jamesromeongmail.com wrote:
>I am getting a new computer which I will put Linux on.
>I was wondering if people thing I should try SUSE 11 alpha2. I have a
>few questions:
>1) I sort of have KDE 4 on my 10.3 machine. But if I boot into KDE 4,
>there is nothing on the desktop, and I cannot even figure out how to
>get
>a shell. I get two widgets that seem to have no purpose, but that is
>all. Is my version broken, or am I totally misusing it? I presume
>11.0
>comes with KDE 4.
>2) If I install alpha2, should I be able to successfully upgrade to
>the
>release version?
>3) Any other gotchas?


Yes. Alpha software is buggy. It is best run on hardware that
you have confidence in, not new stuff as you won't be able to
tell the difference between (say) a bad memory stick and a software
bug.

You can install 10.3 on the machine. If you do, be sure to create
a separate /home partition. Then, when 11.0 comes out, you can
upgrade painlessly and arrange things so that your home partition
won't be touched. Of course at that time it is sensible to back
/home up anyway, but you very likely would have no problems.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

Paul J Gans wrote:
> You can install 10.3 on the machine. If you do, be sure to create
> a separate /home partition.

This is done by default since a few versions. The person who
proposed this to Novell should getan openSUSE boxed verion. With
blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget about the openSUSE.
That genius also proposed the initial sizes of how much space should be
available for each partition.
I believe it was:
A) No seperate partition below 20GB
B) 1/3 for / the rest for /home
C) 20GB as a maximum for /

In all seriousness, remember that it still is a proposal and if you want
to do it differently, you must do so. There is no right answer here,
just many wrong ones. ;-)

> Then, when 11.0 comes out, you can
> upgrade painlessly and arrange things so that your home partition
> won't be touched.

Most likely it will also recognise certain settings and take them over,
like user passwords.

> Of course at that time it is sensible to back
> /home up anyway, but you very likely would have no problems.

I would say ALWAYS backup, even if you don't do any upgrades or updates.

houghi
--

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
down a gully.

jamesromeongmail.com wrote:

> I am getting a new computer which I will put Linux on.
> I was wondering if people thing I should try SUSE 11 alpha2. I have a
> few questions:

No, and Paul already explained why.

> 1) I sort of have KDE 4 on my 10.3 machine. But if I boot into KDE 4,
> there is nothing on the desktop, and I cannot even figure out how to
> get
> a shell. I get two widgets that seem to have no purpose, but that is
> all. Is my version broken, or am I totally misusing it? I presume
> 11.0
> comes with KDE 4.

I have KDE3 for normal work, and KDE4 for play.
Reasons are explained here:
http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/KDE4
Basic is that KDE4 is not more polished KDE3, but new development with few
new components and it is expected that KDE4 ver. 4.1 will be first for day
to day use. Current version is 4.0.2.

After installing 10.3 with KDE3 and buggy KDE4 preview, you can go straight
to this site :
http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...openSUSE_10.3/

and use one of 1-Click install files, or add the link to list of
repositories. I use zypper for adding repos or update, and YaST modules for
tasks that require more control.

zypper ar KDE4-desktop
and then
zypper up -t package -r KDE4-desktop
which will update your KDE4 installation to pretty usable one.
Create new user and login as that user to KDE4. If you still have problems,
post the result here.

> 2) If I install alpha2, should I be able to successfully upgrade to
> the
> release version?

Maybe, but it is path for experienced users that know how to fix problems.

I did updated from last Beta in 10.3 to released version, and there was no
problems, but not from Alpha to released version. The difference between
Alpha 2 and final in 10.3 was large enough to make update a problem.

> 3) Any other gotchas?

To repeat, do not use Alpha software on new machine, test it with 10.3 and
if you have some 2 GB RAM you can test Alpha 2 using virtual machine like
VirtualBox:
http://en.opensuse.org/Virtualbox
or QEMU
http://en.opensuse.org/Qemu
http://en.opensuse.org/Qemu_with_kqe...module_support

They are included in openSUSE repositories and you can find them by
searching:
http://software.opensuse.org/search
for VirtualBox and qemu. For qemu you need kqemu kernel module to get much
faster working virtual machine, and qtemu as graphic frontend.

The newest version you can find usually in:
http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...rtualization:/

Actually I started to run QEMU with 1 GB RAM, but it worked well only on 32
bit installation, where 400 MB was given to QEMU.

--
Regards, Rajko.
See http://en.opensuse.org/Portal