I am looking to install openSUSE onto my next laptop. I have three questions:
Is the Intel Centrino 2230 network card supported out of the box? I understand there is firmware available, but I would rather not compile after every upgrade. I read somewhere that the iwl-2030-ucode firmware has been integrated into recent kernel versions. I wanted to see if anyone has experience, however.
Regarding installed applications, how much control do I have upon install, and which installation image should I choose for the maximum amount of control? I like to avoid pulseaudio when necessary. I don’t even use Gnome so theoretically that should not be an issue, but some distros have forced it upon me during installation. Getting rid of it in those cases was a major pain, and sometimes not even worth it.
> - Regarding installed applications, how much control do I have upon
> install, and which installation image should I choose for the maximum
> amount of control?
The big DVD, not the live images (kde or gnome), as they only contain
one desktop.
> I like to avoid pulseaudio when necessary. I don’t
> even use Gnome so theoretically that should not be an issue, but some
> distros have forced it upon me during installation. Getting rid of it
> in those cases was a major pain, and sometimes not even worth it.
You can install any desktop you choose, or several of them. It is
possible, though, that installing an application such as mozilla brings
in parts of gtk, the libraries behind gnome. openSUSE doesn’t stress the
desktops being clean of “cross-contamination”.
Pulseaudio is just a posibility, many people don’t use it.
For instance, the bluetooth chain in KDE is currently broken. One of the
possible solutions is to use the gnome bluetooth stack. Read the release
notes about that on openSUSE 12.3 Release Notes - although the published version is
obsolete.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Additionally, KDE does not use pulse as the default sound server. And Skype supports ALSA.
I just want to be sure I don’t get it shoved down my throat like with Fedora or Ubuntu. Fedora was especially bad about it.
Still wondering about the wireless. Would love to hear from anyone with experience
DrLegion wrote:
> Still wondering about the wireless. Would love to hear from anyone with
> experience
>
>
You might ask wireless related questions in wireless part of the
forums. Heard that many experts limit themselves to specific forums/sub
forums
Almost all of openSUSE KDE testing is done with Pulse audio enabled. I in fact I am not aware of any testing done on openSUSE with pulse audio disabled.
That means one ‘may’ find themselves in unknown territory with respect some functionality that one might find an application with pulse disabled does not ‘just work’ where one nominally expects it to ‘just work’ (and it does ‘just work’ with pulse). That could be due to the application having been tested and debugged with pulse (on openSUSE) but not tested and debugged without pulse.
I understand and appreciate there are still numbers of users who have a strong disliking for pulse - but unfortunately the vast majority of the users who dislike pulse strongly, also tend to be users who do NOT contribute to the testing and who do NOT contribute to the packaging of sound on openSUSE.
Hence one runs risks when they disable sound on openSUSE.
Well, I have PulseAudio uninstalled since it exists (not because I explicitely dislike it, but because it always gave me problems in the past).
And yes, I do report bugs and even contribute to the packaging (KDE especially).
I haven’t had problems all those years because of not using PulseAudio.
Only those spring to mind right now:
There was a time period (in 12.1 if I remember correctly), when GNOME applications (and GNOME itself) didn’t even play sound at all without PulseAudio. This has been fixed meanwhile though.
With 12.3, openAL’s alsa backend just crashed (supertuxkart was affected by this, f.e.). This was down to a bug in alsa, which was fixed within hours after I reported it.
Now with 13.1 I had some crashes with phonon-backend-vlc (mostly KNotify, but also Amarok). This is caused by a race condition in alsa’s dmix plugin, that was already there in 12.3 (and apparently isn’t really fixable) but somehow didn’t give me problems then. Again, after reporting it, the crashes have been fixed within hours, the online update should be released in a few days.
Hence one runs risks when they disable sound on openSUSE.
I guess you mean “when they disable PulseAudio”, don’t you?
Well, I don’t find it very “risky” to disable PulseAudio…
