I just installed openSuse 11.0 and thought I’d register at the forum.
I’ve been a Windows user for a long time but found out that most apps I use are also available for Linux, so I took the plunge. I’ve been coming across Linux (mostly Suse Enterprise for SAP) at work more and more too, so hence my choice for OpenSuse.
First impressions: other than some Grub trouble installation was easy and fast. I’ve got a 3-year old AMD64 with 2GB and that seems to be enough.
Running Suse: getting my Ralink wifi up was a pain, but I found the answer in this forum: get the firmware before setting up the network device. I got a warning about that beforehand so I should not have had to waste so much time. Ah well.
The desktop effects don’t really work for me. When they are activated, clicking on a window does not always change the focus to that window, and the min/max/close buttons also don’t work very well. And when desktop effects are turned on, they always turn off automatically after a reboot.
Also some USB trouble: plugging a USB2.0 drive into one USB port crashes Linux almost always and into another port my PC just turns off like someone pulled the plug. But those ports don’t work very well in Windows either (very slow speed even though it’s USB2.0) so I think that’s a hardware issue.
One of my partitions doesn’t dismount at shutdown, I get a Failed message. Doesn’t seem to hurt anything.
Last remark: that KDE4 start menu is something to get used to. I’m not too happy with it yet, it’ll have to grow on me.
So I guess I’ll be checking back here as I learn to use my “new” PC.
KDE-4.0.4 that comes with openSUSE-11.0 is not a good example of Linux stability, and KDE-4.1.x which is out now (and will appear in openSUSE-11.1) is significantly more stable and superior (to 4.0.4). Many of us long-in-the-tooth KDE users are still using KDE-3.5 (3.5.9 to be exact) on openSUSE-11.0 or even 3.5.7 on openSUSE-10.3.
I recommend you read this openSUSE Linux concepts page to become more familiar with basic openSUSE concepts: Concepts - openSUSE
I also recommend (if you have not done so already) that you setup your software repositories with 4 (and only 4) repositories, with those 4 being OSS, NON-OSS, Update and Packman. The reason being those are IMHO the 4 most useful, and all other repositories may not be perfectly compatible with those 4. (for example many users who added videolan have had problems with a lack of compatibility with Packman). IF you need an application off of one of the other repositories, then add the “other” repository briefly, install the needed app, and remove the “other” repository. The URL to describe how to add those 4 repositories is here: Repositories/11.0 - openSUSE-Community
You can get volunteer support from various ways, as documented here: Communicate - openSUSE
Welcome to our forum, and I hope your Linux experience works out for you.
I do that when I’m in a big hurry as I know where every thing is in the old style (or install something new); but, I force myself to use KDE4 style as much as possible to try to learn it. BTW, there is a “recently used” tab for those things you use often.
If this is a desktop PC, you can purchase an inexpensive PCI card with 4 USB-2.0 ports, and use that. That is what I have done for my older athlon-1100 PC (which had only USB-1.1 ports on the motherboard) and it works well. I even managed to find a no-name brand (very) inexpensive PCI card (for the USB-2.0 ports) that claimed Linux compatibility in addition to Windows, … and turned out that claim was correct. The no-name brand PCI card works fabulous, with no special (nor additional) configuration required with openSUSE-10.3, then 11.0 and recently with 11.1 alpha2.
This should not happen IMHO. Is this a Linux formatted (ext3 for example) partition, or an MS-Windows NTFS formatted partition? What data do you have on this partition (ensure you have it backed up) ?
It flashes by kind of quickly, I am at the office now so I’ll look at it when I am home. I think it is my EXT3 home partition. I have an NTFS second hard drive in there which it could also be.
I’m not certain off hand what log under /var/log has the shutdown information. I confess what I often do now, when a repeatable problem flashes by the screen, is repeat the problem and take a movie of the screen with the “movie mode” in my digital camera. I then play back the video clip in slow motion and capture the errors that way.
It appears to be the Linux partition that holds the kernel et al (can’t think of the name right now, total n00b here…).
I’ll check the /var/log files too. I already updated KDE and got rid of compiz, that is what was making my desktop experience so bad. It looks and feels more stable this way.
From my playing with 4.1 on the community (not Novell) liveCD (with 4.1) and also my experience from playing with openSUSE-11.1 alpha2, I believe that 4.1 is significantly superior to 4.0.4.
In case you wish to try KDE3, its a simple matter to install it after KDE4 has been installed. The guidance for doing that (in a konsole with root permissions) is here:# zypper install -t pattern kde3or if you just want a clean KDE 3 base:# zypper install --no-recommends -t pattern kde3or even by selecting “KDE3 Base System” pattern on YaST.
I recommend the YaST method.
Then using YaST create a new user, and ONLY log on to KDE3 as that new User (and do not log in as your existing user). That way you do not mix the two with various config files in /home/your-username. I think you will find KDE3 not as clean nor as glossy as KDE4, but KDE3, at this point in time, is more stable and has more features than KDE4. However IMHO that lead of KDE3 will not last for long.
I’m a new daddy so my priorities changed a few weeks ago, hehe.
I’ll dive into it this weekend if I can. I have been talking to a collegue who is an HP-UX consultant and he said it is impossible for Linux to dismount the root partition at shutdown and that is why that gives me a failed message. I’m not convinced, if it is not possible why does it try?
I’m looking forward to start playing around, if only there were more hours in a day!
