SuSE-Installation
From Grokdoc
==Usability problems/studies== (what the page is really about)
As a pretty experienced user of computers (from Commodore 128 on) i installed Suse 8.0 PersEd, on a double-boot machine with M/S win98se. The docs to set up a Conexant internal modem were poor and suffered in translation from the German. Nothing on the CDs helped much as the Help files were dated and the Suse SDB was unavailable (until i could get the modem online). I finally got a beta driver downloaded (via Win/Netscape) and then really enjoyed my Linux experience, until i used Sax2 to upgrade drivers for the NVidia graphics card. Disaster! Now one has to buy a driver for the Conexant-chip modems, bummer!
Finally solved that problem with confusing, contradictory advice from both Suse and NVidia. Not very impressive so far. Then another disaster when i tried to upgrade the 2.4-18 default kernel because of a security notice from Suse. I used Yast2 and did exactly what the read-me said, (except it left out the need to go to Sys3 - no GUI format) and the resulting crashes made me finally remove Linux from the machine (an AMD 2.4G with 512 Mb ram on an Asus As733 MB). Then Suse re-installs would only work in Safe mode (CD timing?), so i gave up. i loved the Open Source concept and the helpful Linux users but it was a failure. Lousy documentation, old or poor drivers, complicated installs did it.
I have yet to get a wireless card to work, am not going to give up but there has to be an easier way to go about this. Also, IMHO, the rate at which new wireless cards hit the market far exceeds SuSE's ability to keep up.
(from Modem Installation): The necessary menu is buried 7 clicks deep.
==Solutions to detailed problems== (eventually to be moved elsewhere)
Discuss in "Discuss this page"
If you tell us what wireless card you have (manufacturer, model major/minor version) would help a lot... Also is as root you type in a command promt "lspci" (without "") and hit enter it will list your devices and their device ids, pasting that list will help us figure out what hardware you have and how to make it work... Later on you will find out there are a number of chipsets, and lots of hardware that is essentially the same, but rebranded... This is how it is made to work. Essentially there are not as many different hardware as it appears to be...
When describing a problem, the environment is very important (SuSE release #, hardware, etc).
YaST is SuSe's setup tool. (Yet another Setup Tool???) Using YaST is very important to installing and maintaining a SuSE installation. Click Yast for pages that breakdown it's main functions.
==Installation 9.1 Personal== (Using downloaded ISO burned locally)
I'm a PC user back from PCDOS and DRDOS, up to XP and server 2003. I have also worked on UNIX, mainly as a user, with a little admin work, so have some understanding of the differences to expect.
Luckily I have a PC set aside for this sort of thing (Duron+512MB, so disconnected all existing HDDs, and dropped in a spare. Taking no chances after reading how installation with other OS's can end up as a DR (disaster recovery) exercise.
Installation initially reasonably smooth, generally I accepted the defaults, unless I knew better. I didn't want the default partition sizes, and that took several iterations to get (almost) want I wanted. Really could do with being more friendly here, the default is to exterminate all other data (maybe because it was Red Hat data), which does not seem very helpful.
Installation did crash, reason unknown, just a little red box, which did eventually let me get past it, and the install restarted in a more wizard mode, so reentered country stuff, and this time it completed, rebooted to YAST, automagically connected via the network to the Internet, accepted all pre ticked items, and added those which could be relevant. YAST updates completed fine.
So then was able to log in as myself, realised clock was wrong, after changing from UTC to local (against the recommendation of the wizard) it was sorted.
So up and running, without too much pain, now to see if it is useable...
Initial (bad) experiences are on the word processing page
Contents |
Installation 9.1 Professional
boxed set
I'm a fairly experienced user (Debian, RedHat, Mandrake) and a novel admin. I gave SuSE a try:
The start of the installation was really great. Everything was explained and intuitive. I just worried with the description of the "installation type". I wanted to preserve a previous RedHat9 installation, in one of the disks. I had to choose "New installation", which warned that the settings would be lost (because it was not an upgrade from a previous SuSE installation). This was the good option for me, but I still got some fear. A "non-warning", indicating that no immediate data loss is possible at this stage would have been great. I'm sure it's in the installation manual, but I didn't read it. I was looking at the screen, though. The screen would have been the best place to calm me down.
I have to give special kudos for the partitioning stage: it guessed by itself (correctly!) and explained clearly what it would do, and gave me the opportunity of changing it if I disagreed.
After the first reboot, the mouse wouldn't work. I knew how to move with tabs, <return> and <space>, but a lot of newbies wouldn't. Again, a warning that this could happen and how to deal with it would have been a live-saver.
