# Suse Linux



## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Hello TSF,
I have a version of SUSE Linux that I want to install on my current system. My plan is to partition my hard drive(250G) with about 50G dedicated to Linux. I have always wanted to try a Linux OS but have never had the resources until now. I'm not in a big hurry to try this but I want to do it the Right Way the First Time. So, my question is: Are there any pitfalls to watch for, considering I know just enough about what I'm doing to be dangerous?
I have a new Compaq Presario with an AMD Anthlon 64 Processor, 1 Gig RAM and a big hard drive with Windows XP Media Center Edition. I have heard and read many good things about open source code based OS and want to learn more. Any opinions or advice would be appreciated. Thanks Jack.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

Hi Jack,

You will want to repartition the drive so that there is 50 GB of free space that is not formated. If you have one giant partition, then you will have to purchase third party partitioning software or use free bootable tools to repartition the drive. SystemRescueCD is one.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
Once you have free space, pop in the SUSE CD, and format the unpartitioned space as ext3. Then, install SUSE, and install programs you want.

BTW, what desktop enviornment do you have (GNOME, KDE, XFCE)?


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

*Suse*

Matt, 
Thanks for the quick reply. I'm not sure yet as to the desktop environment, I had an old Red Hat version that I got from the library,I had it on my old computer and it used KDE. I think this version of Linux uses GNOME. 

I may have a slight delay in my plans though. I've just recently started getting warnings from my computer saying that my "system fan has failed". The fan seems to be turning but I called HP and they want me to send my tower to them to be fixed (it's still under warenty). They claim they can have it done quickly.

As to the partition thing. It seems to me that what you are saying is there is a difference between partitioning 50G of my HD and partitioning my hard drive so that 50G of it is simply "unformatted". Also, I believe the Red Hat version simply asked if I wanted a partition and created a dual-boot type protocol so I could choose Windows or Linux upon start up. Does SUSE do this also?. OK, My daughter is calling me, she is 13 and everything is VERY important right now. Thanks Jack.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

Yes, you will want to leave 50 GB unpartitioned, and then let SUSE partition it. When you install linux alongside with a Windows installation, SUSE should install a GRUB boot loader, which will allow you to select either Windows, or different Kernels of linux you have installed.

I will check, I have used SUSE, but I haven't installed it myself. I have a friend who has installed SUSE. With Ubuntu and Debian, you can choose to format the Windows partition, or install Linux on unpartitioned space if it exists.

Kyle will know more about this, if he jumps in, he can fill in the blanks.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

I have installed Suse, but it's been a while. Which version do you have, Jack? I do remember that I had no problems dual booting. The first time I used Linux, I had one big XP partition, like you. I used SystemRescueCD to resize XP's NTFS partition, freeing up some raw free space. It was not hard, but make sure you back up files beforehand, *just in case*:smile:
Note that you'll need two partitions, one for the root, which is the main partition where the new Linux operating system will reside, and one for Swap, which Linux uses for virtual memory. The swap partition can be between 1 & 2 GB. Suse uses an installer called Yast, which I like. After you've made free space, you can partition that space from the Suse installer. 
FYI, Suse up to version 10.0 used primarily KDE, higher versions have both GNOME and KDE installed.
Also, make sure that you defragment your Windows partition before partitioning, making new partitions on a fragmented drive increases the chance of corrupting data.


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## hal8000 (Dec 23, 2006)

Suse from version 10 and higher already comes with apartitioner which is able to resize NTFS partitions.
As with all Open Source Software it comes with absolutely no warranty whatsoever, in other words if you lose data you cannot blame suse. Having said that I personally have never lost any data on any of my linux systems, but if you are unsure you may be better to shrink your NTFS partition with acronis, or whatever you are used to.

After shrinking off 50G create an extended partition of the full size 50G then install your linux OS into the extended partition.
Ads for a partitioning scheme you really need a minimum of 3 partitions not 2, a root 
(/) a home (/home) and a swap partition (/swap).

The advantage of having separate / and /home partitions is that if by some chance / becomes corrupted your personal data is stored on /home in a separate location.
As you have 1G of RAM then your /swap file does not need to be excessively large,
400M will be adequate, see below/

[email protected]:~> free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 499 493 5 0 5 330
-/+ buffers/cache: 157 342
Swap: 400 0 399

I have 512M Ram and a 400M swap file which hardly gets used, even when compiling. Less that 512M and of course you need a larger swap file.

