Can I boot to a live session via the installation dvd or do I need to download the live cd to try opensuse out and then download the dvd to install? Thanks in advance for your help!
DVD has no Live functionality.
The LiveCD functions as a “demo” as well as an installer but only offers one desktop environment as default install (KDE4 or GNOME) (you can add others and install more software via the net).
DVD can install any of the desktop environments - KDE 3.5.9, KDE4 and GNOME + various other ones such as XFCE, iCEWM etc.
Thank you very much for the quick and informative response! I just have one more question. I’ve been reading around the forums here and I see that it is possible to install more than one desktop environment for OpenSUSE and switch between them. I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few years now and I’ve wanted many times to try installing multiple desktop environments but I understand there are many bugs associated with such a setup. How does OpenSUSE work with this type of setup? How does one switch between desktop environments? Thanks again!
I’ve had a number of desktops installed at the same time, with no problem switching between them. You do need to decide gdm vs kdm, but either can start X in the other environment. The gdm & kdm screens have a menu to choose the gui (the last used is remembered and the default). The default logon mgr and window mgr are set in the openSUSE configuration. Installing is also very easy; you use what are called “patterns”, which will pull in all the packages. The integration is very well done in this distro.
Great! Thanks very much! I’m going to go give this a try right now.
One suggestion . . . don’t install KDE 4. It’s still very immature, and will probably only give you heartburn. There is a way to take the installed version to a higher level, but if this is still relative new, better to wait a bit longer, probably until 4.2. Other than that, rock solid.