Hi.
I’ve been “trying” Opensuse since version 9 was released. Every previous distribution have had major problems and I always spent tens of hours trying to resolve. Maybe my wireless card wasn’t detected or configurable, maybe my USB ports didn’t work etc. I always thought “not yet” as far as a viable replacement for the WIndows OS.
But OMG I put 13.1 on my HP i7 12gb notebook a few days ago and this is frikkin’ awesome! I have never had a computer so responsive and fast! The only hardware it didn’t install “right” was my fingerprint sensor… and my speakers sound like a tin can (Sounded great in Win7).
I’ve been doing a lot with it over the past days. I got my minecraft working and made a launch-able desktop icon. So cool.
My present copy of OpenSuse is actually the second.
I originally installed it, then installed Wine and many of the Windows programs I liked/needed. Everything was going great until I went to use my Lightwave 3d from Newtek and it wouldn’t render correctly.
Oh oh, that’s it… I uninstalled 13.1 and restored Win7 because I need that program to work.
However it took me about 7 hours of Win7 restore work (Uninstall bloat ware, configurations, re-loading, restoring etc) before I realized how horrible Win 7 really is compared to the OpenSuse I had been using for a few days.
Since my Win7 boot manager won’t allow dual booting, I kicked Win 7 to the curb and put 13.1 back on. I’ve been doing a lot of things with it today and learning as much as I can.
I configure Juniper internet backbone routers for a living and am used to certain proprietary console commands but not all that used to Linux Terminal and its commands. Much of it is still foreign.
I admit being a bit frustrated at my previous 13.1 install because I put on so many Windows programs. This time I researched linux equivalents and this is what I found:
Cinelerra for Power Director
QTractor for Cubase
Blender for Lightwave
Shutter for the Windows Snip-it tool
Wine to run Photoshop CS5 (So I can open my .psp files)
Gimp for Photoshop and GIF animation program
Audacity for GoldWave
I think I’ll be happier once I get used to Linux native programs rather than their Windows cousins.
At this point, the biggest hurtle I have is running my favorite game… Skyrim. Any suggestions for a newbee? I couldn’t get it to run under Wine. I installed VirtualBox through Yast and worked a long time getting it going (setting permissions etc) and then it wouldn’t start the XP installation for missing dependencies so I gave up and uninstalled VB.
Right now my biggest pain is the System Tray. Somehow I ended up with the tools (Network connections, speaker, clock etc) which are usually on the right are now on the left. I click the teardrop on the right (to enter the System Tray config) and try to drag the tools to the right but it always just snaps back to the left no matter what I do.
Also, open programs used to appear in the system tray but no more.
How can I get my system tray back to the normal default?
Thanks for any replies in advance!
-Steve