I bought and installed SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional on my Gateway 9300-CX laptop computer a few weeks ago and, after trying it out a bit, returned to 8.0 until 8.1 settles down a bit. Here are some of my experiences, comments and questions: ACTIONS & COMMENTS: 1. Installation was pretty straightforward. I installed onto a fresh disk that had been partitioned with PartitionMagic. The only difficult part was selecting all the packages to install. I'm one of those that likes to install almost everything and, too, would like to see the return of the "Install [Almost] Everything" button to YaST. 2. I could find no way to configure LILO during the install nor by running YaST2 after the install. Since I'd been using LILO since 7.0 and there were a number of reports of problems with GRUB on this list when 8.1 first came out, I had decided to stay with LILO and had checked the "other boot loader" button, not knowing what else to do. (Need more documentation there, IMHO). It turns out that, somehow, GRUB got installed anyway and, with some getting up to speed and manual configuring, I was able to get it to do pretty mych everything I needed it to do, and it works! However, I had to reference a lot of external (i.e., non-SuSE) docs to figure out how to do the configuration for some of the entries (esp booting off the 2nd HDD). I do miss LILO's default entries in the "global" section of the lilo.conf file, though. I like the way I can boot two separate Win2K installations on two different disks with GRUB. It makes hiding and unhiding the necessary partitions very easy. (Windows really makes a lot of very annoying assumptions about the HW setup, esp disk partitioning, IMNSHO). 3. The kernel seemed to run OK with the default YaST settings and I had no crashes or hangs or anything else strange during the day or so I had it up after the install. Didn't really test ACPI/APM operation to see if it really works, though. 4. Starting up KDE was disappointing. Some of my configuration was changed and the desktop looked significantly different. I'd been using the Liquid that shipped with 8.0 which doesn't appear in the 8.1 CD/DVD version. I miss it, though Keramic is not too bad. It does seem to appear in the supplementary/KDE ftp section, though. 5. Starting up GNOME2 was very disappointing. Not only did it not pick up any of my GNOME1 configuration, it wiped out pretty much all my GNOME1 configuration so that, when I booted back into 8.0, my GNOME1 desktop was pretty well trashed. I had to restore it from a backup to get it back to where it had been before running 8.1. QUESTIONS: 1. How can I migrate my GNOME1 desktop config to GNOME2? Is it possible or do I need to pretty much re-create it from scratch? 2. Is it possible to run GNOME1 under 8.1? If so, how? 3. Has anyone gotten the pilot-link stuff to work with USB based Palms (I have an m505)? With Jpilot? With Evolution? If so, how? PLANS: 1. I intend to update the system from the FTP version (which I'm currently downloading) and to add the updates that have been released. I found Liquid for KDE in the supplementary section on the ftp site. Then I'll try it again to see how it works after that. However, after reading many of the reports on this list, I'm planning to take my time since so many people have reported significant problems with their 8.1 intallations. 2. Build and install Hubert Mantel's latest 2.4.19 kernel. I also compile in and run devfs (which I've been doing since 7.1 or 7.2). 3. Configure GNOME2 so I can actually get some work done. I'm primarily a GNOME user (I started out on RedHat 6.2) and feel most comfortable in that environment, though KDE3 has more of the features I was missing in earlier releases. Hopefully, it will work ok from that point? Thanks for any comments, info or suggestions (and for reading this far)! Phil -- Philip Amadeo Saeli SuSE Linux 8.0 (Hopefully 8.1 real soon now ...) psaeli@zorodyne.com