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Thread ID: 125156	2012-06-10 02:32:00	Installing OpenSUSE 12.1	Yorick (8120)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1280905	2012-06-10 02:32:00	I decided that I should have a shot at installing OpenSUSE 12 . 1 seeing as how I was handing out DVDs with gay abandon about the place . The system has an ASUS M4A8 board with Quad core AMD Phenom chip, 4 gigs of RAM, 1tb Samsung SATA HD all inside a superquiet case, no fan noise from either cpu, gpu or psu . Graphics card has a nvidia GTX 550 gpu feeding a BenQ 23" 16:9 monitor . There is also an 80 gig IDE HD with an XP partition on it as a dual boot set up . There is already a Linux install on this machine, an AV Linux install which is basically a Debian based appliance optimised for professional level audio and video production . This is going onto another dedicated machine but I'll retain the data in the home directory in this install . I hadn't tried the Live installer before so I decided to give it a go . OpenSUSE comes with two live instances on the DVD, a Gnome and a KDE . I went for the KDE, simply because of personal preference, I've always been a KDE guy . 3874 There is an install button in the plasma desktop widget window . 3873 First window is select language and keyboard Next is select country and timezone, you don't have to type anything, just click NZ on the map . Next window is suggested partitioning . The standard Linux partition setup is / (root for all the operating system files), swap (instead of . swp file in win) and /home . The advantages of this setup are manifold but mainly it keeps your data separate from your OS files in case of meltdown, the other advantage is that you can update your OS or change to another Distro but still retain all your data . In this case I have video and audio files that I want to hang onto in the home directory so I'm going to reuse the /home partition . In every case I have dealt with in the past, YaST, will work out what you have in your setup and make the best suggestion that retains all the data you have on board and since 11 . 2 the suggestion has always been bang on the money . In this case however, I've nuked the old / partition and put OpenSUSE on there while retaining the /home . If you are installing on a win32 system and want to set up as a dual boot, YaST's suggestion will do the job safely or it will pull out . Defrag and error check prior to install is a good idea, a separate blank HD is the best idea . The partitioner will also mount your Windows partitions so that you can easily access them from the Linux side . The normally suggested mount from 12 . 1 is /windows/c, I use /winc as my default either is perfectly acceptable, everything is a file in linux so any name is acceptable you could even mount it as /Cdrive if you were overtaken by some odd nostalgia thing . :) However you can quite easily just go "Next" when the confirm window pops up: 3876 User window is next 3877 OpenSUSE will berate you if your password is not secure enough, but you can ignore that and carry on if you wish, however do that at your own risk as the default setting is for the installer Users password to be the same as the administrator or root password . It pays to make it a reasonable one . If there is only going to be one user, login to that user will be automatic by default, but that can be changed later . Once that is in the installation settings window pops up and gives a summary of the settings you have chosen . Up to this point the whole process has taken about 5 minutes . Up to this point nothing has really changed and you can pull out without any effect . 3878 Clicking any of the green headings allows you to change anything if you feel the need, otherwise click install and lean back and let it go . The OpenSUSE team have worked hard on the install process and so there is only a single reboot almost straight away, at which point you have to remove the DVD from the optical drive . From there it took about 35 minutes . OK that's the Live install process and it works very simply and quickly . I had to force a reboot at the end because it didn't seem to like my video card at first, but it worked fine after that . The "no reboot" install is not quite there when there are vid cards in place that need third party drivers . OK so good things: Install is brief, painless and very intuitive, everything works as it should afterwards including wireless and high-end video cards . The software collection is as good as has come to be expected from a mainstream Linux Distro, especially one that is aimed at the Home office and Small medium Enterprise market . The Live install is obviously aimed at the Windows User market . The install is vastly easier than Windows 7, no nagging, no product keys or online registration, no installing extra drivers, no installing of needed software such as office suites accounting software, image editors etc, just install and use . Great thus far, yes well, still some annoying issues . The base NVidia driver that NVidia's team sees fit to allow into the kernel is rubbish, so to get all my desktop effects and GPU fan speed control stuff I have to download and install that . . OK Not a big deal, but to a newbie, setting up an extra software repository in YaST, while