Installing SUSE Linux - full tutorial

I kind of hit a couple of 'stumbling blocks' and need some help from you Linux users....

1. While SimplyMepis 6 (latest build) sounds like just what the doctor ordered (for me), I can't seem to find the downloadable iso.

2. Since I can't use a dual boot configuration, I could use some guidance as to installing/running any Linux distro as a virtual machine under VMware.

Thanks for any help... pv

 

Direct DL - http://mirror.cs.vt.edu/pub/MEPIS/SimplyMEPIS_6.0_i386.iso
Mirror List - http://www.mepis.org/node/1462
MD5 Checksum - http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/mepis/released/SimplyMEPIS_6.0_i386.md5sum

If you have a floppy drive, install the bootloader to fd0 - it won't touch your MBR --- Then simply Insert the floppy on boot to load Mepis.

 

Hey dog, thanks for the links (I sure couldn't find them)! As far as my having a floppy drive, exactly what is that? ...just kidding.

 

i just installed SUSE 10.1 with gnome. here's some stuff i've done.

Yast, the package manager, is really, really slow, so i installed Smart instead. here's the guide i used to set it up. Smart is the package manager that might one day be 'the' Linux package manager, so i've heard, so far i think it's brilliant. when it was installed i did an update.
http://dev-loki.blogspot.com/2006/05/how-to-install-and-use-smart-on-suse.html

i did add some repositories to Yast though, i followed this guide for that.
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/254/42/

there's lots more on the page above too. i used it to install my nvidia drivers, although there's a small mistake - you don't need to make the Nvidia driver executable, this bit -
chmod +x ./NVIDIA

to get my media working i used the Ubuntu Wiki Restricted Formats guide, some of the packages have slightly different names to SUSE, but it got all my media working, the names are close enough. (here's the SUSE Restricted Formats guide too)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats
http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats

i installed alot of pakages to get SUSE working, but these are the main ones.
gcc
make
kernel-source
kernel-syms
kdeadmin3
compat-expat1
expat
checkinstall
python-devel

i wish i'd paid more attention to all the stuff i've installed but i can't remember the rest.

all the help i've had i got from irc - irc.freenode.net #suse

BTW, i used the DVD to do the install, i've about three of them from differnet Linux magazines.

 

How supported is SMART? From the page, it looks like a great innovation. Does it have a pretty GUI to make everything easier?

 

smart has alot of respositories (lots of software) and has a GUI too, or you can just use the shell (in a root shell type smart install program_name

it's very, very fast. it launches and is ready to start in about 0.5 secs. everything thereon in is fast - searches, downloading and everything else happens instantly.

here's a picture of the GUI, it's very simple and easy to use - search for what you want, browse the results, then if you want something select it and click the install button.

 

Very nice. Thanks for the heads up!

How updates are the repositories?

 

i don't know what you mean lol. i just had a look at the repo urls and noticed there are a lot of KDE apps and not gnome. i'll have a look for some gnome repos.

edit gnome apps are there too, in the packman and suser-guru repos

 

gah. spell check has stopped functioning lately.

"How up to date are the repositories?" was what I meant.

 

they seem to be very up-to-date. since i started using it (1/2 days) it has already updated 3 programmes to the latest versions.

 

i'm just installing these scripts now. they only work if you use Nautilus (file manager in Gnome), but it doesn't matter which distro you use.

this first one lets you right-click a file and de/encrypt it. it's very secure
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=108513

this one lets you right-click and virus scan a file
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=104001

and i got the secure-file-delete from this page too
http://rob.pectol.com/myscripts/

even though they are scripts when you launch them they do have GUIs

 

Now if only someone could get that to work in KDE. Not that I have anything against Gnome, but I truly like the KDE style. Gnome is too scattered for my tastes. But those look like some great scripts in case I ever do switch to Gnome one day.

Thanks for the info about SMART. One last question about it [I hope.], does it include support for updating drivers and all that good stuff? I'm kind of disappointed Yast dropped Nvdia driver updating. Manually updating isn't too bad, but there's always that "ease of use" that is appealing.

 

It will work in kde, just install nautilus as your file manager and you are good to go.
Cheers,

Alphalutra1

 

Well, if that's not something to look into!

Very nice. Time for some reading later.

 

there are lots of nautilus scripts, like this one for converting audio to a different format here, or this for checking a files md5 here, or root-nautilus-here, or you can just download all of them (about 50) from here - nautilus-scripts.tar.gz

there's also something called Nautilus-actions which does the same thing , but instead of right-clicking a file, selecting scripts, then the script you want, it just puts the action right into the right-click option along with a small icon
http://www.grumz.net/

here's a menu with nautilus actions added (the options under send to...)
http://www.tux-planet.fr/blog/images/screenshots/nautilus-action6.jpeg

here are all the actions you can use. you can just important the action straight into nautilus-actions
http://www.grumz.net/?q=configlist

and, no Smart doesn't include support for updating drivers AFAIK, i'm using the Ubuntu livecd atm (i wanted to check the fonts compared to SUSE - i have to fix the fonts in SUSE i think lol) i'll have a look when i boot into SUSE next. i installed the nvidia drivers so can help, let me know when you want to do it and i'll explain how i did it.

