[To do] Top things to do after installing openSUSE 12.3

Top things to do after installing openSUSE 12.3

¿De qué está hablando? Versión en español

Ok, I installed openSUSE. What do I do now?

In this post I will show what I recommend you to do/install to make your computer run smoothly with openSUSE.

I strongly recommend the use of a Terminal, except when I tell you to open "YaST2"  for example. You will need to be root in many cases. To do that you need to use the command su.

NOTE: Every time I use zypper you need to be root.

In openSUSE, YaST2 is your new best friend.

Don't want to wait 8 seconds to boot?

If you don't want to wait the 8 seconds in the GRUB menu you will need to update the configuration file.
Go to the configuration file as root (using su before launching nano):

nano /etc/default/grub

Search the line where you can set the GRUB_TIMEOUT and put 0

GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

Once you changed the file, you will need to update the GRUB with the following command:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
 

Activating the Network Manager

By default the network manager is disabled. Activate it by going to the menu at the bottom of the desktop.

If your Wifi isn't working I will show you how to enable it later in this tutorial. You will need an Ethernet connexion for your first installation.

Updating and installing the packages

Definitely the first thing you need to do after installing openSUSE is updating your packages and upgrading your software. Open "YaST2" and introduce your password.

The updates will load and you will be able to install them afterwards.

Or you could launch a Terminal and run the following command (as root):

zypper update

The first time you do this could take some time.

Installing proprietary drivers

Graphic drivers : If your computer has a nVidia chipset you will need the proprietary drivers that correspond to your case. First add all the repositories:

zypper addrepo -f http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/12.3/ nvidia

Depending on the model you will need a different package:

For GeForce 8 and later

zypper install x11-video-nvidiaG03

For GeForce 6 and later

zypper install x11-video-nvidiaG02

For FX5xxx

zypper install x11-video-nvidiaG01

For GeForce 4 and later

zypper install x11-video-nvidia

If you use graphic cards ATI/AMD you can find some information about how to install those drivers in the documentation of openSUSE.

Wireless: if you have a Wifi card in your laptop you can view the model with this command:
hwinfo --wlan --short

If you use an old Broadcom chipset (like me) you will need to install a firmware to make your Wifi work. Run the command:

install_bcm43xx_firmware

Multimedia Codecs

If you want to install all the proprietary codecs you can do it with one click here.

If you prefer to do it manually you will need to use the following commands in the Terminal:

zypper addrepo -f http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/packman/suse/12.3/ packman

If you want to play DVDs

zypper addrepo -f http://opensuse-guide.org/repo/12.3/ dvd

This are the packages that you may need:

zypper install libxine2-codecs k3b-codecs ffmpeg lame gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly-orig-addon gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ffmpeg libdvdcss2

I don't like KDE, I want something else

If you don't like KDE you can try different desktops. OpenSUSE has support for Gnome, XMonad, Enlightenment, among others..

Gnome: if you want to install Gnome 3.8 and classic mode just follow these steps:

zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/STABLE:/3.8/openSUSE_12.3 gnome38

zypper dup --from gnome38

zypper in gnome-shell-lang

If you want to install Classic Mode:

zypper in gnome-shell-classic

Gnome 2: if you want to go back to classic Gnome

zypper install gnome-panel

There are some others desktops that you may want to try, but I haven't. Here is a quick list of what you may want to install: XFCE, LXDE, Awesome, Xmonad, MATE... among others.

I like KDE but I will like to tweak it

If you like KDE, you can modify it so it will adjust to your needs.

You can add widgets, workspaces and new tasks. I don't think that you need some extra package for tweaking KDE.

Internet

Google Chrome or Chromium: if you don't like Firefox you can install Google Chrome, just go to the download page of Google and download it.
You can install Chrome using zypper too with the following commands:

If you use a 64Bit version:
zypper ar http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64 Google-Chrome

If you use a 32Bit version:
zypper ar http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/i386 Google-Chrome

Then run:
zypper red

Finally install Chrome with:

zypper in google-chrome-stable

If you want to install Chromium:

zypper install chromium-browser

KTorrent

If you want to download files using Bit Torrent, there is a client included with openSUSE. KTorrent is light and will do just enough: downloading torrents. You can change some of its configuration.

