kde” to “.kde4” before you login to the desktop.
I came from Kubuntu - 14.04 and found openSUSE to work better with my Radeon card, probably thanks to the newer kernel.
*buntu 16.04 will come out this year and have probably newer kernel still so soon to be a non-issue.
Mostly just depends on your card and whether it has kernel support yet. I would check the hardware forum for any others’ experiences.
Main difference is the package management - no more apt-get. You’ll be using Zypper in opensuse and rpm packages.
From my experience, first it will be quite different, then you will come to know that it’s really quite the same, then later still you will realise how different they are
I went to Leap 42.1 after Mint website was hacked and my personal info compromised. I understand everyone is capable of being hacked but there is no excuse you can give me for using the admin password…‘psswd’, that just tells me they don’t give a **** about security, having said that it’s done.
My partitioning scheme was / root on an SSD drive and /Home on a spinning disc drive. After playing around with Leap in a Virtual setup, I decided this was the OS for me.
I used ext4 for my formatting, and the installer just imported my partition settings over, first asked if it was OK to do so. So I checked it all to make sure it was what I wanted, let it reformat the SSD drive, and just left the home the way it was.
There are a few differences but nothing you can’t learn in a few minutes. This (Leap) is a far more superior OS than Linux Mint in every way. I am still picking up on things but have had no problem in the transition.
