SuSE 9.2 - KDE hangs at "Initializing Peripherals"
 

Hello,

I installed SUSE 9.2 on a Toshiba P30-116:

PIV 3.33 Ghz + HT
1 Gb RAM
TFT 17''
100 Gb Disk
ATI Radeon 9700 card

However, during boot the KDE hangs "Initializing Peripherals". I saw there was a similiar problem with SUSE 9.1.

Does any one know whay this happens and how to solve this?

Does your computer have hyperthreading? If so, turning it off in your bios should let you start KDE.

I had this problem on a Toshiba A70.

Hi statguy,

Thanks for your answer!!!
I tried GNOME 2.6 instead of KDE 3.3 and it seems to be working OK. Except for one thing: the computer does not shutdown automatically. I have to press the on/off button.

You are right, it has hyperthreading. What are the disadvantages of turning HT off? Will it be slower afterwards?

I can say that I installed Suse 9.2 on a Toshiba M30x-166 and there was only a problem starting PCMCIA. However, using option NOPCMCIA=yes, everything installed OK. BTW, the M30x has no hyperthreading, it is Pentium M 745.

Another thing...

Is there a way to choose what desktop you want for Suse 9.2 after installation? Because I am new to Linux I had to reinstall the whole system just to change the default setting of KDE desktop to GNOME desktop.

I don't know what the disadvantages are to disabling hyperthreading. I have not noticed speed problems (although I have no comparison group). I'm a statistician and the only times, so far, that my cpu has switched to maximum speed is when testing some of the screensavers. :) I know from the SuSE documentation that ACPI suspend functions do not work with hyperthreading enabled.

The computer not shutting off sounds like an ACPI issue. You should check on that subsystem.

As for being able to choose which desktop, that should be possible. On the login screen, there should be a menu button that lets you choose from a number of desktops, if gnome is not listed there by default it should be possible to add it (it appears in the list on mt slackware system). I don't know which file(s) to edit to add additional windowmanagers to kdm's list.

I turned off hyperthreading in BIOS and now it seems to shutdown and reboot properly. BTW, first I installed KDE as suggested by suse 9.2 and there was no GNOME option at login. After, I changed to GNOME based suse and now both KDE and GNOME options appear. I think this much nicer.