Do as I say, don't do as I Do.

The Opensuse DVD seemed to have more relevant apps that I had initially observed. On closer inspection of the rpm folder I found the Smart App manager, the unrar application and the Opera browser.
All of the three were among the first apps that I downloaded after the installation. One point needs to be highlighted, these apps do not appear during the installation because the default selection filter is set as "Patterns". This need to be changed to "Package Groups" to reveal a better grouping of apps.

As I had myself mentioned a few posts back, one of the first steps should be to browse through the app list in the app manager, before commencing online downloads.

Opensuse 10.3 DVD

The biggest fear when downloading the 4GB+ iso image was data corruption. But, thanks to the data verification built into the BT protocol, the repeated interruptions did not create problems. The installation was smooth. The biggest difference between the CD iso and the DVD iso was the inclusion of many server modules that I would not have needed anyway - so I am thinking this is a huge waste of time.
Further confirming this feeling was the wine installation which for some reason would not work properly. The package is there on the DVD, unlike FC8, but after installing the package, I am unable to launch the exe.. Since Opera and Proxomitron are central to my browsing experience, this is a major drawback.
Intersting is the fact that Realplayer 10 is included in the DVD. Thinking that atleast this package would come with the required codecs, like VLC media player (which is not included), I installed RP10 too. But it would not play AVI files, like the other onboard players like Kaffiene and 3 more media players. This makes Opensuse inclusion of RP 10 look inane.

I may fall back on the live CD of opensuse and install it to the hard disk from there, since past experience has shown that atleast in that case Wine was working properly.

Update:
It seems the installation type makes a difference to the final system health. Since Wine was not usable, I reinstalled the OS, this time adding Wine right at the installation phase. Now Wine is working fine.

FC 8

Didn't have any other DVD, so decided to install FC8.
FC8 was irritating for the following reasons :
1. There is no control panel, just a System menu to manage the hardware. This is less userfriendly.
2. fdisk command does not exist.
3. I thought that the larger installation media would include many apps that I would otherwise have had to download, but Wine was missing - a glaring omission.
4. Only gnome and KDE as window managers, XFCE was a worthy inclusion.
5. No easy way to manage partitions. Unlike some other root level apps that can be launched from the menu by the user - and the root password subsequently provided, the disk management menu will not launch at all. Combined with the failure of fdisk, mounting partitions was an uphill task.
Another annoyance, no K3B.

Since I have been in Opensuse 10.3 for the longest time, I am currently downloading the DVD image of the same. Hopefully, it will come with Wine.

Games with ntfsresize

Resizing with the GUI was a breeze, but for some reason I felt this overwhelming urge to try using the ntfsresize tool to do the same job.
Since Ntfsresize will not proceed with a "flagged" NTFS partition, I had to boot into XP to get the chkdsk /f routine done. Ntfsresize is a deep tool which can first estimate the amount of reducing that can be done, and then do it without really writing stuff to the disk, and then finally doing the whole hog.
ntfsresize -fi /dev/sda will give the reducable size of the partition.
ntfsresize /dev/sda -n -s XXXXM will do a dry run of the process of reducing the parition to XXXX MB
And without the -n option the actual process is launched.
The -n option is a good way to check if there would be any hiccups during the process.
The major issue with ntfsresize is that it does not actually make changes in the partition table as well. This means that while the partition would have effectively been reduced by transferring data existing at the end of the partition to other areas, and updating the MFT to reflect the changes in the addresses, the Parition table itself still shows the old size.
Therefore after the process is completed, ntfsresize suggests ways to modify the partition table to reflect the new size. These instructions are important, and it is best to write them down before proceeding. One critical area which could create problems is in the way fdisk displays partition sizes by default - as cylinders. ntfsresize explicity warns the user to change this behaviour of fdisk for a successfull completion of the resize. Fdisk needs to be set to display partition information in sectors.
Once this is done, the old partition can be deleted, and a new one created which starts at the same sector as the older parition. Ofcourse the final size has to be more than the figure used in the ntfsresize command.
The problem with fdisk is that it renames paritions without informing the user, and this causes a lot of heartache since the system is rendered non bootable if the partition names and positions are not in sync. To rectify the renaming, again fdisk needs to be resorted to, and since the system is not booting this means getting a live CD for this purpose.
The final word is that this is a rare instance where the GUI proves to be a better option than the command line.