The full package of Suse is about 6G so when you set up / allocate 6G, 400M to /swap and the rest to /home

[email protected]:~> df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 reiserfs 6.1G 4.6G 1.5G 77% /
udev tmpfs 250M 248K 250M 1% /dev
/dev/hda5 ext2 76M 13M 60M 18% /boot
/dev/hda8 reiserfs 2.1G 1.8G 301M 86% /home
/dev/hda23 ext3 9.4G 5.2G 3.8G 58% /media/share

Hope that helps


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

A /home partition is a good idea, but is not a requirement.
Unless you have over 2GB of RAM, your swap file should be at least as large as your RAM, in case of a system panic it may dump the contents of the phyical memory (RAM) into the swap, and if the swap is not large enough it may overwrite whatever is beside the swap partition, which would be bad.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

*SUSE help very useful*

TSF people,
Thanks for the very informative replies. I checked my disks and I have SUSE 8.2 personal. My wife got it for me a while ago but I could not get it to work on my ancient computer (until recently, I was using Windows 98 SE with an AMD K\2 chip supported by 256 mb RAM and an 8 G hard drive). I'm sure my version is out dated but I'm just jumping into this.

I figured on de-fragmenting my HD and I still have to get my mysterious fan problem worked out. I'm very grateful for all of the other input and I think I have the confindence to move on. Thanks again. Jack


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

You're welcome. If you need any more assistance here, post back.


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## hal8000 (Dec 23, 2006)

K-B said:


> A /home partition is a good idea, but is not a requirement.
> Unless you have over 2GB of RAM, your swap file should be at least as large as your RAM, in case of a system panic it may dump the contents of the phyical memory (RAM) into the swap, and if the swap is not large enough it may overwrite whatever is beside the swap partition, which would be bad.



The recommendations from the Linux Documentation Project:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/requirements.html


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Hello TSF People,

Well, I have finally got my tower back from the HP repair center in Texas, US. Everything seems good although I have no idea what was wrong and they have given me no info on what was actually done to my computer to "fix" it. Also, I'm replying in the first thread even though it's been a few weeks since I started or added any replies. If no one sees this I'll start a new line of questions.

I have checked out the System Rescue CD site as per the recommendation from the first reply. I have to say, even though I am flattered by the confidence the people at TSF have allowed me, I am totally baffled. I have read several postings on the System Rescue site but each new attempt to visualize and understand the process of partitioning my HD leads to more confusion.

I have managed to down load something called "wget.exe" which I apparently need to down load the System Rescue files to a CD. From what I've read it looks like I have to do allot of command type things to run the partition process-but I'm not sure. Does the CD do these commands for me at prompts or do I need to do these things myself once I boot from the CD? 

Maybe, if some kind person wants to take the time, a step-by-step could be posted for a "rank newbie" who's smart enough to learn but way behind the curve on the techno-jargon? I haven't come across any such info on the forum site. Thanks as always, Jack.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

Hi Jack, if you don't want to use wget, it's easier (and the way I do it) to do a direct download of the iso from SourceForge. Here's the link: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/systemrescuecd/sysresccd-ppc-0.2.0.iso
(SourceForge was down for maintenance a few minutes ago when I checked, but they should be back up soon). 
Once you've downloaded and burnt the .iso, you make sure the BIOS is set to boot from a CD and start up your computer with the CD in the drive. Once the system loads, and you're at the command prompt, simply type

```
gparted
```
 to start GParted, which is the partitioning tool. GParted uses a graphical user interface, so you'll be out of the command line.
Please post back if you need any more help, or if you have more questions.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Greetings TSF,

I have downloaded my .iso and burned the CD successfully from the SurgeForce link that was provided kindly by K-B in the last post. Now my problem is getting my computer to look at my CD drive while booting. I went into the BIOS but found no obvious way to translate the boot sequence. In WIN98 there was a place in the BIOS settings to toggle with the right/left arrow keys to change the boot sequence from A,SCUZI, C etc. to whatever the next choice was i.e. CD-ROM, A, C...I see no such area in my current BIOS page.

I tried inserting the CD and booting thinking Windows XP may check my CD drive while booting up by default in case there were problems. No luck, my machine booted normally. As ironic as it may seem to actually write "my machine booted normally" on a post such as this, I don't know how to boot from a disk now-and that is a task that could be useful in the future.

