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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.
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 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.
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.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 &
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.
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.
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.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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.