Installation questions

English Install/Boot/Login
1

To begin, this is my first foray into the world of Linux so please bare with me. I would also like to apologize upfront if this post is in the wrong section.

I just installed the OpenSuse distro I downloaded from the site today and have already run into a couple of issues. First issue, after going through the install routine (I picked GNOME as my GUI) I realized I had no sound. A review of the Apps-system-sound window should two entries for Internal sound devices. I did a Google search and as best I could determine my on-board sound was one of the two while the SB Audigy card I am currently connected to was the other. Rebooted the system and disabled on-board sound in bios. Now only one “Internal Audio” source is listed. Next after some more digging I located the Yast settings for sound (What is Yast btw?) and it does show that the SB0090 Audigy is listed as item 0 (Im assuming that means its the primary device). A quick check by going to Pandora.com insures it does work. At this point I just want to add a start up sound kinda like windows uses but the forums Ive read on the subject say to go to apps-system-sound and change the default sound for start up there. Unfortunately, I don’t see this option. Could the fact that this only shows internal audio and not explictley my audigy card be a sign of a problem? As far as Im aware I have not installed any additional software besides the default install and any updates that were brought to my attention thereafter.

Secondly, besides these forums where does one go to become better acquainted with Linux in general? I am familiar with Windows and DOS but this is absolutely foreign to me at the moment. I would like to learn more about the command line and would eventually like to use this box to start a web server at the house so I guess Apache references would be good too. Sorry for the shotgun blast approach but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed as of right now.

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

LOL, just realized my user name tag says “puzzled penguin” underneath…how true!!!

3

Start here
SDB:Audio troubleshooting - openSUSE

4

Hi jahysun, welcome to openSUSE Linux and to openSUSE in general.

First a few links to some guides on our forum for help in knowing about where repositories for software are located, where information on drivers can be found, how to setup the multimedia etc …

And a couple links to some basic concepts on openSUSE, with both the old and newer versions of mostly the same document , but with different formatting …

Best wishes in your openSUSE Linux endeavors.

5

Some of the recommended posts have old information regarding Alsa. If you’re using Opensuse 11.x then I think you should be using PulseAudio drivers and PulseAudio preferences. Assuming your sound isn’t muted somewhere then Applications | Multimedia | Volume Control | should help set your preferences.

To add a startup program, no guarantee the startup sound works, try System | Look and Feel | Control Center | Systems | Start up Applications where you can change the login sounds. I find that some sounds play nice and some don’t and the sounds must be in a specific format (wav?) and less than size.

6

first thing
do not get too frustrated with the sound
a few years back pulse-audio was introduced as a “better” way to handle sound in the Fedora distro .Since then other distros have started using it
up until that time sound was ( and still is) a mess .
so from the online documentation , some of witch is OLD, might not give you all the correct information .
This can make things a bit confusing .

Secondly, besides these forums where does one go to become better acquainted with Linux in general?

a few places
Linux.com | The source for Linux information
The Linux Documentation Project
HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials
LinuxPlanet - News, howtos, and reviews for server admins and IT professionals
YoLinux.com: Linux Tutorials, Help, Documentation and Information
some for just the terminal ( a bit old but the basics are the same)
Bash Prompt HOWTO
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.gz

there are also other forums
LinuxQuestions.org
is a good one

7

Yet Another Setup Tool. It is a piece of software that started off (in more primitive form) years and years ago, so don’t ask me what the other setup tools around at the time were.

Basically, it is the place you go to for system configuration stuff, generally in SuSE.

The feeling of overwhelmedness is understandable; there is a lot of different stuff that you could try to understand. ,For Apache, for example, a search on ‘Apache tutorial’ (or ‘Linux Apache Tutorial’) in your favourite search engine will almost always give you some good results.

I find it difficult to recommend a ‘just read this, and learn all about Linux’ link; there are good links for individual aspects, but there are just so many (networking, security, webservers, user management, hardware compatibility, GUIs, etc, etc) that you are better, if you can do it, to focus on one at time.

For the command line, while there are other options, you’ll want to learn the commands and the BASH shell. You may not want learn that much about shell scripting immediately (but it is hardly a big push on from ‘basic’ BASH and it can be quite rewarding).

For the individual commands, the man pages are a good (but sometimes terse…not many examples) source of information, particularly when you just when to know which option to use with a known command

man command_name
or
man -k relevant_term

Some other links
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux Home Networking - Tutorials and Forums

(the second of those is more RedHat orientated, and sometimes the syntax of commands is different, the general principles apply, and once you know the general principles, it is easier to adapt)

8

On 2011-01-10 17:06, markone wrote:
>
> jahysun;2275771 Wrote:
>> (What is Yast btw?)
>
> Yet Another Setup Tool. It is a piece of software that started
> off (in more primitive form) years and years ago, so don’t ask me what
> the other setup tools around at the time were.

Try xconfig :wink:

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Minas Tirith))