I recently installed SUSE Linux 10.1 on a test machine, that now serves as a multimedia hub. It is an AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and with 128MB nVidia GeForce Ti4200 Graphics Card, also with wireless internet through a USB adapter. This document describes the procedure for quick and default installation of SUSE Linux 10.1 and is for n00bs.
Download the installation CDs from SUSE download page. You need to download total 6 CDs (including the addon cd) for complete install. Or you may instead choose to perform internet installation, in which case only one CD (the internet installation image) needs to be downloaded. While internet installation saves 5 CDs, it can be a bit complex for new users, and requires internet connectivity during the installation. After writing the CDs, boot your computer using CD1. If you are performing normal installation with CDs, you can skip the next section on network source selection.
Once the installation begins, select your preferred language, accept the license and add the addon media source (HTTP server mirrors.kernel.org with directory /opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-inst-source/). Addon media contains some useful but non-Open Source applications like flash player, Adobe acrobat reader etc.. Select the preferred desktop, KDE or GNOME. Note that, you can run GNOME applications when using KDE and vice versa. Also, both the desktops can be installed using YaST (YaST is the control panel of SUSE Linux) once the initial installation is complete, and the choice of desktop to use can be made at the time of login.
Now comes the most difficult part, which is to partition harddisk. You need to have one swap partition, roughly twice the size of RAM on your machine, and one root (/) partition for Linux. Usually SUSE installer is able to suggest a good partitioning scheme, otherwise read more about partitioning on internet. At this stage you could also select or deselect software to be installed, but it is usually a good idea to leave it as it is until the installation finishes.
After accepting the licenses, the installation will begin which will take around an hour to finish.
Once the package installation is finished, you will need to enter a name for your computer. Leave the domain name field unchanged if you don't know about it. Next, installer will prompt to enter the root (administrator) password. Select a strong password and NEVER forget it, it is important.
SUSE installer will then try to detect all network interfaces and configure them. By default firewall is turned on with ssh access blocked [image 30]. SSH is a way to connect from a remote machine to your machine, which is a very useful tool for operating your machine remotely. Turning on ssh however can be insecure as it will provide access to everyone who knows (or can guess) your password. If you select to test network connectivity, installer will start online update after downloading the release notes. Online update will install some updates (mostly security fixes), so just accept whatever the installer suggests.
Most personal computers will choose local authentication method. Create a username and password your daily computer usages. Never use the root (administrator) account, unless required. This will be followed by configuration of various other hardware on your system and finishing off the installation.
Your system should no be set up and working great. This guide should have got the basics installed so enjoy Linux, and have fun!!
Now you need to install some other things, like codecs for playing videos and MP3, flash player, acrobat reader. If you have an Nvidia graphics card, installation of video drivers is important for a good desktop experience, while with ATI graphics card, this step can be skipped if you are not very interested in playing games. NOTE: Since many proprietary video codecs, flash player etc.. are not available for 64-bit platforms, it is difficult to configure 64-bit machines for a complete multimedia experience. Hence it is advised that users new to linux use the 32-bit version of SUSE (32-bit SUSE works fine on 64-bit AMD machines).
Hacking SUSE 10.1 provides a nice post-install guide. Read it. Add the following four installation sources (all HTTP) to get access to the repos by SUSE:
packman.unixheads.com/suse/10.1 download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/ download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-inst-source/ ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.1
Install extra packages using YaST Software Management for MP3 support, MPlayer (video player for Linux), w32codec-all (video codecs), mplayerplug-in (Firefox plugin for mplayer), Realplayer and Flash. Also install the video drivers.
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