Version:
12.3.4 (2013-02-27)
Copyright © 2013 Novell, Inc.
Permission
is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the
license is included as the fdl.txt file.
If you upgrade from an older version to this openSUSE release, see previous release notes listed here: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Release_Notes
These release notes cover the following areas:
Section 1, “Miscellaneous”: These entries are automatically included from openFATE, the Feature- and Requirements Management System (http://features.opensuse.org).
N/A
Section 2, “Installation”: Read this if you want to install the system from scratch.
Section 3, “General”: Information that everybody should read.
Section 4, “System Upgrade”: Issues related to the process if you run a system upgrade from the previous release to this openSUSE version.
Section 5, “Technical”: This section contains a number of technical changes and enhancements for the experienced user.
For detailed installation information, see Section 3.1, “openSUSE Documentation”.
In Start-Up, find step-by-step installation instructions, as well as introductions to the KDE and Gnome desktops and to the LibreOffice suite. Also covered are basic administration topics such as deployment and software management and an introduction to the bash shell.
Reference covers administration, and system configuration in detail and explains how to set up various network services.
The Security Guide introduces basic concepts of system security, covering both local and network security aspects.
The System Analysis and Tuning Guide helps with problem detection, resolution and optimization.
Virtualization with KVM offers an introduction to setting up and managing virtualization with KVM, libvirt and QEMU tools.
Find the documentation in /usr/share/doc/manual/opensuse-manuals_$LANG after installing the package opensuse-manuals_$LANG, or online on http://doc.opensuse.org.
Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if availale, to install such an update. A pre-installed Windows 8 is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.
Background:
Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data
gets written to the UEFI storage area. Nobody really knows how much "too
much" is, though. openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than
the bare minimum required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the
UEFI firmware about the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream
Linux Kernel features that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot
and crash information (pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless it is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends.
By default, you use the YaST Network Settings dialog (yast2 network) to activate NetworkManager. If you want to activate NetworkManager, proceed as follows.
The NETWORKMANAGER sysconfig variable in /etc/sysconfig/network/config to activate NetworkManager has been replaced with a systemd network.service alias link, which will be created with the
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
command. It causes the creation of a network.service alias link pointing to the NetworkManager.service, and thus deactivates the /etc/init.d/network script. The command
systemctl -p Id show network.service
allows to query the currently selected network service.
To enable NetworkManager, use:
First, stop the running service:
systemctl is-active network.service && \ systemctl stop network.service
Enable the NetworkManager service:
systemctl --force enable NetworkManager.service
Start the NetworkManager service (via alias link):
systemctl start network.service
To disable NetworkManager, use:
Stop the running service:
systemctl is-active network.service && \ systemctl stop network.service
Disable the NetworkManager service:
systemctl disable NetworkManager.service
Start the /etc/init.d/network service:
systemctl start network.service
To query the currently selected service, use:
systemctl -p Id show network.service
It returns "Id=NetworkManager.service" if the NetworkManager service is enabled, otherwise "Id=network.service" and /etc/init.d/network is acting as the network service.
The SYSLOG_DAEMON variable has been removed. Previously, it was used to select the syslog daemon. Starting with openSUSE 12.3, only one syslog implementation can be installed at a time on a system and will be selected automatically for usage.
For details, see the syslog(8) manpage.
With
openSUSE 11.3 we switched to KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) for Intel, ATI
and NVIDIA graphics, which now is our default. If you encounter problems
with the KMS driver support (intel, radeon, nouveau), disable KMS by
adding nomodeset to the kernel boot command line. To set this permanently using Grub 2, the default boot loader, add it to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT kernel default load options line in your /etc/default/grub text file as root and running the terminal command
sudo /usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
for the changes to take effect. Else, for Grub Legacy, add it to the kernel command line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, also done as root. This option makes sure the appropriate kernel module (intel, radeon, nouveau) is loaded with modeset=0 in initrd, i.e. KMS is disabled.
In the rare cases when loading the DRM module from initrd is a general problem and unrelated to KMS, it is even possible to disable loading of the DRM module in initrd completely. For this set the NO_KMS_IN_INITRD sysconfig variable to yes via YaST, which then recreates initrd afterwards. Reboot your machine.
On Intel without KMS the Xserver falls back to the fbdev driver (the intel driver only supports KMS); alternatively, for legacy GPUs from Intel the "intellegacy" driver (xorg-x11-driver-video-intel-legacy package) is available, which still supports UMS (User Mode Setting). To use it, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and change the driver entry to intellegacy.
On ATI for current GPUs it falls back to radeonhd. On NVIDIA without KMS the nv driver is used (the nouveau driver supports only KMS). Note, newer ATI and NVIDIA GPUs are falling back to fbdev, if you specify the nomodeset kernel boot parameter.
By default, systemd cleans tmp directories daily as configured in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf. Users can change it by copying /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf to /etc/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf and modifying the copied file. It will override /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf.
Note: systemd does not honor obsolete sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/cron such as TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR.
The SuSEconfig.postfix was renamed as /usr/sbin/config.postfix. If you set sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/postfix or /etc/sysconfig/mail, you must manually run /usr/sbin/config.postfix as root.
In Gnome 3.6 use the following workaround to set Shift or Ctrl+Shift as shortcut keys for input source selection:
Install gnome-tweak-tools.
Then in the 'Typing' section, at the very bottom, find the 'Modifiers-only input source switch' option, where you can set Ctrl Shift_L, for example (meaning, Ctrl key and left shift) or Shift_L Shift_R (meaning both Shift Keys).
This is also being tracked in the upstream bug report https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689839.