Suse 10.1 64 Bit

[The PIT]

Thought I'd give this a quick spin and see how it shapes up.

Install went pretty smoothly on the face of it until the graphics configuration came up. It looked like the system didn't support the XT1800 card.

Next slight grumble was the Network card setup. I use static IP's and unlike Winblows Suse hides DNs servers under a misleading section called IP routing. Should really be under one screen.

Next poor design is the autologin aka Winblows. Bad Bad.

Once booted into X Windows I wasn't surprised to see I was stuck at 1024 x 768. Quick trip to Yast and checking the hardware showed the XT had been detected. Under Displays however theres no option to select the card just basic Vesa. Any changes to res just left me back at orginal res.

Perhaps ATI's display drivers may fix it play time for another day.

Sound well the Creative X-FI still isn't supported so still no sound.

Off to the updates and another mess up by Novell. Updates are no longer in one play and all seperated off. Even worse you have to register with Novell and of course the server wasn't responding. Even MS have released it's better having all the updates in one place.

Overall a poor release by Novell as the standard user will be left confused wondering how to the fix the sound and display problems.

Anyway I've got something to play with more hopeful that the display will work thsi time as at least the card is detected in the hardware.


Ease of Install 6/10
Ready for Joe Six pack 4/10

[Haig]

Unlucky you:-)

I installed the 32bit version which went fine in all resepcts with the exception of using 24bit.

Just like 10.0, going into 1280x1024@24bpp with DVI gives me psychadelic colors in both singlehead & dualhead mode. No problems in analog though.

[The PIT]

Well the Creative problem is due to the fact that they won't release details of the card so you can't blame Suse for that.

ATI drivers have always been crap so I reckon theres a 50/50 chance of these working when I try it since Suse has detected the hardware properly.

[The PIT]

As expected the install of ATI drivers didn't work surprise surprise.
Overall Novell have change things around in Suse which make quite crap anyway so it's off to the recycle bin I think and try a different distro when i got time.

[James_D]

As expected the install of ATI drivers didn't work surprise surprise.
Overall Novell have change things around in Suse which make quite crap anyway so it's off to the recycle bin I think and try a different distro when i got time.

Did you try the latest drives from ATI, its stated in the release notes that they support the XT1800 and 1900.

Besides why not try the Dapper from Kubuntu, or Ubuntu if you prefer Gnome.

JD

[The PIT]

Yup

I reckoned I had 50/50 chance of them working. Seems People are having problems with SUSE 10.1 anyway. Even Suse's own updated don't work properly which is funny really. Debain keeps saying hello though.

[James_D]

Yeah, I run Kubuntu here on two machines, and its really great, only problem I have is the multichannel sound, I cant get it to work, no matter what. Thats actually one thing linux should improve on, besides better driver support, and esp Wireless.(Ndiswrapper is great for when no drivers exsists, but speed and perfomance isnt that great.)


JD

[Haig]

Did you try the Envy24 package for your multi channel sound card?

[James_D]

Did you try the Envy24 package for your multi channel sound card?

No, but i thought envy was for Via only, I have a nforce3 250gb, realtek chip.
(and I have tried the nforce linux drivers)

JD

[Haig]

Sorry, I meant the envy24control package.

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Envy24Control

You're right though, it & its accompanying driver set doesn't seem to support your chipset.

[Marshmallowman]

Just downloaded and installed the x64 dvd 10.1 edition.

During the installation it gave me some dire warnings about raid arrays (nvidia raid's), but no problems eventuated, but I will not even try to access the nvidia/windows raid 0 array from linux.

Installed quite quickly , it actually installed most of the files while I thought it was still formating a partiton, nice fast install.
Found and installed the smp kernel automatically

Found my fortismo(envy 24) sound card with no problems, the oss X driver was installed without any issues, no problems there.

Onboard network cards installed cleanly(and firewall), only glitch was I had to manualy specify the gateway IP addess of my router.

Downloaded nvidia video driver and got full 3d acceleration...quite disappointed as I could not find tuxracer on the dvd to install , but amagedtron ran smoothly so opengl installed cleanly.

Since all onboard stuff seemed to work fine, I did not bother with the nvidia nforce drivers, just stuck with the default suse stuff.

Didn't register with suse/novell, just choose configure update source, and then browsed the avaliable packages. seems ok.

Very smooth installation experience, better than 10.0 which was pretty good, but I chose a complete nvidia system for that reason. (and the envy 24 chip)

I give it the thumbs up if you have linux friendly hardware, you mileage does seem to vary with less friendly hardware.

A few details

used gnome
dual opteron board,
nforce 4 chipset(supermicro h8dce)
nvidia 7800gt
herclules fortissmo envy 24(7.1)

Will tweak my kernel over the next couple of weeks and then see how well wolfenstein ET, unreal 2k4 and quake 4 install and run.
(as well as cinerrela and the cad pacakges I was using in suse 10.0)

I did a full install rather than upgrade my 10.0 install becasue I have been shuffling HDD's to play around with nvidia raid in windows.

[Byock]

I installed it on my HP nx9600 Laptop. It auto-setup the ATI driver even at 1680X1050 Res. Everything worked except wireless.

NDISwrapper fixed that. Installed the ATI driver, and with minimal effort have dual head working. All in all, very easy.

The system feels much faster than 10.0, and my Packman screen saver runs about 3X the speed.

[Marshmallowman]

I guess I spoke to soon, yast package management seems to be seriously non-functional for me
A bit of searching tells me it is a known issue with no fix yet,
I have not been able to install or update anything with yast

However following some recomendations I installed Smart Package Manager, it is very good

So if anyone is having issues try this

http://spinink.net/2006/05/20/installing-smart-package-manager/

[The PIT]

I guess I spoke to soon, yast package management seems to be seriously non-functional for me
A bit of searching tells me it is a known issue with no fix yet,
I have not been able to install or update anything with yast

However following some recomendations I installed Smart Package Manager, it is very good

So if anyone is having issues try this

http://spinink.net/2006/05/20/instal...ckage-manager/

Well mine says it doesn't work then says it's installed them then on the next reboot it'll go through the same rountine. I'll have a look for Smark package manager.

Byock I see you're using an older card so it'll probably work fine. Certainly a poor release by Novell.

Marshmallowman can you post me the contents of your ld.so.conf for me.

[Marshmallowman]

contents of ld.so.conf for

/usr/X11R6/lib64/Xaw3d
/usr/X11R6/lib64
/usr/X11R6/lib/Xaw3d
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/x86_64-suse-linux/lib
/usr/local/lib
/opt/kde3/lib
/opt/gnome/lib
/lib64
/lib
/usr/lib64
/usr/lib
/usr/local/lib64
/opt/kde3/lib64
/opt/gnome/lib64
include /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf