this is obsolete doc -- see http://doc.nethence.com/ instead

Notes on using Novell SLES 

Installation 

Boot the CDrom, choose, 

F3 > Text-mode

(note it's F2 on SLES9 and F3 on SLES10) 

and add boot option, 

vga=791

or 

vga=773

Otherwise the KDE install process will bload the RAM and will slow down the installation. 

It's really much faster in text mode. 

In the package selection menu try, 

Filters > Patterns

and unselect (-) all, then Ok. 

To check what you're installing, 

Filters > Install Summary

Note. aaa_base is the base mandatory package 

To apply the dependencies, 

Etc. > Dependencies

To select and unselect packages there's also the Action menu, 

Action > ...

Check, 

All listed packages

and, 

Do not install any

Remote install 

Create the install tree : http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/15522.html 

Criticism 

Problems with Novell SLES, 

- starts bloated install GUI by default (much slower if only 1GB of RAM)

- text-mode install UI sucks at 80x25 unlike slackware, netbsd and freebsd.

- base system needs CD1 (284pkgs), CD2 (6pkgs), CD3 (6pkgs) and CD4 (5pkgs)

  couldn't one put the base packages on CD1 ?

- the package update system is slow and bloated

- YaST install sucks, the package selection stuff is unusable

- YaST deeply sucks.  Although it becomes better in SLES10, it has always been a pain : ugly and bugged, while providing almost 0 usability advantage : you have to write the configuration options anyways !  For example the samba configuration tool.  It's just than you got to click in some textboxes instead editing a text file... great...

- as a novell partner you get lots of commercial & marketing crap by mail.  Partner rewards points, etc.  Looks like they got more marketing guys (not architects) than engineers (just like MS has probably more lawers than engineers).

- they're spammers !  I receive 5 to 10 emails per month about commercial crap about reward points and so on.  Incredibly stressing.  And as I can't stand their website, much to complicated, I won't even unsubscribe from partnernet.