14) Installing full Multimedia Support (Also referred to as restricted formats)
openSUSE only ships with multimedia components that are open and free to use. Closed formats are not included by default but can be added with little effort.
There are two ways to do this. A) Manually adding the needed packages or B) running the One-Click install.
As on page two, you've probably already figured I'm a fan of zypper. Using it you can easily add the needed packages without the clutter One-Click can bring.
A) Install method using zypper:
This will install packages needed for DVD and popular format playback (mp3, avi, mpeg4, divx, etc...).
SMPlayer and VLC are two added players that should be able to handle most, if not all, formates you throw at them
As the packages we will be installing contain proprietary software, these can't be found in the openSUSE repositories. Packman and VideoLan are two well maintained repositories that hold the packages we need. The added # comments are added to clarify what the zypper commands will be doing.
NOTE: If you are using openSUSE 11.0 or earlier, first remove the xine-lib package. ( zypper remove xine-lib #only for 11.0 and earlier!)
Also change the repository version from 11.1 to 11.0.
su - #elevates to root
#add Packman Repo
zypper ar -f http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1/ Packman
#install needed packages
zypper install libdvdread3 libdvdread4 smplayer mplayerplug-in vlc libxine1 libffmpeg0 w32codec-all
#add VideoLan Repo
zypper ar -f http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/SuSE/11.1/ VideoLan
#add needed packages
zypper install -r VideoLan libdvdcss
#remove VideoLan Repo
zypper rr http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/SuSE/11.1/
#check registered repo's (VideoLan should not be there)
zypper lr
* The reason to remove the VideoLan repo is because it can cause dependancy conflicts with packages in the Packman repository.
B) Install method using One-Click
If you rather use the One-Click installer, here's the link :
openSUSE Community - Restricted Formats
15) Configuring application and other settings:
NTP is an excellent way to keep your system time exact.
Using YaST > NTP , set a reliable time source.
Speed up browsing! Disable IPv6 DNS lookup using the about:config page.
More tips and details found here: Firefox go slow
Get some useful add-on's, among my fav's:
Download Statusbar, Downloadhelper, Imagetweak, NoScript, PDF download, SwitchProxy.
* If you've removed Beagle, also disable the Beagle add-on.
(run winecfg as user command. Recommended is to remove the default mapping z which points to /. This decreases the risk of win32 nastiness getting placed in your Linux folders.)
More on Wine : openSUSE.org/Wine
NTFS volumes default to being read-only for users. There are a couple of ways to set it to read-write. One way is to edit the fstab mount entry (/etc/fstab) and replace the mount options with 'default'
fstab entry example:
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320421AS_5TJ0D8V9-part4 /data ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
* By default Minicom needs to be run as root. Use ' su - ' before running it.
minicom -s # use -s to set the configuration
(for com1 configure the port to /dev/ttyS0 and 9600 N 1. Save as dfl (default) and restart minicom.
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Other (non openSUSE packages)
If you need a Windows environment for certain programs, dual boot is an option. Another option is the use a virtualization software program that you can use to run Windows in Linux.
Two well known virtualization programs are VMWare Workstation (Recommended version 6.5 or higher) or Virtualbox.
NOTE: it's best to have a system with at least 1.5 GB of RAM when working with virtualization.
Good Notes
Good outline from the basics to helpful tips making the linux experience easier.