openSUSE Experiment
Dr. Puri… What can I say about him… His love for Linux is driving me nuts right now. His laptop on the other hand seems to be made by people who totally hate Linux.
And the problems it suffers from are incredible and impressive. The latest mess is that the DVD drive is not reading recordable CDs any more. As a result, I cannot install downloaded ISOs of Linux.
He is tired of using Ubuntu so he decides that I should install openSUSE for him. Alright… How do I install openSUSE for him when the idiotic drive would not take any recordable CD?
Managed to find out an Internet installer version… And after almost 10 hours of pain… I finally managed to get him a working Dual Boot system with Vista Home Basic edition and openSUSE 10.3.
Problems? Touchpad is not working in Vista. Yeah, you heard it right. Touchpad with all the drivers properly installed is not working in Vista. It works alright in Linux though.
Wireless never worked in Ubuntu and it is not again working in openSUSE. DVD drive continues to have issues with recordable discs which is a major hassle… But it’s a good feeling that I finally managed to install Linux on a machine without using a CD Disc.
If only I could have found a way to install Linux on his machine from my machine through local FTP.
PS: I do not like openSUSE… Yast is pretty disappointing compared to the similar thing in Ubuntu!
December 1st, 2007 at 09:18 am
I dumped openSUSE for Ubuntu because the packaging/update system (RPM/YUM based) sucks a little. Wireless sometimes (like mine) needs some command-line tinkering to get working properly.
Hmmm, are you saying the DVD drive itself also does not read CDRs *outside* the OS (for booting ISOs), indicating a hardware rather than software issue?
Try burning a CDR/ISO at low speed, maybe 4x or 8x max and not at the highest speed of 52x or whatever… some drives dont work well with CDRs burnt on other drives at high speed…
December 1st, 2007 at 09:32 am
i always burn at the slowest speeds for this particular reason.
my car’s audio system also has issues with cds burnt at fast speeds.
the laptop is not reading the disc which we had used earlier to install ubuntu on it.
so it’s definitely a hardware problem.
December 1st, 2007 at 05:19 pm
” Yast is pretty disappointing compared to the similar thing in Ubuntu!”
There’s NO such thing in ubuntu like Yast.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 am
ah. i was talking about the installer system and the system configuration panel… ubuntu’s make more sense to me perhaps because i am used to it.
December 2nd, 2007 at 05:54 pm
I still have to check out Open Suse in all its glory. I wasnt hanging around there to share the pain..I was slogging it out in the hospital instead..Maybe another day of tinkering and format the whole drive using just one of the OS’s. It is a hassle to get everything on the same thing. Sucks but I have no option. I have to bend over backwards to make the things work.