OpenSuse is great

English Applications
1

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

2

Ok ask distinct questions. Nice story but it is unclear what the real question is.

There should not be any problem dual booting win7 and openSUSE. but it is best to allow openSUSE to control the boot.

You can also install Windows in a VM (virtual machine) which would allow most things except perhaps high level games. Look for VirtualBox. The real advantage is you can be running Windows in a window in Linux this allows you to drag and drop between the two OS’s Unless you require very high video speed and have a real Windows install (not a manufactures image disk) this is a viable alternative.

It is always best to use native apps when you can. Wine should only be a last effort fallback.

3

Maybe the easiest way is to remove the whole panel and replace it with new one.

4

Please, please SteveFury61,

You posted this in a technical help forum about Applications. That means that others assume that you post a consise description about a technical problem: what you did, what you expeceted to happen and what happened instead. This preceded by a good descriptive Title of the thread, so that it will lure people that may be competent into reading your problem. The title “Opensuse is great” does nothing of that kind. It lets people think that you misplaced this thread and that it in fact should have been in General Chitchat.

Personaly I lost interest in finding the starting point of your poblem description in the long story before I reached there.

So my advice is:

  1. choose the (sub)forum you where you post with care;
  2. make a short descriptive (keywords!) title to advertise your post to the gurus you need;
  3. describe your problem consise but precise, when possible show computer proof of your statements/conclusions (between CODE tags), best is: what you did, what you expected to happen, what happened intead;
  4. the above leads atomaticaly to this point: use a different thread for every different problem because most certain they go to different (sub)forums, have different titles and in any case the discussion must not be messed up.

And when you just want some freely flowing discussusion about what you like (or not) in openSUSE, feel free to use General Chitchat or even Soapbox. There are always people here who like those kind of threads.

5

Enter the panel configuration (by clicking that “tear-drop” on the right as you call it), select “Add Widgets”, and add back the task manager widget.

Drag that to the left of the system tray and it will push the tray to the right (the task manager always takes up all available space).

Or just remove the panel completely and add a new “Default Panel” (right-click on the desktop itself or click on the desktop’s “cashew” on the top-right to do that) as already mentioned.