Hello everyone,
I’ve been recently distro-hopping a little and found openSUSE 11.2 an excellent option for a desktop. I have some questions, though:
- I tested the DVD and both Live CDs. I’ve noticed that after a clean GNOME install from the DVD, Software Update offers 86 updates to me, “KDE 4.3.5 Update” and other KDE libs among them. On the other hand, if I install openSUSE directly from the GNOME Live CD, Software Update offers 74 or so updates, none of them KDE-related.
Is this working as intended? Is there a way to avoid it, beyond picking the KDE-related bits and blacklisting them?
- After my first update, all my system fonts were suddenly changed to a very narrow, very ugly Arial font. Upong investigation —with some cursing involved; after all, I am everything but an expert on this—, I’ve discovered that the MS TrueType package caused this. If I’m not mistaken, pullin-mstt-fonts
and fetchmsttfonts were involved.
Apparently, after updating, YaST modifies /etc/fonts/suse-post-user.conf, adding the new fonts at the top of the preferred fonts list, making Arial the default. Although it’s easy to fix, by just replacing Arial with the default Sans font —I believe it’s DejaVu Sans—, it’s a weird behavior, and I can see some newcomers being annoyed by this. Is there a way to avoid it without manually fixing it everytime we install fonts?
Thanks in advance,
Carolina
I don’t know for sure but some of those KDE bits may be required by some default install packages from the DVD that may not be on the CD. A lot more stuff gets installed by default from the DVD. Unless you have some fear of all things KDE I’d not worry. And 4.3.5 is the current version of KDE for OpenSuse.
Not sure about the fonts. It may have been because you never selected and the default is to take the first it comes to. I never saw this but then I run KDE.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with KDE, it just seemed to me a waste of HD space to download a big desktop environment like KDE when I specifically chose another one in the install setup. But it’s okay, not really a big deal.
And as for the font problem, I’m running the KDE Live CD as I type, and Arial is on top of the list by default… I guess this file is the same for GNOME and SUSE is just waiting to have the Arial font in its hands to replace the DejaVu Sans. Weird decision, since I find the latter much more pleasant to the eye and compatible with the GNOME look, but that may be just me.
As a side note, I’m struggling to install the webcam-gspca2 drivers. I could only found the source RPM packages, and with my limited experienced in RPM, I tried the following:
linux@linux:~/Download> sudo rpmbuild --rebuild webcam-gspca2-20100603-18.3.src.rpm
Installing webcam-gspca2-20100603-18.3.src.rpm
error: line 16: Unknown tag: %suse_kernel_module_package -x desktop default pae -p Preamble
Any suggestions?
I doubt if that is the entire KDE environment.
Fonts are a individual choice. In the eye of the beholder and all. lol!
Can’t help with Webcam.
Did you install the gcc compiler you will need it to build from source.
You may want to start a new thread so attract someone that knows about webcams
Probably not, because when I selected the KDE pattern to install, it downloaded about 300 MB of packages. That said, it was a big package, as the update took much longer in the DVD installation.
That’s what ugly peop-- I mean, fonts, say. 
Thanks for your replies, I’ll try checking for gcc missing packages and posting again if I fail.
I’d never heard of webcam-gspca2 so did some look up. It looks like you can get the packge pre compiled. Do a search in Yast- Package search
You will need to install the version that matchs your kernel ie desktop,pae, etc. and 32 or 64 bit
You can get the kernel info with
uname -r
Since this is a kernel module you will need to install the kernel-source also if you intend to compile it.
Thanks for your help. This is the output of Webpin when I search for the aforementioned package:
http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/4368/screenshotpackagesearch.png
I tried installing every one of them and my webcam still isn’t recognized, so I take that it needs the plain webcam-gspca2 package, which I’ve found only in its src.rpm form.
Since I’m kinda new at this RPM thing, I recently discovered the RPM Build Environment pattern in YaST, which probably contains everything needed to build the source RPM. So I guess it’s problem solved, since I know for a fact that my webcam works with those drivers, at least in the Debian and Slackware based distros that I used before.
After two or three days of testing openSUSE, I must say that I’m very happy with it, even if I had to tweak it a little bit to suit my tastes. It’s a really mature, well polished and user-friendly distro, and I’m finding new cool things everyday.
No you still must compile it against your kernel. You do not install packages that are NOT compatible with the kernel you are running. It simply won’t work. The initials in the names are the kernels that the binaries have been compiled against.
Please be sure you uninstall any of the packages you installed multiple versions of the same thing will not help. post here the output of
uname -r
Then I can tell you the package that is compatible with your installed kernel. My guess is that it is desktop. But it is hard to know what people do.
Now the above is a general rule I know nothing about webcams and have no idea if this is the package you need for your web cam. Hopefully someone with more webcam experience will jump in.
BTW you never said what webcam are you sure that this package is what you really need?
linux@linux:~> uname -r
2.6.31.5-0.1-default
For testing purposes, I’m running the Live CD, so I don’t have anything installed right now. I tried installing everything before, when I was running the DVD version, and it didn’t work; I assumed that I had to excecute a rpmbuild --rebuild with the webcam-gspca2 src.rpm packaged offered in the repositories.
The only webcams that I believe need this driver are a couple of cheap old Genius ones, Look 310 and VideoCAM EYE, if I’m not mistaken.
Again, thanks for your support.
You would want the default package.
No that is not how you do it. You would simply install the source find where it is then compile it. You will need the gcc compiler and kernel-source packages installed at least.
BTW In Suse it is better, at least until you get familiar with it, to use Yast-Software Manager to install packages.
If you go the source route it might be better to get the source in .gz format since this is generally set up to compile and install the binaries.
I guess I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. If I’m not mistaken, this is the latest version available.
Now I just have to find the libs needed to compile it; I tried downloading gcc and kernel-source packages from YaST and still got some error, so I guess I’ll have to take a closer look at it later.
For the record, this is the make output:
linux:/home/linux/Download/gspca-2.9.11 # make
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.31.5-0.1-default/build M=/home/linux/Download/gspca-2.9.11/build modules
make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.31.5-0.1-default/build: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [modules] Error 2