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SuSE Presents The YaST2 Package Manager
AnonyMouse writes "SuSE presented the brand new version of YaST2 which includes a new package manager for the upcoming SuSE 8.1. OSNews posted an article about it, pointing off the mistakes made by SuSE in the design of this new package manager." Eugenia's review seems unduly harsh to me, but you can look at the screenshots and judge for yourself.
"Eugenia's review seems unduly harsh to me, but you can look at the screenshots and judge for yourself. " If you _can_ judge a program solely by its screenshots, you probably don't even need to.
How many TLA is Linux gonna end up with? We dont want to be overbearing to newbies, so lets not collude them in TLA Soup.
Not as glitzy as WinXP's "Add/Remove Programs" but it's uncluttered and seemingly easy to use. Finally a step in the right direction.
Is it free or proprietary? I seem to remember it was proprietary. If it has not changed, then it does little good to GNU freedom, and even if it may make Linux more popular, it would be a fragmented popularity, so none the better in the end.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Is there some requirement that states that media reviewers of an operating system must modify its default color scheme and appearance in such a way as to make the user interface appear as undesireable as possible?
Yes, the user interface is configurable. But the distributor spent a great deal of time deciding on defaults that will appeal to most of its customers. It's unprofessional to review a product and post screenshots with modified settings.
Am I going insane, or this woman judged the package manager only by some snapshots? Does she want us to take it as a serious analysis?
Oh... wait!! It is the same woman that cannot make her Gentoo GNU/Linux work and then blame the package system, because they are source and not binary based!!!
That this package manager does not FORCE anything on you. If you dont want to know about versions and such, simply ignore them. If you dont want to search for which packages contain a certain library, then DONT!
The reviewer seems to believe that since HE is confused by the screenshots, that everyone will be. Personally, I find the shots encouraging! This manager seems to have a LOT of power, and honestly, it seems to be fairly straightforard in its design. (as much as you can tell without using it.)
I really wish people would refrain from reviewing things based solely on opinions of screenshots. I realise that opinion has a LOT to do with shaping a review, but to pan a product, simply because the screenshots confuse you seems both stupid and short-sighted.
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
In my mind, the only reason why there are different distributions is because there are different kinds of users. I think that Red Hat is probably the best choice for new Linux users... installation is trivial, the learning curve is pretty gentle. If you're a Linux newbie, might as well get Red Hat, especially if you're not a programmer type. You're more likely to have a smooth ride.
My point is that I think that most of the viewer's complaints were made against features of YaST2 that seemed overly complex, but I think that for the most part, most of the complaints weren't valid. For the kind of user who would use SuSE, it's probably just a slicker way of installing the OS, and I'm sure that SuSE users will appreciate it. For those that would be intimidated or confused, there are other avenues to get up and running with Linux that may be less daunting.
I trust this will be a product that will kick some ass. Well ... SuSE always kicked ass.
It's very intersting what this product will trigger and what RedHat will do in response. Does the Linux competition wars start here?
Imagine giving a presentation on the Linux GUI to a BEos user group. Other than that Eugenia does a great job.
Everything which if commercial is better in her little world. Freedom means nothing.
In her world GCC sucks because ICL6 optimizes better and VC++ has a pretty editor bundled (never mind that those are c and/or c++ only and VC can't even compile my code!).
Everything sucks especially when compared to BeOS (something about moving windows around which isn't 'smooth' enough or whatever under any other OS).
Valgrind is 'better than nothing', but a mere toy compared with PurifyPlus (closed source and only $4800 for a unix license!) because... well, her husband who happenes to use PurifyPlus said so (guess there's no reason to think he'd rationalize it's superiority, especially if he paid $4800 for a license :-).
I'm amazed her opinions gets so much attention, they mostly seem skin deep to me.
This quote sums up the reviewer's whole attitude: "you can't be a Unix and try to sell your product to plain users too."
Seems the reviewer's upset that Suse is, well, a Linux distro. Her prescriptions for dealing with dependencies suggest she's never used apt, either.
And pointing at Windows as a good example of installation behavior is just silly. On Windows, dependencies are shipped with the application, and sometimes you wind up with system libraries getting overwritten with older versions. And sometimes the older version's better, and gets overwritten with a newer one. Microsoft's had to write new features like "Windows File Protection" because of this.
