Convert Microsoft to LINUX: Latest Suse Install


This section will feature info on the latest Suse Linux Distribution. The 12.1 is a vast improvement over the 9.1. The hardware detection is a lot better. Note, this detected the Realtek wireless card on a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 where Ubuntu and Debian could not detect it. It is as good as Microsoft's plug and play now. The Konqueror browser is a lot quicker and can handle all the latest Web pages. The Flash 11 player is automatically installed. Wireless support is greatly improved.

There is also available for download a live DVD for version 12.1
here.
Click on the Live DVD for X86 link. Note, you can now burn the CD onto a USB stick. If you use the standard programs available such as unetbootin, starup-disk creator, or image-writer you can have problems. Here is an absolutely foolproof way tested already on six different distributions.
umount /dev/sdb1 or
umount /dev/sdb if it is not partitioned already.
dd if=/home/victor/downloads/suse-live-12.1-iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
Note, that is sdb not sdb1. Once you use sdb1 you are putting it on a partition of the USB and that confuses the heck out of the bootloaders out there. You will get errors like:
"isolinux.bin install missing or corrupt"
"There is no CD in drive 1"
This only took a week to find and figure out burried deep in Google.

The install then is straight forward, make sure to click on the Boot settings and say no to install bootloader . You can create 3 Linux partitions of:
/ (root) /home / Linux Swap
I had downloaded the default KDE Live CD.
Enjoy and have a lot of fun! As they say in Suseland.

Note, this Suse still uses /boot/grub/menu.lst that is the old school grub which I find a lot easier. Here is a sample of my menu.lst here

Note, I am still sticking with the old grub instead of the new grub2 . When the new grub2 is installed for example in Linux Mint 16 it put my video in a funny mode so that the other systems such as Fedora will no longer boot properly.