My openSUSE 12 Journal 12: Hello 12.3!

Hello openSUSE 12.3!  You were released into the big bad world on 13 March 2013 and you are fantastic!


Two weeks back, I installed 12.3 onto a new partition on my primary workstation/laptop in one hour.  By the hour thereafter, and I do need to install quite a handful of additional software, I was working on my day job without skipping a beat.  One of the software that is critical to my job is IBM Notes 9 Social Edition. As covered in my previous blog entry on the beta, IBM Notes 9 has been officially released on 2 March 2013.  Look out for my next blog entry on installing the Generally Available(GA) version of IBM Notes 9 Social Edition on openSUSE 12.3.

Hand on my heart, 12.3 is a very worthy successor to 12.2.  I am very happy with it, and if you know me, that says alot... BUT... there is one little usage/design point with the GUI of NetworkManager that got me confused and I was unable to get onto my office's Cisco LEAP wireless network.  This was resolved eventually (after 3 days and a weekend) and it turns out to be a non-issue... or a usage issue... or... anyway, look out for this in my next entry.

Installation and Partitioning



With reference to my previous entry on 12.2, the hardware specification remains the same.  For disk partitioning, I have installed 12.3 over the Windows 7 partition and now dual-booting between 12.3 and 12.2 using Grub2.  I'm totally liberated from Windows on the bare-metal.  My use of Windows as a virtual machine (VirtualBox) has decreased over the years, from 35% to 15% of the time.

Installation was trivial and no dramas, except the partitioning part as covered previously and this is due entirely on my personal preference on how I like to partition my disk... wizards are for newbies.

Additional Software, Configurations and Customizations

Further, installation of Oracle Java, VLC, Packman goodies and Google Chrome web browser went smoothly and you can find it documented in my previous entry on 12.2.  My other blog entry on enabling Printing to PDF also applies well onto 12.3.

Back in 12.2, as documented in this blog entry, I was motivated enough to ditch the default kernel and upgrade to a newer kernel via the Kernel repository.  For 12.3, after two weeks of usage, I am quite happy and do not feel the urge to do the same.  The kernel I'm running is 3.7.10 as of this writing.

One final minor note is the Delete option in Dolphin.  For me, I like to enable the Delete option when using Dolphin as opposed to moving files into the trash.  In 12.3, with the newer version of KDE4, the option to enable Delete option on right-click has been moved.

In the dialog box for Configure Dolphin, select Services on the left and check the box next to Delete (shown below)

That's all for this entry.  Stay tuned for my upcoming blog entries on IBM Notes 9 Social Edition and how a small difference in using the GUI of NetworkManager caused me some grief when connecting to a Cisco LEAP wireless network.