Today openSUSE launched version 11.1! I waited for it until T-XX something. I haven’t really used openSUSE that much as compared to Fedora. The last one that I’ve used was 10.3 way back and it just didn’t got me like how Fedora did. The main reason was that my sound card just doesn’t work! No matter how much I tried and how many people I asked in the openSUSE forums. Now that 11.1 has just been released I completely remove my Fedora 10 installation in my laptop and did a complete clean install of openSUSE 11.1. By the way, I love Fedora 10 and there’s nothing wrong with it, I just wanted to try openSUSE again. Maybe this time…it won’t give me such a headache or maybe this time I can handle it since I know a lot more about GNU/Linux than the past and I mostly know how to deal with stuff now. We’ll see…
So I downloaded openSUSE-11.1-DVD-x86_64.iso off openSUSE’s website, burned it into DVD and fired off my laptop and installed openSUSE 11.1.
First off, I use this laptop a lot. However there’s one this I don’t use this laptop for and that is playing games. The only things that I need to work for me as far as I am concerned are the following.
- Working NVIDIA drivers for my laptop’s graphics card.
- Working sound drivers.
- Easy to install Adobe flash.
- Easy to install gsynaptics because I’m not a tapper.
- Install VLC so I can watch most of my movies.
And that’s it. Pretty simple right? That’s all I need. And just in case someone wants to use this blog post as a reference, I’ll include my laptop specs. It’s a Hewlett-Packard DV9000 series laptop more known for its capability to replace a desktop.
- Intel C2D T7500 (2.20 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
- 2GB DDR2 System Memory
- 256MB NVIDIA 8600M GS
- 100GBx2 SATA HDD
- Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth
- LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with DL Support
I did a software RAID on my two HDD’s and I have three partitions. /boot, /, swap. /boot is on RAID1 since you can’t do a RAID0 on it or else you’ll never be able to boot it properly or in a normal way. The last two are on RAID0 – And yes it’s fine for me since I don’t put any mission-critical files on this laptop.
As soon as the installation was done, I logged in as a normal user and see if it detected my sound card. I heard some kind of splash sound like when you first log in…that means it works! Hooray! I then look for the networking icon to see if it detected any wireless network, I see a P4rD0nM3 which is my home network’s name. Wuhoo! Now the only thing I need to do is install Adobe’s Flash and gsynaptics to control my touchpad. I also removed the openSUSE 11.1 DVD entry in the Installed Add-ON Products in YaST. This way it won’t bother me if I’m trying to install something and instead of grabbing it online it tries to grab it from the DVD media.
As I was browsing the Control Center I noticed a familiar word that gave me a smile, it was Touchpad and it has the ability to turn off tapping! Now I don’t need to install gsynaptics like I did in my Fedora 10 installation! That’s one less headache if things go wrong. I also turned off automatic updates since I hate updates through the GUI. I prefer yum-like apps to do it for me. CLI is so much better anyway for me.
openSUSE 11.1 doesn’t use yum, it uses zypper and most of the commands are the same. I then updated my openSUSE 11.1 install. After that I wanted to install NVIDIA’s drivers so that my desktop won’t look ugly anymore. Now about this situation, I’m used to installing a couple of rpms on my Fedora 10 install just to make the NVIDIA drivers work and that’s fine with me and I was prepared for that as well. Since I already forgot how to install NVIDIA drivers in openSUSE, I then asked my good old friend Google. It then showed me that openSUSE actually a has section for NVIDIA on its website which is http://en.opensuse.org/NVIDIA. I told myself, how awesome can that be! I looked around and saw that I was supposed to click on the buttons that say Install, hehe. So I clicked on the one that says it supports Geforce 6++ (I have an 8600M GS remember?). A GUI popped out asking me if I want to install it, I then just clicked my way until the installation was done. Was that it? That was kind of easy compared to Fedora 10! Time to reboot my laptop so I did that. Guess what I saw on boot-up? The NVIDIA logo! Usually if you see that it means you did a good job and everything seems to work! Hahaha.
My next plan was to install Adobe’s Flash plug-in for Firefox so that I can watch Flash videos. Again I have to tell you that I’m used to doing CLI to make Flash work in Fedora 10 but then I thought, let me try the Install Software link in Control Center. I then opened it and then type flash in the search area. I then choose the flash-player, libflashsupport, libflashsupport-32bit, and pullin-flash-player. Hit Apply and let it install. Open Firefox and bam! You can watch Flash movies now!
The last part that I need to do to make me love openSUSE 11.1 even more is install VLC. I tried the default software manager so I typed VLC but nothing came up. That means time to Google it again! I then went to openSUSE’s Additional YaST Package Repositories which is http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories. You’ll then find a link for VLC, if you can’t find it here’s the link, http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.1.
Seriously though, is it this easy now for openSUSE 11.1 users? I mean…like, wow? I love Fedora 10 still since Fedora was one of the few distros that cooperated with my laptop and I will always go back to it if ever there’s a distro that I want to try doesn’t work well with my laptop.
