Installing Firefox 3

Installing Firefox 3 on OpenSUSE

Tutorial Level: Beginner

Hands down one of the best and most reliable internet browser has been Firefox, and Firefox has become the default browser for OpenSUSE systems. After a long wait, Mozilla has finally delivered their newest version, Firefox 3. The great thing about this version is that it comes with a 1-click installer for OpenSUSE. With the release of OpenSUSE 11.0, many have decided (including myself) to upgrade; others have declined this offer. The great thing is that Firefox 3 can be easily installed on both versions of the latest OpenSUSE: 10.3 and 11.0. Below are the 1-click installs for both of the OpenSUSE versions.

Firefox 3 for OpenSUSE 11.0

Firefox 3 for OpenSUSE 10.3

Installing the Latest Version

Please note that the above links are for version 3.0-1.1 of Firefox and they may be updated in the future. To download the newest Firefox version directly through YaST, we must first add a new respository if it is not already added. To do this, open YaST for your application list or by typing yast into the applications runner (Alt+F2). Once there, scroll down to the software category, and click Software Repositories. Once there, click the Add button to add a new repository. Select HTTP… in the first prompt and then click next. For the repository name, set it to something like Mozilla or Mozilla Rep. For the server, set it to: download.opensuse.org. The directory on server will varry for your version…

OpenSUSE 11.0: /repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_11.0/

OpenSUSE 10.3: /repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_10.3/

Once done, click Next to refresh the repository and then the process will be complete. Now, open Software Management under YaST. Wait a few moments for the repositories to load and a list of installable software will appear. Type firefox into the search field and in the left column, the latest version of Firefox should appear. If you already have Firefox installed, the button in the middle should say upgrade, otherwise, it will say install. Click the upgrade/install button and then hit next to download and install the package. Once it is complete, exit YaST. Close all your Firefox applications, and open a new Firefox browser. You will likely be presented with a list of add-ons that may not be compatible and a license agreement. Read through the agreement if you wish and then select agree. Now Firefox will have a new look and new features. To view the new features of Firefox 3, view the following link…

Newest Firefox Features

Now you have the latest version of Firefox installed on your system and are ready to view the internet. To see all the newest information about Firefox and to customize new add-ons to your browser, view the Firefox home page.

Loading Programs on Startup

Starting a program on Startup

Tutorial Level: Beginner

Loading a program when your operating system can be important for security reasons, be essential to a server or simply convenient to the average user. Whatever your needs, automatically starting a program when you load your operating system is a great tool for all users. In OpenSUSE, these programs are loaded through what are called sessions. These sessions are the same thing that load a specific desktop environment, such as Gnome or KDE, when you boot into OpenSUSE. Now that you know the background to sessions, let’s create some of our own.

Creating a Session

Creating a session of our own is actually quick simple thanks to the layout of OpenSUSE. First, find your Control Panel. Due to the fact that Gnome and KDE have their control centers in different locations, one of the best ways to load the correct control panel is hit Alt+F2 and to type control. This should narrow down the search to a handful of choices. Pick the choice labeled either Control Center or Control Panel. Once you find the proper program, hit the Run button to load the panel.

Now that the panel is loaded, we’ll give the search field a bit of use. Type into the field: sessions. Click the option labeled Sessions under the system category. Now, a new window will appear with all the sessions that run when you login to your username in OpenSUSE. Let’s create a new session to start the instant messenger, Pidgin. First, click the button labeled + Add. For this example, make the name Pidgin and the comment Instant Message Client. The command line has the option either to load a location or a command from the terminal. For the instant messenger example, type pidgin as the command and then hit the OK button. Now, the next time you login with your username for OpenSUSE, pidgin will start.

