DVD 11.1 64 bit.
Dual Core AMD CPUs, XP on SATA hard drive, 40 GB IDE internal for SUSE.
I installed the DVD in the past using Gnome. I had a few problems mounting drives and things after working on it for a few weeks so I formatted the drive with Western Digital disk tools and went on to other distros.
Thought I’d give SUSE a try again. Today I reformatted the IDE, unplugged my SATA XP drive, and installed from DVD 64 bit the KDE version. The screen was out-of-whack. I had to drag down the screen to see the tool bar and that was barely visible. Messing around the screen became mostly blanked out (not the green wallpaper) and I couldn’t do anything but reformat the drive. Modest standard resolution set for my 19" widescreen. Ran Repair from DVD.
I’ve had a terrible time burning SUSE DVDs, trashing quite a few. Burned at 1X speed. Have burned at least 6 distro ISOs with no problems and many DVDs so it’s not my drive or media. I decided to try a new 32 bit DVD so downloaded it, burned it, MD5 checksum good, but it would not boot. Trashed 2 DVDs today.
32 bit better than 64 for software compatibility or stability?
Live CD be okay if I can get all the drivers and files from the repositories? I realize the DVD has more.
Any help would be appreciated.
Now. The 1st unsatisfactoriness. After install the display was looking “whack”. You might want to check if the your Video Card drivers were installed correctly. (if using ATI or NVIDIA you can simply visit ATI - openSUSE or NVIDIA - openSUSE and use the 1-click install. Follow the instructions to make sure everything is completely checked. You might have to go into SaX2 and configure some things arround.)
If you’re somehow unable to do this. You can simply go in terminal/konsole and get under root. In order to do that type in su or sudo:
su
You will be prompted for the password. Once under root. Try:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
This should restore all the settings to default.(which typically won’t help since you just installed, but you will be amazed how things sometimes gets messed up easily… so try it!) The screen resolution might be 600x800 but you can later go on and fix that. Try that and see what happens.
About the 32-bit and 64-bit… All sources point at a 64-bit cpu using a 64-bit software to be running much more smoothly than 32-bit. I, since using a 64-bit myself, personally agree. When it comes to software, it is true that some software is simply designed for 32-bit systems only, which will cost trouble in windows. But hey … Welcome to Linux. As far as I know, it does not matter at all whether the software is designed for a 32-bit cpu or a 64-bit cpu, Linux allows the 64-bit machine to run the modules just as nicely. But of course that’s just my personal opinion. If you want, you go ahead and do some research yourself. Good luck.
//Alek
Thanks Alek. Good information. Hope I didn’t sound like I was really complaining, just a bit frustrated. 
I’ve tried KDE several times but always come back to Gnome which I’m more comfortable with. I’ll give another go and install 11.1 64 bit Gnome on my second HD.