SuSe 9.2 Bouquets and Brickbats
 

Over the last couple of months I've been trying as many distros as I could lay my hands on. The test system is a 2000+ Athlon, 1G RAM, NVIDEA TNT2, SAMSUNG & LITEON DVD, SOundblaster card, TV/ FM Card, NETGEAR 311T Wireless network card.

Early on I learnt that 'power user' distro means the thing is the barest basic install. Best to have a brick wall handy where you can bang your head in frustration. UBUNTU (?) comes to mind.

FEDORA fell off the list early because its doesn't come with kernel source on the distro. Dial up users like me will find it a nuisance to download 40meg of files that are a bitch to install.

OK, to the point.

Last Friday I installed SuSe 9.2

As far as the install went, brilliant. It did not miss a beat. Detected everything and even set up the NETGEAR card. No other distro I tried did that!

And then it told me it found the TV card!! Again, none of the other distros even got close.

Once into the desktop, I was again impressed.

I was convinced. SuSe 9.2 it is.

And then I went to shut the system down. Every other distro I tried powered the PC down.

But not SuSe. It's supposed, according what I read. It just left a message on the screen that indicated the system was down.

Damn.

What would have been a 10 out of 10 is now an 8 out of 10.

Nevertheless, I am impressed by the hardware detection. All Linux Distros should be this good on setup/ install.

What did the message exactly say? Did it tell it was goint to shutdown, or that it is shut down?

I am not sure if this will have an effect:

In KDE-control center -> System Adminsitration -> Login Manager -> Shutdown, try to change in 'Commands -> Halt' /sbin/halt to /sbin/poweroff

AFter the displaying the shutdown sequence log it terminates with the message "The system is down" on a graphic screen.

Yes, I had already tried that, but it didn't make any difference.

No matter, Linux boxes are never switched off anyway, are they? :D

regards

Tried another way:

When in KDE, I log out. Then, when in the (GUI) log in screen, click MENU> TURN OFF COMPUTER.

Same thing- PC is note powered down. Instead I get "The System is down".

I don't think it's my hardware since all the other main stream distros power the PC down OK, ie MDK10.2, FEDORA Core 3, UBUNTU, Debian.

But you didn't install with ACPI off? Strange! Sure there is no acpi=off in /boot/grub/menu.lst?

What happens if you type 'halt -p' on command-line?

EDIT: Did some research and found this: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0..._shutdown.html

I experimented with ACPI=ON and ACPI=OFF in the boot options. It made no difference.

"command not found"

The box is properly configured for a single processor.

Now, in YaST, when I hit the ACPI under POWER MANAGEMENT button I get:

"Buttons can be configured only for ACPI. Your system probably does not support ACPI and uses APM"

:scratch:

Ain't Linux fun? (Please read my signature line). :D


Thanks

I suggest you screen /var/log/boot.msg for ACPI related errors.

What about powersaved? Is it running (ps ax | grep powersaved)?

OK, it's telling me my BIOS is too old. Like me ;)

After a bit of searching I found that "acpi= force" in the boot options will fix the reluctance to power down.

That's fixed it!

Many thanks, all.

Now SuSe 9.2 get's an almost unqualified thumbs up from me. The hardware detection certainly seems second to none.

regards.