Other Options

There are also other functions that you can perform in the Session manager. The Startup Programs tab, that we were in when we created the new session above, shows all other the applications and commands that initiate when you login in OpenSUSE. Many of these are default programs and important to OpenSUSE, so be careful which sessions you remove. The Current Session tab shows all of the sessions that are currently running as you read this. This is useful when trying to find what is running behind the scenes. The Session Options has the option (surprising, I know) automatically remember what sessions are running when you logout so they can automatically load when you log back in. There is also a button to remember the current applications running for when you logout. As stated before, sessions are an important part of OpenSUSE, but be careful about removing sessions or changing the currently running sessions as it may cause problems with your system.

Installing your Graphics Card Drivers

Installing Nvidia & ATI Graphics Drivers

Tutorial Level: Beginner

One of the first things that a new user must do when installing OpenSUSE on their computer is installing and configuring graphics card drivers. Most users use either Nvidia or ATI products, and fortunately for OpenSUSE users, there are 1-click installers available for both of these graphics cards. Although there are packaged drivers that are available directly from Nvidia or ATI, the 1-click install is much easier and easily updated by your machine. So now that you got the rundown on graphic drivers, let’s find which one is for you.

Finding your Driver

Before you can install your drivers, you first need to find which driver you need for your machine. If you do not already know which graphic card you are using, open a terminal, issue the command su and enter your root password when prompted to gain root permissions, and enter the following command…

hwinfo –gfxcard

Look for Model and Vendor to find the version of your graphic card and the creator respectively. Now that you know which vendor to use, refer to the following pages for your graphic card driver…

Nvidia Drivers

ATI Drivers

For Nvidia drivers, be sure to check if you are to use normal drivers or latency driver. The list of latency drivers can be found here. For ATI drivers, check which version you want to install and which you think would run better for you. If you are unsure, simply choose the lastest driver. Now that you know which driver to install, we need to install and configure the driver.

Installation and Configuration

Installing the driver very simple. Click the button for the 1-click install of the driver you choose, and follow the step-by-step walkthrough of installing the packages. This should only take a few minutes and simply involve clicking accept buttons. Once you have the drivers installed, reboot. Next, we need to configure the drivers to work with your machine. To do this, open a terminal window and run the command sax2 -r. This will bring up a window that has your graphics card and monitor information. If all the settings match what you want, click accept. If your screen is positioned incorrectly, hit the Test button and use the arrow buttons on the screen to move your screen to the proper location. Once all the settings check out for you, click the accept button.

The changes you have made will not take effect until you reload your graphics settings. You can either restart your computer, or reload your X-Server. To reload the X-Server, open a terminal window and login as a root user with su. Once you enter the root password and become a SuperUser, type init 3. This will send you to the command line terminal. If you are not already logged in, enter your username and password. Then type startx to reload the graphic interface. Now the settings you entered in Sax2 and the driver settings will take effect.

Text-only Installation

Installing your graphics card driver through the text-only command line interface (CLI) is very similar to the graphic interface method. First, you need to get into the CLI if you are not already there. You can simply hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or use the terminal method. Open a terminal window and type su to become a SuperUser. Enter your root password and then enter init 3 to view the CLI. In the command line, enter your username and password. Once you login, enter su and the root password again. Next, enter yast2 to load YaST (Yet another System Tool). Next, use the arrow keys to hover over Software Management (right, down) and then hit enter. Once the repositories load, hit F2 to search. Enter the following into the field depending on your driver…

Nvidia: x11-video-nvidiaG01

Nvidia Latency: x11-video-nvidia

ATI (newest and latency): x11-video-fglrxG01

Once you have found your driver, hit enter to slate it for installation and then hit F10. Confirm the installation if prompted, and then wait for the package to download and install. Once the installation is complete, hit F9 to exit YaST. Reboot your system, and then boot back into the CLI. After closing YaST, enter sax2 -r and configure your graphic settings, including screen position and resolution (see Installation and Configuration above for further details). Lastly, enter exit to logout of the root permissions, and then enter startx to load the graphic user interface.

Finding a Program Files Folder

Finding a folder in Program Files

Tutorial Level: Beginner

One of the common problems when playing a game with Wine is finding the location of the game file and what folder it lies in the C:/Program Files directory. To start, I’m going to assume you have already installed Wine, knowing how to start a Wine program, or have seen the Installing and Using Wine tutorial. Because the wine command needs the path for the program or game to start it. This tutorial will show you two ways to find the folder and file that the game requires in path to start.

