Installing SuSE 10.0

[allies]

Hey all, I decided to finally put my 30 gb of unused partition to use. Installing linux for the first time, but I don't know whether I should use KDE or GNOME. If I chose one, can I change it later without much hassle? I'm kinda confused, being a linux newbie and all. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[kamper]

Yeah, changing is pretty easy, so long as Suse puts the proper work into supporting gnome (kde being their first choice). You might find starting with kde convenient and then evaluate both as you figure out how to work with the platform in general.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: kamper
Yeah, changing is pretty easy, so long as Suse puts the proper work into supporting gnome (kde being their first choice). You might find starting with kde convenient and then evaluate both as you figure out how to work with the platform in general.

Alright, I'll install with KDE when I get back to my dorm then.. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Monoman]

I use Gnome with all my OS's it's my personal fav. I even setup windows to mirrow it's functionality here at work..

 

[cKGunslinger]

It's (almost) all about personal preference. I prefer KDE, myself. You can install both and switch between them to try each.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger
It's (almost) all about personal preference. I prefer KDE, myself. You can install both and switch between them to try each.

How do I install both? Is there an option after I initially set up the OS (doing so with KDE as we speak).

 

[sourceninja]

I use gnome, but SuSe's gnome support isn't as good as their KDE support. Its getting better, but its still not there.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: allies

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger
It's (almost) all about personal preference. I prefer KDE, myself. You can install both and switch between them to try each.

How do I install both? Is there an option after I initially set up the OS (doing so with KDE as we speak).

I'm not familiar with SuSE's setup, but there is sually an option to install multiple GUI packages, then choose a default.

 

[Monoman]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I use gnome, but SuSe's gnome support isn't as good as their KDE support. Its getting better, but its still not there.

source? I think their Gnome support is just fine when compaired to Ubuntu or redhat. Then again, I should try KDE on my SUSE install as well. I will knock that out tonight.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: Monoman

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I use gnome, but SuSe's gnome support isn't as good as their KDE support. Its getting better, but its still not there.

source? I think their Gnome support is just fine when compaired to Ubuntu or redhat. Then again, I should try KDE on my SUSE install as well. I will knock that out tonight.

My personal use of both ubuntu and suse. I'm a gnome fan. I love gnome. But SuSe's gnome doesn't feel as polished. Plus their community is KDE centric. So its harder to get support if you need it as a noob. Its better then it was, but its still not worth using.

 

[allies]

i'm running KDE with SuSE right now... fairly interesting, kind of confusing
Some problems (possibly user error) I've encountered:
-Sound is messed up. Using onboard Soundblaster 24-bit Live, under windows things are fine, in SuSE it's crackly (sounds like bass is too high/ midrange can't handle added bass)
-Updating Firefox to 1.5... WTF. It shouldn't be this hard... I don't think. I kinda just unzipped the tar to my /home and then linked the desktop icon to that. No way to delete the old firefox, or what?
-I want to be able to access all the emails on my windows partition (and maybe save the files on my windows partition), but don't know if this is possible... would be very helpful.
-Forward/backward buttons don't work on my MX518...

That's about it, I'm pretty impressed for something that is free!

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Yeah SuSE's great. I think they use kdm for their login manager and in the bottom left you'll see a session manager so you can switch from kde to others. I personally haven't gnome on there, but I think it needs to actually be installed (assuming you've chosen kde).

 

[allies]

SleepWalkerX... do you have any questions for my above questions? Thanks!

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: allies
SleepWalkerX... do you have any questions for my above questions? Thanks!

Alright let me see what I can help with.

Originally posted by: allies
-Sound is messed up. Using onboard Soundblaster 24-bit Live, under windows things are fine, in SuSE it's crackly (sounds like bass is too high/ midrange can't handle added bass)

Try updating your kernel and alsa.

Add this repository to yast (if you haven't already added packman's) when upgrading alsa and download an rpm of the latest kernel-default here (I'd also recommend getting the corresponding version of the kernel-sources rpm). Then reconfigure your audio card.

Originally posted by: allies
-Updating Firefox to 1.5... WTF. It shouldn't be this hard... I don't think. I kinda just unzipped the tar to my /home and then linked the desktop icon to that. No way to delete the old firefox, or what?