On one point, I will agree: an installer or package manager should be as simple as it can be. If you install a package, any dependencies it requires should be automatically installed.
But all this stuff is a solved problem. It boggles the mind that people would rather use their own wierd solution than build on apt.
As a SuSE user, I see that new package manager as a step forward, it solves a lot of problems that I had with previous versions, add a lot desired features, and at least for me seems that will make things easier.
For the usabilty point of view, well, I think no package manager yet scores perfect, but anyway is too much noise for screenshots that could be intended to show how powerful can be that new version.
While i can admit that the package manager is too complicated for the averege user it reflects something vital. Versioning and installing of programs in linux needs a standard that makes it esier to install applications. I have no problems whatsoever but i can imagine how frustrated a newbie could get. It should be possible to change the versioning system to someting more coherent and easier. If you polish todays system it wont help the underlying problems of dependencies and versioning. automatic download of depending packages solves the problem but in a very advanced way. There must be a simpler way to fix this. Small programs should be compiled statically since an increse of a couple of megs is well worth not having to grind your teeth over missing packages.
HTTP/1.1 400
I wish Apple fans would just go away and use their own OS and stop telling us how to make ours.
Someone at SuSe needs to read a book on UI design... I couldn't make head nor tail of what those dialogs were trying to tell me, and I'm used to Linux. A newbie would probably reformat and install Windows if presented with that.
Hopefully it was just a beta he was looking at and most of those dialogs will be consigned to the trash where they belong.
The author evaluates the product from the screenshots, kinda-like the slasdolts who rant without reading the story....
Please, note, folks: it's not out yet. SuSE actually listens deeply to its customers, and if people don't like it, it will be fixed (of course, SuSE listens more to the real customers who hang out at the suse-linux-e mailing list which generates >200 messages a day.)
Please note, also, that SuSE is not designed for the "Average Joe", which the OSNews.com review brings up all the time. SuSE is designed more for the intermediate-professional level. One piece of evidence for that is the existence of a NCurses (i.e., console) version of YaST2.
Eugenia Loli-Queru, the author, also bitches about the ability to remove system libraries and about the ability to find which pickage provides a certain library (or what needs it). Frankly, I find that a lovely feature, and will be sure to use it.
The author ends with the question: "Does this truly solves the problem for the customer?" The answer is a true yes (IMO), because SuSE's customers are not first-stage newbies. As a longtime SuSE user, I have found that if SuSE has to choose between power and simplicity, power will win, and I applaud them for that.
As one of the few Linux companies with a _profitable_ software division, there's real concrete proof that SuSE knows what they are doing. At least wait until the product launches before writing a scathing review...
It is very easy. Pay for regularly scheduled upgrades from your vendor every 2-3 years. If you want it to have behave like Windows, you have to treat it like windows. Just because you can't download the nightly snapshots of windows libraries as source can compile and install them yourself in whatever order you choose whenever you feel like doesn't mean Linux has an inferior installer. You don't have to choose every beta package individually every week, and even if you do, Debian and Mandrake have free applications that make it a breeze. If you want Redhat or SuSE or tell you what you want, their installers have buttons that say "just do it and tell me when it's done"
of using 'apt' in conjuction with Yast2 on SuSE 8.0
At least there was a menu option for yast. Yast is only wierd if you aren't used to it. Like everything else. And I guarantee that all dependencies will be shown and automatically taken care of when possible.
Red Hat is probably the best choice for new Linux users
That runs contrary to my experience. Mandrake is far easier on the newbie than Red Hat, which is targeted more at the experienced crowd. SuSe is in between Mandrake and Red Hat in ease of setup/use for the newbie. Red Hat is targeted towards the programmer/hackers out there.
I do agree that most of the complaints were a bit premature, given that the reviewer never used YaST2, even the older versions of it (5.0 came with YaST1).
Anyone who thinks that Windows has it all nailed on DLL (library under Linux) versioning has never done much with Windows. Windows does hide everything under the covers about versioning, which makes thing seem simple. Just wait until something goes wrong and you have no easy way of telling who changed which DLL, and when. Microsoft has been adding features to track this kind of thing, because even they couldn't debug many DLL conflicts, since they involved non-Microsoft products. This results in many (or most) re-installs of Windows.
