Until now, I was trying to avoid SUSE/OpenSUSE Linux distros for reasons that goes beyond technology. I must say OpenSUSE pleasantly surprised me with the installation process. Little that I can complain about. Of course, installing Oracle XE 11.2 (beta) was my first post-installation step:

$ cd Downloads
$ wget  http://ftp.novell.com/partners/oracle/sles-11/orarun-1.9-172.20.21.54.x86_64.rpm

[->Download Oracle XE 11.2 Beta into "Downloads" directory from otn.oracle.com.]

$ unzip linux.x64_11gR2_OracleXE.zip

Check if bc (GNU command line calculator) is installed and if it's not install it:

$ sudo zypper install bc

then it's as easy as:

$ sudo zypper install oracle-xe-11.2.0-0.5.x86_64.rpm 
$ sudo zypper install orarun-1.9-172.20.21.54.x86_64.rpm
$ su -
# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure
# exit
$ nano $HOME/.bashrc

and add line at the end of file:

. /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh

Optionally, you can configure Apex. You’ll find shorcut “Get Started with Oracle Database 11g Express edition” in Application panel. Don’t forget to turn off firewall (or better yet configure firewall to allow access to 8080 or whatever port you chose).

If you want to add your account to dba group that’ll allow you to connect “/ as sysdba” without a password, then:

$ su -
# usermod -a -G dba alesk