Home Desktop Gnome Edition

Continued from front page: Home Desktop Gnome has the exact same running gear as with the original Home Desktop v2.3.1 but we have changed the desktop manager. We have found for some users that the KDE desktop of the original Home Desktop buggy in areas of the Network and Internet Connection Manager, hosts some buggy scripts at desktop level, and occasionally glitches out when new widgets are installed. This new edition with Gnome is 99% bug free for the most part as it is the standard Gnome Desktop that most Linux Distros use. It aint as pretty, but its a lot more reliable. Find this new edition in the downloads area.

Home Desktop Edition v2.3.1

Continued from front page: Home Desktop has all of the beautifying features of Microsoft's Vista, it includes all of the security benefits of a strong Linux system, and is packed with lots of games and extra software that is not normally found within typical operating systems. The NiHao Studios team went to great efforts to create a fun system, as well as a child friendly system filled with education software. Download your edition of Home Desktop today.

NiHao SDM English Server Suite

Continued from front page: Not only are all of these servers available to you, these servers are very easy to setup too. With just a little server management experience one can set up a fully functioning server within minutes with the easy to use pre-packaged installers. The NiHao SDM Server Suites are presently still in development and have a planned release for 2010.

NiHao SDM Multi-Language Server

Continued from the front page: Your new NiHao system will be an embedded system that from your location and language settings the appropriate Fonts for your selected language will be automatically configured. Other than language and location strings added to this suite, it is an exact replica of its predecessor the NiHao SDM Suite. The NiHao SDM Multi-Language Server Suite will also be released in 2010 shortly after the English Server Suite edition has been launched.

Download and Burn the ISO

What you need:
You need a DVD Writer with DVD writing software installed in your machine.

Then simply download the NiHao ISO Image to your computer. Make sure you have at least 4gb free on your hard disk. Then open your DVD Writer software and burn the ISO to a blank DVD.

Running NiHao

After burning the ISO image to a blank DVD disk, leave the disk in your disk drive and reboot your computer. At reboot the disk will auto boot into the SUSE LIVE system which will run your new NiHao system directly from the DVD. This is perfectly safe and will not effect your computer at all. If you find that NiHao doesn't run well on your machine, or it is not what you were looking for; simply exit NiHao from the desktop menu and take the DVD out by rebooting your machine and selecting <BOOT FROM HARD DISK> at the NiHao boot menu and you will returned back to your original system.

Installing Home Desktop

To choose to install the Home Desktop to your system simply click the Install icon on your LIVE DVD desktop. You will be prompted for this password: eos2nihao

We recommend that you perform a fresh install to an empty hard disk / allocation. If you are experienced with Linux installations then you may of course attempt a dual boot system install, but we do not recommend this for the novice user. If you have already prepared an empty hard disk / allocation (recommended), simply install Home Desktop to this disk / allocation. Your previous operating system should (under most conditions) remain intact and will be bootable from the GRUB Boot Loader.

After Install: Drivers Missing

As perfect as the Home Desktop is there will be occurances of this. Every range of computers built are different. You will recieve automatic system messages to your desktop telling you about missing drivers. You can get these drivers simply by copying down the driver name as indicated in the desktop message and downloading them with the YAST2 Package Manager. Your YAST2 Package Manager can be found in your desktop menu.

When launching YAST2 you will be asked to enter your root password.

No Sound and DVD Codecs and Drivers

With 3rd Party licenses we are unable to pack some drivers into the Home Desktop system. But as an end user you are allowed to download these drivers yourself. We recommend that you go to your YAST2 Package Manager and download and install the VLC Media Player. The VLC Media Player corrects issues with DVD Zones and MP3 sound codecs and.....is a very fine and simple to use media player. We have included other media players with the Home Desktop but they may require that you install missing drivers. Note: Be sure to check that your Master Volume Control settings are not set to mute.

Home Desktop - My Taskbar is a Mess

If after the install of Home Desktop you arrive at your first desktop and the taskbar icons are loading on top of each other, or are looking messy....

Simply right click on the taskbar and click remove panel. Repeat this action untio the taskbar has been removed. Then right click on desktop and select Add New Taskbar. A window will appear asking you to select a taskbar type - Choose Default taskbar.

The reason that this sometimes occurs is that on first boot your video card will build the taskbar in layers disregarding the Desktop Settings. After following the instructions the problem will not occur again.

NiHao SDM Server Install - How to agree with terms?

When you are installing the NiHao SDM Suite for the first time you will be presented with a black DOS type screen showing the TOS (Terms of Services). You will need to use the DOWN key on your keyboard to scroll down to the bottom of this page. Then press "Q" and / or "ENTER" until the words "Do You Agree With These Terms" appear. Then simply type "Y" and press "ENTER". At which your install will return back to graphical mode. If you are familiar with DOS and Linux Text commands you may also use these commands to get past the TOS screen.

Help: Where is this, and where is that?

Your Home Desktop system will be different than most other systems that you may have used. But....not impossibly so. It is different but it has been designed to be user friendly. From testing we can say that given an hour or two most users will have gotten a fairly good grasp over using the system and would be competent enough to perform usual day to day computing tasks. So do not worry...this and that are still there...all you need to do is spend a little time looking around and familiarizing yourself with this new system. And....Yes it is different, but different in a better way :)

After Install: Cannot Eject CD from Drive

The Home Desktop system uses the long proven and popular mounting system for CD's and DVD's. Once placed into your machine the operating system will mount the player and later it will read it with greater ease as your machine will treat it as it would an internal disk. But such a system requires a little more effort on your part. Open your desktop menu and you will see the CD or DVD shown as a new disk. Right click on it and select eject. This does not eject the disk but un-mounts it from the system. At which you can now press the eject button on the player to remove your CD/DVD.

Home Desktop System Passwords

The passwords for the Home Desktop; ZhongWen & English are as follows:

Username: nihao
Password: nihao

Root / Admin Login username: root
Password: eos2nihao

It is strongly recommended that you change these during installation.

Home Desktop Gnome System Passwords

The passwords for the Home Desktop; Gnome v0.0.3 are as follows:

Username: nihao
Password: nihao

Root / Admin Login username: root
Password: nihaoHD

It is strongly recommended that you change these during installation.

eOS2 Gamer System Passwords

The passwords for the eOS2 Gamer Edition; ZhongWen & English are as follows:

Username: nihaogamer
Password: nihaogamer

Root / Admin Login username: root
Password: simply!awesome

It is strongly recommended that you change these during installation.

Getting more help

You can get more simple help solutions from the NiHao Forums. If you are after a bigger bite of the steak and need more technical help and guides then head over to the Open-Suse11.1 website from where you can take a peek into the NiHao running gear and learn how to make changes to your newly installed system as you may require. A list of the files packed into all of our systems can be found here.

Note: You may be asked to join Open-Suse Novell in order to participate in their forums.