Using Konqueror

Konqueror is a very powerful program for viewing directories and files. If you are using KDE, chances are you already have this program installed, and have used it before. If you are using Gnome, most likely YaST has installed kdebase3 or kdebase4 during the installation of OpenSUSE. From this point, since the KDE base packages are an essential part of an OpenSUSE system, that Konqueror is already installed. To open Konqueror, hit Aft+F2 and type Konqueror to open the program. Once the program appears, click the Home Folder link (with the house next to it). This will bring you to your /home folder. To view your program files, enter into the top address bar…

~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files

This will bring you to your Program Files folder. This is where you will you find all the folders in your Program Files directory. Now you can view the files in a folder too, also finding the file that will initiate the program you are look to start. To do this through Konqueror itself, and bypass using a terminal, right click on the file you want to start in Wine. In the drop down, there will be a option to Open With. Mouseover and click Other…. When a new window appears, enter wine into the text field. If you want the program to have its own shell running with the program (similar to if you started the program from the terminal), check the box that says: Run in terminal. Now the program will start, and save you the step of opening the terminal. Using the graphical way is for most the more comfortable way to view files, but it is not always the best, because sometimes files are hidden do to permissions. Sometimes the only way (and possibly the best) is to use the terminal.

Using the Terminal

Although using a terminal does not have the visual effects of a file browser like Konqueror, it is a very powerful tool to use when trying to find a file or directory. To do this, open a terminal window and login as a SuperUser by typing the command su and then enter the root password. The following two steps can be done as one, but by doing it in two steps, you can be kept in the directory, rather than having to reenter the path of the Program Files every time you use a command. So, first, let’s get into the directory by typing…

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files

Now we are in C:/Program Files. To view the contents of this directory, type…

dir

…Or…

ls -l

Note the second command contains two Ls (Legend) not two capital Is (Interview). Both will give you the same output. This will now show you the folders in the C:/Program Files directory. Now that you know the folder, you can find the file you are looking for by using cd. To do this, type…

cd folder

Replace folder with the folder you want to view. Note: do not add an slashes to the folder name, because doing this will not put you into C:/Program Files/folder, it will put you into plain /folder. Now that you are in the folder you want to be, type the dir command again. This will show you the contents of this folder. Now that you have folder the locations of the folder and file of the program, you can completely fill out the wine command and start the program you want to.

Mail with Evolution

Using Evolution as a Mail Client

Tutorial Level: Beginner

Mail clients are a great tool for just about everyone. They are much more convenient than repeatedly logging into webmail servers such as Yahoo or Gmail. A Mail client is simply a program you install on your system that takes your mail from your email address and places them directly on your computer. One of the most popular client is Mozilla Thunderbird. Fortunately, if you are using Gnome as your desktop environment, there is no need to download a mail client because Gnome has a program called Evolution built in. Because there is no program to download and install, the first step is connecting the mail server to obtain your emails.

Starting the Program

First we must open the program. There are two ways to do this: the first though your terminal and the other through the Application Browser. There is no real distinct difference between either method, but in a terminal window, you can monitor the output of Evolution. To open Evolution in the terminal, open a new terminal window and enter su and enter the root password. Now that we have root permissions, enter…

evolution

The second method, through the application browser can be open through two methods in itself. For the first, click the Computer button on the bottom left of the screen and Evolution will be the first program (in the left column) under Favorite Applications. The other way to open the application is by hitting Alt+F2 and when a search field appears, enter Evolution. All three methods will bring up a window entitled Evolution Setup Assistant, since this is the first we are using the program.

Setting up an Account

The first page will be a welcome screen: feel free to read it, and when you are done, click the Forward button. The next window is your information page. In the first field, enter your name as you want it to be seen. in the second field, enter your email address. Under Additional Information, you can add an organization and reply-to (like a call-back number on a phone), but check to see if the checkbox is selected for Make this my default account. After you complete this, hit the Forward button again.