After the install, I had to tinker for a while to get (i) the mouse working perfectly and (ii) the refresh rate to a proper, non-eye-aching, level. Everything is supposed to "just work", I know... but maybe a first-run druid could have been handy, as I had no idea of how to do the tinkering "the SuSE-YAST-SAX way", and lost a lot of time trying to figure my way through editing of config files and the like...
A software company (linux newbies, technically competent) tries installing Linux
This thread began on the "Mandrake" page. Getting frustrated with Mandrake, we bought the SuSE 9.2 boxed set, and installed it over Mandrake, with no problems. Here our saga continues...
A new domain server
I haven't sent an update in some time - our transition to Linux being something I definitely want to do, but also being something that happens in my spare time. At least, that was the plan - then our (Win2k) domain server died.
To put in a good word for Windows, that server sat in the closet for years with no trouble - and in the end, some sort of hardware failure brought it down. The reason I want to move our company away from Windows is political: Microsoft's support for software patents, oppressive licensing/activation policies, etc. We will continue to support our existing Windows products, but new development is in Java.
There is this about taking the bull by the horns: either you'll get gored, or you'll wrestle the beastie to the ground. I have no experience at all with Linux administration. So I ordered naked hardware, put SuSE 9.2 on it, and called it a domain server.
Setup and installation
Setup went incredibly smoothly, even with a very complex software RAID setup. It took about two days to get our data restored and to have basic functionality. This is no different from what I would have expected had I replaced the Windows server.
- On one hand, I had to spend a good deal of time reading documentation and searching for help on the Internet. That's to be expected, since I've never done Linux administration. And I had little or no trouble finding everything I needed to know. The hardest part was finding the terms to search for. Once I knew I needed to read about, say, "smb.conf", then finding the documentation was a snap.
- On the other hand - an advantage that I can hardly overstate - *everything* is on a single DVD. With Windows I would have spend hours and hours swapping install CDs, which is an incredible time-eater. Granted, the "big boys" have fancy administrative setups, but that isn't us.
So it was a zero-sum game - and I was quite happy with how well the setup went.
The most positive experience: configuration
- Windows-administration: configuration files, piles of stuff in that horror called the "registry", and a zillion different control-panel applets and adminstrative applications. Fixing configuration problems is like playing pinball - click here, fiddle there, try - nope, fiddle here, click there and try again...
- Under Linux, it seems that everything that makes up the configuration of the server is somewhere in a plain-text file. I may not yet know where to find everything, but it's all there, in a human-readable format, with predictable consequences. I've found that I prefer to skip all the fancy configuration tools, and just hunt down the right text file. I can read it, change it, and know what will happen as a result. What a relief!
The most negative experience: documentation
In any case, it's now down to the fine-tuning. Getting a backup program working automatically in the background, finding a way to get our custom Java server-application to run at startup. Lots of little things. Here we come to the one area where open-source still has a problem: documentation.
Take backups, for example. There are something like 20 different backup programs delivered on the SuSE DVD. Nowhere - either on the DVD or on the Internet - is there any comparison or general description of them. At best, I can look at the README files, or find some very brief summary of each on the Internet. But, in the end, it comes down to installing and trying them out one after the other, until I find one that does what we need. This is a big time-waster.
Mind, I understand: programming is fun, and documenting is tedious. Just look at the online handbooks to our company's commercial products - they are always out-of-date. When I program for fun, it's even worse. Still, this is definitely a hindrance.
What would help? Two things:
- First, to find a way to motivate open-source documentors. Ideally, these shouldn't be the developers at all, but rather users, who would explain from the user's point of view how to set up and make use of the software.
- Second, the equivalent of the magazine reviews of commercial products: "20 color laser printers compared". Feature-by-feature comparisons of products, along with ratings, etc. Perhaps this exists in one Linux magazine or another, but as a new user I am unaware of it, and turned up nothing in my Internet searches.
While I'm on the subject of documentation, I would like to award one large, stinky, rotten tomato at the Gnu Foundation. Their "info" system is a useless mess. I can type in "man" and get a single, linear page of documentation about a command. If I want, I can print it out. Further, "man" may be primitive, but it is standard. "Info", on the other hand, is yet another place to look. And it is a pain to use - if they want hypertext, they should use HTML.
On the positive side of Linux documentation: thank goodness for the big companies, who can pay staff to do documentation. The SuSE Help Center is a big help - their Admin-Guide and User-Guide are both well-written. While they aren't comprehensive, they provide a very good starting point on virtually all topics.
Next step: desktops?
I don't know when I'll write the next update - probably whenever we are as far as trying to move everyone's desktop over. Later this year, perhaps?
Of course, we'll stay with Windows at least partially for years. We have to support existing products under windows, and we use a number of applications for which there is not (yet) a Linux version (InDesign, for example). I hope that will change, however!
