My openSUSE 12 Journal - 6: Hello 12.2!

More than a year (12+ months) since my last entry... obviously lots have happened... BUT

Its a new year (2013), a new job, a new Laptop and a new openSUSE 12.2!  I'll stop right there before I go off on a tangent, seeing & proclaiming trends where none existed previously.

Details:

• openSUSE 12.2 x86_64 (64-bit) - KDE desktop (default)
• Toshiba Tecra R840 (Intel i5, 4Gb RAM, 320Gb Hdd, Intel HD integrated graphics)
• Dual-boot with Windows 7 (/dev/sda1) and openSUSE (/dev/sda2)

Installation:
Smooth as silk is all I can say and something that has come to be expected.

Given the dual-boot setup, I created my own disk partitioning scheme.  So this step deviated from the otherwise straight-forward install (ie click next till the end).

Disk partition scheme:

• /dev/sda1 - 100Gb - original factory installed Windows 7 (size shrunk to 100Gb)
• /dev/sda2 - 100Gb - root partition of openSUSE 12.2 ('/') formatted to ext4
• /dev/sda3 - 98Gb - extended partition
• /dev/sda5 - 6Gb - SWAP partition
• /dev/sda6 - 92Gb - common data partition formatted to NTFS (read/write for both Win7 & openSUSE 12.2)

At install time, I did not format the common data partition.  Instead, I left it blank (unformatted) and used Windows 7 to format it much later.  Once formatted, this common data partition will be known as D:\ drive on Windows 7.

Reboot into openSUSE 12.2 and use YaST Partitioner to set a mount point.  I usually mount this under /mnt/common.  Now, openSUSE 12.2 will automatically mount the common data partition in /mnt/common on boot.

The only outstanding part is that /mnt/common is accessible by root (super-user) but normal users access is troublesome.  To make /mnt/common read-writeable by normal user, I edit the mount options of /mnt/common in the /etc/fstab file.  Example, changed the options in bold from original (first line below) to the second:

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-xxxxxx-part6 /mnt/common          ntfs-3g    user,users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-xxxxxx-part6 /mnt/common          ntfs-3g    uid=han,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

where han in uid=han is my normal user account on openSUSE 12.2.

There might be a more user-friendly way to do this but I did not explore since I'm comfortable editing the /etc/fstab. Readers who knows how this can be done, please feel free to leave a comment.  Thanks.


Grub vs Grub2:
I chose to stick with Grub instead of the newer Grub2 boot loader.  The reason is simple, I could easily edit the boot options via /boot/grub/menu.lst because its a text file.  In Grub2, this is non-trivial and until they have an easier editing interface, I'll stick with Grub.


Additional Software



Oracle Java:
Due to licensing of Java now that Oracle is in-charge, openSUSE ships the open source Iced Tea implementation of Java.  However, for software compatibility reasons, I need Oracle Java to be installed on my system including the need to update web browser plugins.

Based on what I read online, its better to leave the Iced Tea Java as-is and not remove it (mainly for LibreOffice and other open sourced software).  We just need to download Oracle Java, install it and use the update-alternatives command to link Oracle Java as the preferred Java.

Will not go into the details here since its already well documented online at http://www.freetechie.com/blog/installing-oracle-sun-java-jrejdk-1-7-update-7-on-opensuse-12-2-x86_64/


VLC:
I need a video player that can play most codecs and VLC is one of the best.  Installing VLC is a simple two-step process.  First, we add the VLC online software repository into openSUSE 12.2.  The next step is to install VLC.

1)  To add VLC online repository, execute this command:

zypper ar -f -n vlc http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/12.2 vlc

There is a user-friendlier way to do this via YaST Software Repositories where all you need is to enter the VLC repository URL, http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/12.2, click Next and you're done.

2) To install vlc, execute this command:

zypper in vlc

There is a user-friendlier way to do this via YaST Software Management where all you need is to search for vlc and click to install.


Packman:
Packman is another online software repository full of goodies... so full that its sub-divided into the these categories: Essentials, Multimedia, Extra and Games.

For me, I just add the all-in-one repository for convenience:

zypper ar -f -n packman http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_12.2 packman

For finer granularity, please refer to http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories#Packman for details.

Some software I install from the Packman repository are:

• Audacity
• Avidemux2
• smplayer (QT frontend for mplayer)

Chrome web browser:
This one is easy, just point your Firefox (default) web browser to http://www.google.com/chrome.  Once there, Google will detect you are using Linux and will list a number of binaries for you to choose.  For my setup, I choose the 64 bit .rpm (For Fedora/openSUSE) and click Download.

Once downloaded, I use the zypper command (as root) to install it.

zypper in google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm

Naturally, there is a user-friendlier way to install this RPM file.  Simply click on the rpm file from the Dolphin file browser and keep clicking (Yes, Next, Finish) till its installed.  :)


What's Next?

Stay tuned for my next couple of entries on my continuing adventures using openSUSE 12.2... up next, my experience installing and using IBM Notes Social Edition 9.0beta.