Reinstalling SuSE 10.1

Welp, I was getting somewhat bored with my computer, so I decided that I would reinstall SuSE today. I finally got my dual-layer 32-bit/64-bit SuSE 10.1 DVD, so now I don't need to switch CDs every few minutes. That will be nice. Anyway, this time I plan to document the quirks that I run into as I attempt to get my laptop back to the state it was in before all of this mumbo jumbo.

First off, I was able to install SuSE earlier today.. Everything seemed to be going well up until I should have logged in the first time. The login screen never came--it just showed the 'busy' cursor for a few minutes. Then I restarted the computer and it did the same thing. Then I decided to reinstall again... just because I could. The same thing happened, even though I chose the GNOME setup that time (whereas I chose to use KDE the first time). Eventually it dawned on me that the 3D acceleration drivers I used before required that I share some of my real RAM with my video card. I thought it might be a good idea to try disabling that business and seeing how things went on only the dedicated video RAM. It worked. I logged into a great-looking GNOME setup and played around for a bit. I noticed that my synaptics touch pad thinger (mouse) wasn't responding too well, and I'm not really a big fan of GNOME to begin with. So I'm in the process of reinstalling SuSE for the third time today--this time with KDE. We'll see how things go this time.

The installation has finished, and now I'm working on getting my wireless to function. I had previously acquired the appropriate 64-bit drivers, so those weren't hard to get back. I installed the ndiswrapper package that came with SuSE 10.1, extracted the drivers, and installed them. My laptop locked up the first time I tried to modprobe the ndiswrapper system, but it works ok now. I can see the wireless network here on campus but I can't do anything with it yet.

I suppose my time is up for now, but I will continue this post later.