Things I didn't know about SUSE.

[blackbelt_jones]

A DISCLAIMER: SInce I have not run, and certainly not mastered, every Linux distro, I'm not claining that any of these attributes are exclusive. If you want to chime in that your favorite distro also does so and so, by all means-- but please don't berate me for not knowing, and for making extravagant claims on SUSE's behalf.

1. SUSE automatically disconnects you after a few minutes when you don't use your internet connection. I'm sure there's a way to disable this that I haven't found yet, but it's easy to get the connection back by clicking on the kinternet icon, and I it's actually a good security feature, since being online when you're not using the connection makes you vulnerable to attack unnecessesarily. I mention it first because when I first installed SUSE, I thought it was a problem with my connection, and for that reason I thought SUSE was shoddy. Eventually, I got it.

2. YAST works best when you have a problem. As a package manager, Apt-get is much much easier and faster than YAST, with it's big clunky GUIS, and the need to read and refresh sources when it opens up. The great thing about YAST is that when there's a conflict or dependency problem, it lays out all your options, and gives you the maximum choices. There are times when you may want to take the option labelled "install anyway, and risk system inconsistencies", and with YAST, you can.

3. SUSE comes with a couple of great manuals. Even the free version carries the manuals as html, and they're also available in PDF for as a download on the SUSE site. I love the way these are organized. "Manual 1: Getting Started". "Manual 2: Reference." In other words, it's not a single linear book that you're supposed to read from page 1 to 1000 in order to run your system. They get you started, then they let you look up the information you need, seperate from the information you don't need. Now THAT is what the world needs more of!"


I know there was more. I'll add it when I think of it.

[chameleon]

What version are you using? I'm running 9.2 and I've not experienced the internet disconnection feature.

[Piko]

Don't forget, setting up your WiFi cards in SuSE is really easy too. Even if your using ndiswrapper to get them to work.

[blackbelt_jones]

What version are you using? I'm running 9.2 and I've not experienced the internet disconnection feature.

That's interesting. I'm running 10.0, but I've also experienced it with 9.0 and 9.3, and on more than one computer. I can only surmise something different in the way that we install..

[rdeschene2]

Since you're using kinternet, I assume this is a dial-in connection.

Go into Yast, and under network devices, modem, Change settings for the modem that is already configured.

Select Edit, and you may have to click on the Next button a few times but you'll see an "Idle Timeout" figure in seconds. There's a description of the options on the left side of the screen: set it to zero (0) for NO idle timeout.
i.e. stays permanently connected.

The exact steps may not be quite right, but you'll probably find it.

Have Fun! I've been using Suse since version 6.4 and have found it to be a well thought out, value-added distro.
Rick D.

[blackbelt_jones]

Since you're using kinternet, I assume this is a dial-in connection..

Actually, no. It's a DSL connection. It connects automatically on boot, but when it breaks I use kinternet to recconnect.

But I did find an idle timeout setting under DSL. I tried setting it to zero. Since the number chosen is supposed to be the number of seconds for an idle timeout, you'd think that zero would mean an immediate idle timeout, but what would be the point of that?

[blackbelt_jones]

I knew there were a couple of other "things I didn't know about SUSE" that I'd neglected to mention, and I finally remembered.

4. Installing SUSE will automatically set up a multiboot with grub and any other distro of operating system you have installled. There are other distros that attempt this, but in my experience on my system, SUSE is by far the most reliable.

5. SUSE comes with a great automated system repair tool. It scans your system and replaces missing or corrupted files, reconfigures fstab, and best of all, fixes the bootloader when you've been messing around with reinstalls, no manual editing of the /boot/grub/menu.lst file required.

To run the system repair tool, boot SUSE disk 1 and click through the menus as if you were installing, past the licensing agreement, and all the way to fresh install/upgrade/other. Click on "other".

[leonpmu]

BTW Blackbelt, it does the same for LiLO, not just grub...

[rdeschene2]

blackbelt jones:
So did or didn't setting idle timeout to zero for a DSL connection resolve this issue ? It's not clear from your last post.

Note that there's (in Suse 7.x to 9.x anyways) an information column on the left side on the Yast windows describing what the various options mean. Where you enter the idle time though, it shows (if I remember right) that the units are seconds -- so yeah, this is rather counterintuitive AND misleading. But zero (0) displays reliably, the infinity symbol may not ! Simple and extended ASCII character sets and all that.

Rick D.

P.S. I think Suse is one of the few "major distros" that still has complete configuration tools that work without X. This helps on completely solid-state systems, putting old PC's to good use, etc.

[blackbelt_jones]

blackbelt jones:
So did or didn't setting idle timeout to zero for a DSL connection resolve this issue ? It's not clear from your last post.

I'm not sure. I was curious, but it's not really an issue for me, since once I understood what was going on, it seemed like a good idea. I briefly tried it as an expieriment, and I think I did lose my connection once, so maybe the answer is "no". I've since turned the idle timeout all the way up to 600 seconds, which works great for me.

BTW Blackbelt, it does the same for LiLO, not just grub...

Are you sure? The only time that SUSE didn't automatically set up a dual boot for me was when I installled it with Vector Linux SOHO, which uses Lilo (although editing the menu.lst file for SUSE so that GRUB could boot Vector was simple enough.

(Or maybe you mean if you install Lilo into SUSE?)

[leonpmu]

I personally prefer LiLO to grub, put it down to long use of Linux and when I started using it it, there was only LiLO availale on Redhat 6! Although I have found on certain systems that Grub has booted where LiLO hasn't, and vice versa.

I use on Lilo on all of the systems that I have conf'ed and setup, and LiLO on suse does definitely auto-conf itself for multi booting...and also for automounting of other partitions of your system, including windows drives...( a personal favorite)