There are other options in Linux, like Transmission, Deluge...

Thunderbird

If you want to install Thunderbird the only thing you need to do is:

zypper install MozillaThunderbird

Multimedia

A very frequent question that you find in some pages, is how to enable DVD playback. All DVDs uses an encryption algorithm, you will need to install a package that will decrypt the data.
You can find how to do that in the "Codec" section of this post.

VLC

A really great media player is VLC, basically it plays everything that you may want.

zypper ar http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/12.3 VLC
zypper mr -r VLC
zypper in vlc

Clementine

If you don't like Amarok or you think is just too much, you can try Clementine.

If you want to install it go the download page and install it with one click. 

GIMP

If you do some photography and you don't want to invest a lot of money in Photoshop, you can try installing GIMP. I use it everyday and it has a lot of functionalities.

Just use the following command:

zypper install gimp

You will need this extra package to edit RAW files:

zypper install gimp-ufraw

This will allow GIMP to edit the imported file.


Inkscape

If you like to design sometimes a really great program to use is Inkscape. Here is an example I made on a rainy sunday.

zypper install inkscape

OpenShot

If you want to do some video editing in Linux, I think the best option is OpenShot. Download it from this page.

Did you just find out that Steam is on Linux?

That's right, Steam released its client for Linux a few months ago and it looks very good.
If you want to install it you can go to this page and make a one-click install.

Here is how it looks in openSUSE:

Messenger

Pidgin

If you have had some problems with Empathy another alternative is Pidgin, it supports many protocols like MSN, Facebook, IRC, Google Talk...

zypper install pidgin

Skype

If you want to install Skype in openSUSE first prepare the installation with:
zypper install libqt4 libqt4-x11 libqt4-dbus-1 libsigc++2 libpng12-0

Then go to the download page of Skype and select the RPM version that correspond to openSUSE.
Once you downloaded the file run this command (with the version that you downloaded).

zypper in skype-<version>.rpm

Cloud y backup

Dropbox

A lot of people uses the cloud to make backups or to have many files accessibles from any computer. Go to the download page of openSUSE and do a one-click install.

Deja-Dup

Something that I love about Linux is that there are many good programs to do backups. You can sync your files with a FTP, with Ubuntu One or with a hard drive.
Again, go to the download page of openSUSE and do a one-click install.

Some tools for your system

File managing

If you download or share many files in the Internet maybe you need some tools for compressing. Here is a list of packages that you may need.

zypper install unace unrar zip unzip p7zip-full p7zip-rar sharutils rar
 

Note: If you intall the rar, unrar packages you will be able to read comics in .cbr format with oKular.

Necesito algunos programas de Windows

Wine

If you need to install some Windows programs because you can't find a solution in the opensource world you can install the Wine emulator. You won't be able to run everything but I know that you can install a lot of useful things like Microsoft Office.

zypper install wine



Virtual Box

If Wine doesn't do the trick you can create a virtual machine and install the program that you want in it. The problem es that you need an ISO image of Windows. You will need to prepare the packages to install VirtualBox:

zypper in libpng12.so.0

For 32Bits systems:

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.2.0/VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.0_80737_openSUSE114-1.i586.rpm

sudo rpm -ivh irtualBox-4.2-4.2.0_80737_openSUSE114-1.i586.rpm

For 64Bits systems:

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.2.0/VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.0_80737_openSUSE114-1.x86_64.rpm

sudo rpm -ivh irtualBox-4.2-4.2.0_80737_openSUSE114-1.x86_64.rpm

Programming (a.k.a "Why don't you compile?")

For people who use their machine for writing code, here is a list that you use for installing some basic packages for programming:

Essentials

First of all you want to install some basic packages that allows you to compile, this packages include gcc for example

zypper install gcc make bison

¿gcc is too old school?

Clang is a great compiler for C and C++, it has the same syntax that gcc but it has a nice output:

zypper install clang

Geany

zypper install clang

Geany

Un editor simpático que reconoce algunos lenguajes de programación.

zypper install geany

Eclipse

If you want to program in Java the only thing that you need to do is install Eclipse.

OpenGL

If you're planning to do some programming using OpenGL you must install the "freeglut" package:

zypper install freeglut3-dev

And you're good to go. Enjoy your new install!