not a difficult task it is still an extra step that shouldn't be necessary, if it's good enough for Intel GPUs then . . . . . . I have to admit I don't like the Live install . After it had finished I went back and did the full install from boot . The reason? I like to be able to choose any Desktop environment that suits my mood in any one day . The live install only allows for one, whichever you install from . At install you can choose from any of these: 3887388838893890 The live install has a selection of software that is installed by default, there is no way to modify that until after the install . There are a few programmes that I have to have that aren't in the default install and I prefer to sort that at the beginning . The upside of this is: There is a method that suits everyone from the new desktop user to the Enterprise SysAdmin . I'll have to get the Nvidia Drivers installed before I check out all the sexy bits, but otherwise painless install as per usual, all my files are untouched, it recognised my home directory and mounted that with all access intact . All in all, simple and quick, from install to full productivity in under an hour by the time I get Nvidia drivers installed .	Yorick (8120)
1280906	2012-06-10 03:27:00	Thanks for the great install review. :) OpenSUSE will berate you if your password is not secure enough, but you can ignore that and carry on if you wish, however do that at your own risk as the default setting is for the installer Users password to be the same as the administrator or root password. It pays to make it a reasonable one. If there is only going to be one user, login to that user will be automatic by default, but that can be changed later.Is the installer user account 'root' or does SuSE use sudo? Your first batch of attached images seem to have gone AWOL. Only the last 4 images display/open. I've checked in the background and can't see them there, so not sure what has happened. You may need to upload those screenshots again.	Jen (38)
1280907	2012-06-10 12:08:00	Thanks for the great install review . :) Is the installer user account 'root' or does SuSE use sudo? Both work, iow you can login as root or just use sudo . Personally I always use root in terminal if I need to but for the most part I use YaST which requires root privileges . Your first batch of attached images seem to have gone AWOL . Only the last 4 images display/open . I've checked in the background and can't see them there, so not sure what has happened . You may need to upload those screenshots again . It seems that one is only allowed 5 attachments per post, no problem .	Yorick (8120)
1280908	2012-06-10 12:19:00	Lets try that again with pics this time! I decided that I should have a shot at installing OpenSUSE 12 . 1 seeing as how I was handing out DVDs with gay abandon about the place . The system has an ASUS M4A8 board with Quad core AMD Phenom chip, 4 gigs of RAM, 1tb Samsung SATA HD all inside a superquiet case, no fan noise from either cpu, gpu or psu . Graphics card has a nvidia GTX 550 gpu feeding a BenQ 23" 16:9 monitor . There is also an 80 gig IDE HD with an XP partition on it as a dual boot set up . There is already a Linux install on this machine, an AV Linux install which is basically a Debian based appliance optimised for professional level audio and video production . This is going onto another dedicated machine but I'll retain the data in the home directory in this install . I hadn't tried the Live installer before so I decided to give it a go . OpenSUSE comes with two live instances on the DVD, a Gnome and a KDE . I went for the KDE, simply because of personal preference, I've always been a KDE guy . 3901 There is an install button in the plasma desktop widget window . 3902 First window is select language and keyboard Next is select country and timezone, you don't have to type anything, just click NZ on the map . Next window is suggested partitioning . The standard Linux partition setup is / (root for all the operating system files), swap (instead of . swp file in win) and /home . The advantages of this setup are manifold but mainly it keeps your data separate from your OS files in case of meltdown, the other advantage is that you can update your OS or change to another Distro but still retain all your data . In this case I have video and audio files that I want to hang onto in the home directory so I'm going to reuse the /home partition . In every case I have dealt with in the past, YaST, will work out what you have in your setup and make the best suggestion that retains all the data you have on board and since 11 . 2 the suggestion has always been bang on the money . In this case however, I've nuked the old / partition and put OpenSUSE on there while retaining the /home . If you are installing on a win32 system and want to set up as a dual boot, YaST's suggestion will do the job safely or it will pull out . Defrag and error check prior to install is a good idea, a separate blank HD is the best idea . The partitioner will also mount your Windows partitions so that you can easily access them from the Linux side . The normally suggested mount from 12 . 