 

i improved the screen resolution by changing afew things. you can check pixels-per-inch with this command -
xdpyinfo | grep resolution
the output should be this
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
mine wasn't so i did this to change it -

Configure X to run at 96 DPI:
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak <--- this makes a backup
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

added these lines to the end of the driver section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE"
Option "DPI" "96 x 96"

so this is how it looks like now -

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6775/screenshotxorgconfbu7.png

save and exit. then restartx

then to make my fonts look better i added this file, attached, to my home directory.
.fonts.conf
NOTE i had to save it as fonts.conf (without the first dot) rename it to .fonts.conf and put it in your home directory. if you save the file to your desktop as .fonts.conf it will disappear because the . makes files hidden

 

here's an RPM for SUSE 10.1 for nautilus-actions (the program which lets you put stuff in the right-click menu)
http://software.opensuse.org/download/home:/rodrigomoya/SUSE_Linux_10.1/i586/
use this to install
sudo rpm -Uhv nautilus-actions-1.2-5.1.i586.rpm

here's the nautilus-actions home page.
http://www.grumz.net/index.php?q=taxonomy/term/2/9
you can import any action you like, here's a list
http://www.grumz.net/?q=configlist&PHPSESSID=0cd0113d4c42cf92efa59878977b2ca2

 

i'm doing a SUSE install now

i added a GURU repo too, i picked one from the YaST2 Installation Sources from this page
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/

also i installed all the build packages from the build section in YaST, i'll find out the proper name later. i'm adding the guru repo atm

 

this is how i got my nvidia card working -

added the Novell repo -

open yast>installation source. then added this -

Protocol: FTP
Server Name: : download.nvidia.com
Directory on Server: novell

then still using yast installed -

x11-video-nvidia
nvidia-gfx-kmp-"kernel-flavor"

NOTE: you can find your "kernel-flavor" by running uname -r (mine is smp) i think these are the options -
default/smp/bigsmp

i also added the kernel sources, i'm about %80 sure that's needed too!

then i got my nvidia driver from nvidia, you can check if you have the correct driver by clicking on the option which shows supported cards.

then i did ctrl-alt-F1 to get out of GUI mode, then chaged to 'init 3', if you get an error saying x is running you have to run this
su
rm -rf /tmp/.X0-lock

then cd to where the driver is and run it like this
sh driver_name.

that's it. my computer is totally slient now where i don't need the graphics card

 

Hello,
You can also:
Go here and read http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html
In other words, download the file manually.
init3
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86*.run -q * replace with adequate version
sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia
And that's it.
Mrk

 

hi, i don't think that will work with 10.1. i had the drivers already because i have my home directory on another disk so i just did as you described from memory. but when i got an error i remembered i'd added the extra things which i mentioned in my post.

i asked on IRC too. these are the instructions for 10.1
http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html#3

actually, i think the instructions at the top of the page are the reason i installed the kernel-sources out of order, i saw them copied to a blog before i asked on IRC

 

i just installed this which comes with SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop)
http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/07/28/latest-sled-10-gnome-menu-in-your-vanilla-101-oss/

have alook at the screenshots. it uses beagle, the linux desktop search which indexes everything you want it to, so it finds anything you put in the search right away!!

 

I found that installing from YAST was enough to get 3d support. Did not have to change to init3 or anything. May not be the latest and greatest drivers, but for those new at Linux, it should prove less frightening than remembering a bunch of commands and filenames.

 

you really should give the other method a go because it's just a generic driver in Yast, not nvidia.

there are some instructions here (from - Installing the NVidia Kernel Module - to Install xgl and compiz)
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17174.html

i wish i'd made more notes about what i've done. here are some -

make root apps use your theme -
sudo ln -s /home/USERNAME/.themes /root/.themes

you can make root apps use your icons too, but i don't do that because i like root to look different so i don't forget i'm using it. but, here's how to do it -
sudo ln -s /home/USERNAME/.icons /root/.icons

so, this is how nautilus looks before it uses my theme -

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3118/screenshotrootfilebrowser1us6.th.png

this is it using my theme -

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/2636/screenshotrootfilebrowseroo5.th.png

and this is how natuilus looks normally in user mode, if it used my icons it would still look different -

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4371/screenshotfilebrowserqm0.th.png

 

Hello,
XGL is still rather experimental. I would advise against using it ... yet.
Mrk