Success! Problem: The default kernel that ships with openSUSE 11.3 conflicts with the latest Nvidia graphics drivers, leading to frequent freezing of the system for several seconds at a time. My keyboard buffer was also affected, often sending a jumble of the characters I'd typed each time the system caught up with me. Solution: Upgrade the kernel. 1. Add this repository, either in YaST or with zypper ar: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/openSUSE_11.3/ 2. In YaST software management, upgrade all your kernel packages to the newer kernel - in my case that's 2.6.36-90-desktop. The packages I had to upgrade were kernel-desktop, kernel-desktop-devel and kernel-devel. Install kernel- sources, if it's not already installed, otherwise upgrade it as well. The easiest way to do this upgrade is to select the Kernel:/HEAD repository and click on 'Switch system packages to the versions in this repository'. 3. Build and install the Nvidia drivers. On the Nvidia website - http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/home.html - click on 'Download Drivers', enter the details of your graphics card, and download the driver. This will be in the form a shell script, such as NVIDIA-Linux- x86_64-260.19.12.run. (The name will differ if you've selected the 32 bit driver). Save it wherever you like, then make it executable (chmod +x <filename>). Reboot the computer, selecting the new 2.6.36 kernel. Graphics mode will fail, and you will be left at a console login prompt. Login as root, then cd to the directory containing the Nvidia script. Type: ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-260.19.12.run or whatever your file was called. Agree to the licence, then accept all the options offered. The final stage is to ask if you want the script to run nvidia-xconfig for you. The default is No, but I would recommend answering yes here, as you will only have to do this later anyway. Reboot again (:~ # shutdown -r now), and you should be back into a graphical environment. Many thanks to Matt Hayes, Togan Muftuoglu, David Rankin, michael getachew, dwgallien and Felix Miata, who helped me through this. Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.3 64-bit, Kernel 2.6.36.90-desktop, KDE 4.5.2 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org