1 is /windows/c, I use /winc as my default either is perfectly acceptable, everything is a file in linux so any name is acceptable you could even mount it as /Cdrive if you were overtaken by some odd nostalgia thing . :) However you can quite easily just go "Next" when the confirm window pops up: 3905 User window is next 3904 OpenSUSE will berate you if your password is not secure enough, but you can ignore that and carry on if you wish, however do that at your own risk as the default setting is for the installer Users password to be the same as the administrator or root password . It pays to make it a reasonable one . If there is only going to be one user, login to that user will be automatic by default, but that can be changed later . Once that is in the installation settings window pops up and gives a summary of the settings you have chosen . Up to this point the whole process has taken about 5 minutes . Up to this point nothing has really changed and you can pull out without any effect . 3903 Clicking any of the green headings allows you to change anything if you feel the need, otherwise click install and lean back and let it go . The OpenSUSE team have worked hard on the install process and so there is only a single reboot almost straight away, at which point you have to remove the DVD from the optical drive . From there it took about 35 minutes . OK that's the Live install process and it works very simply and quickly . I had to force a reboot at the end because it didn't seem to like my video card at first, but it worked fine after that . The "no reboot" install is not quite there when there are vid cards in place that need third party drivers . OK so good things: Install is brief, painless and very intuitive, everything works as it should afterwards including wireless and high-end video cards . The software collection is as good as has come to be expected from a mainstream Linux Distro, especially one that is aimed at the Home office and Small medium Enterprise market . The Live install is obviously aimed at the Windows User market . The install is vastly easier than Windows 7, no nagging, no product keys or online registration, no installing extra drivers, no installing of needed software such as office suites accounting software, image editors etc, just install and use . Great thus far, yes well, still some annoying issues . The base NVidia driver that NVidia's team sees fit to allow into the kernel is rubbish, so to get all my desktop effects and GPU fan speed control stuff I have to download and install that . . OK Not a big deal, but to a newbie, setting up an extra software repository in YaST, while not a difficult task it is still an extra step that shouldn't be necessary, if it's good enough for Intel GPUs then . . . . . .	Yorick (8120)
1280909	2012-06-10 12:23:00	Continuing: I have to admit I don't like the Live install . After it had finished I went back and did the full install from boot . The reason? I like to be able to choose any Desktop environment that suits my mood in any one day . The live install only allows for one, whichever you install from . At install you can choose from any or all of these: Gnome: Advanced Desktop, not greatly configurable but high end function with Lot's of effects3906 KDE: The other advanced Desktop, lots of functionality, excellent Outlook Type programme called Kontact, many effects as well 3907 LXDE: Lightweight very fast, nowhere as resource hungry as the previous 2 but very good all the same3908 XFCE: Same feature set as LXDE in terms of light weight also very good . 3909 The live install has a selection of software that is installed by default, there is no way to modify that until after the install . There are a few programmes that I have to have that aren't in the default install and I prefer to sort that at the beginning . The upside of this is: There is a method that suits everyone from the new desktop user to the Enterprise SysAdmin . I'll have to get the Nvidia Drivers installed before I check out all the sexy bits, but otherwise painless install as per usual, all my files are untouched, it recognised my home directory and mounted that with all access intact . All in all, simple and quick, from install to full productivity in under an hour by the time I get Nvidia drivers installed .	Yorick (8120)
1280910	2012-06-11 12:10:00	Well this is great n'all but way beyond me. I downloaded openSUSE 12.1 a few days ago (twice!) to give it a try on an old laptop. And that's as far as I got. Two large 4.1GB files (duplicates I hope). They won't open. I can't write them to DVD. Nadda.	Winston001 (3612)
1280911	2012-06-12 12:31:00	Well this is great n'all but way beyond me. I downloaded openSUSE 12.1 a few days ago (twice!) to give it a try on an old laptop. And that's as far as I got. Two large 4.1GB files (duplicates I hope). They won't open. I can't write them to DVD. Nadda. The file is "iso" file. First thing you need to do is burn them to a DVD. Nero will do that and will figure out that you have an iso and take the appropriate steps. Then just put the DVD in your DVD drive and reboot. Selecting either Live KDE or Live Gnome will give you the opportunity to look at it before trying it. It will run without disturbing the data on your HD or your windows install. Cheers GL	Yorick (8120)
1280912	2012-06-18 07:45:00	Thanks for the OpenSUSE 12.1 disk, Yorick, it arrived today.	zqwerty (97)
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