YaST to Become Open Source

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.

Comments

Good work Novell

[Teh_monkeyCode]

Hopefully we can get other large companies putting as much support into open source as Novell is.

Re:Good work Novell

[hawkeyeMI]

I would say Novell's very livelihood depends on their switch to Linux. AFAIK they were no longer going anyhere, though they were once the leaders.

Let's hope they can bring the famed Novell ease-of-use to Linux.

Re:Good work Novell

[Myuu]

forgot Apple!

Re:Good work Novell

[SphericalCrusher]

That'd be real good, but I doubt we'll ever see it. The whole world is about money and ignorance. Showing off their source code to the world is like taking a punch in the face in front of your girlfriend to some.

I guess a lot of companies just like to sit around and brag about how good their software helps Earth; they don't really want anyone to know how it actually is because someone else's might be better. It's a huge pride issue.

Arrogancy owns the world.

Re:Good work Novell

[ErikTheRed]

It's not quite all open source, but props to Novell for finally releasing a downloadable evaluation version of SuSe Enterprise Server...

Re:Good work Novell

[ciaran_o_riordan]

For the last 5 years, while GNU/Linux was eating Microsofts lunch, Novell was fading out of the spotlight, hanging on through existing contracts.

Meanwhile, all the big players have realised that free software is the future. Business models based on control will be obsolete in a decade or two. Unfortuneatly, Microsofts business model - since they do little other than software sales - their model is based completely on control.

MS are trying to pretend that freedom is not inevitable, hoping that if they can postpone it for long enough, it won't happen. (Due to Trusted Computing or similar.)

Meanwhile the others (IBM, SUN, HP, etc. and now Novell) have accepted it, but they want to slow it down so because it will take time to port their business models to the new way of doing software.

SuSE was one of the big GNU/Linux vendors, but they were slowly declining. Their use of proprietary software showed a gap in their appreciation of how the free software economy will work. Novell seem to have a better grasp on the concept. I'm looking forward to what they do with SuSE.

ease-of-use will come in time. user-orientated free-as-in-cost trustable-as-in-viewable are all functions of free-as-in-freedom. I'm looking forward to all the distros now sharing installer&config code.

Re:Good work Novell

[murdocj]

Meanwhile, all the big players have realised that free software is the future. Business models based on control will be obsolete in a decade or two.

Also, humans will establish a viable colony on Mars and the war on terrorism will be over.

Open source is a great idea. It works in some cases. I see zero evidence that it's going to take over the entire universe of software. In a few cases like Linux where you are able to apply the efforts of lots of bright folks to the project, it may well win. In lots of other areas that aren't of general interest, seems pretty unlikely.

Re:Good work Novell

[shyster]

Meanwhile, all the big players have realised that free software is the future.

Not very many companies are making a killing on OSS right now. Some, like IBM, are subsidizing it from their HW sales. Others, like Novell, Red Hat, and Ximian, are still trying to figure it out. I'd say it's a bit early to call it won.

Business models based on control will be obsolete in a decade or two.

Just about every business model, not just software, depends on control. That's why businesses spend so much money getting IP protection laws passed. Every business wants locked-in customers, it's a good revenue stream. When OSS companies start playing with the big boys (public investors), they're going to have to find a way to keep them happy.

Unfortuneatly, Microsofts business model - since they do little other than software sales - their model is based completely on control.

Let's see. According to the latest FY2004 1st quarter results (ending on Sept 30, 2003), MSFT gets about 15% of their revenue from segments besides OS and Office sales.

However, if you take the time to read thru their segmentations, you'll notice that Server and Tools also includes MSDN training and tools, certifications, MS Press, consulting services, and Premier PSS - all non software revenue. According to their financial highlights, we can calculate that Consulting and PSS revenue was $231 million, and MSDN and MS Press was $190 million. Their Office segment also includes revenu from LiveMeeting and Professional PSS, but they don't give figures to calculate that portion of it.

Adding those numbers together, we can see that non-software revenue is about 20% of their total revenue. That is also significantly higher than the previous year, while their OS and Office segments have been relatively flat (do you think someone at MSFT might have noticed that?).

Okay, so we can realistically claim that 80% of Microsoft's revenue is from software sales. But, that 20% of non-software revenue (which, again, is growing) is a pretty impressive $1.7 billion (that's with a B) per quarter - that's about $7 billion a year.

To put that into perspective, VA Linux's revenue is $24 million (that's with a M) a year. Red Hat's revenue is $90 million (that's with a M) a year. Novell's revenue is $1.1 billion a year. Sun's revenue is $11 billion per year (but note that they lost money, even discounting non-recurring expenses).

IBM's revenue is a much higher $80 billion a year...but let's take a look at their cost of revenue and expenses. While MSFT earns almost an ungodly 30% profit on its revenue, IBM's profit is a paltry 8% (I didn't include non-recurring expenses)! MSFT nets more profits on it's $30 billion of revenue than IBM does on it's $80 billion! The story is much the same with HP, though their profit is a even smaller 5%.

I think it's safe to say that MSFT's non-software revenue is quite healthy, and ever growing.

While I like FOSS, I've yet to see how it can sustain a viable corporate business. And, until that time comes, investor money will continue to flock to MSFT so that they can make even more $$. And, even if FOSS wins the war, expect MSFT to remain around for quite a long time. Despite what Linux zealots may think, MSFT is not stupid, and they know how to make money. In the game of business, that's what it's all about...not the ideals of FOSS.

Re:Good work Novell

[NighthawkFoo]

IBM owns multiple factories, chip foundries, and other large, expensive properties. It just costs more to produce physical goods than software. The days of getting 30% margin on a mainframe are over.

