I suppose an update is in order :)
The installation was a breeze - I booted into Knoppix, and used
ntfsresize to shrink the WinXP installation to 18GB - and then fdisk
to create space for Linux. This is NOT the recommended procedure for
newbies/intermediates - I personally found the interface of qtparted
clumsy, that's all :) Unless you have a complete understanding of
disks, partitions, volumes and whatnots, please do not attempt this
without parental guidance.
One difference I found in SuSE (as opposed to Redhat) is that after
installing stuff from CD1, the system reboots to the harddisk and
continues installation from there. Redhat/Fedora finishes off full
installation using as many CDs as required before rebooting to the
harddisk. I am not going to post screenshots or anything - didn't even
bother capturing any - several others have done it in far better ways.
Everything was autodetected. My e1000 network card, the CD writer (at
least, K3b shows the writer - I am yet to see if it actually manages
to write anything), sound system (haven't tested the microphone yet -
midweek here, can't fiddle around too much). The docking station could
be configured (sorry for the false alarm earlier today, folks!) using
YaST - "second monitor/keyboard/mouse". I still haven't figured out
how to blank out the LCD when I use the docking station.
Wifi has been a disappointment. First of all, it seems that
configuring WPA is a challenge (all access points I use require WPA,
except the T-Mobile hotspots which are open anyway). Secondly, I seem
to have hit upon a bug either in SuSE's packaging or ipw2100 itself -
"ipw2100-1.3.fw is not available or load failed". So I am still in
WinXP at home, typing this. A colleague pointed me here:
http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/
It was far easier to configure my two important network drives - a
CIFS share and a DAV one - in Konqueror than it was in Windows.
More later. The next update should be from Linux. :)
Binand
