[NBLUG/talk] SuSE 9.0 on Dell Inspiron 1000

[A'fish'ionado]

First, I have to say that I have never had a Linux
install be this unproblematic before. :-)

I expected that setting up a dual-boot system with
Windows XP would be a sticking point. SuSE
automatically figured out that I had Windows XP
installed, and offered to resize its partition to half
the hard drive and set up GRUB to dual-boot both OSes,
without me even asking. All I had to do was click OK.
:-) XP ran checkdsk after I resized the partition, but
I didn't lose any data on the partition (as far as I
can tell), and XP boots perfectly under GRUB.

I also had a feeling that getting online via the local
ethernet might be another sticking point. SuSE
automatically detected the high-speed Internet
connection here in the dorm through the ethernet card,
and I was online instantly. I haven't tried the modem
yet; YaST detects a WinModem, so that may be a
sticking spot later. Then again, the WinModems that
have caused me grief before weren't even detected by
YaST (but did work with a $20 Linuxant driver...).

I haven't tested the USB floppy drive (no floppies
handy) or PCMCIA (no PC cards handy) under Linux;
we'll see if those are sticking spots later.

The only issue I've had is the screen got kind of
"jittery" after I ran a system update; rebooting fixed
this. It later came back when I was switching
accounts; rebooting fixed it again. We'll see if this
comes back to haunt me.

KDE was causing the computer to swap the scratch file
more than I liked (I think this machine has 256 megs,
but I'm not positive), so I gave WindowMaker a whirl.
It takes a little getting used to, but I like it. :-)
SuSE seems to expect you to use KDE, and accessing
some of the YaST modules from WindowMaker is a little
confusing, though.

Konqueror was rendering Yahoo email funny (a banner ad
showed up on top of the email controls), and doesn't
seem to work under WindowMaker (?), so I downloaded
FireFox 0.8 (my favorite extension doesn't work under
0.9) and everything is running smoothly. :-)

In short, the install was far less troublesome than I
expected, and I couldn't be happier.

Linux! Linux! Linux!
William

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