Top things to do after installing openSUSE 12.3
¿De qué está hablando? Versión en españolOk, 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
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.
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
PidginIf 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
DropboxA 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 managingIf 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
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!