For the next few steps, I will use Optimum Online’s server information as an example. The next page you will have a dropdown prompting you for a server type. Since Optonline uses a POP (Post Office Protocol), I will select the option for POP. Once we enter a server type, more fields will appear. Most mail servers have the website URL with the prefix mail. in front of it. For example: Optimum Online’s mail server is…

mail.optonline.net

Since I currently use Optonline, I would enter this server into the server field. The next field requests your username. This is the name you would use to login if you were on your email provider’s website. Commonly, this is the first part of your email address (username@mail.com). Evolution will already enter this value into the field for you when you enter your email on the username/email page. Next, set the encryption type. I do not use an encryption, so I would leave it as is. Then enter the authentication type. Most servers use a password and this will be the default value. If you want your password to be remembered on your computer so you don’t have to enter it each time you open Evolution, check the Remember password checkbox.

The next page is the configuration for Evolution. The first option will check automatically for mail once in the amount of time you provide. I would suggest you check this box so you don’t have to repeatedly hit the Get Mail button. Ten minutes is a good amount of time, so you can keep the default. The next options are for deleting mail off the server. I personally check the second box because this will remove the message off the mail server after a certain amount of days, rather than having hundreds of messages left on the mail server and possibly reaching my size limit. I set the number of days to 2, but you can set it however you see fit.

The following page is for setting up the outgoing mail server information. The first field leave as SMTP, unless you are sure that you do not use a SMTP server. For the server, enter the outgoing server for your mail provider. Many times, this is the same as your incoming server name that you entered before. If your provider requires you to login to access your email, keep the Server requires authentication box checked. If you are using a secure connection, set it in the dropdown menu. Lastly, enter your username (again, most likely the first part of your email address) and you can check the Remember password box if you don’t want to enter your password each time you send an email.

The next page will prompt you for the name of your account. You can enter any name you want: only you will see this, as it only appears under the account column in Evolution. Hit Forward and then set your timezone. Instead of search the long list of timezone locations, you can click on one of the red dots on the map closest to your own location in the world to quickly set your timezone. Once you have your proper timezone, continue to the next page.

This is the final page. If you are not sure about one of your settings or want to change a setting, feel free to hit the Back button. If you are satisfied by the settings you entered, hit the Apply button. Congratulations, you have now finished creating an Evolution account!

Using Evolution for Mail

Evolution is not just a mail client, but a personal organizer. It have the capability to store Tasks, Memos, Appointments and tuns of other information. For now, we are concerned with is the mail section. To get new mail, simply click on the Get Mail button in the top left of the window. To create a new message, click the New button (not the down arrow). The keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl+N. The last part of the mail client is the Contacts tab. To view you contacts, click the Contacts button on the button left of the window. Once in the contacts tab, click the New button to create a new contact.

One option that you can change pertaining to emails is when images are shown. Some people would rather not have images loaded in HTML emails, but for others that want images loaded, Evolution has an option for this. Go to the Edit tab on the top of the window and click Preferences. In Preferences window, click Mail Preferences in the left column (third option down). Once there, click the HTML Mail tab at the top and the second section on this page, under Loading Images, will be the image loading preferences. There are also countless number of other options in Evolution, but these are the basics for creating an account and getting started with Gnome’s Mail Client: Evolution.

Installing and Using Wine

Installing and Working with Wine

Tutorial Level: Beginner

One of the most noticeable differences between Linux and Windows is working with “Windows only” programs such as games. One of the best tools that installs and runs these programs is an application called “Wine.” Wine does not run every program and application the same way it would run on Windows, but by far, it has one of the largest database of working Windows programs.

Installing Wine

Downloading and installing Wine on OpenSUSE is very easy thanks to YaST’s software database. Before we download Wine, we need to log into YaST. To install software in YaST, click on Computer button on the bottom-left of the screen and then click Install Software on the right column. Once you enter your password and all the RMPs and repositories load, we’ll be presented with a list of software available for installation (left) and software already installed on your machine (right). In the search field, type “wine.” When you find the program, click the Install button in the center of the two columns, and then click Accept. Wine will now be downloaded and install automatically.

