I am new to Suse 9.3. I have recently just bought an Acer Aspire One Laptop and have formatted the windows OS because I want to try linux. I have installed ubuntu, which didn’t work very well, and then I have installed Suse 9.3 which i have got from my computer store. It installed with the least amount of issues. The only 4 issues that i get are:
my touchpad isn’t working
my wireless lan doesn’t work
my webcam doesn’t work
my network and ethernet doesn’t work.
I plugged in my cable from my router from my laptop, and then i set the ip address up as automatic, but nothing. I then set my i.p address up as static, but also nothing.
Please could you show me a step by step guide of some sort on how to fix these problems. I am new to linux and want to learn, but i am not sure where to start.
9.3 is ancient and long out of support. Many of the software packages on 9.3 have had updates since end of support to fix security problems. Is there a good reason why you won’t use 11.0, or wait a couple of months for 11.1? What’s more, the hardware support should be better in a more recent release.
I know that the software is outdated. do you think that my driver issue problems will be solved by installing the new version of suse?
I don’t think the problem is the driver because it picks up the lan card. i think the problem is the actual setup of the network. I am unsure whether it should be on automatic dhcp or pppoe or static ip or ppp over ethernet…
I kicked the tires of linux for years and years before getting serious about trying it around 1.5 years ago. In that time I’ve tried a couple of different revisions of a couple of different distros.
Linux sometimes seems to change more in 6 months than Windows does in 4 years.
If you are serious about trying Linux, do yourself a favor and take ken_yap’s advice. Download openSUSE 11.0, or wait for 11.1, or pick the newest version of some other distro.
DO NOT jump into Linux with a 4 year old release – you are absolutely shooting yourself in the foot to do so. I would say this regardless of whether all your hardware seemed to work or not. Think of it this way – if you wanted to try Windows for the first time, would you pick Windows 2000 to start with today?
Also, just FYI Ubuntu is normally regarded as one of the easiest distros to get going for someone new to Linux. I’ve recently switched from Ubuntu to openSUSE (less than a week), so my point isn’t to send you back to Ubuntu, but “didn’t go so well” may mean that a bit of tweaking would have been required to get things working right that you didn’t know you had to do.
After you install openSUSE 11, make sure you post in the forums here with any troubles you have. Linux works differently from windows, and for awhile that can be frustrating, especially if you are a power user in windows. Eventually something “clicks” and you find yourself sighing whenever you have to use a Windows box, but it can take awhile to get to that point. A year and a half in, I’m mostly self sufficient, but still need help if I get too far out of my comfort zone.
That is some sound advice. Thank you for your reply. Ok, so i will try to get hold of the new opensuse, or and other distro, and install and see what happens.
Best of luck to you! From what I’ve seen lurking a bunch of threads in my few days of openSUSE, the community here is one of the friendliest I’ve seen, so you should find plenty of help if you need it.
the first version of linux i installed and tried to use was Redhat v5.2(still have it).
uninstalled it after about 2 weeks, couldnt figure out what to do with it.
since then i have tried numerous different versions from different companies(?) and finally downloaded and installed opensuse 9.3.
had similar problems as “Anverayob” no LAN, internet or sound, regardless of what i did, i couldnt get it going.
after countless hours spent reading forums,faqs and manuals, a friend of mine told me to download the network install .iso version 11.0 write the CD/DVD and install it.
worked like a charm, found everything on my system and automatically installed all the needed drivers.
its only been about a week but i already like opensuse version 11 better than any of the others that i have tried.
A year and a half in, I’m mostly self sufficient, but still need help if I get too far out of my comfort zone.