openSUSE 11.1

I recently installed openSUSE 11.1 beta 5. Though it is still in beta stage, it is quite stable. It looks much more cooler than openSUSE 11.0 and any other distro out there. It is one of the best and easiest Linux distro to use. With YAST (something like Windows' Control Panel), it beats any other linux distro in terms of configuration from a GUI.

It is very simple to install, one place where one can mess things up is while partitioning the harddisk. If you have trouble then in your windows, open RUN (in the start menu) and type diskmgmt.msc and click Run. Take a screenshot and mail it to me. blvdeer [AT] gmail [DOT] com. I will find the best configuration for partitioning and write step by step tutorial on how to do it in the installer.

After you have install, just open YAST and add software repositories
Goto to the K-Menu (start menu like thing), select Application, System, Administration Settings.
Enter your password. In that you will see different options in the left pane. In Softwares, you will see Software Repositories. Click it.




Click on Add. And choose Community Repositories. Add Packman, KDE-Backport, VideoLAN, KDE-Community, etc repositories. And select OK.

There you are. Now goto Software Management (in YAST > Software) and install the softwares you love.

Some of the things that I installed are:

1. gcc - GNU Compiler Collection C complier
2. make - Make for the compiler
3. automake - Automatically generate Makefile.in
4. autoconf - Automatically configure source code
5. bison - Parse generator
6. flex - Lexical analyser
7. vlc - VLC player
8. mplayer - Mplayer
9. smplayer - A great frontend for mplayer
10. flash - Adobe Flash Player
11. mplayerplug-in - Browser Plugin for mplayer
12. unrar - Adds rar support to Ark
13. p7zip - 7zip but only commandline, adds 7z support to Ark
14. java-1_6_0-sun - Java
15. java-1_6_0-sun-plugin - Java Plugin for Browser
16. gcc-c++ - C++ compiler
17. krita - Picture editing tool
18. gimp - Picture editing tool like photoshop
19. wine - Allows you to run windows programs on Linux
20. isomaster - Lets you edit iso images
21. isomorphin - Lets you mount iso images
22. peazip - Frontend for p7zip
23. dosbox - Dos emulator

I installed MySQL, Qt 4, squid and a few other things as well. Flex & bison are required only if you are planning to compile and install wine.

Thats all for a normal user. You will love openSuSE, it's a great distribution.