I get to the welcome & menu screens, then it goes to the black monitor screen, saying something about booting from an external (DVD) drive. And there it sits. I downloaded from open SUSE, and checked the MD5 checksum & burned the DVD. I get the same results on two Linux machines. (I’m running Mint 17 on both). Why won’t it boot up?
Thanks!
What graphics adapter do you have?
The most common cause of this problem is have an Nvidia graphics card or maybe an ATI card.
If that’s your problem, then look for function keys (on the boot screen). One of them (I think it is F3) is for video. Use that, and select “NoKMS” or “nomodeset”. And see if that gets you past the black screen.
If there are no function key options near the bottom of the boot screen, then you have a UEFI system. In that case, enter ‘e’ on the grub menu, to edit the boot line. Scroll down to find the line that begins “linux” (or, probably, “linuxefi”). Go to the end of the line, and append " nomodeset" (without the quotes, of course). Then hit the key that proceeds with boot - there will be a message on the screen telling you what that is. Again, that should get you past the black screen.
If that is not your problem, then we will need more information.
Looks like I have an AMD/ATI graphics adaptor. I have never figured out how to find out what hardware I have, in Linux. I’ve done the “nomodeset” on my desktop. But before I go any further…I managed to get the thumb drive reformatted and put the ISO on that, and it came right up and started to install! I don’t want to install it, yet, I want to just test drive it, and see if I’m going to like it. I downloaded Ubuntu 13.2, and it booted right up, so I don’t understand why SUSE has such a problem. I CAN test drive this, without installing it, can’t I? Thanks for your help.
Did you download the LIVE version the full DVD is for install only. The reason is space. Even on a DVD openSUSE packs lots of stuff on like 4 complete desktops all the basic apps you could want. Not enough room for the live stuff so they provide separate KDE or gnome Live DVD it is on the down load page if you actually read it 
You may have had a bad burn did you run media check on the DVD? Always burn at the lowest possible speed for best results
This is what I downloaded. http://software.opensuse.org/132/en AH! I see them. You have to read the fine print. OK. I’ll start over. THANKS!