Question about installing another desktop

Opensuse 13.1 - KDE

Guys, first off I am so pleased that I switched from Ubuntu.

Not only is OpenSuse 13.1 more stable, but more challenging and it goes against the conventions of the of ‘proprietary creep’ found in to other distros. The freedom to change and experiment is rewarding.

That said I would like to know, if I was to install another desktop like Gnome, would I have to re-intall the codecs, repositories and pacman for Gnome!

The reason I ask is that there is a variation in pacman codecs between Gnome & KDE in an install guide:

https://forums.opensuse.org/entry.php/149-openSUSE-13-1-Multi-media-and-Restricted-Format-Installation-Guide

Thanks in advance

Steve

No.
All the repositories stay the same, regardless whether you install GNOME or KDE or both.

For the codecs it’s more about which applications you are using.
You should have libxine2-codecs, which will stay installed of course, so all xine based players will still work.

For VLC you need to install “vlc-codecs”, no matter if you use KDE or GNOME.

“MPlayer” works fine stand-alone, without any additional packages.

The main difference of those two codec installers is gstreamer, mainly because there are two independent versions available, 1.x and 0.10. (and you shouldn’t be forced to have both installed, even if you only use one)
KDE uses gstreamer-0_10, so you need the codecs for that (and those you get with the KDE codec installer).
Most (but not necessarily all) GNOME applications (totem and banshee at least) are using gstreamer-1.x in the meantime.

You don’t have to use the GNOME codec installer now though. (Although it wouldn’t harm either. It would NOT install those codecs again that you already have)
Just enter YaST->Software Management, and install the missing packages.
For gstreamer-1.x you should additionally install those:
gstreamer-plugins-bad-orig-addon, gstreamer-plugins-ugly-orig-addon, gstreamer-plugins-libav.

The rest should be done automatically by YaST.

PS: Just to be sure, to prevent misunderstandings: you can of course install more than one desktop on your system.
You can then choose the one to login to at the login screen.
So if you want to install GNOME, you don’t have to do a complete re-installation of your system.
Just install the corresponding patterns in YaST->Software Management (“View”->“Patterns”).

Thanks Wolfi… I installed the desktops and updates followed.

thank you Wolfi… I actually followed your advice and installed the KDE4 on my laptop yesterday to try to fix the bad screen rendering.
I had struggled with nVidia drivers install for the last 4 days and could not make it work no matter what I tried. the screen simply looked washed up and fonts were terrible. I was reluctant about installing KDE as when I did a full KDE install initially it made the machine useless. BUT loading install install with LXDE, do all updates and making all other things work, then installing KDE worked perfectly.
as of last night I have a beautiful desktop with KDE and violet theam.
not sure what drivers are in used for video but all fonts and screen are nice and crisp (I did installed the windows font pack I have found the instructions for here on the forum)
and the machine flies.

thanks again…

PS>> I knew I picked opensuse for a good reason :slight_smile:

You could look in KInfocenter, YaST->Hardware->Hardware Information, or in /var/log/Xorg.0.log f.e.

I did and it looks like it uses nv what ever that means.
but it was there before I installed KDE and it did not seam to work.
now it does :slight_smile:

Are you sure it’s nv?

nv is the very old nvidia open source driver, that supports 2d acceleration, but no 3d.

Maybe post the exact text to verify?