Making the switch...

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hey, I’m sure this thread has been done before, but I want to know what I might need to know before I make the switch from Vista to openSUSE

  1. Will it void my DELL Complete Care Warranty?
  2. Photoshop Elements is a big deal for me
  3. How different it is from the previous OS’s I used (Ubuntu, XP, Vista, OS X)
#2

  1. Ask DELL, they are the only ones who can give you a reliable answer.

  2. Try to find an alternative or good luck with wine (you’ll need it).

  3. Yes, especially different from Vista.

#3

My friend has told me a lot of good things about it, and he told me a few things about it.

And I think wine would work with it if I’m not mistaken?

#4

WineHQ - Wine Application Database

#5

If you wanted a safe way to test Suse with the option to resort back to Vista if you really really really really really MUST, you could do something like this:

Boot a LiveCD (or usb pendrivelinux disk-- anything which will give you a full blown linux with the ability to access the drives on the computer)

Plug in a USB harddrive with plenty of space (at least the size of your existing harddrive in the computer), and mount the USB drive (if it doesn’t automount). It will probably be a device such as /dev/sdb1. You can see what it is by running ‘dmesg’ and see what USB device just showed up. Mount it if necessary: # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Find the device of the internal drive (ie: /dev/sda, or /dev/hda)

do:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/vistaBackup.dd bs=1024k

(assuming /mnt is the mountpoint of usb external drive)

Once complete, you should have a file: vistaBackup.dd the same size as your internal drive.

You should then be able to shutdown, and install whatever you want on the system. If you need to get back to vista, you boot that LiveCD or pendrive again and do the opposite:

dd if=/mnt/vistaBackup.dd of=/dev/sda bs=1024k

Before doing anything, make sure you know what all your devices are. :slight_smile: