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YaST to Become Open Source

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the changes-of-heart dept.

Space_Soldier writes "According to News.com, YaST is going open source: 'For years, SUSE has considered its YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool) software for installing, configuring and managing Linux an advantage over its competitors and forbade them from incorporating it into the products they sold. But with the new plan, to be announced Monday at Novell's Brainshare conference, the company will release YAST under the GPL, sources familiar with the plan said.'" Several years ago, when I first used YaST, I found it to be superior to the rest of the all-in-one administation tools around at the time. It was generally regarded as a great program, save for the licensing. Today, that's no longer a concern.

8 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. Re:YaST - great for newbs but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since I use SuSE at home, i have become quite accustomed to using YaST. Although sometimes it does not make changes, I find that that is very rare, and can be changed manualy. I have never seen YaST overwrite a config file in having used it for over a year. Overall I think YaST is amazing, and is supperior to most other linux managment tools that I have used.

  2. YaST vs. Anaconda? by Xystance · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, alright...

    I purchase SuSE 9.0 Professional, DVD.

    I boot off the DVD, and I get a whopping five step process that takes me through everything from network configuration, partitioning, and hardware configuration AS WELL as choosing a password for root and another user.

    Incredible. Combined with hotplug even X configuration may not be necessary. This really could put the barriers to installing, configuring, and beginning to use Linux (for the general public of course) to rest.

    But, what about the Anaconda installer?
    Relatively simple install and relatively problem free. Not quite as "pretty" as SuSE has made YaST, but it does the job just as well. Then why hasn't Anaconda become a defacto standard? (Though, look at installing Gentoo from binary stages and GRP packages through Anaconda... looks damn good)

    So, why does Mandrake choose to make their own installer? Why do other "user-friendly" distributions choose to use other installers? What are the deficiencies in Anaconda that have not attracted others to this install process? Are those same deficiencies non-existent in YaST?

    Therefore, I pose the question :

    Anaconda vs. YaST : All other variables made equal, which is easier to use as a user, and which is easier to implement as a distro developer?

    1. Re:YaST vs. Anaconda? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well Anaconda is also getting ported to Debian by Progeny last I remember in addition to the gentoo port.

      If I am not mistaken, the reason that Mandrake dosn't use anaconda, is that at the time that they made thier own installer, the anaconda installer just wasn't up to par. It, and all the redhat-config-* tools, have improved dramatically since RH8 and up.

  3. Other Closed Programs in SUSE? by Landaras · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am a huge SUSE fan, in fact running 9.0 Professional as I type this.

    Before, SUSE kept individuals from reselling their ISO's by leveraging YaST. Specifically, the YaST license states that you can freely make copies of ISO's containing it, and give them away. However, no money could change hands in the process.

    Want to host SUSE ISO's containing YaST for all of your friends? The YaST license says 'go for it.' Want to charge them five dollars to download them (just to cover your hosting costs). The YaST license says you can't do that.

    You could still extract OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other GPL'd (or similar) software from the SUSE distro and distribute those as you wished, but it was YaST that you could only give away, never sell.

    Novell appears to be opening YaST up to try to get the market and other parties to standardize on it. I applaud this, as I definitely consider YaST to be a best-of-breed application.

    My question is, is there any other software within the SUSE distro that Novell could leverage to keep the SUSE ISO's from being sold?

    - Neil Wehneman

    --
    My legal education, in nifty podcast format
    1. Re:Other Closed Programs in SUSE? by sflory · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My feeling is having talked with some of the Novell people during the early days of the merger. The Suse Linux product will become much more like Red Hat Linux was. I'm fairly sure that you will see the following products suse 9.1 products free download /w isos, basic cdrom with installation support and manuals, and profession with some additional non free stuff. Of course I'm just guessing, but I get the feeling Novell intends to open things up a lot.

      Remember that Novell isn't in the Linux distro business. Suse is a way for Novell to sell services, and additional enterprise software around. That and counter blance MS, and RH. Let's face it if Intel, and IBM actually liked Red Hat. Suse would have been out of business long ago. Then again having dealt with RH selling their RHEL product. I'm beginning to understand the feeling.

      --
      IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
  4. Re:YaST - great for newbs but... by texroot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think that the general rule for gui config tools is to either use the tool or config things manually, but don't do both. Or, use the tool, then add your manual tweaks, saving a copy of the config before using the gui tool again.

    Aggravating, but I've seen the case made for this typical behaviour elsewhere. The justification is that if joe user invokes the gui tool you want predictable results, not results subtly sabotaged by a previous botched hand edit of config files.

  5. YaST over SSH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Best thing about YaST is that you can easily run it over an ssh connection. It works almost exactly the same over a terminal as from a X session.

  6. Thanks! by Nermal6693 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SuSE has been my preferred distro for years, and a good part of that decision has been due to YaST. Configuring Linux with YaST is easier than configuring Windows. Well I suppose once XP came out, Linux looked a LOT easier in comparison :) So thanks SuSE/Novell, for opening up your distribution further. I hope that this move helps others to see the light.