Mandrake, SuSe, and Red Hat, in order from newbie to expert, are the distros that are readily available on the shelf, at least in the USA. Red Hat in particular, with their pricing policy for support and updates, targets corporate accounts more than the newbie crowd, who are often just trying things out.
Her article. I would have hoped that she would at least wait to get the real thing before trashing it.
yay! SuSE
The reviewer clearly doesn't have A CLUE! That's an extremely useful functionality. I can certainly empathize with trying to install an rpm that isn't listed in YaST...because often times it breaks because of a missing dependancy...and it usually takes AGES to find what package it's in!
So... clearly the reviewer is just spouting on this point or, more likely, simply doesn't understand what it means.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
All her reviews are negative. Even back in her BeOS days. She is the worst kind of critic. What's that saying about "...those who cannot do...are critics..." or some such thing
I'm certainly no friend of either SuSE in general or YaST in particular, but after reading this article, I am left with the uneasy feeling that this was just not objective journalism, but in fact outright bashing, and I'm kinda saddened by this. is this really necessary? Debating things, even in a controversial way, is certainly a good thing, but let's try to not get personal - the last thing we need is this kind of mudslinging amongst ourselves.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
My first reaction was that the reviewer was, yes, being unduly harsh by expecting a complex problem to be magically made simple. And calling a user interface cluttered just because they didn't understand everything about it at first glance.
But then I realized what they were getting at. The software is probably easy to use and powerful for people who have lots of experience and have already done things the hard way many times. But those are the people who *least* need a new package manger! Linux is being increasingly promoted as a system that is suitable for "desktop" users, i.e. users who just want to use a small set of programs and don't want to spend time configuring their computer or learning how everything works. These are the people who need attention now. So, really, anyone who creates a brand new package manager that doesn't address the needs of those users is completely wasting their time (and ours).
They've taken the time to re-invent a rather complex wheel (functionally, it's not much different than other package managers available) while what they should have been doing is creating something far simpler, but putting more thought and care into it. What people increasingly need is something that just asks what software (or, better, what *kind* of software) you want to use, with a minimum of choices, and then proceeds to install it with a minimum of fuss and bother.
It doesn't have to be fine grained. It can install a few extra things just in case because most people have big hard drives and we're not talking about creating a stripped down web server or firewall here -- it's a desktop system. It shouldn't bother the user with versions and dependancies -- just automatically install the latest stable version of everything that's needed (and somehow keep it updated!) And it shouldn't ask which server to use; instead it should silently query them for ping times and current load statistics and then use heuristics to choose the best one.
But if such software existed, could we trust it to get everything right? Only, if the developers put enough effort into it, testing it thoroughly, defining rules and heuristics to work around and streamline all common situations (as identified by extensive testing), and updating those rules and heuristics as things change. Unfortunately it's not very glamourous work and the most vocal users are the "power-users" who would probably be the least appreciative. But maybe if it were done really, really well then everyone could appreciate it on some level, at the very least by recognizing that it furthered the acceptance of Linux by the average computer user.
This is the second time this week I have seen Eugenia express a knee-jerck opinion on something without putting much thought into it. The first was calling for a user friendly Gentoo but that's a different argument. I don't care who you are - calling a program a "UI disaster" without even actually using it is VERY irresposible. As a reporter she should be doing due dilligence and research before forming an opinion or dare I say "review" on a new piece of software. The good people at SuSE are working VERY hard at trying to make managing binary packages easier and here's someone slamming them before it's even out the door. This is irresposible reporting at it's worst. OSNews has become a soundboard for Eugenia's opinions and she has no problems shelling them out at her every whim. This was the last article I plan to read at OSNews. I'de prefer to get unbiased news elseware.
Sincerely, Former OSNews Reader
Have a Happy.
There must be a simpler way to fix this. Small programs should be compiled statically since an increse of a couple of megs is well worth not having to grind your teeth over missing packages.
Or perhaps the more standard libraries should be combined into larger units. One might note that, in fact, libc is really a large collection of quite diverse utilities but it would be a nightmare if they were separated into distinct files.
I know, personally, if I were creating a commercial product for Linux I would statically link as much as possible/reasonable, both so as not to run the risk of compatability issues and for a "fewer moving parts" solution. For anything I didn't statically link, I would include the shared library as part of my package.
Well it's not really that difficult, but it does require some thought.
The main problem with the screenshots is that they seem to be of obscure features rather than the ordinary things I would do all the time.
apt-cache search
apt-cache show
apt-get install
apt-get upgrade -u --fix-missing
That's all I need 95% of the time.
I'm confused by what the color scheme was meant to represent, and what the problem is with the project versions.
These screenshots are obviously designed by programmers for programmers. That's why there is a screenshot of dependency hell. A marketter would not have included it. On the other hand, I trust open source because I know the developers are going to be honest even if it doesn't make business sense. It would be nice to fix dependency hell, but it can't realistically happen. Microsoft fixes it by controlling the entire process and by releasing new versions less frequently than even Debian. Linux is developed too fast, and by too many different people for the problem to go away entirely.
"Actually, all the user needs to know is that there is a new version available. Nothing else." I disagree, I sometimes wonder what version is going to be installed. They could make all the new versions a different color, that way everyone wins.
The article let's windows off too easily. I have never liked windows update. It always makes me nervous. To download a patch to active X, I had to turn on active X. How do I revert changes? It never tells me what it is doing to my system. These days windows update seems to be turned on by default. It pops up when I use other people's systems. Windows update is like X-10 ads without the buxom babysitters. I don't think it ever gives any information about what program is going to upgraded. I never know if I should press yes to upgrade, or if it is going to trash the system.
Eugenia's articles are great. We need more discussion about user interfaces.
Mommy, I'm scared! Them bad old boys at SuSE told me what is available for my server and what I have! I get so confused when I see all those styles of versions an not standard ones like 2000 SP1 or NT SP6 or (fill in the blank)!
How can anyone make the silly assed proposals this guy did? What? Translate all of the versions of each package into a standardized set of SuSE versions? How then can I tell what version I chave compered to Red Hat, or the real package itself?
Silly Silly MS folks should go figure out needle point or something if this stuff is too complicated for them to grasp. They certainly shouldn't be playing with computers if they truely want to work with toasters!
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
redhat is a server distro.
most newbies don't run servers.
mandrake is a desktop distro aimed at end users.
sheesh.
Shouldn't it be named YaYast instead of Yast2?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I could not count the number of times when I downloaded a software package that I could not install because I didn't have widget-02.so on my system, but there is no indication of what package contains that file. If the file is so important, why not include it IN the package?
Wow. Lots of people posting about SuSE who don't appear to actually use it. I want to make just two points. First, while I understand that their installers are not GPL'd, I also understand that this is what makes them a profitable enough company to be stable. I don't want SuSE to be like Mandrake, asking for handouts. I want Linux to survive, and companies teetering on the edge make me uncomfortable. Second, YAST is not new (obviously), so any hype about managing packages is overstated. YAST has done that for a while. But what is new, and -- sorry -- what I and other customers asked for, is the ability to search inside a package for libraries and such. For me personally, I wanted to get Xine and Xmms working from a compile, and there were cascading dependencies. I didn't want to compile everything. So it is NOT that SuSE put that there because they screw up dependencies and have "advanced search" as a bandaid. They have it there (at least in my case) so that I can select a library, get all the sub-dependencies taken care of, and then I only need to use gcc for the app itself.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Did you even read the article?
He complains about regular users being able to render a system unbootable by letting them remove core system libraries. He's also very concerned about the lack of auomatic resolving of dependencies.
Props?
There's a reason that people like Gates and Ballmer do not walk out in front of their share holders and say, "I'd like to give mad props to our development teams for these bitchin' features!"
No one would take them seriously.
Sure, this is a cheap shot, but my reply to individual idiocies in the article would probably have my submission rejected for sheer length.
Plus, I don't have time to make snide remarks laughing at non-existant problems in this software. I've got to go dump core, you see. I'll be sure to think over the body of the article, however, as I sit upon the porcelain debugger.
It all depends on your newbie. If your newbie is computer-literate, they can install SuSE 7.3 over FTP.
