OpenSUSE 11.1 upgrade/install an small review

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

ok, after several weeks of clock and calendar watching by me, the day finally arrives and with bated breath and anticipation I download the ISO files. Here’s a short little summary of my upgrade install just completed and troubles resolved this evening. This is on my new Toshiba AMD Turion x2 laptop.
I am seriously considering a complete rebuild of my desktop running Fedora to OpenSUSE.

First I want to thank the person that made the helpful stickies in this section, the help notes served to be invaluable to my upgrade.

[Install]
flawless and no surprises, nothing to be resolved

[first boot]
A few glitches here:
Desktop-effects proved to be 1 of the issues to resolve. Desktop came up as a blank white screen after wallpaper appeared for just a sec…<note to self, turn this off before next upgrade in the future.>

after figuring out issues from previous updates, I finally removed the compiz config dir:

rm ~/.gconf/apps/compiz

logged back in and problem solved.

Gnome-power-manager would not start, but resolved the same way.

rm ~/.gconf/apps/gnome-power-manger

and let it reconfigure on the next login, problem solved.

[Wireless]
well no wireless @ first, a quick install of the madwifi packages and verification of ath5k blacklisted. All resolved and wireless working. (this was following the procedure I previously posted in wireless section for AR242x adapter).
Strange (but not complaining) the signal strength seems better

[Sound]
Works, no issues to resolve. all my multimedia progs work perfect. have not tested with ipod yet.

[Graphics]
works, no issues to resolve except for the compiz dir thing
ATI Radeon 3100 graphics works perfect
I don’t see the ATI catalyst utility anymore. but no biggie.

[flash plugin)
works, no issues to resolve.

[java plugin]
works, no issues to resolve.

[firefox]
works, no issues to resolve.

I really can think of very few issues or cons I have with this upgrade. kudos to the opensuse devel team, they did a great job!!

a few more tweaks (like removing the beagle-indexer) and my laptop will be just like nothing ever happened.

#2

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Wow… this is a great review. The details are admirable, and I thank
you. If you can post back on your iPod progress I’d like to know as my
wife’s computer will be going to 11.1 this week and I’m debating getting
her an iPod. If it works with 11.1 that may just make my decision for me.

Thank-you again for the review.

Good luck.

linuxfan50 wrote:
> ok, after several weeks of clock and calendar watching by me, the day
> finally arrives and with bated breath and anticipation I download the
> ISO files. Here’s a short little summary of my upgrade install just
> completed and troubles resolved this evening. This is on my new Toshiba
> AMD Turion x2 laptop.
> I am seriously considering a complete rebuild of my desktop running
> Fedora to OpenSUSE.
>
> First I want to thank the person that made the helpful stickies in this
> section, the help notes served to be invaluable to my upgrade.
>
> [Install]
> flawless and no surprises, nothing to be resolved
>
> [first boot]
> A few glitches here:
> Desktop-effects proved to be 1 of the issues to resolve. Desktop came
> up as a blank white screen after wallpaper appeared for just a
> sec…<note to self, turn this off before next upgrade in the future.>
>
> after figuring out issues from previous updates, I finally removed the
> compiz config dir:
>
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> rm ~/.gconf/apps/compiz
> --------------------
>
> logged back in and problem solved.
>
> Gnome-power-manager would not start, but resolved the same way.
>
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> rm ~/.gconf/apps/gnome-power-manger
> --------------------
>
> and let it reconfigure on the next login, problem solved.
>
> [Wireless]
> well no wireless @ first, a quick install of the madwifi packages and
> verification of ath5k blacklisted. All resolved and wireless working.
> (this was following the procedure I previously posted in wireless
> section for AR242x adapter).
> Strange (but not complaining) the signal strength seems better
>
> [Sound]
> Works, no issues to resolve. all my multimedia progs work perfect. have
> not tested with ipod yet.
>
> [Graphics]
> works, no issues to resolve except for the compiz dir thing
> ATI Radeon 3100 graphics works perfect
> I don’t see the ATI catalyst utility anymore. but no biggie.
>
> [flash plugin)
> works, no issues to resolve.
>
> [java plugin]
> works, no issues to resolve.
>
> [firefox]
> works, no issues to resolve.
>
> I really can think of very few issues or cons I have with this upgrade.
> kudos to the opensuse devel team, they did a great job!!
>
> a few more tweaks (like removing the beagle-indexer) and my laptop will
> be just like nothing ever happened.
>
>
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#3

