Geek White North

It took several hours to download the 4.2GB file, check the file and burn it to a DVD.
Installation was very similar to before except the screens looked older, and not quite as flashy.

The other difference I noticed is that I was given a choice to install Gnome, KDE or other. I chose to install Gnome.

The video card setup was quick.
First I was going to customize the desktop – I tried to enable Compiz fusion.
It popped up a message that moaned that my hardware configuration was not capable of running Compiz.
I ignored it and surfed the web for a while I noticed that the screen fonts were corrupted and looked odd like empty lines running through my text.

After some thought I went to the openSuSe website and with some digging I found an article that said for the HD3450 card it was recommended that I install the ATI drivers. I then found the one click install. Yes one click and it was installed.
This is where I held my breath because five months ago I did this with Linux Mint and it would not enable multi-display.
But OpenSUSE just worked. I identified the screens and found my screens were switched around so I moved the configuration around but after doing that and rebooting several times, a quick trip under the desk and switching the cables solved this.

Compiz now was now smiling and I could now zoom my window and flap my pages.

I installed the codecs and this time sound was working fine.

Next on the list was gPodder, a great podcatcher, and a newer version came with openSUSE. I really like the new features in gPodder

I was able to install Giver, a simple file sharing program that I use to pass files around over the internal network with other computers.

Finally my configuration was finished once I updated my user profile for Firefox and Thunderbird.

I’ve jumped in with both feet. I have my core utilities installed; now to explore YAST and the other features.

Around every 6 months I back up everything and look at updating my distro. My last update was in the summer when I tried updating Mint and ended up with Ubuntu.

Well, I heard on the Linux Outlaws Podcasts that some listeners said great things about openSUSE and how it just worked.
I got my Linux Format magazine and the cover disk had Mandriva 2010, Ubuntu 9.10 and openSUSE.

I had every intention of actually installing Ubuntu, but when I put the disk in the drive and ran the live version of Ubuntu I noticed that I had similar video issues to 6 months ago. I thought I’d have to go through that configuration again.
It did recognize the 2 Acer monitors attached but it did not indicate that it knew the videocard. I tried to use the configure display settings utility but with no luck.

I then thought to myself why not give the live version of openSUSE a try. The live version was KDE4.3.
Now it identified my video card as the ATI HD3450 without any help from me. It did not recognize the 2 Acer monitors. I was amazed that when I tried to use configure display settings. It worked!

So I tried installing from the live version. The installation is very similar to installing Mint or Ubuntu approx 20 minutes, but then it reboots and goes through an extra configuration stage.
An added plus was that it identified that I have 2 hard drives and that one is a Windows drive.
Mint and Ubuntu in the past have always needed some intervention to make sure it is going to the whole drive.

The negative was that the first time I installed it stopped half way through. I believe it may have been me knocking one of the buttons on my mouse and activating the highlighted button, which was abort.

After installation my first impression of KDE4.3 was that it was much nicer that the previous KDE4.x implementation that I had seen 6 months ago.

Then it happened – crash…Reinstall…crash… Reinstall. OK when you have just installed it is easier to reinstall because it is 20 minutes, whilst troubleshooting could be an hour. I did some reading and the live distros are only 686 versions and I only have 2GB Ram on this computer.
I like to watch podcasts so I need the codecs to play them. I downloaded the media packs. I now see the podcasts but with no sound. Bah!

Crash! I thought that perhaps the low memory and the 686 version combination may be making things unstable. I had come this far, I have everything backed up, OK so time to download the 586 version distro, give that a try.