SuSE
I was pretty pissed off by my Belkin Bluetooth adaptor F8T001 not compatible with Windows XP sp2. The bluetooth stack in sp2 simply doesn't work and ruined my machine. To be fair, I shouldn't only blame M$, but this event did push me one more step to a Linux OS on my lappy. So I decided to install SuSe in my Dell 5160. Installation is as easy as snapping your fingers. It even resize and keep the original windows partition for you, gracefully. The only issue is my wireless is not working yet. Gotta figure out.
Comments
Update 9/9:
I get the VPN work!!! It turned out I am looking at the wrong client. David told me that our server is not using cisco VPN, instead it is using PPTP protocol, a MS protocol. So I went to search for PPTP client.
Here is a very good article on how to do it on SuSE:(make sure you read the article before following the link for install)
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=13469
Three files are downloaded:
php-pcntl-4.3.9-2.i386.rpm
php-gtk-pcntl-1.0.1-2.i386.rpm
pptpconfig-20040722-4.noarch.rpm
They seems to be a php interface wrapper to help you configure your PPTP. Since PPTP is precompiled with SuSE, you don't have to install it.
After installing the rpms, I try to run the pptpconfig, and it bitched about "Cannot instantiate non-existent class: gdkcolor". I assume it need PHP and GTK support, and installed PHP4, php4-devel and php4-gd from yast. Immediately it works!
Posted by: willow | September 9, 2005 01:01 AM
Ok, so it turned out my hard dirve is corrupted. I used Hitachi Hard drive fitness test and spent 8 hours rewrite the whole disk. Now I am installing SuSE again. This time with EXT3. Just upgraded my Nvidia Driver, back to my 1440x resolution.
Posted by: willow | September 1, 2005 11:05 PM
Too bad I am writing this report using XP again. SuSE 9.3 becomes slow after two weeks. Especially after I installed Skype, it became unacceptably slow. I found some same complains about SuSE. According to some people, the Reiser file system could be one of the reasons. Reiser is supposed to be faster than Ext3 but not as stable. It is not a solid file system foundation. So next time if you would like to try out SuSE, use Ext3 instead of Reiser.
I have two more softwares successfully installed but not working:
1. ndiswrapper (wireless)
I successfully compiled installed ndiswrapper, and necessary windows driver, but still the computer refused to recognize the wireless card.
2. vpnclient
I installed Cisco vpnclient.
I tried out the group setting the password, but reset by remote.
(very good source of cisco vpn installing instruction:
http://system.cs.fsu.edu/services/vpninfo/linvpn.php)
Posted by: willow | August 24, 2005 09:35 PM
Just got a 64bit machine with no floppy, no CD-ROM, no nothing, desperately tring to get the PXE work, so that I can boot the machine remotely and install SuSE on it. With hours of searching and trying, still couldn't configure or run the bootpd and pxe properly. Here are some resource maybe useful for you, if you try to continue testing PXE on SuSE 9.3. http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/professional/pxe.html
Posted by: willow | August 12, 2005 12:54 AM
This comment is left using lynx. I found this website still readable and informative.
Posted by: willow | August 11, 2005 07:34 PM