Hey there,
Newcomer here. I have a background with Ubuntu and other UNIX based OSs. I like the aesthetics of openSUSE and I want to give it a try.
I need some installation help, especially with partition planning… my thoughts to actually install a distro are always thwarted by my incompetence of partitioning and installing in the right place… does openSUSE make installation any easier?
If you are installing to a Windows machine with a standard setup, defrag it, back it up and then let openSUSE install everything. It will sort out reasonable allocations for everything.
If you have a non-standard setup or want to do something non-standard with openSUSE, tell us what is non-standard about your setup or your plans.
As far as I’m concerned, nothing is non-standard (Thank you in advance for being understanding… I’m already starting to like this distro)
I have been told by so many users of other distros that one needs to configure everything manually. I have a generous sized drive and want to set up a dual-boot between Windows Vista and openSUSE.
I guess different distros work differently. I would just let openSuse handle it, myself. Unless you have a non-standard setup it should work fine. It has always worked for me.
Linux usually doesn’t take nearly as much hard drive space as Windows. So if it picks what seems a ridiculously low amount of space don’t be alarmed.
If you do want to do a custom partition just do a search of this forum. There should be lots of guides.
Okay awesome 
I will most definitely let the installer do its own thing. I keep all of my important files on a USB stick anyways so I always have everything backed up.
I’ll do a defrag prior to the install.
I think what a lot of other users in other distro’s forums have told me is how to plan my partitions to let me access Windows files in Linux and vice versa.
Does the openSUSE automated installer automatically create the root and swap partitions? openSUSE uses an ext3 file system yes?
Does the openSUSE automated installer automatically create the root and swap partitions? openSUSE uses an ext3 file system yes?
Yes, Yes.
openSUSE should create a
/
/home
swap
It will likely grab what free space it can without leaving Vista short and create an extended partition and within that, logical partitions.
You will probably need to edit /etc/fstab after install to get read/write access to Vista. See this how to:
HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access in openSUSE 10, 11
this is the point you need to focus on
To mount your NTFS partition permanently, add your version of the following line into the file system table, fstab. make sure you leave no line spaces, except the last entry must be a blank line. Recommended option for world-writeable mount:
/dev/sda2 /path_to/mount_point ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
When you reboot, the partion will mount into the folder /path_to/mount_point with permissions drwxrwxrwx, i.e with read/write access for everybody, in the style of Microsoft’s insecure filesystems.
The ntfs partition will not be as /dev
and all you will probably need to change is the ‘defaults 0 0’
right at the end of the entry on the vista line
Before installing, take a look at our new user guide “stickie”: NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums
also, a read thru some openSUSE concepts may help you identify some areas where openSUSE does things different: Concepts - openSUSE
Great, well in my preparation for installation, I’ve backed up all of my important files, deleted the ones I don’t to maximize hard drive space, and done a full defragmentation.
I’ve obtained a DVD iso, done the checksum, burned it to DVD+R, checked the installation media, so I think I’m good to go!
Any last words of luck before I leap?
If you still have the Ubuntu installed (or some other Linux installed) , and if you are planing on removing it, you could print out and have handy some of the configuration files from those installs. That way if you run into a glitch with openSUSE (should not happen, but … ) then you have a reference to compare to. … Other than that, good luck !!
Pay very close attention to how the installer proposes to carve up your hard drive (to make certain you are happy) and also pay very close attention to what it says about where is is planning on installing grub. I believe you either want grub installed on the active partition, or you want it installed on the MBR (I know some of our expert users will shoot me for saying “mbr” ). When it comes to where grub is to be placed, I’m no expert, but some users have complained of 11.1 messing this up.
I will pop in the dvd tonight when I get home from work and I will type here what the installer details propose.
Then you guys can tell me if everything looks good to go.
Currently, I have only Windows Vista Business 32-bit Service Pack 1 installed on the only hard drive in the VAIO laptop. There are no other partitions (not even a recovery partition), and no other OSs installed on any other partition.