Installing Programs with Wine

Now that Wine is installed, let’s put it to good use. As an example, I’ll use the popular program Steam. First, we need to download the program from Steam’s website, found here (center-right of the page). Download the file to your desktop and open up a new terminal window (Applications -> Gnome Terminal). Next, we need to enter the desktop directory using the following command…

cd Desktop

Now that we are in the desktop directory, we need to initiate the installer for Steam. To do this, we need to use the wine start command in the terminal window. Try it with…

wine start SteamInstaller.msi

With that, the Steam installer will guide you to installing Steam on your Linux machine. Use all the default settings until the installation is complete. Because Wine emulates Windows, the program has now be saved to C:/Program Files/Steam/, the same way it would had you installed it on a Windows desktop. Because we have no more use for the installer, let’s remove it from the desktop…

rm -r SteamInstall.msi

Running Programs Through Wine

Now that we know the program has been installed with Wine to the Program Files, we need to use the wine command to start the program. There are actually two ways to do this. The proper folder for Program Files is really ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files. This may be confusing at first, but it will make more sense when we run the command in the terminal. First, open a terminal window. Now, use either of the following to start the program you installed (in this case, Steam)…

wine C:/Program\ Files/Steam/Steam.exe

…Or…

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam/Steam.exe

Always remember to all the add the backslash before any space in the file path because the terminal will only read the path before the space if the slash is missing. Although there are two ways to initiate the program, I would suggest using the first method. It is shorter and has a smaller chance of causing problems when starting the program. Please note that if you close the terminal window at any time while Steam or any Wine program is running, the program will close as well.

Uninstalling Wine Programs

Uninstalling a program on Wine is actually very simple. Open a new terminal window. To bring up the uninstaller window, type the following…

uninstaller

This will bring up a window with all the programs that have been installed using Wine. Click on a application from the list, and then click the Uninstall button to remove the program from Wine and your Linux machine.

Configuring Wine

This is the more advanced part of working with Steam. There will be times when working with different programs that you might need to change some settings or access your registry keys for Wine. To view your configuration window for Wine, simply type the following into a terminal…

winecfg

That will bring up a window with different tabs ranging from the graphics settings to the Libraries for Wine. The other more advanced aspect of Wine is the registry keys. You may recognize them from Windows if your have every manually uninstalled a program modified a key to change desktop affects. It is made of a tree-system, comprised of six different directories…

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• HKEY_USERS
• HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
• HKEY_DYN_DATA

These are the same categories as Windows because most, if not all Windows program require access to these registry keys, so Wine creates them itself. To view or edit these keys, it is the same command as in Windows: type into a terminal…

regedit

And a new window will appear with the registry keys.

One of the best parts of Wine is the immense amount of information found on their website at WineHQ. There, you can find documentation, including the User Guide, and one of the most important areas to look at when installing a Windows program on Linux: the Application Database. Here, you can find information, such as HowTOs and patches for different programs and games that run on Steam. It is a good habit to check a program out in the AppDB before you install it to see if it will run properly in Wine and if the program requires any patches or documentation to run.

Running Wine as Root

Please note that Wine should not be run as a root user. Running Wine as root can cause errors or other problems when using and installing pograms in software. I personally have had problems when using Wine as root, so, from experience, it can cause problems.

Nvidia Compiled Drivers through CLI

Installing Nvidia Drivers Through the Command Line Terminal

Tutorial Level: Beginner

If there’s one thing that will send most people into a panic, and I speak from experience here as well, is when the video drivers fail to load and you get stuck in your text-only CLI. Fear not, because there is a way to fix this problem through your kernel. Because Nvidia drivers are one of the most popular drivers, I will use them as an example of how to install and configure driver through a text-only kernel. Now that we know why were need to use this tutorial, let’s get started.

See also Installing your Graphics Card Drivers: Text-only Installation.