I have looked for postings in various places for instructions but have come up empty. I will keep looking, but if there is an obvious thing I'm missing, please advise. Slow but sure. Jack.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

Do you know what BIOS version it is? (And by what maker, e.g. Award, Phoenix) It usually says on the first page when booting up.
Also, how did you burn the .iso? You can't just burn it as a file, you have to burn it as an ISO image.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Jax -
A coupla things.
First off, your HP Media Center PC will almost surely have 3 partitions on the HDD already. There will be a small partition that's somehow tied to Media Center functions, the main Windows install, and the recovery partition. At least that's how Dell Media Center PC's work. These three partitions will also almost surely be primary partitions. 
Instead of trying to create a fourth primary partition, you'll be better off building an extended partition. Think of the extended partition as a box, because that's basically all it is. The extended partition will have no data inside (well, no useful data anyway) until you create logical partitions inside the box. Those logical partitions will, at minimum, be the main Linux partition (referred to as "/" in Linux terminology rather than "C", as in typical Windows terminology) and "swap". That would be two logical partitions inside the extended partition. "/" would be formatted as ext3. Swap has its own formatting. 
If you want to create a "/home" partition, then there'll be three logical partitions inside the extended partition. "/", "/home", and swap. Both / and /home are formatted as ext3.

I guarantee you there's a way to change the boot device sequence on that PC. As Kyle mentioned, if you can tell us the BIOS maker and version someone can find directions. Wait a minute, you oughta be able to find the directions for changing boot sequence on HP's support site for that PC. Anyway, if you go back into BIOS, look at the main choices across the top of the page. One of them will say "Boot" or Device" or something like that.

I'm not sure why the guys are telling you to download/burn a partitioner that seems to be fairly complicated. Why not download/burn GPLCD? Just download the latest version and convert to a bootable CD.

But if you think you have one now, no point in starting over. There's a fairly easy way to check if you converted the .iso to a bootable CD correctly or not. With your Windows PC up and running, toss the CD in the optical drive. It'll spin up but nothing will happen on the screen. Go to Windows Explorer and "explore" the CD. If you see just one file, then you didn't convert the .iso correctly. 

I only have a copy of GPLCD here, not the partitioner you guys are using. But with a properly converted bootable GPLCD CD I see a folder and a file, and the folder opens to half a dozen more files.

If you see more than one file on your CD, then at least you know you converted it to a bootable CD.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Kyle, I just checked out OpenSUSE - the latest version is 10.2. If Jax has access to broadband, or a friend who wouldn't mind helping out, don't you think he'd be better off with the latest version? 
Jax, Linux is progressing very rapidly. Ubuntu's the only distro I'm at all familiar with. There's no way I'd choose to go backward two versions! 

Just my two cents, but if I was going thru all the hassle of partitioning/installing/etc. I'd definitely install the latest version... 

I think I understand what the System rescue CD is now. It looks like it might be a handy tool. 

Jax, GPLCD is just the GParted partitioner. If you went to that download site I linked and burned a CD that's all you'd have. It looks like System Rescue has the same partitioner, plus several other tools. If that's true, there's no point in downloading/burning GPLCD as long as your CD was converted correctly.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

Definitely, in fact I had missed that post where he said what version it is...
If possible, definitely upgrade, 8.2 was released on *April 7, 2003* (going on 4 years old). I can assure you that Linux has advanced a LOT since then.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

TFS, 
Thanks for the great information. I know my BIOS version 3.11 but haven't found the maker yet. I also saw something called "Core Version" which is 6.0.

To burn the CD I simply downloaded the .iso from the SurgeFroce site and then transfered whatever that download was to a CD with something called Sonic. I know it took a long time to download but haven't opened it yet. When I did I found a folder called boot which contains several files like: boot.msg, map.hsf, system.map, vmlinux etc. along with a zip file called intrd.img. Do these sound like what I'm supposed to have?

The thought about just downloading a more recent version of SUsE had also occurred to me. I didn't know if I should install the one I have and upgrade or just use a newer version to begin with.

The system resduce CD is supposed to have GParted on it if I can get to that point. I attacking this project in little bits at a time in between work, family etc. If I get a chunk of time things may go quicker.

