Hi, this is a general note on installing 12.1 over 11.4. At the start of the 2011 I migrated 2 of my 3 PC’s to open suse. It was quite hard and I would not succed without the help of an expert friend and many hours of studying. At the end of June I had a stable system that was doing all I needed. Before that, the main problems were related to :
-the ATI driver and the use of 2 different size and resolution screens
-the audio system, with an external usb DAC that kept the system confused for weeks
-an erratic behaviour of the network card
A few days ago I tried the upgrade to release 12.1. Unfortunately, it was a mistake. The old 3 problems were still there, but to have the system up and running was even harder.
The installation simply stopped while probing the network card. By disabling it, the install process stopped with problems related to the sound card. By disabling it, the ATI control system is not willing to accept changes and keeps starting the PC with the wrong settings.
I know that keeping control of all the hardware out there is extremely difficult and that most of the work is done for free by clever people. But really, having a system that does not boot for a USB DAC or a network card is too much. The installation should go ahead and allow the user to find a solution when a minimal working setting is reached. I am left with the option of asking my old friend to spend hours by issuing commands to the prompt. This may be right for many people but it is not right for the general public: if the ambition of the project is to be an alternative to the mainstream, it should be more robust and user friendly.
So, I will keep trying but please, think of giving more resources to stability before producing software with bells and whistles.
Best regards
Luciano