[CLUE-Tech] SuSE network install

[Collins]

On Sunday 21 December 2003 11:04, Mike Miller (earthlink) wrote:
> I've done it several times. the secret is:
>

[ snipped ]

My suspicions confirmed; speed of the mirror is paramount.

>
> I ended up buying a copy as $75 for the pro edition was cheap vs. the
> time waiting to get the software the hard way. The fact it came with
> two copies of the distro (5 CD's and 2 DVDs) and a pretty good newbie
> reference was iceing.
>
> I moved from RH 8 to RH 9 to SuSE 8.2 about a year ago and haven't been
> happier.
>

I recently bought a copy of 9.0 pro to load on my new labrat PC for 
experimentation with networking support, and I, too, have been positively 
impressed.  The automated installer is absolutely superb.  My PowerSpec PC is 
relatively new, relatively strange (SIS onboard video, audio, and nic), and 
SUSE setup everything without a hitch.  The only setting I had to alter was 
monitor resolution.  SUSE picked 1000x768 whcih is pretty much unreadable on 
my old 15" monitor. Changing to 800x600 was no problem, but a few of the KDE 
dialogs are not designed to work well with the larger character resolution 
(have to use alt-drag to move some of the dialog onscreen).

Although I prefer to setup config files manually, the new YaST is a dream for 
the inexperienced user.  SUSE includes a big variety of printer PPD files, so 
using YaST to setup CUPS for my Lexmark Z53 was a breeze.  Of course, there 
is the old CUPS bugaboo that assumes that everyone uses a4 paper <g>.  I also 
setup NFS for a few directories with very minimal keystrokes, and it's no 
problem to modify the config files after the fact.

I was even able to plug in my kodak usb camera and download thumbnails with 
gphoto2, but for some reason the gtkam application recommended in the user 
guide hangs up (strange because it uses gphoto2 under the covers).

The RPM installation section of YaST solves the age old problem of 
dependancies very nicely.  If you select a package, you will be prompted to 
install any dependancies, and that will be done automatically.

I'm sticking pretty much to the standard offerings with SUSE in order to get a 
handle on "look and feel" for less experienced users.  My next project is to 
check out the SUSE standard firewall product.

And yes, the documentation is quite nice.  Unlike times in the past, SUSE 
gives a good presentation of both gnome and kde, and the sections on 
networking (dns, apache, nfs, etc.) are very well written.

I used ntfsresize to whack down the size of my WinXP partition, but 
unfortunately I could only get half of the drive back in free space.  WinXP 
plunks down a swap file right in the middle of the drive.  Even though I 
removed the swap file and ran chkdisk again, this didn't cure the problem.  I 
would be curious to know if anyone else has worked out a solution for this 
problem.

I only wish that SUSE offered a really uptodate repository with more products, 
a la gentoo.

Good luck,

-- 
Collins