I'll find out the maker of the BIOS and post back along with investigating HPs help site. Thanks folks. Jack.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

Yep, sounds like you did it right. If you had simply dropped the file onto the CD and burned it, if you open the cd all you would have seen is one file, the .iso.
It would be better to do a clean install with a new version. It may not even be possible to upgrade, because there have been such major code changes from a release that old.
It should also say what maker the BIOS is if you enter, somewhere on the screen it should say.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Jax -
Please state for the record your exact model of Compaq. It's not hard to find boot device instructions on HP's website. Maybe someone can get you pointed in the right direction.
EDIT: For example, I went to HP Support, picked a Compaq model, then just started clicking on things and typing search words like "boot device bios" into the search boxes. Here's a link showing how to get to boot devices in a Compaq 5600 BIOS
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...en&product=93496&dlc=en&lang=en#bph07110_Boot

HP/Compaq has pretty extensive support online


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

I would install SuSE 10.0 or 10.2

SuSE 10.0 has everything onboard that you would need to partition, install and set up a dual boot with Windows. It is inherently wireless capable.
It's a live-DVD and an install DVD.
It contains both KDE and Gnome desktop environments.

If you want to proceed slowly and pre-partition, that will work too.

Bulletproof ISO Burner :
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/burncdcc.html

GParted : 
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

What a correctly burned GParted self-booting CD will look like from inside Windows :


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

jflan, he already has the Sys Rescue CD which is a toolbox the includes gparted.
But yes, definitely 10.0 or higher.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

I was driving home from work tonight and thinking, "if SUsE 10.0 has the capability to partition ready to go why should I mess around with this embarrassing problem of partitioning in the first place when the software can do it for me"?

I got home to find posts to that effect. Not only that, but a private message from someone named "joe" who is willing to sell a legit copy of SUsE 10.0 for $12.00 US. Sounds good to me! I want to learn about Linux because I think it represents the future...but also, I'm a photographer and a song writer on the side, I want to employ the Linux tools in these areas to have some fun.

For the record: I have a Compaq Presario SR1950NX with an AMD 64 Anthlon 3800+ chip and 1GIG Ram and 250 GIG HD. Thanks as always. Jack>


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

OK, you're still going to have to get the PC to boot from the optical drive

Take a look at this webpage
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&dlc=en&product=3184153&dlc=en&lang=en#N1600

Shows how to get to the part of the BIOS where you tweak boot device. Doesn't give specific directions for how to do it but you should be able to figure that out.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

JaxMax said:


> I was driving home from work tonight and thinking, "if SUsE 10.0 has the capability to partition ready to go why should I mess around with this embarrassing problem of partitioning in the first place when the software can do it for me"?
> 
> I got home to find posts to that effect. Not only that, but a private message from someone named "joe" who is willing to sell a legit copy of SUsE 10.0 for $12.00 US. Sounds good to me! I want to learn about Linux because I think it represents the future...but also, I'm a photographer and a song writer on the side, I want to employ the Linux tools in these areas to have some fun.
> 
> For the record: I have a Compaq Presario SR1950NX with an AMD 64 Anthlon 3800+ chip and 1GIG Ram and 250 GIG HD. Thanks as always. Jack>


FYI: "Suse" is no more. It's now called "OpenSuse". OpenSuse is free. The latest stable version is 10.2.
The Non-free version of Suse is now called Novell Suse Linux Enterprise. The latest stable version is 10.0. Suse Linux Enterprise costs $50 USD from Novell.
So make sure that you're getting Suse Linux Enterprise, not OpenSuse.
Good luck!


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

TSF, Hello again,

I have found the secret to booting from my optical drive. My mistake was pressing F11 instead of F1 (F11 took me to another world in set up that was Irrelevant). I found the boot changes in F1 so all is good. I have a SUsE 10.0 disk on the way and will install upon arrival. I've learned so much and I haven't even started yet. Thanks to all: Communication is Tantamount to Success!. OK, Jack.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

JaxMax said:


> Thanks to all: Communication is Tantamount to Success!


That and taking notes. I've got several big 3-ring binders near my PC. One's for Linux, another's Windows, another's for an older couple I try to help out.

Inside the binders are several dividers with marked tabs so I can impose some order on my note-taking.

You will thank yourself for it if you take well-composed notes at every step of your Linux travels. And they have to be well-composed! I still fall into the trap of scratching down some quick comments as I'm doing something, then a few months later I can't follow my own directions.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Bartender,

Very good advice! I also have a pile of papers right below my keyboard with scribbled notes and instructions, I use the law of "superposition" and gravity to keep a time line. I doesn't work. Time to get a real notebook. OK, Jack.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Hello again TSF,
Sorry for the time lag-work and family you know. I have my suse 10.0 disk in hand thanks to jflan and have booted from the optical drive with no problem. I have run into some snags though and before continuing, thought I would post. My original plan was to allocate about 50G to suse and divide it up for the various options like the swap area and the root etc. When I got to the partitioning portion of the install I ran into this:

Partitioning

*shrink windows partition /dev/sda1 to 94.3 GB
*Create extended partition/dev/sda3 (130.2 GB)
*Create swap partition/dev/sda5 (1.0 GB)
*create root partition/dev/sda6 (129.2 GB) with reiserfs
*set mount point of/dev/sda2 to /Windows/D

It offered me a choice to change these parameters but when I went that direction I ran into a message:

"This version of windows on your system is not compatible with the resizing tool. Shrinking your windows partition is not possible. Choose a different disk or abort installation and shrink your windows partition by other means".

The installation seemed to be going fine but this resizing is not what I was looking for, I aborted to be safe. It seems that the suse wants to adopt most of my HD. Is that correct or should I continue. I was tempted to go on and basically kiss Windows good-bye but I don't have the cajones just yet. Any thoughts on this? Thanks Jack.


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

What you can do is go to post #21 in this thread and build the Gparted liveCD as detailed. You may find it easier to pre-partition.

Then you will want to do a Disk Cleanup, a Defrag and a backup on Windows prior to partitioning.

Then boot to Gparted and to keep it simple, do two basic partitions, one for Windows and one for Linux.
Leave plenty of headroom for Windows. If you try to prune it too close you can damage it. 
You are probably using NTFS for Windows and Reiser for SuSE.

SuSE should lock onto the Reiser partition and create the additional partitions that it needs while leaving the NTFS partition alone.
It will also set up GRUB, Grand Unified Bootloader to manage your new dual-boot .

Another way to "pre-partition" is to use your hard drive maufacturer's utility the same way Gparted is used here.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Jflan and TSF,

I have met with success! I managed to partition my HD and I'll spare everyone the gory details. It took a few tries on my part but I ended up using the "GParted live CD that I burned just in case the sysresc CD didn't work (for the record, my BIOS is by Phoenix, version 3.11 and is already set up to boot from the optical by default).

Installation of the SUSE 10.0 went without a hitch and dual booting is no problem. I do have one issue. During the set-up phase SUSE wants to check the internet for up-dates, this part failed and I got this message:

etho Device: nVidia Corp. MCP51 Ethernet Controller (reva3)

etho Configuration: eth-id-00:17:31:9e:24:fb DHCP Client is already
running on etho.

I tried everything I could think of with YaST to configure things myself but no luck. I know the physical address for my network controller is correct, but I don't know what's wrong. The upshot is I can't connect to the internet. If anyone has any thoughts, please advise. Otherwise, everything seems to working great. Thanks for all the help! Jack.


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

Congrats !
SuSE's great, very polished.
I love that lizard 

I think everything you need will be in YaST.
Looks like your ethernet hardware is OK and functioning.
I would suspect it's something simple, such as entering your ISP name and/or username.
I'm set up wirelessly and I have to enter those two items, then SuSE automajically connects. No manual configuration needed.

If I get a chance, I'll try it on a wired machine just to see what it takes.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Jflan, 

Thanks and that lizard is stunning, it looks like it's going leap off my screen or snap its tongue out at a fly. I'd have to do some digging to find an IP name or user name. I haven't ever had to use one on my computer but there may be one on my wife's old Dell. I'll have some time tomorrow to look. OK, Jack.


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

I haven't made it over to the wired machine, but I can tell you that with DSL (on wireless) I have to enter Provider, Username and Password.

These three items were issued by my ISP.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

TSF,

Hey folks. I still haven't connected to the internet but I've spent some time with SuSe 10 and I can see there is going to be learning curve here, but I can say it's fast and this thing called "GIMP" is amazing (although my version only has black and white so far), it's every bit as good as PhotoShop and three times as fast.

I'm having a little trouble dealing with the file system but I'm sure I'll catch on. I've gone through page after page in YaST to setup the internet but no luck. I've searched for help but nothing makes sense, the terminology is off the wall. That's part of my curve. I called Yahoo DSL tech support and was told that they have never heard of "Linux"...Great!:4-dontkno I am a GUI type person, A visual learner. I need to see to learn. All input is appreciated. Ok, Jack


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

OK, let's try this:

Get into *YaST* > *Network Card* > Type in *Password* if asked 
You should see a split program window.
Your network card will be listed by make/model or simply called *eth0*
click *configure*
Let's try selecting *DHCP* (the easy way if it sticks) > *Next* > *Finish*

If that doesn't work then you will have to find a smart person at your ISP to provide you with your static IP address, gateway address, DNS address etc.
Also your official Provider name, user name and password.
This may sound daunting but it's all basic info that your any competent person at your ISP can provide you.
Then it's a simple matter of doing a manual setup and entering this information in the correct fields.

