Greetings, This is tough love for the folks at SuSE, who have apparently been oppressed by a bunch of suits from Novell. Or something. For the first time since SuSE 6.1 saved my 486 computer from complete uselessness eight years ago, this regular customer of SuSE Linux has just about had it. I have installed the following versions of Linux on various platforms from an obsolete 486 desktop to a 2.8 GHz Dell laptop in dual boot mode with Windows XP: 6.1, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9,2 and 10.1 (if 10.1 can count as a "successful" install). Of course, this doesn't make me an expert. Just an experienced mid-level user. The kind of guy Novell ought to try keeping as a customer since there are, for better or worse, lots of us out there. Even back in 1998 or so when I, barely even knowing what Linux is, successfully installed SuSE 6.1, I have been a fan of the relative ease of installation and use of SuSE Linux. In fact, it has been my primary operating system ever since. But if I have another "install" like the one I had today, that might change for good. Even when I installed 6.1 without knowing what I was doing, it more or less worked. Sure. I had to locate a how-to to get my zip drive working, but that was cutting-edge back then, and every installation -- until 9.2 -- configured zip drives correctly straight out of the box, much to my pleasant surprise. But with 9.2, I found myself editing fstab again to get the zip drive at home to work. "No big deal," I thought. "Something slips through the cracks once in a while." That's what I thought until today, when I had the following extremely unusual, "Does Bill Gates have a mole at Novell?" kind of installation experience. Here it is so far. This is a system that has had no problems installing or running SuSE 8.1 or 8.2. (1) On first attempt, I checked "include add-on software". The installer installed CD 1, and then skipped CDs 2, 3, 4, and 5. (Even though it said something like "CD 2 is next" the whole time software from CD 1 was installing.) It installed the add-on software, then attempted to reboot. It failed. (2) Second attempt: I selected "repair damaged system". The installer died on an unspecified error. (3) Third attempt: I foolishly chose to "repartition based on proposal". This would have caused a reformat of my data disk, I am pretty sure. There was no way to back out, so I powered off the computer so I could start over. (4) Fourth attempt: I attempted to select the "expert" option so I could override the inane partitioning proposal the installer coughed up (because it apparently could not read my partition table). Since I did this before "evaluating package selection" was over, the installation froze and I had to start over. BTW: Why is there is there an "evaluating package selection" step that takes over five minutes when I have not made any such selection yet? This apparently happened every time aI hit this stage of the process, and every time I toggled soemthing there. (5) Fifth attempt: This time, I left unchecked the option for the "add-on CD". Only the software from CD 1 was installed. The system failed to reboot from the hard disk. If I recall earlier installs correctly, the requirement to reboot isn't too unusual. But the failure to do so is new. (6) Sixth attempt: I tried again, booting from the CD and selecting "boot installed system", an option I saw only by chance. This worked and I installed the rest of my software, save the add-on CD. (7) After waiting about 10 minutes for the YaST Online Update to configure, I selected "later" contrary to SuSE's recommendation. Later on, I found out by accident that the necessary port was blocked by the firewall anyway. *** The installer gets a "D" only because it permitted me to perform the whole process -- despite its persistent efforts -- without reformatting my data disk, and because a working Linux system resides on the other hard drive afterwards. The system has, however, the following deficiencies. There may be more, but my test driving has been somewhat, shall we say, limited.... (a) I hate automount and was expecting to have to struggle to turn it off. Instead, the same distribution that has had these things working out of the box twice in a row (and without any input on my part) fails to recognize ANY of these, my ZIP drive, my CDRW (You know, the one that I used to INSTALL the bloody thing!), my pen drive. I can probably edit fstab or something of the sort to get this functionality back, but WHY is this -- a problem that was licked long ago -- suddenly making my life difficult? (And yes, I am aware that the pen drive should have some funky name in fstab when I plug it in. If only I were so lucky! But when NOTHING appears, you can't make a soft link....) (b) I can't boot from the hard drive. I specified a partition, /dev/hda1, to be mounted as /boot. My system wants to boot off of /dev/hda2 for some reason. I have to boot from that same odious installer disk that screwed everything up in the first place, which is doing nothing for me but reminding me not to make another purchase from Novell ever again unless they get 10.2 a lot closer to the level of perfection SuSE had hit two major releases before. What happenes when I boot from the hard drive? The word "GRUB" shows up. I get lots of goofy blips on my screen. I think I'd get cobwebs if I waited long enough, but never a boot. (c) The system is a LOT slower. I use a Pentium III 450 MHz at home, so maybe this is a bit unfair, but still. This is NOTICEABLY slower than it (8.2) used to be. Really. Exactly how many novels should I be able to compose in my head while I'm waiting for Acroread 7 to start in ... FVWM? F-V-W-M for Christ's sake! Thick me finally remembered to select FVWM vice KD-freakin'-E as my default session type for root the fourth time I logged in to TRY to fix the boot loader via YaST. No joy there so far. Four attempts and counting. I'd love help with the GRUB problem, because I'm clueless there. I can take care of the "missing" block devices on my own, I am pretty sure. The pen drive might take some work if there's more to that problem than a missing module, though. But my point is this: This was by far the most unpleasant experience I have ever had installing ANY OS, Windows included. I used to brag about how much easier SuSE was to install than Windows. And besides. Isn't ease of use out of the box for things like this -- booting and accessing removable media -- a big part of why companies can make a profit off Linux in the first place? Please fix this! Years ago, SuSE 6.1 saved a poverty-stricken, recently-divorced grad student and his obsolete PC from computational oblivion, and he has been an avid fan ever since. But I have my limits. As much as I love SuSE, I can't stay if I have to fight it every step of the way. I have too much to do for this. Again. If I sound harsh, it's because I'd like to see the SuSE I came to know and love again. Expressing my extreme displeasure as long-time user is about the only thing I have the time or expertise to do towards that end. Steve __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com