[NTLUG:Discuss] A Review of Suse 9.2

[David Ross]

On Monday 15 November 2004 02:59 am, Kevin Brannen wrote:
> I was in a writing mood, so here it is.  I really should do a Part 2
> later.  If anyone is interested, please let me know.
Very nice article.

>
> I should probably start with a description of my hardware.  I have an
> AMD Athlon 2400+ based system with an Nvida GeForce4 MX 440 and AC97
> sound chip and a VT6102 Rhine-II NIC on the motherboard, 1G of RAM,, and a 
Canon
> i560 printer.  This is probably a slightly above average home system,
> but I do development work here at home so the extra power is required,
> at least IMO. :-)

I'm running the same hardware except I use a GeForce 5200 Ultra,and I have a 
Sound Blaster running along side my on-board sound card.


> Yet even with all that goodness, they don't install ksh, locate, xosview,
> or postgres by default...sigh.  Maybe it's just me, but I can't live
> without those utilities.  Fortunately, installing them is easy with Yast.

Mandrake 10 did not install locate by default either.

> The hardware detection was perfect, except for my printer.  I knew from
> Suse 9.0 that my printer was not there.  I was hoping that a year later,
> there would be a driver for it.  Alas, I'm still disappointed.  But wait!
> A quick search  on Google shows there may be an answer if you're willing
> to install 2 RPMs from Canon's Japanese ftp server (apparently they
> support it over there but not in North America. 
> OK, checking out http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/221135,
> got the 2 RPMs; I need libpng.so.2, grabbing it from my Suse 9.0 install,
> and forcing the install with "--nodeps".  Yippee!  The test page works,
> plus I can print from Mozilla, life has never been this good. :-)  

Took me a while to find these drivers too,now I just wish I had ink level 
monitoring.

> I also have a USB scanner,

I just plug mine in and it works,same with my digital camera

> My video looks exquisite.   The second thing I noticed was that if I
> run the X server, then go back to text mode (as I start in runlevel 3 and
> do "startx"), the text screen is totally freaked out and Ctl-Alt-Del
> is the only way to fix it.  Even the old trick of changing to another
> virtual terminal and back does not help. .  Of course, that driver from 
Nvidia was marked experimental; still, this does not thrill me!

I had the same problem with an older Nvidia driver 5336,but with the new 6xxx 
driver this problem went away.I get 40-50 FPS in Americas Army,only about 25 
in UT2004.


> That meant I had to go into Yast to setup sound, which took all of about
> 2 clicks. 

I have 2 sound cards which Mandrake detected and they both work flawlessly.


> Kevin Brannen
> Copyright 2004
> Freely redistrubtable as long as it's not for profit. :-)
>
>
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-- 
David Ross
Registered Linux User #344306
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