A few weeks ago, I decided to give openSUSE a shot after seeing some sterling reviews. I’ve been a Linux user newbie for just over a year and, as such, an Ubuntu user since. I haven’t been thrilled at the way in which Unity and Gnome 3 have headed, so KDE looked promising.
Of course, I didn’t realise how different openSUSE is to Ubuntu, in terms of management, so it threw me. I then tried Kubuntu but had endless hassles with the software centre and fonts.
Here I am, again, in openSUSE. I’m trying really hard to get it working to my liking. I’ve been reading the forums slowly, following the various newbie steps and, as I type this, I’ve just managed to get the Packman repos working and I’m doing updates via YAST (I think that’s what it is called). I have to rebbot to “update my kernal” and so far, things are looking good.
I do like the openSUSE branding and I’m going to be asking loads of questions to try wrap my head around the way things. It’s a lot better looking than Kubuntu, by the way.
When I get back from my reboot, I’m going to try install Nvidia drivers and MS fonts.
Welcome to openSUSE. There are a number of users coming from Ubuntu so no worries there.
You are right, there is something different about the “openSUSE way” and the “Ubuntu way”, which I am still trying to fully learn. I’ve found it more different than some other distributions, but no less capable if I can focus enough energies to just learn.
Yes welcome, sounds like you are making good progress now. You mentioned Kubuntu, and software management was one of the main reasons I ditched it from an older desktop pc. Make good use of the help sections of the forum and enjoy the ride.
Thanks. I think I’m coming along, albeit slowly. Everything has gone according to the help topics in this forum, but I may have one or two things in the wrong order. Hopefully, that won’t affect my installation.
For example, I accidentally installed the multimedia extras from the section for openSUSE 11.0 (or 11.3) instead of 12.1. (I manually selected the codecs selected and found them in YAST. Once they were installed, I scrolled down and saw a slightly different method - using Terminal - for 12.1, so I did that too. I should be fine, right?
In case you haven’t spotted it, just enter ‘fetch’ in the YaST Software Management search bar and the program to fetch the MS fonts for you should pop up.
I found a very lengthy page on how to install my Nvidia driver. Is that correct? Such a long page? In Kubuntu, I simply hit Additional Drivers and the Nvidia options popped up. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it a painful process to install my Nvidia drivers?
On 02/01/2012 07:16 PM, Forkjulle wrote:
> I didn’t realise how different openSUSE is to Ubuntu
maybe not all, but at least some of the bigger differences you need to
know about right away are here for your use:
http://tinyurl.com/ubuntu-to-openSUSE
that one hasn’t been updated since 12.1 came out, so there will be some
stuff missing, i guess…but it will get you started on learning the
ways to get around
and, this one below is just a google of these forum for pages in which
both ‘different’ and ‘ubuntu’ are both found (only about 8,000 of those!):
no, actually the install of the Nvidia driver is really easy. First of all, you enable the Nvidia repository. Then you just need to search in YaST for Nvidia. Then it comes up with some choices: x11-nvidia-g01 or x11-nvidia-g02. It depends, which graphics card you are using. If it is one which is newer than a GeForce 6000 then you take …-g02. Then you choose nvidia-GFX-g02-kmp-desktop as the kernel module (for a card newer than Geforce 6000) or nvidia-GFX-g01-kmp-desktop (for an older card), as you have a desktop kernel in your system (even with a Laptop) and you don´t want to change to a different kernel. Then all dependencies are solved automatically and installed. After a reboot, you have the Nvidia driver working.
