Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2827 mails)

["David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Listmates:

        I wanted to "kick the tires" of 11.1 a bit before providing a first 
review of
my experience with the 11.1 install. For this install:

Setup:

M/B:   K9N2 SLI Platinum
CPU:  AMD Phenom Black Box Quad Core (125W)
GPU:  evga eGeForce 8800GT
RAM:  4G OCZ Platinum
Drives:
                Current Install of 11.0 x86_64
        Two Seagate 500G (ST3500630AS), sda,sdb RAID1 on SATA 1,2
                Current Install of 11.1 Beta5 x86_64
        One Seagate 500G (ST3500630AS), sdc
DVD:  LG GH22LS30
PSU:  HEC Zypher 750
UPS:  CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD on usb (Bus 001/Device 005):
Case: Antec 182SE, 3 120mm fans

Packages (A very large number):

 - complete server application install
 - complete kde3 (with manual selection of nearly all kde3 packages)
 - complete kernel, web, c/c++, java, and perl development packages
 - open office, killustrator, and
 - host of other packages.
(I will provide the full list after I run yast again).

Install Time Required:

        34 minutes actual install time (After manual selection of packages)

Install Review:

        This will by my shortest install review ever, because -- there were NO 
install
problems at all. Damn, nothing to bitch about ;-(

        I haven't fully finished configuration of everything yet but at present 
I have
only run across two issues:

(1) Yast install failure to configure grub to boot my 11.0 dm-raid install
which according to the feedback on bugzilla, the problem has already been
identified from the y2logs submitted and will be corrected after Christmas:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=445602

(2) Nut ups package released with wrong permissions (somewhere) resulting in
failure to start. This is being worked on the nut-list and should be resolved
shortly.

        The nut issue is what I view as a normal nit associated with any 
release of
any distro. The grub issue, despite the impact to some, is the same type of
nit. The problem was identified and a fix was developed during testing of 11.1
beta5. As a new fix, it too needed some tweaking.

        The impact for those who want to keep 11.0 on a bios raid install when 
they
install 11.1 to a separate drive might be a little surprising, but I have
already done a separate post so that issue is contained in the list archive in
an way that is easy to find. See post titled:

"11.1 Yast Installer leaves 11.0 on dm-raid Unbootable" 12/20/08 4:56 (CST)

        Overall this was one of the cleanest, fastest installs, that had no 
problems
during the install that I have ever done. With 11.0, my first install crashed,
and in the remaining 5 or so Installs of 11.0 I did, I experienced crashes once
more for an install failure total of 40%. I haven't done that number of 11.1
installs, but if my first install was any indication, there won't be anything
else to write on that issue.

Other Nit (singular) Found so Far:

        kickerrc omits the parameter "MenuEntryHeight=" causing the traditional 
kde
menu to be very cramped. This has been a problem since (10.0?). KDE4 omits this
parameter as well. As a work-around:

vi ~/.kde/share/config/kickerrc (or use your favorite editor)

        search for the section [menus]

        and add the variable "MenuEntryHeight=25" the default value used to be 
"32"
and acceptable values are between 20 to 32. (it can be as small as 16 if you
like to squint)  I prefer 25. A proper location for the entry is below (above
or in) the following group of variables:

MenuEntryFormat=NameAndDescription
NumVisibleEntries=6
MenuEntryHeight=25

restart the menu to accept the changes:

        <alt><f2>, then type: "dcop kicker panel restart" and run it - the 
screen will
flash for a second and the panel will restart. the Menu should appear with your
changes.

Command lines:

        dcop kicker panel restart
or
        dcop kicker kicker restart

(If I recall, I use the first form, but others say it is the second)

        In my opinion the new box-style start menu is just too inefficient and
cumbersome to try and navigate. Too much of every separate menu in the box is
hidden. I just want to open the menu, see the entire thing, and pick an
application or sublevel. I don't want to have to open a menu AND have to use a
scroll-bar to find the hidden part of the menu and then have to use another
scroll-bar on the next sublevel, or have to drop the mouse and type in a search
and have a query find it either. Picky, I know, but I subscribe to the old kde
goal of efficiency, that everything should be done with an absolute MINIMUM
number of inputs required on the part of the user to accomplish any one task --
that's just logical to me.

        I'm sure there are more nits to be uncovered, but so far 11.1 has been 
one
clean release. Good job to all the openSuSE team.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
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