Tags: Control Center, Install Software, NVIDIA, VLC
It’s been this easy since as long as I can remember which starts at 10.1
I’ve always looked at Opensuse as the most polished OS, even thou I’m I a ubuntu user, but this time I wanted to try it not only read about it. I tried fedora 10, Ubuntu 8.10 and many other new and old distros…. but Opensuse wasn’t among them, I don’t know why
Anyway, I waited 11.1 to be released and installed it in my hp laptop. And saying WoW is not enough, this is the best distro I’ve ever used, there is only one thing that is bothering me…. I don’t have sound!! all the other distros worked fine with my sound card and this is the only one that didn’t recognized it!
I’m gonna give it a try to OpenSuse 11.1!
I also want to use KDE 4.2 and compare it to Gnome (I’m on ubuntu 8.10)
openSUSE 11.1 is by far THE WORST LINUX OFFERING I HAVE EVER TRIED TO INSTALL!!! Its much vaunted, easy installation process was a nightmare – DVD or LiveCD – neither could find a wireless network if it was sitting right beside the bloody D-Link router! And as to manually configuring the wireless network (Intel 4965 AGN) it would not accept the facts punched into it either!
As far as it’s supposedly superior Network Manager, it couldn’t find its ass with both hands! Even when hooked directly (it ‘recognized’ both wired and wireless cards – for what that’s worth…)it denied the existence of a simple cable network. I am beginning to think that Vista is absolutely terrific compared to Linux. Is it really true?.., that openSUSE is really Linux for Losers? I am beginning to think it is. All I want to know know is:
1) where did it install itself
2) how can I gas this ridiculous OS and get it out of my system?
ANY HELP would be appreciated. I can be reached at [[email protected]] in Vista where I can at least read my Windows Mail through a wireless network that it not only created but finds flawlessly every time. Jeez, even when Windows did all the dirty work of setting things up, openSUSE still can’t follow the footsteps.
Ticked off in Western Canada
@ Jeff
Hi Jeff, I never used openSUSE, I do use Ubuntu 9.04.
I think the problem with the wireless network is because I think you didn’t install openSUSE with the ethernet cable connected so it coudn’t download and install the drivers for the wireless card.
But again, thats how I did it on Ubuntu.
Sorry my english, spanish lang. here.
Bye
I never had that problem with the wi fi, just installed the opensuse 11.1 in my acer aspire5315 with 1 gb ram n celeron cpu. That worked from the first moment, totally different with ubuntu or mint, didnt need to mess with the console . Was dumbproof. Just for me , lol.
I started my Linux adventure with SuSE back in the days when X was a seperate install and you had to configure your desktop manager manually. Since then I have reviewed all the major distros off and on over the years. It wasn’t until opensSUSE 11.1 did I get the warm fuzzy feeling about Linux.
Linux has found it’s way into our organization, and it’s SUSE that gets the honors.
I love YaST!
Opensuse 11.1 ROCKS!!!
Heck Linux Rocks!!!! I use Opensuse 11.1 @ the office, @ home, on one of my laptops, Ubuntu on another box.
Of course gotta have a Mac. OSX Leopard. Windows is relegated to several virtual machines.
OSS Forever!!!
RE: VLC & playing .mov on openSUSE v11.2 gnome
Rodo,
I read with consuming interest your blog describing your experience with openSUSE v11.1, and your comparison of it with Fedora.
I very recently installed openSUSE v11.2 on my Gateway netbook, and am still learning how to use Gnome and the Bash shell, which, to this Windows user, makes MS-DOS appear crude by comparison.
I was particularly interested to read that you, too, chose to install VLC Media Player, because I could get neither Banshee nor Totemm–the default Gnome media players–to play ANY of my video files. Then I recalled having used VLC in Windows a few years ago, and decided to check out their web site. Being a Newbie, I wasn’t sure about the installation procedure, but tried downloading their latest RPM, and the package installer took care of the rest. To my utter amazement, VLC played EVERY video file format perfectly, except for my .mov files, which it also played, but in a jumpy, hesitating fashion. To be perfectly honest, I’ve also had trouble getting media players to play my .mov files in Windows. Even with additional XP or Vista codecs installed, Windows Media player usually was useless, and even iTunes and Quicktime didn’t do the job, and .mov is supposed to be a Quicktime format! The only media player that appears to play my .mov files halfway decently in Windows is Media Player Home Cinema, which is also free. Unfortunately, they don’t appear to offer a Linux version.
The reason I am bothering you at this time is to ask you if you know of ANY free or open source media player that will play .mov files properly in openSUSE OR if you know of any codecs that I can download and install that will help VLC play my .mov files properly. Any advice or guidance you can offer would be appreciated
Linux Newbie,
Bob Marma
Love it! You’re right on. Please keep sharing these ideas. We need more people like you to speak up.