My 5 cents too

I have made a clean install of openSUSE 11.1 DVD x86
Notebook: HP Pavilion dv5-1030en (HP Pavilion dv5-1030en Notebook PC*-* Product Specifications*)

[Install]
No problems
Pattern selected: KDE3

[first boot]
At the first boot I got a prompt “315 - not a valid video mode. Please select another”. This screen - each reboot.

But when I tried to change the mode to 305 in the Boot loader section of Yast, next reboot said there is no operating system installed. So, Yast destroyed my original bootloader. I performed rescue steps to recover Vista’s bootloader. I think that was really dangerous issue for a begginer not experienced with Vista recovery DVD

Adding “windows” section to the Grub menu had no effect. Pressing that menu during boot just returned to start screen, but during screen repaint I saw something like “invalid filesystem specified”.

At the moment I have configured Vista bootloader to perform dual boot.

[Wireless]
Atheros card finally works out-of-the box!

[eth]
Realtek driver finally works too! No extra config needed

[Sound]
No sound. The issue is being ivestigated in this thread: No sound, openSUSE 11.1 on HP dv5-1030en - openSUSE Forums

[Graphics]
Finally ATI driver works out-of-the-box. Before with 11.0 LiveCD the was a black screen instead of boot process

[flash plugin]
No problem

[java plugin]
No problem

[firefox]
No problem

openSUSE 11.1 has made a big step forward!
Congratulations to all fans!
Since Vista is fully unusable OS - I will switch fully to openSUSE as soon as my “no sound” problem will be eliminated

Cheers to all!

#4

I’ve sucessfully upgraded my OpenSuse 11 installation (that was itself upgraded from 10.3) with only a few gotchas :

The upgrade process removes some programs that might be important (in my case it removed VLC, mPlayer and Sun’s Virtual Box). So please take note of those programs when you upgrade to reinstall them later. Other than that, upgrade went fine and my box rebooted fine.

  1. Compiz/Emerald stoppped working after the upgrade. The solution was to add the X11/Compiz repo and use the rpms available from this repo. This is were I lost most time so it might be a good idea to disable Compiz before starting your upgrade.
  2. I haven’t noticed any big improvement or degradation in overall speed except for software and repo management wich is really fast now. No problems with audio like we saw with 11.0. The only piece that still doesn’t work here is the suspend to ram (still have to test suspend to disk).
  3. The login background is horrible but can be changed in this file : /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.vendor/%gconf-tree.xml. I changed this line so now it looks better : <stringvalue>/usr/share/backgrounds/grass/grass.xml</stringvalue>.

Of course, I highly recommand to backup your system before upgrading it. Good luck.

#5

Looks like all had at least some problems so here is my review:

[Install]
No problems
Pattern selected: KDE 4 (with beagle deselected)

[first boot]
no problems.

[eth]
works flawless as usual.

[Sound]
Was working but got glitches in amarok. This was resolved by using xine instead of gstreamer and selecting alsa as output module in amarok.

[Graphics]
Fuzzy fonts in kde 4 :frowning: was reloved by using hinting style full in anti aliasing settings (kde settings manager). After installing nvidia drives from repository got 60Hz fixed this by manual adding a valid Modeline in xorg.conf.

[flash plugin]
No problem

[firefox]
No problem

The rest works fine :slight_smile:

#6

I think I saw reports on kernel wireless driver update, that it would improve reception. So that’s the probable explanation, if you got the driver that was involved.

a few more tweaks (like removing the beagle-indexer) and my laptop will be just like nothing ever happened.

Let’s hope it doesn’t feel that way, under the hood, it’s all gleaming and decrufted with more power.

#7

WOW, I tried my ipod today and “homerun”, all works just fine and dandy with banshee!

I really love banshee!!