Well, I learned some more today in trying to install the software I use all of the time. As a long-time Kubuntu user I was used to how they set up their repositories, I know all of the command-line tricks for using apt, and none of that is any use to me now.:) But I knew that would be the case, so I persevered.

The first thing I learned is that there are a lot of repositories. I was trying to install a password manager I like, KeePassX, and finding which repository it was in took forever. openSUSE has these repositories called BuildService, and there are a bunch of them. As it happened none of them had what I wanted. Then I found one called Packman, but that didn’t have it either. Finally I added opensuse-contrib, and that had what I wanted. So now I have about 20 repositories configured. I can’t tell whether that is a huge mistake. I did notice that for some reason every repository has a GPG key that is untrusted.

Then I had one piece of software that had to be compiled. Again, everything is different. Instead of a package with everything included, you have to install the components, like gcc and make, separately. Or at least that is what got me going. If you know better, please share the knowledge.

My one big unsolved problem from today is that my favorite Chrome extension, G+me for Google Plus, is not working. I have installed it, removed it, reinstalled it, and it just isn’t working. At this point I have to call it a day, but I will try to get it going again. All of my other Firefox and Chrome extensions/add-ons seem to work fine. So, the day is mostly a success, but a few things to work on yet.

Well, I just installed OpenSuse 12.1 on one of my computers. Another one of my New Year’s resolutions was to try some other distros. I picked OpenSuse because it is a KDE distro, and I definitely prefer KDE. I am hoping to find that RPM is better than it used to be. So far, YAST looks pretty good to me. I used it to install Samba and connect the computer to the rest of my network, and it was really easy to do, in fact I thought it was easier than in Kubuntu, which has been my distro for the last 5 years.

I figured out how to add a repository, KDE:Extras, and I installed a plasmoid I really like, Veromix. But I cannot figure out how to get it onto a panel. I really like this particular plasmoid, so if anyone can explain this I would appreciate it. I tried installing it directly on the panel using Add Widget, but that errored out on me, hence my attempt to add the repository and get it that way.

I know I will stumble over how to do things in this new distro, but I am going to keep with it for at least a few months and give it a fair chance. It is time to learn some new things.