:) But that's getting a little OT... )
My newbie could get around Win32 adequately. His home box always seemed "slow." He saw KDE 3.0.3 running on my Gentoo box, and noted I was always raving about Linux and how he should try SuSE. So, he went home, and grabbed SuSE 7.3 bootdisks, on his own. He then did everything the installer asked - I just gave him some names of IRC clients and the name "KDE", and he installed it all himself. And that was YaST1. (Which IMHO was a better package selector in ncurses, but apparently it works nicely again in 8.1's YaST. I've installed a 7.2 and 7.3, ran 8.0 for some time, but I've just recently installed Gentoo. I love it
In any event, later, SuSE apparently installed sendmail so he could send email, and he could run pine and successfully send me email.
So is he a brighter newbie than normal? Or is Eugenia a dumber newbie? I think that SuSE gets high marks in terms of usability for me - my one gripe about 7.3 was that it didn't start XDM/KDM/GDM automagically. (I love that word...) It was fixed in 8.0. And it used YaST2 for installation under X or some FBDev... it was a dream to upgrade from 7.3 to 8.0. I just hit "upgrade", fed it its 7 CDs (HEH), and it went. He's a convert now. (I've been a convert for 4 years - now I only boot win2k if there's a game that I wanna play - WineX is helping with that, love it already! - or... well.. I don't boot win2k otherwise!)
Happily,
pi
I've been using it exclusively on the desktop for 2 years and on a few servers at work. This is a step in the right direction for the distro. In SuSE 8, the developer's sought to become more compliant to the LSB (Linux Standard Base) and to streamline their distro. Prior to 8.0, SuSE was sporting both Yast and Yast2. Yast was a carry over from ealier distro's which included an NCURSES based package manager (among many other things). Yast2 provided a clean GUI that could be run under X or via NCurses at a terminal (or over SSH...great!) allowing for easy system updates and administration for newbies and exerienced alike. Those who don't like Yast can turn it off and take responsibility for managing the system manually. With 8.0, Yast was removed from the distro and a BIG complaint from their user base was the loss of the Yast1 package manager. This clearly is a response to their user base to integrate a package manager into Yast2 (and a powerful looking manager at that). Please. If you don't use SuSE refrain from the constant "apt" this and "emerge" that. SuSE works very well with apt4rpm if you so desire and if you like Debian or Gentoo (I don't have the patience, it was fun to get it working, but when I'm building several workstations, Gentoo ain't happening), then use them. Linux distro's can peacefully coexist, and as an admin and desktop user of SuSE's distro, I'm glad to see a GUI and console package manager re-integrated into the distro. I'm sure it will only get better.
It ain't free software. I'll stick with the distros that actually care about the community that supports them.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't know how many of you frequent OSNews, but Eugenia is always very critical of Linux, Java, OS X, or anything not Microsoft or BeOS.
I personally think it is poor reporting to post such a rancorous review of a program based entirely on screenshots. In her forum section, she admits to having never used YaST, so the review is based entirely on nescience, sensationalism and a dislike for anything Linux (although she regularly denies it).
Eugenia has a bad habit of telling her readers to f**k off and die and deleting posts she doesn't like, so it won't do any good to try and reason with her to be more intellectually honest in her articles. It's best just to take this horrid review with a grain of salt.
YaST is a very good tool, and from the screenshots, they have fixed some things that needed to be fixed. It looks very good to me and I look forward to trying it out when 8.1 is released.
tgz packages are hard to find, but of course they are basicly a tar ball that you unpack in /
/usr/path/to/files/ then gzip program.tar and rename it to tgz. easy and simple. But isnt that the same as a rpm?
so to make a package you can use Checkinstall or you can make your own by doing tar -cvvf program.tar
keanmarine.com
They need to help the Wine project port Dreamweaver 4.0 to Wine/Linux, and include it in its next release.
uh, no.
With power comes responsibility. I welcome more information and control over the packages that are installed. I have tried many of the popular distributions, and I often find packages that I never use but are installed by default in the distributions. These packages are potential security risks and uses up valuable disk space.
I have used SuSE 6.x - 7.x in production and have found the tools included to be better and more comprehensive than the most popular distributions. And SuSE does not charge for online updating.
If you don't know which packages you want to use, use a default selection.
