I have read the other threads to no avail. I do not have GNOME installed. When I open YaST2, and search for GNOME, i get a lot of little program choices. I don't know what i need to install to switch from KDE to Gnome. Is there a reference list some where that I can use? I would also like to add that I have tried using SuSe as well as other distro's of Linux, but never found a version stable enough for me. I lost Windows on my IBM ThinkPad R51 last week, so I had no choice but to install a Linux distro on my laptop. I chose SuSe because of its supported hardware drivers. So far I love it, I just want to try out the GNOME desktop enviroment.

And lastly, what are the big differences between GNOME and KDE? Is there a place to compare and contrast functions of each?

All help is greatly appreciated.

My advice first is this:
Install Ubuntu. Great distro. Loooooves Thinkpads. (you can even get your fingerprint scanner working, if the R series has them. I'm not sure, I'm personally familiar with T-60s and T-43s.) 7.04 runs Gnome 2.16 by default.

Secondly, if you must keep Suse, (which I remind you of the deal recently signed between Microsoft and Novell but moving on) the easiest thing to do is redo your installation and tell it you want to install Gnome to begin with, I believe. As it were, when I installed 10.1 briefly I remember Gnome being the default. Did you install KDE on purpose?

Thirdly, Gnome is more lightweight, and just generally different than KDE. You can find lots of great discussion boards between KDE and Gnome (and even Fluxbox, sometimes) users about the pros and cons of each of their favorite window managers.

As a Gnome user, I can't deal with KDE because it takes too much RAM, but it (apparently) has more utilities and such.

Hi,

Go to Yast2's software management, switch the package selector from "Search" to "Patterns". Select GNOME Desktop Environment. That's it.

Next time you boot up, choose a Gnome session from the login screen. You may also want to install equivalent utilities for Gnome that you had in KDE.

Sam

PS
Please don't feel pressured to change distros, if you feel you are content with your own. Some people prefer Ubuntu over Suse. This is a personal choice, and it may or may not benefit you.

First off "Unknown" Yes I purposly installed KDE necause I heard it was easy to switch between KDE and knome, and in 10.2 KDE is the default, secondly, Why would I want to witch to Ubantoo? Why is this distro so good. SUSE has no issues with my thinkpad (as far as I have been able to tell). Also does Ubantoo support Samsung digital cameras, HP scanners, and does it have any good photo edditing software? I use my laptop mainly for my digital photo work, school, and my daughter surfs the web to view videos and photographs on it. She is a ver good artist and needs the camera and scanners to help her publish her work.

Sam, thanks for your advice, I did what you advised and presto, problem solved. I am realativly new to linux and the only Distro I have realy worked with is SuSe. I find it able to handle 99% of my tasks, but still miss cerrtain things about windows.

You're welcome. Remember that if you have any other questions (to get 100% of your tasks windows-free), don't be afraid to ask. As I've said, "if you've got a problem, it's highly likely that 15,000 people have had that problem before you".

Sam

to get 100% of my problems fixed their needs to be a way i can use some of my expensive windows apps like Photo Impact pro V10 to work within linux, also linux doesn't support guildwars
an rpg game my wife and i play on a constant nightly basis

you could try installing wine, wine is an emulator to run windows apps

Too new to this stuff...don't understand wine...heard of it, know what it is supposed to do, installed it, just don't know how to use it to install the apps

Thanks for all your help guys

http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php?catId=0 and also here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WINE Hope this helps YOU.

WINE = WINE Is Not an Emulator

Basically, it provides a layer upon which Windows-based code can be run under whatever system it has been compiled for. It's not foolproof, and only a handful of programs work properly on it, but if you need a Windows program, you should give it a try.

After installing it on SuSE (My personal favourite distro) it associates itself with most .exe files, and on all distros, it creates a Windows-like directory structure in ~/.wine for programs to be installed in.

Thus far, I've gotten Steam working under it, gotten Half Life 2 to start (Tweaked some Wine settings since, haven't gotten it running well yet), got StarCraft to run, and made Myst start, but crash quite often.

As a hint if you do try it, .msi files need the command "msiexec" to run ("msiexec /i name.msi" installs).