I am trying to figure out how to set up the various 3D stuff…here is the deal. I have been screwing around all weekend with my Suse on an old Acer tablet. I got IM figured out with pidgin, got codecs for DVD working, did all the recommended updates, etc. Then I went into my desktop settings and played with various settings. I got my 3d to work and here is where I am once again lost:
I called my brother in law and walked him through the 3d settings I did. His dont do anything when he pushed alt and tab. Now does his work when he pushes control and f11. WTF?
Does anyone have documentation that I can get on what is available, and how to go about setting it all up? I am unsure what else I may have added to my laptop in software that makes mine work and not my brother in laws…
In my opinion, if it was easier to follow a plan of attack with linux, it would be less frusterating and people would be much more likely to use it over M$…I know I would love to throw M$ away, but seeing as I am not sure what I am doing with Linux, I feel I will need to fall back with my XP partition for quite a while unless I find a way to figure everything out to accomplish my needs.
If anyone can send me documentation on how to set up various parts of this distro I would be grateful!
Thanks,
Jeff
I think some extra information would be helpful.
You said you use Pidgin for IM…do you know which desktop environment you and your brother-in-law are using? Are you using Gnome? KDE 4.1? or KDE 3.5?
Also do you know what hardware you each have? Most importantly what video cards each machine has? Nvidia? ATI? Intel?
Lastly, did you mean to say that your brother-in-law has effects that work when he presses Control-F11 or that it does not work?
If it does work then it sounds like:
- He’s running KDE 4.1
- His 3D effects do work
- He just needs to set-up his effects & keyboard shortcuts the way he wants.
If the above 3 things are true then have him try this:
- open Kickoff (aka “start menu”)
- type “configure desktop” in the menu’s search box
- click the “Configure Desktop” choice
- select “Desktop” in the newly opened “System Settings” window
- select the “All Effects” tab
…the various effects are listed in sub-categories… - scroll down to the “Window Management” sub-category
- un-check the option for “Box Switch”
- check the option for “Cover Switch” OR “Flip Switch” (not both)
- click “Apply”
This will change his computer’s alt-tab behavior to something that is more obviously a ‘3D effect’.
Note that in the same list of effects…there is a little wrench button beside each effect. Clicking the wrench will present some configuration options, including what keyboard shortcut he wants to use to activate that particular effect. The button will only work for effects that are enabled.
Welcome to openSUSE and the openSUSE forums. I hope you enjoy your new OS but I also hope you want it for more than fancy desktop tricks! 
Extra Documentation…
Official Novell Docs - http://www.novell.com/documentation/opensuse111/
Broader Community List of links - http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation
We are both using KDM 4.1…
I have an old acer travelmate C301 that has an intel 855 graphics card, my effects were working, but not all of them. i could use the cube, tab scrolling pages. I could not use cylinder or sphere and other options. But sometimes my laptop would freeze up, or while trying to turn the cube, it would not spin. I am assuming my RAM is too small. 512MB at this time. I will be upgrading to 2GB in the near future.
Tonight I was screwing around with kde programs, uninstalling them…during the time things were uninstalling and then installing I could spin the cube every time I used the command: control+f11 then spin with my mouse. But once the install/uninstall quit, my system crashed. Now I can only start in failsafe mode. But I dont know command line so I will reboot OS tomorrow off the DVD OS install. I am currently running live CD install. Another note, i have enabled the tablet settings for my tablet, and it doesnt work…any ideas there?
As for my brother in law, he has a Dell that is a bit newer than mine. It has an ati graphics card. He is running KDE 4.1 off the dvd install. As I understand it, nothing happens when he tried to use 3D effects. He said he noticed absolutely nothing when pushing the commands. I had him double check to see if he had 3D enabling checked in the Display settings, he does have it enabled.
As for kickoff, is that KDE or Gnome? I did not know the “start menu” was known as “kickoff”. So thanks for that. I already walked him through all the settings for 3D under the desktop set up, and to no avail.
After reading since yesterday evening, I came to the conclusion that the problem lays in the fact that he has an ATi card. I sent him some links on the subject and when he gets a chance he will try to do the solutions…if anything comes to mind, please let me know.
On another note, I am unsure exactly what I did to make my 3D work…I did go into the programs and check various settings that I thought looked interesting…Did this make the 3D work, or should it just work as simply as you mentioned? I am unsure. Again I am new to linux and Suse. It would be great if there was a step by step instruction on options and a complete set up of options of suse 11.1…do you know of anything like this?
I have tried other Linux distros, but had problems setting them up. I took a class at the community collgeg on suse 10.2 and convinced my teacher to let me use the 11.1 distro…so this is all a fast paced learning lesson for me. I have to do the school work for Suse 10.2 in my head and try to make a comparable solution with 11.1 on my laptop and turn it into or show my instructor. It is VERY interesting, but frusterating as well. I am not sure what alot of the various lingo is referring to.
If you would like be merciful and add my address to your IM it is jeffwallner@gmail. I will be reinstalling tomorrow AM. It would be noce to have a little help from someone that obviously knows their way around suse!
Thanks for the help,
Jeff
BTW-I want to know Linux because I am sick of having my computers crash and get so **** slow…plus being free OS and software is a BONUS! I would love to convince friends to go to this distro, but I will need to learn it first to help them out on set up and any issues they may have if they set it up…or I will look like a jerk. lol.