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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.
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.
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.
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 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.