Finding the Correct Drivers

Installing the wrong drivers will be very counterproductive , so first we need to find the correct drivers. Since you cannot use your Desktop or Graphic Interface, this may need to be done on a working computer or on Windows if you have a dual-boot. The Nvidia drivers page, and enter the information for your graphics card. I personally use a GeForce 7900 GS, so for the tutorial, I’ll use the package for the 7000 series, but make sure you use your own drivers package. Once you have entered the information into the drop-downs, click the Search button. On the page that appears, find the Download link, right click on the link and click Copy Link Location. Now paste that location in a separate location and either write it down, or have it available when you go through the following processes.

Installation and Configuration

Now that we have the path to the file, start up OpenSUSE and wait until the black-and-white Command Line Interface loads. Once the CLI loads, we must first login. Login with your normal username (not root) and then enter your password for that user. You are now logged into OpenSUSE. Next, we must login as root to gain the root permissions. To do this, enter su into the CLI and then enter your root password. Now that we have all the permissions we need, enter the directory for your desktop by typing…

cd Desktop

Now that we are in the Desktop directory, we have to download the package containing the drivers. Please note that I am going to use the package information for my own graphics card, so replace the package information below with your own. To download the files, we’re going to use the wget command in unison with the URL of the package that you saved or wrote down before…

wget full/url/of/the/drivers.pkg1.run

With that, the driver package is now downloaded onto your Desktop. Now we have to execute the package so the installation process can begin. For this, we use the sh command…

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run

Now a visual guide will appear that will walk you through the process on installing your drivers. It is a relatively quick installation and the Nvidia package will tell you that you have successfully installed the drivers. Before we move on and start the graphic interface, we need to configure your screen. To do this, run the following command…

sax2

Sax2 will initiate, and the screen may flash black a few times, but don’t worry, this is normal. A prompt will appear and allow you to change the configuration of OpenSUSE for your graphics card and monitor. If your screen looks fine with the suggested settings, simply except them. If you want to change the settings, click the change button and change the settings as needed. You can also test your screen position and settings with the Test button. If part of your desktop is “off” the monitor, click the Test button and position your screen correctly. Once you have completed this, a prompt will tell you that the settings will be used next time your start X-Server. Next, we have to delete the driver package “sitting” on your desktop. For this, run the following command (replacing the package name with the package name for your drivers)…

rm -r NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run

Now that the package was deleted, we can exit the root permissions with…

exit

Lastly, we need to restart the X-Server. So enter…

startx

This will start your graphic interface and bring you to the Desktop with the icons and background as we know it. Please remember that there is guarantee that this will solve your problem that is keeping X-Server from loading, but it is one of ways to install drivers in case the drivers your are running are outdated, corrupted or there is a bug with the current drivers installed on your system.

Simple Tutorial

This is for all those who know the working of the CLI and are more experienced with Linux and OpenSUSE.

1. Find the correct set of drivers for your graphics card here
2. Copy the link location of the download link and save it or write it down
3. Load into the Command Line Terminal
4. Run wget full/url/of/the/drivers.pkg1.run (path from step 3)
5. Run sh packagename.run (replace with your package name)
6. Complete the step-by-step Nvidia installer
7. Run sax2
8. Configure your monitor and graphics card
9. Delete the installer with rm -r packagename.run
10. Run exit
11. Run startx

Folding@Home

Folding@Home on OpenSUSE

Tutorial Level: Beginner

I’ve personally been using Folding@Home for about a year now and think it is a great program. It was created by Stanford University as a means of conducting research on human cell growth to aid in finding out more about human diseases and cancerous cell mutation. Although I’ve been using Folding@Home on Windows, I finally switched over to OpenSUSE and wanted to continue folding, but wasn’t sure how to go about doing it on the new operating system. Well, after some trial-and-error, I was finally about to run the program. This isn’t a very long tutorial, but there’s a good amount that can be learned from it, and at the same time can help save lives.

