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.

Comments

Screenshots

[infornogr]

"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.

Looks Good

[cscx]

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.

Re:Free or proprietary

[leandrod]

> I don't think the target audience of this program (Linux newbies) care very much about whether their package manager contributes to "GNU freedom".

It is not about catering for any particular class of users, but about making GNU a coherent, open platform, not simply a fragmented, proprietary product.

In the long run, freedom and coherence matters, even for newbies. Or perhaps especially for them, as hackers can always find their way around.

OSNews Reviewer does not understand.

[beernutz]

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.

Re:OSNews Reviewer does not understand.

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss an important point though. By making all of this information available, the interface is cluttered. By cluttering the interface, it is harder for the user to identify the information they are actually interested in. Observe the following; try to find the letter "A" below...

1. GGHGSGEJKAKFHHDK
2. G H A

Which was easier, 1 or 2? This is the problem; if you throw a bunch of crap on the UI, then the user has to work much harder. Users are lazy.

All you need to know

[Webmonger]

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.

SuSE 8.1's YaST2

[noodlez84]

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...

Re:Better versioning system and installing standar

[Anonymous Coward]

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"

Reviewer needs a smack

[ZeLonewolf]

"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.

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.

Re:Reviewer needs a smack

[Watts Martin]

Or perhaps you're missing the reviewer's point. While I've occasionally sparred (mildly) with Eugenia, she's right on target here; unfortunately, she's not expressing herself too clearly (English being her second language sometimes does show through). Whether the "advanced search" is useful for fixing broken dependencies is honestly irrelevant. The point is that desktop users shouldn't need to know about things like library dependencies.

It's a generally well-accepted principle of human-computer interaction that if you allow this kind of "under the hood" access because occasionally you have to--in other words, because of the scenario that you're describing--the program isn't well-designed. If it often breaks, as you say, that means this isn't an "advanced" mode, it's a "we can't get our dependency handling right" mode.

I think the earlier comment someone had about using apt as a back-end is right on target. From a UI standpoint, even (gasp) typing "apt-get install emacs" stomps over any GUI package manager with poor dependency handling, no matter how elegant and refined the GUI might be.

Re:Reviewer needs a smack

[Dr. Spork]

desktop users shouldn't need to know about things like library dependencies

I'm sorry. I really don't think that's right. Linux is a system with shared libraries. That's something which doesn't need fixing. But as long as that's the case, I see no reason to insulate the user from this fact. Yast2 seems to reveal dependencies in a very straightforward way, so noobs only need to press OK whenever they don't understand something, and all will go well. However, at no expense to them, they learn something about the internal structure of their software environment. This is exactly what they need if they are one day going to graduate from the noob status and start seeing the real power of *nix. BTW, this graduation is not going to happen for someone on OSX unless they really work at it. I think SuSE's utility does a much better job informing them what's under their hood without asking them to do anything more than press "OK". How this could be a bad thing, I don't understand.

UI is difficult.

[Error27]

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.

OK...I DO use SuSE....

[kikensei]

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.

With power comes responsibility.

[wen]

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.

Re:Eugenia is a whining bitch.

[Reality_X]

I couldn't agree with you more.

Her husband later said that he'd never used valgrind. He just had a glimpse at the webpage.

When people realise Eugenia is a moron, the world will be a better place.

I really would like to know what, if any, qualifications Eugenia has. Why do people pay any attention to her? What makes her reviews so much more important than someone elses?

Re:Waaa Waaa!!!

[Zemran]

The blank you missed was Beos. The author of the article is a Beos advocate looking for a new direction in life. She is lost and does not know what she is talking about.