Software Update Successful!
Feb. 1st, 2010 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuAfter consulting with the collective intelligence of the OpenSUSE forums for the last few days, I finally--with much fear and trepidation--updated my PC from OpenSUSE 10.3 to OpenSUSE 11.2.
It was quite a big leap. I'd tried to update to 11.0 or 11.1 at various points, but whenever the updated kernel started loading, I lost my video feed. The monitor went dark and I get an INPUT SIGNAL OUT OF RANGE error message from the monitor. I had no idea why, or how to fix it. I eventually learned that the ATI Radeon video card I'm using was known to have some driver issues with later versions of SUSE. There were a number of potential fixes to be found online, but after spending a couple of days struggling to get the video system working again after a major failure during one such attempted fix, I've been leery of trying.
On the other hand, 10.3 was past the end of its support life cycle. No more automatic updates. No more manual updates from the no longer available online repositories of software. Plus, my video issues were only getting worse with time. Flash videos were increasingly unavailable because I couldn't/wouldn't update my flash plug-ins for my browsers. Worse, I'd reached the point where simply trying access certain web pages (primarily those with embedded video, but also simply web pages with long URLs), my browsers would crash the entire X Windows (graphic interface) system.
My monitor would go dark for a moment, then I'd find myself at a log-in screen to relaunch the graphic user interface. It was getting to be a real pain in the ass. But I was still gunshy of messing with the video drivers because I'd had such trouble the last time.
I posted to the OpenSUSE forums, asking questions nad soliciting advice. I discovered a way to launch the 11.0 LiveCD in text mode, then bootstrap my way to a graphical interface. If worse came to worst during an installation now, I knew I could still get the video to work. So today I downloaded the .iso image for the OpenSUSE 11.2 installation DVD. I verified the MD5 checksum, burned it to DVD, reverified the checksum to make sure I had a valid image. And then tonight I bit the bullet and started the installation.
I'm now posting from my PC running OpenSUSE 11.2. It's working fine. No video issues. Hurrah!
It was quite a big leap. I'd tried to update to 11.0 or 11.1 at various points, but whenever the updated kernel started loading, I lost my video feed. The monitor went dark and I get an INPUT SIGNAL OUT OF RANGE error message from the monitor. I had no idea why, or how to fix it. I eventually learned that the ATI Radeon video card I'm using was known to have some driver issues with later versions of SUSE. There were a number of potential fixes to be found online, but after spending a couple of days struggling to get the video system working again after a major failure during one such attempted fix, I've been leery of trying.
On the other hand, 10.3 was past the end of its support life cycle. No more automatic updates. No more manual updates from the no longer available online repositories of software. Plus, my video issues were only getting worse with time. Flash videos were increasingly unavailable because I couldn't/wouldn't update my flash plug-ins for my browsers. Worse, I'd reached the point where simply trying access certain web pages (primarily those with embedded video, but also simply web pages with long URLs), my browsers would crash the entire X Windows (graphic interface) system.
My monitor would go dark for a moment, then I'd find myself at a log-in screen to relaunch the graphic user interface. It was getting to be a real pain in the ass. But I was still gunshy of messing with the video drivers because I'd had such trouble the last time.
I posted to the OpenSUSE forums, asking questions nad soliciting advice. I discovered a way to launch the 11.0 LiveCD in text mode, then bootstrap my way to a graphical interface. If worse came to worst during an installation now, I knew I could still get the video to work. So today I downloaded the .iso image for the OpenSUSE 11.2 installation DVD. I verified the MD5 checksum, burned it to DVD, reverified the checksum to make sure I had a valid image. And then tonight I bit the bullet and started the installation.
I'm now posting from my PC running OpenSUSE 11.2. It's working fine. No video issues. Hurrah!