Lady and Gentlemen,
Last time I installed openSuse 11 was very difficult since I had 11 logical partitions on one of drives. I have found out the problem only occur on openSuse and recent version of Fedora. Others install without any noticeable problem i.e., Debian, Slackware, Solaris, Open BSDI Unix and like.
To overcome openSuse problem, I had to delete one logical partition whilst installing Suse 11 and then restored 11th logical partition with fdisk. It was indeed cumbersome.
I always use multiple disks to split /, /usr and /tmp or swap over separate disks to increase performance therefore always in needs of logical partitions. Allocating single large file system is not very efficient wheather Linux, Unix or Windows. Did open Suse solved this problem with version 11.1?
I also like to find out if I could rewrite fstab uuid and disk model number entry with more simple sda(x) sdb(x) like fashion. Is there way to set preference whilst installing openSuse? Please kindly advise. If I can install without uuid and disk model number entry in fstab, then I can just use dummy drive and transfer partition to the disk that has 11 logical partitions (including pre-allocated partitions for part of openSuse) and make it safer than temporary deleting 11th logical partition with fdisk. Unlike DOS fdisk Util-Linux fdisk does not really damage data as longer as you keep reliable start and end cylinder number, but this is the last resort to use such a trick just for installing openSuse.
Average disk size in 2008 on desktop were 320GB, and laptop were 250GB and it will increase every year. I have Solaris, BSD and 3 Windows and they all do have Unix like separate file systems between OS, Apps and Data with the way I setup.
Suse has it’s strength in Solaris like rock solid stability, I have not yet lost usb mouse during lengthy transfer of data between DVD and SATA disk on openSuse. This can happens on some other Linux where udev implementation is not quite matured. It also mount, reads and writes on different old and new Linux partition fluently. openSuse does not run old games except the ones from openSuse.org web. At this moment, I do not own usb dial up modem since they are rather expensive therefore I have to depend on the other machine for any download which has Hayes Analogue Telephonique Modem for Unix just for small downloads. Hence My openSuse 11, Solaris 10, Solaris Express 11, Debian 4.05, StarOffice 8 & 9, OpenOffice 3.0, I did buy them as distribution media CD/DVD sets, It costs more money to download them than buy standard distribution set when download gets over 100MB or no time left for browsing web.
It would be great if openSuse could re-compile kernel to mount usf with read, write and exec but problem is not only on Suse therefore I have absolutely no reason to blame. Once capable Debian (up to kernel 2.2) does no longer recompile current kernel to provide write support on unix partitions. SCO/Caldera Linux did write on SCO Unix but not on others such as Solaris.
I have great faith in the future of Solaris, users and contributors and like are increasing all over the world. It is a friendly OS that user can specify level of security (even to practically none like Windows) and multiple language and locale support right at installation. You can choose from the beginning Solaris’ XDM equivalent ‘dtlogin’ let any users to go out to run level 3 if you choose to allow that without any modification. I do not like gnome so I stick with mwm with cde of1998 era. They let you do this without any fuss. openOffice on openSuse is sponsored by Sun as well. There is only single pam.conf rather than dozens or so in Linux /etc/pam.d. It’s not fishy like some other distribution of Linux who tried to make most rigid regime inflexible to user’s freedom needs.
At one time it was difficult to set up Solaris 86 to co-exist harmoniously since its’ partition boundary in rare occasion encroached into CHS defined boundary of other OS. It should be forgiven since it was not intentional like some other major Software Manufacturer would do. Sun’s contributions to academic institutions and children all over the world is by far great enough to let us drop and forget transient glitch over 10 years old. Automatically initialised Linux LVM is far more dangerous than any old little glitch I mentioned above.
Knowledgeable and wise ladies and gentlemen! I would appreciate kind follow up on 15 partition limitation issue imposed on openSuse Linux.
Sincerely,
Pinecloud