Although tomorrow openSUSE-Team will announce the first realase candidate (RC1) of openSUSE 11.2, I tried install the Milestone 8 on my laptop happily.. It is not just curiousity pushes me to try it, more than that, help this project to be the bug-free release right on the schedule.

Folks said that it was no big issue to install, but mine. No worry, there are many kind people will help if you feel worries and find troubles..

Why Now?

• It is about this acer-wmi (it failed to boot except get ACPI kernel parameter disabled on boot)  and usb-serial (i could not use my 3G/HSDPA modem) issues on its kernels.
• It is about my low unreliable speed of my bandwidth..

Now, Is it OK to boot?

Of course it booted well, until i did not see the KDE 4 desktop’s coming.. I could hear the sound of KDE startup, and saw the desktop few seconds only when switching to terminal– Ctrl+Alt+Fn– though.

Yes, it is about VGA driver– radeonhd– used by this release, it failed to bring X perfecly(?). The work arround? Just upgrade the package: xorg-x11-driver-video-radeonhd from X11:/Drivers:/Video repository. It will work like a charm!

It feels like faster, smoother and more stable than the proprietary one. I’ll tell you further about this on other post.

Fortunately, it will be fixed on next release (RC1).

No bootsplash?

If you don’t find an issue on installing the kernel module (radeonhd, like i did), you will have this beautiful (bootsplash) screen:

From openSUSE

Otherwise, we have to reinstall the current kernel (through YaST or Zypper), or choose other kernel package, like kernel-desktop (the new kernel-precompiled feature brought by this release). And make sure you have the right kernel boot parameters (bolt). It is in /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

title Desktop — openSUSE 11.2
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-10-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST96812A_5PJ0C37Y-part6 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST968
12A_5PJ0C37Y-part2 splash=silent showopts vga=0×317
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31-10-desktop

The (KWin) Desktop Effect?

God bless us! It is (really) faster than openSUSE 11.1 as its overall experiences responsiveness!

Could someone show me how to prove/benchmark it?

The Eye Candy?

Ooh.. You tell me. It is awesome!

KDE4-Firefox Integration?

Cool, thanks to Lubos Lunak, and here are videos: one, and two.

KDE4-OOo Integration?

Here’s the story.

From openSUSE

Want to know more? Just install it, needs thousands of words to be told here . More will follow, we’re talking from the new one.

From openSUSE

Have a lot of fun!