After using ubuntu with gnome for over a year I’ve decided to try a few different distributions of GNU/Linux.
I’ve installed opensuse with kde and i do quite like they way it looks. My problem is that several of the things that just worked in ubuntu seem to be having a few problems.
ONE) Firstly I cannot access my wireless internet at home. I used to have a WEP ascii password, but that option was not available when I tried to find my wireless network. I then changed my security to WPA but that also will not connect to the internet.
TWO) At work I can connect to the wireless internet, but can only browse the web using firefox. I have to change proxy settings to access the web and I think I’ve done that correctly in konqueror however when i try to connect i do not get asked for a password to login to my work network.
THREE) I cannot see my school windows network at all
FOUR) I cannot access the windows partition or my ubuntu partition when in open suse.
FIVE) I cannot play any of my wav files, i presume I need to download vlc or some such player.
Perhaps I am unfair in making the comparison but I recently had a play with linux mint and I was amazed at just how well everything “just worked” without the necessity to tweak several things.
I’ve spent about 5 hours trying to resolve all of the above but have yet to have any success.
Most pressing is the ability to connect to the internet at home.
I do not get the opportunity to enter a WEP ASCII password. I have tried changing the router password to WPA and also WEP HEX but each of these failed to work.
I’ve searched the forums and come up with very little.
Yes it worked without password at all, but not with any of the wpa or wep securities.
Thanks for your time, but there are too many issues for me to deal with at this stage and I’m still a bit of linux novice.
I had a go at installing fedora with kde and that had internet working really nicely.
To begin with I wasn’t sure if it was a kde thing or a opensuse thing. But since internet works with fedora it must be opensuse. It maybe that my old dell laptop can’t run opensuse or that I’m just not experienced enough to get it to work.
I’ll give opensuse another go when I’m a bit more experienced.
Actually if Internet worked without a WEP key, it should work with a key too. It was just a configuration problem. Anyway, post back when you try openSUSE again.
Once again: there’s issues, on and off, with the NetworkManager and wireless networks. I visit Ubuntu fora as well, it’s the same thing overthere.
Please do yourself a favor and install ‘wicd’ from: WICD at openSUSE
I’m using it on WEP, and various WPA secured networks.
In Yast networking choose the Traditional method, set the Wifi card to Manual Activation.
Now you can remove the NetworkManager applet from the panel. Reboot to make sure.
If wicd doesn’t start the first time by itself, hit Alt-F2, type: wicd-client, and you’ll see an icon in the system tray. Works everywhere all the time, on KDE, Gnome and XFCE from my experiences.
It’s a shame because I really liked the look of kde opensuse, just i couldn’t do much with it.
I’ve now got a kde installation of fedora which looks quite nice as well. Problem is it’s so slow. Moreover konqueror seems to take so much longer to load web pages than i’m used to. It may well be that my main beef is with kde and not opensuse.
I realize you are already gone, but in case you change your mind or someone else needs help with the same issues:
If you cannot access your partitions, they are probably not mounted. Do they have entries in your fstab? This is not an OpenSuse issue specifically, it is how things work in linux.
For wav files, as well as various other formats, you will need to install the appropriate codecs. Look for the restricted media codecs, as it should cover several of them. These are not included by default to keep licensing restrictions at a minimum, as I understand it. User oldcpu posted a guide for this in the howto section of the forum.