Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to report in on my experience installing OpenSuse 10.1 on my T40. Everything worked out of the box, including ACPI and my 2200BG wireless card! I'm quite impressed with this distribution, and I might just keep it in spite of my feelings about the Novell/Microsoft deal.

Great, OpenSuse rarely gives any headache as compared to other distros.

Anyways any particular reason for not going for 10.2 version?

I just had the 10.1 DVD at hand. Is there an easy way to update to 10.2?

It's long and not that easy:

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index ... opic=50668


I suggest you do it through iso method.

Has YaST improved much in 10.2? I've noticed since installing 10.1 that it has been very slow.

They've put an effort in it, 10.2 is far better than 10.1 and has newer kernel but sadly there is minimal improvement towards YaSt.

I'm going to check it out. I'm downloading the DVD for 10.2 now.

I'm running 10.2 now. This is awesome! I have XGL running and I'm really enjoying the cube effect. My wireless is even running out of the box, something I have never seen in a linux distro.

The Spirit of X21 wrote:I'm running 10.2 now. This is awesome! I have XGL running and I'm really enjoying the cube effect. My wireless is even running out of the box, something I have never seen in a linux distro.

on which of your machines? i am assuming from your sig you mean your T40. if so, what graphics card does your model have (9000 or 7500?)? according to this it shouldn't be working, or not working very well. can you please clarify? thanks

georgeb

I have a 7500. The effects are window wobbling, transparency, and cube-based desktop switching. All seem to work well because they are short effects in duration and don't appear to tax the graphics card too much. The system told me that it might not work, but I tried it anyway.

so you aren't getting this?

Slow at 24 bpp. Flickering, bitmaps not properly redrawn, slow windows, and black windows at 16 bpp. I've tested it with Kororaa XGL Demo LiveCD 0.2 and found it working smooth but without dri

did you try running Kororaa on yours?

georgeb

I'm not experiencing any of those effects (that I can notice, anyway). I have never even heard of Kororaa actually.

One thing, how does one edit the menu.lst file? Is there an rpm to install sudo?

Hmmm, it appears that the events file in /etc/acpi/events is a dummy file. What does SuSE use to configure the special key functions?

ryengineer wrote:Great, OpenSuse rarely gives any headache as compared to other distros.

My own research also bears that out, even so some slackware user "accused" me of being prejudiced here.

But I'm going for the commerica distro, because they have added support for Thinkpads.

The Spirit of X21 wrote: One thing, how does one edit the menu.lst file? Is there an rpm to install sudo?

Oh boy. Nevermind. I just logged in as root and added myself to sudoers. I was able to install nano through YaST. I can now easily modify the menu.lst file. As an update to the XGL discussion, I should note that while I can use the cool effects, DVDs only play well when the 3D desktop is disabled.

The Spirit of X21 wrote:I'm running 10.2 now. This is awesome! I have XGL running and I'm really enjoying the cube effect. My wireless is even running out of the box, something I have never seen in a linux distro.

See, as I said before 10.2 is better than it's predecessor.

I am glad you liked it.

I read in a Novell report that they even plan on supporting the fingerprint reader.
But I think right now their SW is only in beta stage.

The 10.3 (Development version) is available for download but after checking it out I wouldn't advise anyone to get it as a great deal of work has to be done on it (a very major modification).

When will 10.3 officially be released?

Technically, 10.3 (alpha1) has officially been released. It will go through atleast 3 more phases (alpha2, beta1, beta2) before it could be released as final.

My guess is 10.3 final version would be released somewhere near christmas 07 or by the start of next year.