openSUSE running on a MacBook

Lately I got a request to blog more about the progress of KMess, and I've been scratching an itch on it. Since we're about to release a "KMess 2.0 beta 2" release I'll delay that for later today/tomorrow.

The train from work to home also started to get a bit boring so I've decided to install openSUSE on my MacBook. I really wanted to do this because KDE 4.2 is looking so sweet. Running OS X didn't feel right anymore at all.

The setup was a bit difficult due to EFI-partitioning being messed up, but the actual install was easy. In case you're looking for a HOWTO, the openSUSE wiki pages give you everything you need. Most hardware seams to be working, including: bluetooth, wifi, audio, compositing, video out, special keys, sensors, iSight webcam (requires firmware). There are some quirks remaining though: at the login I briefly see some video memory garbage and the synaptics touchpad sometimes gets locked after suspend to ram.

However, now I can have some fun in the train, show pictures to friends easier, potentially expose Linux/KDE4 to more people, read cached e-mail, etc... Perhaps I could code somewhat, but most of my energy is still spent on my daily job and the renovation of my apartment in the evenings/weekends. I'll blog a bit more about that later.