Updated to openSUSE 11.3 KDE

I was going to switch to LXDE on the Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, but clicked the update option in a state of exhaustion. The result was a clean update for openSUSE 11.2 to openSUSE 11.3, but I still have the KDE desktop. Do I restart with a fresh install to get the  LXDE desktop, or just work with KDE?

Once I realized that I was just upgrading, I decided to let it finish. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to check the numbers for KDE. Immediately after the login, I started a terminal window and ran the free command. The initial amount of free memory was 8,324 KiB. I ran the command again, and the number went up. After all the initial login commands had completed, the amount of free memory settled at 39,816 KiB, with 338,220 KiB available from unused buffer and cache allocations.

A dramatic drop from the LXDE desktop, which showed an initial free memory of 136,552 KiB. However, the drop was not as large when taking into account available memory from buffers and caches, which was 354,580 KiB. When looking at the free memory after buffer and cache availability, we need to remember that the kernel automatically allocates memory for spare buffers and caches. However, the kernel does not allocate all of memory. As a result, the amount of free memory after adding available memory from buffers and free caches should result in a smaller difference.

The system works, and seems to be working much better than it did under openSUSE 11.2. I think I will stick with KDE for awhile, as I really do not look forward to reconfiguring all the applications. Nor, do I look forward to the challenge of getting applications like Quanta to appear in the LXDE menu. It should be as simple as putting a link for the quanta.desktop file in the /usr/share/applications directory to the actual file in the /opt directory. The only possible glitch is that the quanta.desktop file is not formatted correctly for LXDE, which would require more tweaking. At least, I know that the LXDE desktop works from the earlier experiment on the HP laptop.

As an interesting sidelight, since I had installed the desktop kernel under openSUSE 11.2, the upgrade automatically installed the new version of the desktop kernel under openSUSE 11.3.  It still installed the server kernel, but made the desktop kernel the default kernel. For anyone using openSUSE in a desktop, and not server, environment, you should install the desktop version of the kernel. The preemption settings for kernel modules in the desktop kernel provide for a much smoother desktop experience, especially when watching Adobe Flash movies. I still need to work on finding a way to play movies using “restricted” formats.