Update to new version
 

I encountered many problems after installing openSuSE12.1 from 11.2. I have since installed 11.4 and have been getting updates from Evergreen. Evergreen support should be valid until Nov 2014, but none have been detected for quite some time now.

I have read negative reviews of the latest openSuSE12.3. and my question therefore is whether I should upgrade to the latest distro in order to be up to date with security issues. I have NOD32 antivirus & spyware installed & running. If I choose to stay with 11.4, how vulnerable am I without updates support?

My existing OS is openSuSE 11.4 Linux 2.6.37.6-24-desktop (KDE 4.6.00 "release 6")

Thanks in advance for any advice.

There is no real mechanism for upgrading from the "evergreen" 11.4 to the current 12.3

back up data
reformat to ext4 or LVM
do a new clean install of 12.3
-- use the KDE4 Desktop if you do not want to fight with the mess of Gnome3

OpenSUSE 12.2 still has 199 DAYS left
see :
http://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime

as for installing and running a AV program
they are looking for Microsoft Windows viruses

good for a mail server or to keep you from giving your Microsoft Windows friends a MS virus , hidden in a shared file .

ClamAV dose a great job for running a mail server

and for scanning downloads for MS windows viruses .

( clam is in the suse base repos )

OpenSUSE 12.3 is good, I don't know what bad review you are seeing. Go with KDE, Gnome is just no there yet.

Good luck to you

Hi TroN-0074
Can't remember where the review(s) were picked up, but my experience with 12.2 was disastrous. Firefox didn't work (it actually disappeared) and USB disks cannot be mounted when plugged in. Also MyComputer did not show any drives at all. Apart from the hassle of having to round up restricted codecs & nVidia driver had a bug which wouldn't save settings. The list goes on...

I have installed Mint13 Maya (LTS) 2 days ago and most of the codecs were included out of the box; restricted extras were easy to get/install. Beauty is that support is up to 2017. Only drawback is eset NOD32 antivirus (still have 2 yrs paid subscription left) knocks out my internet connection after installation (3 times with same result). I can't figure out why this is so cos its such a shame that I have to fall back on clam.

Thanks for your reply. If 12.3 lets me play my mp3s & videos/youtube etc. I would love to stick with SuSE as it has been my distro of choice for a number of years now.

I do everything in my laptop with OpenSUSE 12.3, I watch movies and play my music and lately I have been reading my eBook in it too. My internet connection is too slow for youtube but I did installed the flash plugin to allows me to watch videos there.

Codecs are no installed in OpenSUSE by default like Linux Mint does but you can get them by enabling the repo. Also my laptop is fully supported in OpenSUSE 12.3, I had some sound issues back when I started in OpenSUSE 11.4 but those problems are long gone.

If Linux Mint is working for you I would encourage it you to stay with it, I dont see anything wrong with that

Good luck to you.