Re: Why the SuSE Lizard is smiling

From: Keith Clark (clarkphotography_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 05/19/04 

Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 10:01:05 -0700

Frank Hagan wrote:

> Got my SuSE 9.1 Pro Retail yesterday. Did fresh install on new 80GB Seagate.
> I am finally able to use my onboard nF2 LAN (Shuttle AN35N mobo) for my DSL
> connection! Docs, email and contact imported easily. USB Zip 250 recognized
> and works perfectly! Installed Nvidia drivers for my Ti4200 and off I go.
>
> First impressions: faster boot, programs load faster, Konqueror has improved
> web-site compatibility and improved SaX2. And of course I love YaST!
>
> I got the retail because my last SuSE paper documentation came with my 8.2
> Personal edition.
>
> Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are included in the package as stand alone
> programs, but the improved Konqueror is just fine for what I do. I had
> installed Firefox and Tbird on my 9.0 Pro, but with improvements and
> intergration of KDE components It is just a matter of preference. They are
> decent programs.
>
> Disclaimer: This is the opinion of a relative Linux newbie after having used
> MS Operating Systems from DOS 3.3 through XP Pro. I like SuSE 9.1 Pro!

I installed it yesterday on two systems, one with IDE drives and one with SCSI
drives.

It installed fine, and configured all the network adapters, graphic cards, sound
cards. It's worth noting that the SuSE 2.6.5 kernel that I installed on 9.0
didn't work with my Creative SoundBlaster Live, but 9.1 works fine with it.

Installed the Nvidia driver, the full retail Unreal Tournament 2004 (thanks to a
previous thread on how to get around the new submount issue), did some online
playing and messed with other settings and apps like Mozilla, Konqueror etc. I
installed Gnome and every other desktop on the CD's but haven't tried them yet
except for Blackbox which I use when I have to log in as Root because it loads
instantly.

All in all, 9.1 seems OK from what I've seen so far, but -

I don't see many, if any, speed improvements over 9.0 with the 2.6.5 kernel. In
fact I thought 9.0 with 2.6.5 booted faster but maybe that's not right, as I
never timed it.

I'm not complaining, I just don't see any "dramatic" speed improvements (2.4 GHz
P4, hyperthreading, 512 MB RAM, SMP kernel).

Because I need to do real-world work with Windows apps, I also have XP on one of
the systems, and it boots much faster than SuSE (I sure wish starting XFree86
didn't take so bloody long!). Don't get me wrong, I'm *not* a "fan" of Windoze,
just stating a fact.

But now that there's some work on a graphical DVD authoring interface
(http://varsha.sourceforge.net/), I might be able to do some more work in Linux
- if I can find Linux equivalents of VirtualDub and Mpeg-vcr (www.womble.com).

Keith

Relevant Pages

  • Re: FC4 does not work, "out of the box" for me; GUI/X11 fails
    ... Being new to Linux and trying to administer my own ... >> I am trying to work out how to compile my own kernel because the ... >> basic setup to install the Nvidia drivers doesn't work on my Dell ... I've found that the NVIDIA drivers work reasonably well. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: [SLE] GeForce 2 GTS problem.
    ... > I tried to download the nVidia driver with YoU. ... Then MAKE ABSOLUTLEY SHURE you have the entire kernel source trees ... the Nvidia drivers so the easiest way i find is close all your ... Linux for Errrrrrrrr Toooooooooo many years to remember now! ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Latest nVidia drivers
    ... >>I just downloaded and installed the latest nVidia drivers for Linux. ... looking for the kernel headers. ...
    (alt.os.linux)
  • Yum upgrade from F8 to F9 with KDE desktop - installation notes
    ... nVidia drivers from Freshrpms, and I had to install the latest nVidia driver ... kernel in step 5; once I did that, the dkms package (which gets installed from ... Use your preferred method to install the above file: ...
    (Fedora)
  • Yum upgrade from F8 to F8 with KDE desktop - installation notes
    ... nVidia drivers from Freshrpms, and I had to install the latest nVidia driver ... kernel in step 5; once I did that, the dkms package (which gets installed from ... relevant info to do a yum upgrade a bit daunting. ... Use your preferred method to install the above file: ...
    (Fedora)