If DHCP works, in comparison, it does all this automjaically :grin: 

Hang in there, you'll get it.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Thanks Jflan,

I've tried these things several times...no luck. I'm wondering if I should re-install the linux, some things are querky. Like GIMP not having any colors but black and white or this pesky connection problem. Something should make a difference but I keep getting the same results no matter what I do (i.e. "cannot connect to novell.com, that's it, just that, no other info).

Also, I am thinking that I should have gone with KDE instead of GNOME. It's just instinct talking now, but I don't know the difference. My research and reading is leading there. maybe I can re-do an install because most of the soft-ware seems to geared to KDE. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to get this thing up and running. Maybe KDE has more built-in tweaks. Just thinking, Thanks, Jack.


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## jflan (May 29, 2005)

Couple things:
Are you getting your network card recognizes and installed ?

One of the nifty things about SuSE is that several desktop environments are on the DVD including KDE and Gnome.
The live version should default to KDE, my personal favorite.
Just run it off your optical drive and have a look.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

TSF and jflan,

Sorry, I've been away for a while. In that time I decided to do a new install of Suse. This time I ran with KDE instead of GNOME (KDE does seem to make more sense to me at first glance). It seemed to stick but the first time I re-booted into Suse I was asked for a User Name and a Password...I had not entered a User Name during install and my password would not work. All log-in attempts failed so I was essentially locked out of my own computer.

I re-installed Suse once more and a funny thing happened. This time, when it came time for the automatic update part of the install, my computer connected easily and downloaded about 2 1/2 hours worth of up-dates. I thought: Great! Also, when I boot into Suse I am only asked for a Password and I can log in. The bad part is that I can't connect to the internet, I still get the same "cannot find server" message. It does indeed recognize My network card, but I get no cooperation beyond that point. In addition to that, there are many programs, like the office programs that won't run (i.e. I can't open a blank document).

I'm still messing with it and learning. I read a disturbing article somewhere along the way about Phoenix Inc.(MY BIOS is Phoenix 3.11) making a deal with MicroShaft that would prohibit other OS from running along side of Windows OS, I'm wondering if this is true and if it is the source of my frustrating experience with Linux. 

Anyhow, I'm still chipping away at this. Don't feel compelled to reply unless some bright idea pops up-I'm just tossing out some info to keep the thread alive and possibly remotely interesting on the chance I break through to daylight. Keep cool, stay calm and try to adjust. OK, Jack


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

Howdy,
Just a quick note. Here are some things I've encountered along the way, if anything looks familiar to someone please post some info to clarify (these are from my notes). Thanks.
While in YAsT I got some messages while trying to configure internet:

"error occurred while restarting the DHCP daemon"

also on the DCHP page it says "DHCP server is not running" I can't figure out how to get it "running".

When I try to connect I get this message: "could not find usable proxy script" at the top of my screen in a little pop-up and on the page it says "unknown host www.kde.org" (From automatic update in Konqurer).

Also, when I installed this SUsE 10.0 I got a pop-up saying "you are about to install a 32 bit program on a 64 bit machine". At the time I didn't think it would make a difference...now I'm wondering. I'm doing a lot of jumping back and forth between XP and KDE, booting and re-booting. Linux is fast, click on something and POP, there it is. OK, Jack.


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## JaxMax (Jan 3, 2007)

OK, 
So here's something. I was watching my SuSE boot up(you can press the Esc button and watch all the code lines run by during boot process), and I saw this flash by: "Failed to boot: Subdomain". I don't know what the "subdomain" is. It sounds like something that should be there but isn't. Does anyone know what the subdomain is and how I can get it to load? Thanks Jack.

PS. As I learn, I can see this Linux stuff kicks butt in the graphics world. I'm having trouble actually saving things but I think I'll figure out what it wants to save an original file. Adios.


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## K-B (Oct 24, 2005)

I'm not sure what that would be, but if you're not having problems with anything I wouldn't worry about it:grin:

What graphics program are you having trouble with?


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