Hi,

I thought I would like to try the latest release of openSUSE and downloaded the .ISO file which I burned to a CD.

When I booted my desktop machine with the live CD there was only a command asking me for a login name and password instead of a desktop. The same CD in a friend's machine boots and produces the GNOME desktop.

Could anyone suggest why I do not get the desktop on my machine but am asked to login and give a password instead, and how to get from the command prompt to the desktop.

I'd suspect your video card or other hardware is not being fully utilized or not enough for Gnome. Try the KDE version maybe.

Many thanks for your advice jefro. I think that for the moment I will abandon any idea of using Suse 12.1. If the live CD will not run properly then I doubt if an installed version will either

Live cd's are a great way to test. Remember you have to burn them at the very slowest speeds. Some laptops don't read the disks very well if burned slightly off. Be sure to use good quality disks.

Also laptops are and have been the most difficult to get linux on. They are unique to the company that made them.

If you want you can post your specs for a better guess as to what is wrong.

Hello again jefro,

The machine that won't display the Suse 12.1 desktop is my desktop machine. However, I acquired a laptop at Christmas and had thought of making it a dual boot machine, but before I could do anything about it the hard disc crashed and the laptop had to be returned to the supplier.

I have now got it back and, hopefully, it will last for more than a couple of days before crashing. The machine is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 2500K with 4GB RAM, a 500 GB hard disc and an Intel Core i3 2310M CPU running at 2.1 GHz.

I was proposing to use Gparted to make a 100Gb partition on the drive, create in it a Linux swap partition and another partition of around 50 Gb formatted ext4 and install Linux. I have never done anything like this before so I am prepared for it "all to end in tears" although at the moment, I don't see why it should. As I have absolutely no experience with openSUSE I was thinking of installing Ubuntu to begin with as I have used that a bit.

Personally I like to use virtual machines on newer systems. Be sure to run a few live cd's on this before you attempt an install and be sure you know about any hidden partitions that you may want to keep (needed to return to oem state).

I am not even sure you'd need a swap file or partition.

Use windows to shrink the drive.

I have the same problem and don't know how to handle with it

What problem is it?

Might as well post it on a new post as it might be different?

Hi jefro

I have installed Virtual Box as you suggested but am a bit worried as to where the virtual OS is stored. The desktop machine that I am using is also used by someone else and I won't be able to handle any problems that arise because the virtual OS has mucked up his precious Windows 7 or taken up a lot of disc space. I read an article about installing Virtual Box on a USB memory stick so I did that but it gives a lot of error messages. It is not the Virtual Box as supplied by Oracle but a portable version adapted from Oracle's version

You have more problems than that. Even the portable version needs admin to install it last time I checked so your system is not secure (or is it his system is not secure) All users need to be running at lowest level which is the standard user in windows 7 to help prevent issues.

Virtualbox is a great tool but all tools take up space. I have never seen an issue where a virtual machine damaged the host. It is possible but I'd think more unlikely than any other way of using a new OS. In a normal install the virtual machines end up in the users name folders Virtualbox VM's or something like that. You can run them from almost anyplace however that has read write. That includes usb and networked drives. Can run live cd's from the cd/dvd drive.

Not knowing the portable vm you have I can't guess what you have. I have not seen a good portable virtualbox, the one that was out there was blocked by sun or oracle. The only true portable emulator is qemu. It is slower but can be used on very locked down systems.

Go ahead and repost on a new post to help separate this issue.