Well I downloaded and installed SLED 10 SP1 and I have it working, including multimedia MP3 and DVD support. I have an ECS GeForce6100M motherboard and an add-in GeForce 7900 video card. I had/have a couple of remaining problems with the install.

Problem one, which I solved was with the built-in nvidia video driver. The nv driver simply never worked, at all! At the end of the install, when you can select or change your video setup. Nothing ever caused video to be displayed, no matter what I tried. So, on restart of X, the screen was just blank as in the video tests. I did find a very useful command to get video working using Sax2. That command was:

sax2 -m 0=vesa

I never thought of using the driver vesa, I just kept trying to use the vesa video modes and reseting the video driver setup. Next time you have troubles with video going blank, give this command a try. Once I could see something, I could download the kernel source files and install the nvidia video driver which works great!

The next problem I only solved after installing a different network card. The built in network of the ECS motherboard uses the MCP61 nvidia network hardware. I get this to work under SuSE 10.2 by manually adding in the network interface and using the nvidia FORCEDETH driver. While this driver seems to exist in the older kernel of SLED 10 SP1, I just could not get the built-in network to work. Actually, it did work one time, but I never could figure out why or reproduce the success after a reboot. If anyone has a suggestion to get the nvidia MCP61 adapter to work, just let me know.

After all of the trouble to install it, I am not sure it would be better than using openSuSE 10.2, but I need to work with it a while to say that for sure.

Thank You,

Maybe compare the kernel configurations of that kernel with which you had the network interface working, and that with which it didn't work; maybe there's difference in some compiled modules, or their versions?

By the way, what does "sled" stand for -- SuSE Linux: Enter the Daemon?

Thank you for your suggestions. My motherboard supported one pci express socket, so I installed a D-LINK DGE-560T Gigabit adapter I found that works with SLED, SuSE 10.2 and Windows XP with Vista support promised in the future. It works great, but it set me back $56 plus tax. By using the pci express slot, it gave me back a pci slot I had/have my tuner card installed in which is what I wanted to do.

Thank You,

SLED = SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop