I'm coming over... yay

Hi all,

Well, as my name suggests i am MS Certified and understand a PC,
However i’m technically a Virgin when it comes to Linux.
We’ve flitered a few times and maybe fondeled each other here and there
in the server room (Redhat servers at work) but have not had any real
interaction on a personal level.

I am however from the Novell camp in terms of favourite email client
being Groupwise and the fact that to this day i still despise AD in
comparison to ConsoleOne (iManager etc)

I love Novells implamentation of there admin tools and am now looking
to bring my home PC, media center and laptop over to the camp.

I have a few questions (sorry for my first post being questions, but
this is a HUGE jump to make for me a windows sys admin, and am hoping
the community may help me with this move prior to me making the jump and
forgetting my parachute.

so here we go:

1: My main Pc has a PCI-E ATI4870 GFX Card on a Gigabyte 780G Chipset
3200 IGP Motherboard. Setup includes a Triple monitor spanned setup over
2x 24" 1920x1200 monitors and a 37" 1366x768 LCD TV in the middle.
Can and will Opensuse allow me to utilise my multi-monitor setup or
will i lose this functionality.

2: My Audio card is an ASUS Xonar D2X PCI-E which is rather new and is
sublime in terms of audio. Will opensuse support this by default as ASUS
have no linux driver support on there site.

3: I own many beta and licenced versions of Windows (being a MCP and
MSDN subscriber) and wonder how difficult by default it is to install
windows in a linux environment (what emulation software is included by
default, how easy is it to use, does it use VHD’s or does it require the
partitioning of a phsical drive etc any of you who use this any help or
general advice is really welcome)

4: Once i install Windows in a virtual environement using a VHD
(ideally) can (like virtual windows on windows) i point the Virtual OS
to a local USB plugged into my host pc.
Usually i run apps or save reports from “whocrashed” etc in my windows
VM to my local USB plugged into my host machine, Very handy.

5: As we have a media centre pc is there any media centre software
included. Can i play MKV files, can i send a spdif out using my ASUS D2X
card. Can i play XVID, MP3, x264 and other HD content by default.

6: Does anyone have any very valuable advice from when moving over to
opensuse from windows. Things you learnt the hardway? I dont want to
learn the hard way as i will probably go back to the easy way… ie
Windows… and i really would like to move over to linux but with as
much help, support and advice as i can to ensure the transistion is
enjoyable… i dont want to make the experience a bad one if it can at
all be helped.

Thanks in advance for helping, and i really hope to be over and using
opensuse very soon.

Karl

P.s its 7am rushing around, did not proof read or spell check my typing
and burnt my mouth on my coffee <sorry>


MCSE101

MCSE101’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=21197
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=406314

for the first and second questions, check out SUSE’s hardware
compatibility list ‘Hardware - openSUSE’
(http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware) Usually, the newer your kernel is, the
more chance it’ll include a driver for a specific device

3-4. Virtualization on Linux is very good and mature, I recommend you
try out VMWare and VirtualBox (the latter my favorite). For the USB
thingy, I think this is possible

5; you can play virtually all audio/video files on Linux, with the help
of MPlayer/ffmpeg’s libavcodec and libavformat, which is also found in
VLC, Xine, and other video players. For audio, we have Amarok, Banshee,
Rhythmbox, Audacious, etc

6; Advice: Linux does things differently so don’t expect the first time
everything to go smoothly, though this is very much possible. If you got
a problem and get frustrated, calm down, breathe and ask for help. Don’t
just spew crap like “This sucks, I can’t fix it, I’m going back to
Windows”


‘Get h264enc’ (http://h264enc.sourceforge.net) - ‘Get xvidenc’
(http://xvidenc.sourceforge.net)
- ‘Get divxenc’
(http://divxenc.sourceforge.net)

microchip8’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=163
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=406314

sound advice from microchip8, also, have a read of this from oldcpu
‘NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums’
(http://tinyurl.com/6jwtg9)

Andy


To be is to do = Immanuel Kant
To do is to be = Descartes.
Do be do be do = Frank Sinatra

SuSE user since 7.0,Linux user since 1994

deltaflyer44’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=95
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