I've been using the beta versions of 8.1 for a bit, and I was sceptical about this new version of YaST's package tools. SuSE have dropped the Slackware-derived package series', and opted for grouping. This concerned me, as I've become very used to the series system since I started using SuSE (6.3).
,it's a lot faster to use, no more tabbing between sections and remembering which key to hit with ALT, it moves around the interface with the cursor keys :)
However, when I actually used the new tool (gosh, soneone basing a judgement on using it? Whatever next...?) I found it really easy to use, more importantly, I was able to select the packages I wanted to install extremely quickly, and then go and make a coffee while it got on with installing them. Anything to reduces the time before I go get a coffee is a good thing!
One great thing is you can finally turn off automatic dependency checking. Sometimes you just want to force an install of something that you know full well clashes with something else, previous versions of YaST wouldn't let you do this, but now you can ust turn off the dependency checking and away you go. So, if you wanted to do that, you could leave that package till the last one to select, so everything else has it's dependencies verified, turn off the checking, add your 'extra' package, and away you go.
I've not tried it's YOU functionality, yet, I tend to use Fou4S anyway, so I'm afraid I can't comment on that.
Oh yes, the ncurses version of YaST generally (not just the package tool) is vastly improved
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
Self-important journalism. Let's take a few examples..
Firstly, they decry the fact that YaST2 doesn't simplify the version numbers. And *then* they get upset that YAST2 does try a simplification using colour. YaST2 says "We're trying our best here, and it seems to work pretty well" where petulant reviewer mumbles something about hating versioning systems on Linux. Frankly, it seems they don't understand the nature of open-source.
Then they complain about a search feature to see which package provides a given library, and tries to convince us that that's only something 'power users' need - personally, it was one of the first things I learned to do with the RPM tool when I installed Linux for the first time - non-standard packages off the net would often complain about missing libraries.
To add to everything else, this article is written by someone who by their own admission hasn't used the tool yet, and is going purely off screenshots. What a retard.
Score:-1, Funny
However:
Look what the lack of standard versioning scheme throughout the open source community is forcing SuSE to do [...] A commercial OS would have enforce such a standard on all its engineering teams
What is she smoking exactly? There is no Windows standard for version systems. Every app comes with it's own scheme. There is not even a scheme for Windows itself: Win98, Win2k, WinMillenium, WinNT4, Win3.1, WinXP. Ask a newbie to put those in order. Their apps version system is similar "clear".
Eugenia sounds like a womans name to me...
It is only if you select Manual package selection that you even see the package manager.
If you simply accept the default, or just use the other predefined options it skips over the package manager completely.
And incidentally, the earlier versions of the package manager DO automatically handle dependencies.If you select a package, it will automatically select anything it depends on for you, and then tell you that it has done so.
You can of course go back and override these automatically selected packages if you are feeling brave.
To get into that mess shown in the last screen shot would have taken quite a lot of deliberate effort to "vandalise" the work done by the package manager.
They explicitly prevent other distributions or private parties from selling Yast. So why bother? This is how they repay those that created all that software for them that they can use because of the GPL? Lowzy.
Try Gentoo, RedHat, Mandrake, Xandros or some other distro that embraces your freedoms.
This sig intentionally left blank.
SuSE is easy to install, on the same level as Mandrake I would say - a few clicks with the mouse, the DVD goes whrr-whrr-whrr for a little while and it is installed and ready to use.
/usr and /opt is really nothing. This way I never have to install anything again, just remove a few unneeded daemons after install.
ONLY IF the intermediate to expert user wants to tinker, can he start the package manager and start tinkering. The whole point is that it is still outrageously easy for the novice, but that SuSE have made the package manager much more powerful for the more experienced user who has some tinkering wish.
Actually on my old days I have started to always select "everything", I have a 60GB disk and a few gigs of
I once installed another distro which came on one CD and had an "extras" CD and while it was easy to install I had to spend two weeks downloading all kinds of things I needed afterwards and discovered was lacking as I started using my new system.
Things like these (among others):
:)
"Advanced search: Which package provides that library my program needs?" Do you truly think that Joe User needs or should be forced to know or search about this? If your answer is "yes", then, Mr SuSE, you got no clue about desktop system design.
Well...the thing is, SuSE is really aimed at companies (they want support contracts!) with professional sysadmins. It is used on the server a lot, and if it is rolled out on the desktop it will probably be done by a companies admin.
