So, let's say someone has the latest version of openSUSE on a machine from the mid 00's: It has a single-core 1.2 GHZ processor, 512 MB of DDR2 memory, an AGP video card with 128 MB of VRAM, and pretty much old hardware. Then they buy a new computer with the latest tech: A quad-core CPU on a different socket, 8GB of DDR3 memory, a powerful PCI-E video card, new motherboard chipset architecture, etc. However, the user doesn't feel like re-installing the operating system from scratch. So he either moves the hard drive of the old computer into the new one or clones the partition using a disk cloning tool, then powers on the new PC.
My question is if openSUSE will still be able to boot, and automatically recognize all of the new hardware. Having bigger values for frequencies and amount of memory shouldn't be a problem, but the installation existed on a totally different architecture (chipset, sockets and more). When the system boots again, it comes across technologies it never seen before or was configured for. Unless Linux is that awesome and automatically aware of everything, it will likely be stuck at boot time with a console. But maybe there's some tool you can access from the recovery console to re-detect and configure all hardware.
When I'll upgrade my computer (not too soon) it won't be anything as extreme as my example (my current PC was made of the latest tech 3 years ago). Still, I will be getting the latest hardware again... which means a new chipset and CPU design, possibly a new video card architecture, and likely DDR4 memory instead of DDR3 (not sure if DDR4 is already a common standard at this day). I know I'm lazy but I don't wish to setup my system from scratch right after I get a new machine. So how can I make my openSUSE install adapt to all the new hardware and boot like nothing happened?
My question is if openSUSE will still be able to boot, and automatically recognize all of the new hardware. Having bigger values for frequencies and amount of memory shouldn't be a problem, but the installation existed on a totally different architecture (chipset, sockets and more). When the system boots again, it comes across technologies it never seen before or was configured for. Unless Linux is that awesome and automatically aware of everything, it will likely be stuck at boot time with a console. But maybe there's some tool you can access from the recovery console to re-detect and configure all hardware.
When I'll upgrade my computer (not too soon) it won't be anything as extreme as my example (my current PC was made of the latest tech 3 years ago). Still, I will be getting the latest hardware again... which means a new chipset and CPU design, possibly a new video card architecture, and likely DDR4 memory instead of DDR3 (not sure if DDR4 is already a common standard at this day). I know I'm lazy but I don't wish to setup my system from scratch right after I get a new machine. So how can I make my openSUSE install adapt to all the new hardware and boot like nothing happened?