The installation settings that appear allow you to select either the Overview or Expert tab. Review the settings on these tabs. The following steps describe the options on the Expert tab, which provides more detailed information than the Overview tab:

9. System. Select System to probe your computer hardware. You get details about the type and model of each hardware item on your computer. You can save this information to your hard disk (if there is an available partition) or to a floppy disk. Click Details to see further information about any selected item. You might find this information useful if, for some reason, the hardware is not properly configured after the install is complete. It will give you information you need to search the Web or ask a question in a Linux forum about your hardware problem.

10. Keyboard layout. Make sure the language/country associated with the keyboard you are using are properly identified.

11. Partitioning. Partitioning is very important, especially if you want to protect any data currently on your hard disk. Select Partitioning. openSUSE recommends a partitioning scheme. (If your disk is already partitioned, openSUSE tries to use that scheme.) You can simply accept that scheme (choose Accept Proposal As-Is and click Next) or elect to create a custom partition setup.

The Expert partitioning selection enables you to use a partitioning interface that is very similar to Disk Druid. See the description of partitioning in Chapter 7 for information on partitioning your hard disk. If you ever plan to move your partitions around with a tool such as Partition Magic, you should assign your Linux partition to the ext3 file system type. (If you are an expert and want to use the fdisk command, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get to a shell, run fdisk, and then press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to the graphical installer.)

12. Software. Select Software to see a list of packages available to install on your hard disk. The openSUSE install CD offers various groups of software, including graphical software, word processing and document production software, applications for software development, and much more.

Choose a group to see the specific packages in each group. Figure 10-3 shows the preselected packages associated with the openSUSE Base System group. Check marks indicate which packages will be installed. If you want to customize the standard installation, it's a good idea to look through this list to see what you are getting. If you change any of the selections, click the Check button to make sure that all packages which other packages depend on are being installed.

The YaST software packages module used for adding, removing, and finding out about software packages during installation is the same one used on a running openSUSE system. In either case, you can find out a lot of information about packages that interest you. With a package selected, click tabs in the box at the bottom-right corner of the screen to see its description, technical data (its size, packager, and so on), dependencies, and version numbers.