So, if something breaks, our happy sysadmin could look up missing dependencies of a certain package - rather usefull I'd say.
And no, Joe Avg User probably doesn't want this, that's why it says 'ADVANCED search', i.e. Joe Avg Stupid User shouldn't go there in the first place, but just select 'Automagically use my harddisk as you see fit', then 'Default Desktop Install', and that's just about how much he should see of the install process.
But for sure, I would *love* this advanced search thing (fortunately, Gentoo Portage has it built-in
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
My biggest complaint is the way that yast operates. rather than work with the config files for a particular part of the system directly, it keeps its changes in a databases, than shits them out to the actual config files afterwards.
If you have ever made manual changes to any config, you are fscked as soon as you use yast for that 'quick change' you couldn't remember how to do with the text files...or if you have multiple machine admins, good luck.
And yast doesn't support all of the possible config options available for certain things either, so you HAVE to tweak them by hand (1152x864 resolution on the video card I use at work, for example).
My last gripe is that ridiculous mix of /etc/rc.d scripts and /etc/rc.config for configuring what gets started or not. Come on! Pick one method and use it. That mix is just confusing to anybody using that distro for the first time. Having to muck with it in two places is wrong.
I've taken a point to not listen too much to Eugenia. She reminds me of someone who has PMS every other day. Seriously. She finds fault with everything and doesn't seem satisfied with too much. It's amazing how she even manages to keep her sanity using a computer? Actually I'm amazed she hasn't abstained from computers for the rest of her life. Maybe she'd like to complain about other things non-computer related, like milk carton design, car bumper design, sport rules, or better yet, what's wrong with world peace. Trust me, she'd find fault with world peace somewhere.
After browsing your /. comments I actually read her article, which Eugenia considers "NOT a review article, it is a commentary", which sounds to me like an excuse for flaming.. Anyway, from my experience Yast2 improved a lot with SuSE 8.0, lets see what 8.1 will do, and I think it is one of the fastest-to-install distros for the average user... Although I personally prefer the apt-* stuff for upgradebility and dependencies. (Distro wars please stop here..)
While E. starts with hitting on Yast2, she later gets deeply into critizing package management and the free software community distributing process, and she is pretty much having the same points as the so-called other " excellent article" " on OSNews: Linux installations are much heavier to handle for "the user" because there is no intuitive way to install new packages, and again, the new Yast2 fails to offer a plain and simple way.
But:
I know Linux (or any other free software system) sometimes is more demanding to the user than other systems in terms of a steeper learning curve, but pretending that other systems do not have a learning curve at all is unfair and ridiculous.
This whole article - as well as the other OSNews article she refers to - looks to me like being written on a morning with a bad mood and/or a bad hangover. And believe me, I am a hangover specialist...
Maybe the community could lean on some of the more creative folks and urge them to apply their creativity more to the product and less to the version numbering system.
Or the Linux Standard Base could weigh in. I know, we view standardazation as the Siamese twin of censorship, but it can have the effect of lowering the entropy in the system.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The problem here is, that this young lady is not really good at writing critics but sadly just someone whos style is critical. You do not warn people with "Note: this is not a review article ...". You imply your readers can't tell the difference. And you also don't write "I would truly give props to SuSE for their new version, but ...". Well, you either do or you don't. But just because it is a new version doesn't mean anything. The whole sentence rather gets an untruely character.
Oh, and writing "a Windows user would lose him/herself" is plain suicide. You could as well have written "beeing a Windows user, I got lost" (and didn't know the distros have no real choice when it comes to the version numbers of other people's software ...).
For the rest of the article I believe she says what she thinks but it also means she doesn't know where the software is coming from and why it does what it does. Sometimes you have to admit things are over your head and you back out of it. You come back again when you understood them. Do not just click on the advanced setup button if you could have been easily satisfied with the beginners options given (small, medium, full or whatever they are).
And a final remark to the author: do not write cirtics about things that make you laugh. Write about those that make you cry. Laughing about other people's work is most disrespectful. It means you do not take them seriously, so why should they? (Or what's the point of the article ...)
Sven
Ex boyfriend?
Does this reduce the functional insufficiencies of rpm compared to deb?
