"This article will guide you through a basic SuSE 7.3 installation, and walk you through setting up a few of the Desktop basics that many users require to feel comfortable with Linux as their full time OS. I use my PC for Internet, e-mail, gaming, word processing and general tinkering about. I'm on a small home network, with a D-Link firewall providing DHCP IP addresses to my PC to access a cable modem. I will guide you through getting the Linux PC up and running with X Windowing system, getting online via a LAN connection, upgrading your browser and email applications, getting 3D video working for gaming, printer setup, and using a USB digital camera to copy images to your PC.
With a little help from Santa this season, I acquired some parts to rebuild my home PC. Building a PC, in terms of the hardware, is no different with Linux then it is with any other OS. It is wise, though, to get some info on hardware driver maturity and availability for Linux. While I have found that more hardware is recognized and properly configured "out of the box" from a new install of your favorite Linux distro, than in Windows, those odd hardware holdouts can be a major problem.
While this little step by step is specific to my hardware and the installation of a Windows 2000/SuSE Linux 7.3 dual-boot PC, hopefully some of the procedures will be of relevance to other configurations. I have used whenever possible utilities bundled with the SuSE distribution to install and configure the system. All of the configuration's and tweaks can be performed at the command line of your console, and configuration files can be manually edited using a command line editor (I prefer vi). However, in the interest of assisting the new SuSE Linux user, I have focused on the graphical install and configuration tool when possible. As you become more comfortable with the system, you may find that you prefer a simple command at the console to the launching of a graphical tool. For the purposes of this article though, we'll stick to the colorful wizards and configuration tools."