Root Permissions

Please note that you do not have to install and run Folding@Home with root permissions (using the su command). You can simply skip any step that includes the su command. If you install Folding@Home as a root user, you must also run it as root; if it is installed as a normal user, you can run it as a normal user. The reason that the root permissions are included in this tutorial to show and give example of how the su command functions.

Download

Okay, now that we established what Folding@Home is, we need to download the program. I personally use the SMP version, so I’ll write the tutorial about this version of the program. First, we must go to the Folding@Home download page and find the correct distribution. Click here and download the SMP client console version 6.02; the second package on the list. For convenience, download the file to the Desktop. Create a folder called Folding@Home and drag the file into that folder. Later, when we install the package, other files are extracted, so to keep it organized, we create a new folder to store all the files dealing with Folding@Home.

Installation

Installing the package is where the terminal comes into play. If you are new to OpenSUSE, don’t worry! To find your terminal, click Computer on the bottom-left of the screen, then click More Applications… and a new window will appear. In the search field, type “terminal” and an application called Gnome Terminal will appear. Click the icon for the program to launch. Now that we have the terminal open and ready to go, we must login as a root user. To do this, simply type…

su

After your type this, you will be prompted for your root password. Enter the root password and the status line of the terminal will now appear in a red font. You are now a root user. Now we have to view the directory (folder) that the package is located in. To do this, we simply use the cd command. So, to get into the Folding@Home directory, type the following…

cd Desktop/Folding@Home

Now that we’re inside the folder, we can begin the installation. Because the package is a tgz file, we need to extract the files. For this, we must run the tar command with special parameters.

tar xzvf FAH6.02beta1-Linux.tgz

Once this command is run, two files will be extracted into the folder…

1. mpiexec
2. fah6

The file we are concerned with is fah6. Now we execute the file by running…

./fah6

The next few steps are solely based around installation questions by Folding@Home to configure your program. If you are familiar with this setup process, you can simply skip the next few steps and go strait to the removing of the package. First you will be asked to enter a username: if you already have a Folding@Home username, enter it here; if you don’t have a username, create one. Then enter a team number. If you don’t have one, hit the enter button to enter the default. Enter the default for the passkey, and then enter the default when asked whether to ask before sending/fetching work. Lastly, enter the default when asked if you want to run through a proxy and decline (again, by entering the default). Congratulations, you’ve installed Folding@Home on your Linux machine!

Removing Installation Files

Now that we have installed the files, we need to remove the original install package. To complete this, we must use the rm command. To delete the package, run the command below…

rm -r FAH6.02beta1-Linux.tgz

Now the package has been been removed and we are good to go.

Running Folding@Home

Once we install Folding@Home, it may automatically start the program in your terminal window. If it does not, or you want to start the program again at a later time, we have to manually run it. To do this, open up a new terminal (if you already have a terminal open, all you need to do it hit Ctrl+Alt+T and a new window will open inside the same program, keeping you more organized and saving space on the bottom panel). To manually start the program, run the commands below (each line is a new command)…

su

cd Desktop/Folding@Home

./fah6

And now you should see Folding@Home outputs in the same terminal window. Please note that if you close the terminal window that Folding@Home is running in, the program will close as well.

Security Alternative

Some may be uncomfortable with allowing Folding@Home accessing your files. An alternative to installing the files directly onto your user documents is creating a new user and installing it to that user’s documents. Then, to access and start the files, open up a virtual window of the other user and start the program the same way you would if you installed it to your own desktop.

Simple Tutorial

I know is looks overwhelming at first, but the tutorial above is broken down into the most basic steps. If you are a more experienced OpenSUSE or Linux user, below are the simple steps to this tutorial.

1. Download the SMP version to your desktop from here
2. Create a folder on your desktop called Folding@Home
3. Move the package into the new folder
4. Login as root in your terminal
5. Run cd Desktop/Folding@Home
6. Run tar xzvf FAH6.02beta1-Linux.tgz
7. Run ./fah6
8. Complete the Folding@Home installation questionnaire
9. Run rm -r FAH6.02beta1-Linux.tgz