Since I regard myself far more of a normal user of OpenSuSE for the benefit of an educational charity but can work my way around these problems, though with a level of inefficiency, I can only merely list the experience so far, so that anyone who has a more detailed expertise might be able to fix one or two of them:
While certain issues have been fixed on upgrading to 12.2, others remain and new ones are added:
1. The online upgrade SBD as specified from 11.2-12.2 definitely does not function (at least not with the industry standard 64-bit Asus Z96F laptop nor an MSI netbook, nor can it then be completed after stalling by using a DVD ISO image. However, it probably was more appropriate to clear out clutter by being forced to undertake a clean install.
2. Power Management:
2.1 Battery status monitoring is now totally weird, at random reporting 4%, 46%, 68% and 100% charge and at times adding a report that the battery is broken and needs to be changed (tho maybe a correct deduction on a laptop used for a few years now).
2.2 Still, seemingly at random, but more prone under battery power (and just maybe more prevalent when OpenOffice, or now LibreOffice document is open) once power management has itself cut screen illumination when the lid might already be closed with screen lighting thereby already cut, the screen often refuses to come to life again (i.e. will not show the logon window) even if some short-term hard drive activity is noticed as a result of any keystrokes. The only option found under this quite regularly occurring circumstance is to force a crash shutoff and reboot, regardless of what that might do to any application which had been running.
3. Newly saved files, e.g. an recording recording, do not visibly appear in Dolphin, no matter how many times you refresh/reload the window. The only way to 'find' the newly saved file is to close dolphin completely, then re-open.
4. Network Manager seems broadly to function better overall, such as functioning with more modern mobile Internet/data modems (eg ZTE MF627 - though, while the modem itself is seen to log onto the mobile broadband network....
4.1 it still needs to be plugged and re-plugged into the USB socket several times before Network Manager successfully detects it. We are confident that this lack of sensitivity is with Network Manager's detection ability, not with the modem;
4.2 I am not at all sure what is the purpose of the Mobile Broadband tick-box which appears in its task-manager pop-up control panel, since if a Mobile Broadband modem connection happens to be successfully detected, it functions regardless whether this box is ticked or not;
4.3 Mobile broadband USB dongles are certainly not detected at all if they happen to be plugged in before all hard drive activity has ceased on cold booting the system. It proves to be too soon even if plugged when the system sound signal is emitted, supposedly indicating that the system has fully loaded, but instead a full reboot then proves necessary, needing to wait for that extra period before the mobile broadband indicator can possibly appear in Network Manager.
4.4 Not only will a mobile USB broadband connection be dropped after quite a short period of inactivity, unless held open by such as GMail or Skype (no complaint here since that saves wasting chargeable capacity from the provider IF on PAYG) but the entire connection with the USB modem is also lost, necessitating that it once again repeatedly be unplugged and re-plugged each time. That can get quite tedious, especially if not re-detected at the first re-plug. One also gets concerned about how durable the USB socket connections can be in any PC, especially laptops if continually having to be re-plugged.
5. Audio seems now to be even more of a pain:
5.1 Firstly, with the fully fledged KDEmixer being withdrawn, the remaining KMix interface is absolutely awful, as is also the Alsamix-GUI with an integral HDA 82801G Intel/Realtek soundcontroller; being bare of adequate control, since audio effectively runs via Pulse and not fully through ALSA and Pulse still does not provide a decent integrated alternative interface (I have no idea where gstreamer comes into the picture). KMix shows only two slider controls and is not configurable, not even to the extent of holding a set panel size. In contrast, Gmerlin-mixer is fully populated, though a bit crude. xfce4(desktop)HDA audio Mixer is neater but cannot run under kde4 so crashes out at every attempt to load.
5.2 There seems to be lack of reliable integration between whatever ALSA elements are used, Pulse, gstreamer, phonon, the System Settings multimedia configuration from the KDE menu, the Audio settings from within YaST2 and the fragmented Pulse control modules, particularly such that microphone operation can be lost between one boot session and the next unless you jiggle around with various of these separate controls. This is not handy if you regularly use Skype.
6. Micro-dry printer PPDs still confuse print resolution settings with print output size magnification, seemingly more problematic with LibreOffice (as also with OpenOffice before)..
7. Re LibreOffice
7.1 Spreadsheet Column and Row headers can get out of kilter, overlaying the first columns and rows of data, and sometimes only placing column numbers on alternate instead of every row. It seems to sort itself out by toggling these headers on and off, and/or after closing and re-opening, but then goes haywire again when the spreadsheet is next opened.
7.2 Freeze headings does get saved, but then is not implemented the next time a spreadsheet is opened. Headings must then first be un-frozen, then re-frozen.
7.3 A pity that the translation between files originally created under OpenOffice fonts could not be more accurately similar;
8. The software module supposed installed to disable the touchpad when typing continues to be ineffectual, with the cursor frequently jumping to the wrong location as the hand inevitably passes close to the touchpad (albeit without making any contact).
9. Yes, I too have been forced to dig in and read all the threads about the confused nomenclature between copy and clone copy under K3b when trying to make backups.
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