Unfortunately, I don't know a yast respository that hosts suse 10.0 firefox rpms, but this link has some firefox rpms for suse. I'd recommend to just install the rpms, but the old firefox is stored at /opt/mozilla/firefox last time I recall. So you can just delete everything in there and replace it with the firefox build you downloaded and the links should remain intact.

Originally posted by: allies
-I want to be able to access all the emails on my windows partition (and maybe save the files on my windows partition), but don't know if this is possible... would be very helpful.

You can export everything while in windows to a floppy or something and transfer it from Outlook, but I'm not sure where Outlook stores their address book and emails in windows.

Suse should've detected your windows partition if you didn't get rid of it. I think there should be a My Computer type link on the bottom left of the taskbar, if you go in there you'll see other partitions on your hard drive.

Originally posted by: allies
-Forward/backward buttons don't work on my MX518...

Is there a driver for your mx518 or are you using some generic one? If you can't find one for the mx518 try using the mx510 one, the two are pretty similar.

Hope I might've helped, I've only used Suse 10.0 for a month or two until I reformatted my hd. I'm hoping ubuntu might have respositories with more stuff.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: allies
SleepWalkerX... do you have any questions for my above questions? Thanks!

Alright let me see what I can help with.

Awesome! I haven't yet tried the suggestions, but once I do, I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks for the help!

 

[allies]

I guess since I had the volume all the way up in the config, crackling happened. I took it down to about 75 and even when I cranked my speakers, the distortion was gone. The GUI is a lot better in linux, and it feels like it performs a LOT better than xp (i was using x86-64 SuSE, could be why), but I'm just so comfortable with WinXP, there are EXECUTABLE files instead of using YaST, and games work I just hope M$ takes a few pointers from those who developed KDE (as well as GNOME, for that matter, both are impressive) and integrate it into Vista. I don't see myself using SuSE too much, but it's still a really cool bit o' OS.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: allies
-Updating Firefox to 1.5... WTF. It shouldn't be this hard... I don't think. I kinda just unzipped the tar to my /home and then linked the desktop icon to that. No way to delete the old firefox, or what?

Unfortunately, I don't know a yast respository that hosts suse 10.0 firefox rpms, but ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/projects/mozilla/10.0">this link</a> has some firefox rpms for suse. I'd recommend to just install the rpms, but the old firefox is stored at /opt/mozilla/firefox last time I recall. So you can just delete everything in there and replace it with the firefox build you downloaded and the links should remain intact.

Going in and blowing away files that have been isntalled by a package manager is probably not a very good idea. Why not just uninstall firefox from yast? But yeah, it's better to get new versions of a prog from a package repository than grabbing the vanilla one and running it from your home dir. Sometimes the latest isn't available from a repository yet though, so then running the vanilla one works for the gap.

Originally posted by: allies
-I want to be able to access all the emails on my windows partition (and maybe save the files on my windows partition), but don't know if this is possible... would be very helpful.

You can export everything while in windows to a floppy or something and transfer it from Outlook, but I'm not sure where Outlook stores their address book and emails in windows.

Suse should've detected your windows partition if you didn't get rid of it. I think there should be a My Computer type link on the bottom left of the taskbar, if you go in there you'll see other partitions on your hard drive.

Is suse supposed to have ntfs support out of the box? Also, what kind of email accounts do you have? If it's imap, you shouldn't have to worry about copying any files, just set up your server config in your client of choice. If it's pop, you will probably never be happy using two clients at the same time. The only way I'd recommend moving all your emails over and actually pulling down new ones in suse is if you actually intend to abandon outlook.

Originally posted by: allies
-Forward/backward buttons don't work on my MX518...

Is there a driver for your mx518 or are you using some generic one? If you can't find one for the mx518 try using the mx510 one, the two are pretty similar.

Hope I might've helped, I've only used Suse 10.0 for a month or two until I reformatted my hd. I'm hoping ubuntu might have respositories with more stuff.

Generally speaking, you don't get much in the way of drivers that aren't included in the kernel already. The first step though, is probably to see what you can configure in yast, to see if there is support for your mouse. If yast can't do it, you can go into your xorg.conf to try to convince x of what kinds of buttons your mouse has. I'm sorry to say that this is one of my pet peeves about x and I've never had much luck in fixing it, although I'm far from being an expert.