2. Proper design to handle potential crashes, errors, etc. (in other words, I should NEVER get a ldconfig error because it has been overwritten and now I cannot build my system back up)
3. Alternate input methods to allow any non Package installed packages (like from source) to still be counted as present for purposes of upgrading, dependencies, etc.
Those are the main things, anything else is just 'cool', however these three things are vital and because of the lack of those I usually play it safe and compile from source. These definitely go in my Santa letter this year
Thus this has little to no posotive effect on the OSS movement. If you disagree I strongly suggest that you read the license. Want to copy those CD's and distributed them to friends and family...no no no. YAST(insert version) is on them, and it is illegal to do so. Personally SuSE is my favorite distro (for lots of reasons), and this irritates me to no end. I am sick of Linux distro's including "stuff" on their CD's that allows them to force purchase. Anyway, I digress.
I always like the slashdot stories' poster remarks, especialy the one today:
From the Slashdot text:
Eugenia's review seems unduly harsh to me,[..]
But in OSNews 'article' it says:
Note: This is NOT a review article, it is a commentary.
Can you say: R-O-T-F-L-O-L ?
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
SUSE puts this software at the heart of its distro and even doesnt seem to have the decency to GPL it, just like RedHat or virtually any other distro.
If there's one Microsoft among the Linux companies out there, it's certainly SUSE!
The comment about what packages should do with shared libraries is quiet absurd and would make all packages way to big, but he has a point to think about...
Stick to Debian! :)
I think the word management pretty much sums it up. You can't be braindead to use it, and Yast2 doesn't seem any more/less complicated than any other package manager (except Slack's). I've been doin' this Linux thing for about 5-6 years now, and I don't want to think about package management any more than I absolutly have to. To make it simple, you could try this: Ask 'what do you want to do?' Based on preferences, install new, unrated stuff, stuff with the highest ratings, etc. They will try out the software, until they find the one or two that fits what they want to do. Keep track of what the person uses. If there is a clear winner, later on, ask them if they want to get rid of the unused stuff. The package manage would install and uninstall any required dependancies, download and compile them from source, etc. to accomplish whatever goals the person has in mind. The above seems to me to be what people do anyway...minus the uninstall part, since they don't want to sink into dependancy hell. Since I'm pretty lazy about this, I just compile from source, which, strangely enough, is easier than keeping track of my packages.
no, my penis is still intact. when a normal persons penis comes in contact with eugenia sarlaac, her alien like acid pussy juice melts the member away. she needs like monostat 50, zovirax, brute 99 deodorant, lye to nullify the acid, and prozac, affexor, zoloft, paxil and phenobarbitol to normalize her metal behavior, and that goofy assholic thrashing on osnews is the rsulting behavior. she has melted so many penises off with her death pussy juice - and she needs to get fucked, and her steely dan is rusted from the corrosive pussy juice. she smells the fumes of her pussy as they waft in the air, dehairing her hairy greek nose (and her ear hair, eyebrows). he seat is stained yellow for acidic chunky brown vagina discharges. im a medic that has had to treat several of her victims. poor sap, usually crossed eyed retarded crack addicted men that haplessly fall into this terrescute trap.
Welcome to linux. You think a slackware user would even use Yast. What about a redhat user? Fragmentation started up the day Linus released the kernel into the wild. Same for RMS.
The LSB is as close as linux will ever get to being One operating system. And thats how people like it. Linux will never be one size fits all.
And God help you if you actually need to use the installer you built with InstallShield. I've seen everything from "Admin permission not given" errors on Win98 boxes with no admins, to failure to uninstall, to outrageously slow performance. Just getting the InstallShield development environment installed and working on my PC took four installs. How crappy is your installer if it can't even install itself?!?
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
But this gives no excuse for SuSE to enforce fragmentation by denying other people the right to see and use the source code it has created to use a free installer and configure a free OS.
Next time, if you want an answer, please identify yourself and read the arguments before repeating something that has nothing to do with the issue.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
> Small programs should be compiled statically since an increse of a couple of megs
Absolutely not!! You'll vastly increase memory consumption and the foot print doing that.
Finally a security flaw found in say, a library called openssl or (worst case) glibc would then result, in users needing to download a huge number of updates.