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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.
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...
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.
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