[CLUE-Tech] My 30-second SuSE 9.1 Review (err, whinge)

[Nate Duehr]

On Saturday 24 July 2004 23:47, Jed S. Baer wrote:

> After the install, the system booted fine, although I rather like seeing
> the various boot messages go by, as opposed to a graphical screen with
> nothing but a progress bar. 

Edit /etc/sysconfig/bootsplash to get rid of that.

> runlevel 5 again. So I used YAST to change the default runlevel (couldn't
> remember the boot param to do it).

/etc/inittab 

> Now, how do I actually dial up my ISP? Good question. One without an
> apparent answer. Logged back in as a regular user, there's nothing I can
> find in any of the menus for activating the modem. The "help" icon brings
> up help for Gnome. So I think maybe there's a menu update that has to be
> triggered. I log out, and log back in again -- no change. Logged in as
> root, there's still nothing I can find. I figure I'll try wvdial, just in
> case that's what I'm supposed to use -- it complains that there isn't any
> user/login information configured. So back to YAST I go to make certain
> all that stuff is configured. It'd be nice if there were a "save" button.
> It's not quite as obvious as it ought to be that the only way to save
> changes to a sub-screen is not to go back to the main screen, but to hit
> "next".

Go to the main menu, click Internet, click Dial-Up, choose from KPPP or 
KInternet.

I don't use my modem (yet) for anything, but SuSE autodetected that it was a 
softmodem and set up the correct module (slamr) into the kernel - KInternet I 
think has the ability to both set it up for dialing an ISP and also to check 
a box to dial-on-demand if you like that sort of thing.  

The one confusing part about it is once it's set up, when you launch it, it 
just puts an icon in the taskbar... no indication that it did anything.  The 
icon looks like a power plug, not anything "internet" related, so I couldn't 
figure out where it went (even though it was in the ps list) for a while.

Keep lookin' ... you'll find their GUI gadgets!  They actually look pretty 
nice once I found them.  Will track multiple dial-up providers, etc..

Oh yeah... if you want KInternet to launch each time you log on, right click 
on it and CLOSE it... it'll pop a box asking you if it should launch whenever 
you log in.  That wasn't very intuitive to find, but it's there. 

Have fun, 

--
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com