Currently running KDE 4.8.1 on openSUSE 12.1 with 3.2.9 kernel. One thing i always love about KDE is it’s customization of almost everything. You can customize it from head to toe the way you want it. In the screen shots below, i would also share my desktop settings if any one else might want to try it out.

Desktop theme: Produkt

Windows decoration: Bespin

Style: Oxygen

Fonts: Droid Sans

Icons: MaliaeSVG

Colors: Mint-RGS

Kwin beclock at the right top corner.

Cinnamon is a desktop environment introduced by Linux Mint developers/creators. It is based on Gnome3 giving you the look and feel of Gnome2 and is quite nicely done with its initial stage. Let’s have it in openSUSE 12.1, 1st of all open terminal and become root by su - . Now type:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Cinnamon/12.1/ Cinnamon-desktop

And now refresh the repos:

zypper ref

Install cinnamon by typing the following command:

zypper in cinnamon

After installation, logout and choose cinnamon from the session menu and login. There you have it…easy!

If you are on KDE with openSUSE and want to change the default login theme(by default it is SUSE theme). That will be pretty easy. In case you tried Login Screen in Configure Desktop Settings and its not working, then you can follow this post to have your desired login screen theme. Almost every theme is available on kde-look.org KDM KDE4 themes page, search around and download your favorite one. Lets say you downloaded it to Downloads folder in your home directory, extract it there. [for example this post will use KStarboard-new theme]

Now open terminal and become root by su - , type:

cd /home/username/Downloads/

mv KStarboard-new /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/themes/

Now open YaST, go to /etc/sysconfig Editor and then click on Desktop -> Display Manager -> DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME, and you will SUSE or some other value, change it to your theme folder name like KStarboard-new. Save and close YaST. Checkout the screen shot for this.

Reboot your system so that the changes take effect.

If you are editor/terminal lover, you can open the following file in terminal instead of using YaST and edit it there(via root user):

vim /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager

Look for this line [DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME="SUSE"] and add your theme folder name there.

That should do it.

I have Sony Vaio VPCCA laptop, which have hybrid graphic cards Intel and ATI. I had tried the catalyst drivers from AMD to switch the cards, but with no luck. New release of the driver version 12.1 is available and seems that it had/has fixed the issues with switchable modes. I can confirm that, i have installed the drivers and every thing just works.

Had replied to a thread in openSUSE forums with the installation procedure in detail, here is the specific post from the thread. Hope it will work for you.

Good luck with it!