Tested it today, and it's nice that dding the liveCD to a USB stick is enable now.

The major improvement to the previous 11 versions I had been trying previously is the suppression of these enormous icons in YaST, the software installer (http://en.opensuse.org/Yast); they were so big you could hardly have more than a few packages listed on the screen. Now, there are lists with tickable items, just like in Synaptic, and that's more handy.

The eeepc's features were supported from the start of 11th version, and the OpenSUSE graphics make the hit; Gnome is beautiful with OpenSUSE! Compiz runs nicely in live mode.

There are a lot of network services you might never get the use of, unless you have Windows near by; but if you want an access to a Windows machine, they might be a plus.

My previous experiences with Gnome on OpenSUSE were that mixing the different Gnome repositories, and trying to suppress the OpenSUSE branding of Gnome packages, soon led to a mess; only perhaps it was because at that time Gnome 2.28 was in testing/experimental repositories (will have to explore that further).

The new features are listed here: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_11.2

You can try to boot from your CD by editing Grub when it starts (when starting, select the distro you want to boot, then press the tab key, then the e key (to edit)) and add the following to the booting parameters:
rootdelay=20 (so it gives 20 seconds to the machine to find the USB CD reader)
from=/dev/sr0/the_name_of_iso_version.iso (sr0 often is the label for USB CD readers)

Then enter, then b, and that should work

pindar wrote:

Has anybody tried OpenSuSE 11.2? ...The opensuse people have finally managed to make installation easy; you can just dd the live cd image to a usb stick.

Really? I didn't notice that in reading the install stuff on the OpenSuse site, in fact the instructions for setting up a live-USB are rather messy , even Unetbootin can't do it with the .iso image file. Reference?

pindar wrote:

Here's a reference. But whatever you do, don't just try it. I mean, simply dd'ing the iso to your stick, who know what could happen? Locusts, floods, fish jumping out of their fish tanks...

Not a very impressive one! Not even an official OpenSuse live-cd file, and requiring other software to make it work! Come back when OS are offering  a live-CD iso file that transfers onto USB without further manipulation.

No mention of the USB option on the 11.2-RC2 download page (http://software.opensuse.org/developer/en), certainly if you try booting that image it complains that it can't find disks and exits.

Ooops! Correction - if you dd the image to the usb key it does boot OS as advertised! Serves me right for using unetbootin rather than dd, sorry about getting that wrong, still once you get the OS desktop up it seems worth while, pretty solid.

Last edited by RubyTuesday (2009-11-04 4:35:29 pm)

The gfxboot seems to be not yet belonging to the original syslinux, see:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.ph … M32_module

I had also problems to install the openSuse 11.2 Lice-CD onto an USB stick.

First I tested the recommended dd-method. The USB-stick started booting, but then did not find the compressed file system and stopped.
Then I formatted the stick to ext2 and installed extlinux, the ext2-version of syslinux. This resulted in a single line of "Read Error" being shown.
Finally I installed grub onto the USB stick and now it works perfectly. Even WLAN works without any fixes required.

This post is written from the openSuse Live-CD running on my 701 4G.
inux@linux:~/Dokumente> uname -a
Linux linux 2.6.31.5-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-10-26 15:49:03 +0100 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

linux@linux:~/Dokumente> lsmod | grep eee
eeepc_laptop           17428  0
rfkill                 22868  2 cfg80211,eeepc_laptop
pci_hotplug            32928  1 eeepc_laptop
hwmon                   3676  2 eeepc_laptop,thermal_sys

linux@linux:~/Dokumente> lsmod | grep ath
ath5k                 138632  0
mac80211              214968  1 ath5k
led_class               4836  1 ath5k
ath                     8608  1 ath5k
cfg80211              103584  3 ath5k,mac80211,ath

This Live-CD can also be used to install the distribution.

I did an installation of 11.2 yesterday on my 1000HA.  I chose the "update" rather than "new install" route  through the installation since 11.1 was already installed.  I was dissatisfied with the result. Too many broken things left over. Did not reboot correctly after the initial install. Had to manhandle it.  Nothing that I could not have addressed item by item to correct. But without knowing how deep the hole was, I decided to reinstall and select "new install". I don't thing the issues with "update" are unique to this release.

The Fn keys seem to work ok.  Wireless worked for me out of the box as for others (ath5k).

I did notice that the "blank the screen NOW silver button" (left most button on my 1000HA on the same row as the power button) no longer works as it did under 11.1.

I think, but am not sure, that the Fn+F9 key would bring up a performance related program under 11.1. Nothing  now under 11.2.  Not an issue and particularly not since I am even sure that it formerly worked under 11.1.

Last edited by garyeee (2009-11-20 2:50:25 pm)

Greetings all. I have installed OpenSuse 11.2 KDE version to an 8 gig USB stick on my 701 4g and it runs beautifully, wifi, sound, keys. The only problem i had was during installation, the screen resolution is too large and makes it impossible to see the choices on the bottom of the installer screens. In 11.1 you could resize them but I could not see how to do that in 11.2. I ended up attaching an external desktop monitor to do the install but still with some difficulty.

Thanks Engineer. I actually read your linked post before I posted my own. Like I say, other than the pain with the oversized install screens, OpenSuse 11.2 is sweet. The only other issue I have seen so far is a crash in trying to use Kwrite under superuser permission in order to edit /boot/grub/menu/lst. The openSuse team has come so far over the last year in getting the distro netbook friendly. Other than Jolicloud, which is a dream on the 701, OpenSuse has been my favourite distro since I began using Linux in 2006 on my desktop.
(Guelph is cloudy and very chilly tonight.)

Did you get xrandr --panning working in KDE ?

In IceWM, this is no problem:
To enable panning : xrandr --output LVDS --panning 1024x768
To switch back    : xrandr --output LVDS --panning 800x480

KDE refuses to expand to the new size.

RubyTuesday wrote:

So, has anyone got xsnow working on openSUSE 11.2? It seems the window manager in kde draws over the xsnow stuff, when turning compositing on and off one sees tantalising glimses of the snow and santas!

Have you tested it in IceWM ?  If you have IceWM installed together with KDE, you can use the "Session" sub-menu of the login-screen to start an IceWM-Session.

My experience with xrandr --panning in KDE and in IceWM lets me suspect that there a problem in the KDE window manager.

Ha! I used to think VWs were reliable till I had one! It just shows the power of advertising.

Dec. 27. Still loving OpenSuse 11.2 on the 701. Smooth, all hardware working, great community repositories like Packman. I highly recommend trying it if you are looking for a Linux distro for your eee.
And, the command line tool zypper is nice to use after you switch user to root:
zypper refresh = refresh repositories
zypper update = update packages
zypper install (package name) installs a package
Sweet! Cheers from Guelph Ontario Canada!

Last edited by Freshmeadow (2009-12-27 11:05:13 pm)