I wanted to test the 'UPGRADE' mode out. Some folks had reported troubles with it.
I chose the 'install nearly everythng' option and 1873 programs (3 hours) later it was done.
YaST2 runs very smoothly but I did encounter some problems.

The first thing I tried was KDE 2.2 and Konqueror.
KDE 2.1 came up when I fired startx as root, and the app which steps you through the upgrade to KDE 2.2 worked beautifully.
KDE 2.2 is Awesome!

The new Konqueror displays UT perfectly!

When I logged in to my user account KDE 2.2 came up without going through the KDE 2.1 --> KDE 2.2 upgrade app. My desktop icons were missing. The menu structure was gone, and when I tried to fire any app I got "missing " messages. About the only thing I could do was log out.

In the console mode there is a big, beautiful green shaded boarder around the black on white console screen. It displays a cute SuSE logo. So big, in fact, that my 17" monitor is effectively reduced to about 12". Being cute has its disadvantages.

I use OSS for sound. The new kernel is 2.4.10-4GB. My OSS, which was for 2.4, doesn't install on 2.4.10-4GB. Not to worry. I get free upgrades till May of 2002.


There were some other annoyances. The new kernel is totally modular, which has both good and bad points, and my list of installed modules doubled. If YaST2 sees a 'feature' in your BIOS or a capability in your hardware it installs a module for it, automatically, with default features. After it is installed you can configure or remove it. They did this because a lot of folks complained, in previous releases, that so-and-so wasn't installed.
It saw my disabled AC97 mobo sound system, even though I had diabled it in the BIOS, and it saw my SB Live! peripheral card, which was active, and reported an IRQ storm of its own making.

This weekend I am going to do a clean install because I want to use ReiserFS, which avoids the necessity of an UPS, and SuSE 7.2 was the first time I didn't install it since SuSE began adding it to their distro. It was worked flawlessly on the SuSE 6.4 box we have in production here. That box has been up 24/7 for over a year without a single problem or failure. Even when Ben Laden Squirrel blew out the HV transformer supplying our office building and we lost total power for awhile nothing was lost. And because I always do clean installs as a way of removing the debris of my various putterings.

Gonna have fun, fun, fun this weekend! :)
JLK

Nebraska Dept of Revenue