openSUSE desktop unusable

I recieved a laptop from a friend. He had a virus. All files were hidden by said virus, and as he had everyhing of use backed up and was looking for a reason to get a new one, he decided to give it to me.

First off, this is the first time I've ever attempted to use Linux (or anything other than Windows). I wanted to start off with easy and user friendly. I used the "Which distro is right for me" tool. Top five (in order) were Ubuntu, openSUSE, Kubuntu, LinuxMint, Mandriva. From what I read they are all fairly similar as far as user friendliness. Decided on openSUSE based on looks in all honesty.

I installed it. Did a fair amount of reading on partitioning and had to set up my own partitions, I came up with:

/ (20GB)
/swap (2GB)
/home (remaining, about 278GB)

It was fairly easy install, point and click, self explanatory for pretty much everything other than partitioning. Shouldn't be a problem right? Unfortunately, wrong.

When the computer rebooted after installation it never actually restarted. It gave me a blank screen. I reinstalled twice same thing. So I finally "restarted" myself by turning off once I reached the black screen, giving it 20 seconds to rest, then turning it back on manually. It gets through the GRUB and brings up the boot screen. It gives me the option of running "Desktop" or "Failsafe" (I'm assuming failsafe is like running in "safe" mode on windows?). If I select Desktop (which is default), I get the same result. If I select Failsafe it runs just fine, although as I'm not 100% familiar with what its functionality and graphics should be I can't say for sure. But internet connection isn't a problem, using any tools available directly on Linux isn't a problem. The only thing I couldn't do was download and install Google Chrome as an internet browser.

I have no clue what to look for. I've reinstalled 5 times now, all with the same result. I've tried 32-bit AND 64-bit versions. Is my partitioning ok? Is there something specific I'm supposed to select for it to be able to boot into a normal desktop environment? The only thing I can see that I can't tried is installing with "automatically log in" selected. I require a password as I have a 3 year old son who I don't want just playing on the keyboard and messing something up.

Thanks for the help!

I think I've narrowed it down, but don't know exactly how to fix it. Basically just before you click for the final install, and it shows you all of your options, it has a message in red under booting. It says the MBR is being installed on a partition more than 128GB. I've tried to change which partition its being loaded on to no avail. Is there a better way to ensure the MBR is being loaded on the /boot parition (which I added and has 200MB)?

pbcranium202 said:

I think I've narrowed it down, but don't know exactly how to fix it. Basically just before you click for the final install, and it shows you all of your options, it has a message in red under booting. It says the MBR is being installed on a partition more than 128GB. I've tried to change which partition its being loaded on to no avail. Is there a better way to ensure the MBR is being loaded on the /boot parition (which I added and has 200MB)?

Click to expand...

You don't need to worry about a failure because of installing the MBR to a partition bigger than 128 GB.

The 128 GB limit only applies to pre-2003 boards.

Corrupted disk?

Laptops can be a little more fussy. I had similar experiences when I went distro-hopping for old Dell Inspiron.

If for nothing else, for the sake of eliminating the possibility of hardware problems, I'd try a couple new distros and see if any of them install properly.

Also, google your computers type and model number with 'linux' and see who else has gotten a distro to work on it.

In the case of my ancient Inspiron, no distro worked until I tried Puppy Linux, and I was able to deduce the video controller and keyboard was forked because of some weird behaviors.

Check out:
-Mint (Personally, I still like Isadora (LTS)
-Debian Stable