Hello, I am new hare and I am still running Win 7 on my laptop, but I want to entirely and permanently switch to openSUSE Leap. That’s why I have two questions:
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After I download and verify the checksum of the .iso file and record it on my usb flash drive, is there a way to verify the checksum again after it has been recorded?
I am afraid of viruses and I am using an antivirus, but still…
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If there is a virus on the laptop when I do the entire switch to openSuse with a clean usb flash drive, will it be deleted? Or it is not sure and it can infect the drive, especially if it is in the boot sector?
Thank you in advance for your answers!
Welcome to the openSUSE Forums!
If you download and use the DVD installer, after you have burned it to an USB drive you can boot from it then choose the “Other…” option on the boot menu and then “Verify installation media”; if no errors are found you can proceed with the installation.
This is not true for LiveDVD media, since their structure is somewhat special and is modified when burned to USB media. I am not sure about the Net Install media, please ask again if you intend to use a net install.
Please be aware that creating openSUSE media in Win* might be problematic if you use Rufus, please refer to this page https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Create_a_Live_USB_stick_using_Windows
Again, feel free to ask here if in doubt.
If you are planning on wiping and reformatting your entire disk, I’m pretty sure that any malware will be wiped as well. The default installer proposal if you choose to “Use the whole disk” (or similar option) will do just that.
You can even wipe the boot sector if you want, but it is highly unlikely that anything there have an effect on a linux install.
If you are paranoid about that (no offence…) somebody here might be able to suggest “paranoid” procedures.
Hope you will enjoy openSUSE.
In my long experience with all sorts of systems, users and even malicious **** (overall about 15 years more or less) I did encounter a lot of systems infected with some weird stuff - some were easy to delete - others I had trouble with over several days. Most often I just ended up with connecting some external drive - copy over all private data - wipe the entire disc and clean re-install a new system (win xp and then win 7). As for the private data I can’t remember exactly - but if memory servers correctly here I did pretty much anything between using some special live disc to just yolo-connect it on my running system - but, and I guess that’s mostly luck, never got any infection on my system. Yes, I had some files showed as infected and only very few I had to actually cleaned by anti-virus software (mostly family photos) - but often the owner either had the data “backed up” on another drive or could reacquire them otherwise.
As for “being cautious”: there’s nothing wrong with it. If you’re unsure if maybe something could had slipped unnoticed on your system it sure is a possible threat that when you use such infected system to create an install media that new media can get infected, although unlikely in your case as you change from windows to linux - and it would require a very sophisticated attack to slip some malicious code on to a newly created install flash drive from a different architecture.
As for wiping the drive: If you made sure your install media is clean the best approach would be just to let the installer wipe the entire drive. This should kill about almost anything still survived up to this point. The only thing that can survive wiping a disk are codes that are inserted into the bios/uefi - but such attacks (known as “bios virus” back in the 90s) are long gone on normal enduser hardware.
If you’re still unsure if you drive may could had gotten infected I could give you a few other ideas - but most of them require at least a 2nd known-clean computer.
Welcome to the family! ;-))
I would keep that Win7 drive and just put it on the shelf, buy a new SSD for openSUSE.
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20200720
KDE Plasma Version: 5.19.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.72.0
Qt Version: 5.15.0
Kernel Version: 5.7.9-1-default
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
Memory: 31.0 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Hello,
I will get my laptop with openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed in a few days!
But I understood that they have put :
username = admin and password = root - I simply forgot to species this!
And I wrote these questions and sent them to a friend to enter in my profile and publish them here, because all I have now is my ancient smartphone!
- What is the procedure change them? And when can I do this: only on the first log-in or also after that?
- How can I fill-in the IP address and all the relevant data if it turns out that I need to?
- What commands should I use in both cases?
Thank you in advance for your answers!
- Assuming that you know the superuser password (AKA “root” password) you can always open YaST > User and Group Management and do whatever you want with the existing users.
My guess is that it is easier and cleaner to create a new user to your liking and then possibly delete the users that you no longer need.
YaST has modules to perform most common administrative tasks, so explore them and appreciate how easy it is to administer a personal system with openSUSE.
If you need help just ask in the Forums, but please stick to the simple rule: One Thread - One Question (and in the relevant subforum, to attract the specialists that are most likely to help you).
Enjoy Leap!