[oldnemesis]

If you use openSuSE:

- The service you need to shutdown might be either gdm, kdm or xdm depending on whether you chose Gnome, KDE or XFCE;
- mingetty already installed and is in /etc/inittab, so you do not need to install it;
- no need to install rcconf, as the services are configured using chkconfig. Just type:

Code:

chkconfig xdm off

I also changed .bashrc so it doesn't try to start x when I connect to the box using ssh:

Code:

xpid=`pidof X`
if [ -z "$xpid" ]; then
        startx
fi

make sure your distro has pidof utility.

Other SuSE-specific tweaks:
1. It prints too much during kernel boot, which delays boot process for couple of seconds. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst file, remove "showopts" and add "quiet" option.

2. It starts too many servers. Even in minimal installation I had to stop portmap and postfix. You could always stop postfix unless you want to read mail from your crond. If you're not going to mount NFS shares, you could stop portmap as well.

3. Yast2 -> Network services -> NTP configuration and enable NTP server. Will take care of your time. Make sure the timezone is set properly.

4. Do not enable automatic update, you risk to get a broken box three hours before the party at your house when kernel gets updated but your ATI or Nvidia driver is not

Just my 5c.