How long until MS is forced to reduce their margins to a similar level?

Re:Good work Novell

[Patoski]

Not very many companies are making a killing on OSS right now. Some, like IBM, are subsidizing it from their HW sales. Others, like Novell, Red Hat, and Ximian, are still trying to figure it out. I'd say it's a bit early to call it won.

Red Hat has been able to rack up profitable quarterly results in a very spending averse environment. I'd say they're a bit past figuring out how to make money. Maybe a year or so ago I would've agreed with you but I can't say the same now. Also, circumstantial evidence points to the fact that SuSe was cash flow positive when they were purchased by Novell which further bolsters the case for making money in open source.

Just about every business model, not just software, depends on control. That's why businesses spend so much money getting IP protection laws passed.

Business models aren't (or shouldn't be) based around control they're based around providing value to customers. Sometimes control is a means by which companies use to try to keep other companies from providing value in the same way. But to base your business on control is a great way to the poor house (just look at IBM and the in the 80-90's).

Every business wants locked-in customers, it's a good revenue stream.

How about providing a better product than your competitor? This is what capitalism is based on after all. Providing a better product/service than your competition so consumers will give you money. Inevitably companies based on control lose that control and crumble into ash as their product isn't competitive without the old controls. I'm not saying that a collapse of that magnitude is getting ready to happen to MS but they do need to be careful.

When OSS companies start playing with the big boys (public investors), they're going to have to find a way to keep them happy.

I don't quite understand what you mean here by "playing with the big boys" since so many Linux companies are publicly traded.

Let's see. According to the latest FY2004 1st quarter results (ending on Sept 30, 2003), MSFT gets about 15% of their revenue from segments besides OS and Office sales.

Revenue is largely meaningless (as you point out with respect to Sun). It is better to talk about profit but anyway...

MSFT nets more profits on it's $30 billion of revenue than IBM does on it's $80 billion! The story is much the same with HP, though their profit is a even smaller 5%.

This is precisely why MS is ripe for the pickings. With these profit margins MS hasn't exactly made a lot of friends with it's customers. Linux will to a degree commoditize OSes which is really the natural progression in free markets. Product / service offerings become mature, areas of opportunity for differentiation are exhausted by the market and they become increasingly commoditized. This type of environment is antithetical to the insane profit margins that MS is used to. Just look at all the deals and discounts that MS is offering to keep people from switching. That should tell you what's coming down the road. MS wouldn't offer these deep discounts unless they felt they had to because of competition.

I think it's safe to say that MSFT's non-software revenue is quite healthy, and ever growing.

Certainly MS' revenue is very large but ever growing? This is certainly not true and easily disproved. If you look at MS's 10-Q for 4Q 04 you'll see that last quarter their software revenues were flat. The only thing that gave them a positive earnings growth this quarter was their investments department. Why do you think MS has started offering a (small) dividend? Their investors demanded it for two reasons: because of the great amount of cash MS has on hand and the realization by investors that MS is no longer the high growth company it once was. How do you maintain high revenue growth rates when your OS and office suite comes shipped with just about every computer sold? The answer is you cannot unless y

Re:Good work Novell

[maxpublic]

SuSE was one of the big GNU/Linux vendors, but they were slowly declining.

I don't know where you got this from. SuSe's market share and profit margin have been increasingly steadily. They've never been in decline, and their sales numbers show that sometime in the next few years they have the potential to surpass Redhat.

Probably due to the fact that YAST makes it easy even for the clueless to install Linux.

Max

Re:Good work Novell

[Grishnakh]

And there's little reason FOR it to be OSS/free either.

This reminds me of an article I read just yesterday about some business guy complaining that OSS hackers weren't working on "uncool" projects like the software you just mentioned. It amounted to him just wanting stuff without having to pay for it.

OSS isn't a way for people to get any software they want for free, it's a way for a community of people to work together and build software that they ALL need. Everyone needs an Operating System, so it's better if it (or several) are available open-source and Free, so we can all benefit, rather than one or more vendors keeping it locked up, and everyone having to pay them a toll to use it. Lots of people also want to have CD burning programs, media players, drawing programs, and basic office programs (word processor, spreadsheet), so it works well for people to work together on this. Instead of everyone having to continually pay money for every new release of a word processor or CD burning program, a group of people has spent some time writing one for Free, and now everyone can stop reinventing the wheel, and spend their time and money on something new.

Pension administration systems are not part of this. No home computer user needs or wants such a thing, and no OSS hacker has any reason to waste their time working on one for no pay; if they contribute work to a media player, they benefit by getting to watch movie trailers or something, which they couldn't do before. If they work on a pension system, they get nothing.

So, for a niche product like this, the business that needs it needs to pony up the money and just buy it. If they're smart, they'll run all their systems on Free software, so instead of having to pay for OS license, CAL licenses, antivirus licenses, AND the license for the pension program, they'll only have to pay a license for the pension program and everything else will be free.

Of course, there's also the school of thought that purchased software should also be open-source--it should come with the source code in case the vendor goes belly up, so the customers can still use and develop the software on their own if necessary. This is good, but is something the customer needs to work out with the vendor that they're paying for this, and has nothing to do with freely-available OSS/Free software.

Finally...

[Seoulstriker]

Maybe I can finally install packages myself without having someone else remotely login and set them up for me.

Give me a break. I'm new to this whole "Linux" thing.

Re:Finally...

[petecarlson]

Maybe I can finally install packages myself without having someone else remotely login and set them up for me.

That's one of the things I like about YaST, I can SSH in and run it to install packages or configure without having to think.

YaST - great for newbs but...

[hawkeyeMI]

While YaST may be great for people who know nothing about linux (and I'm happy to see that they're releasing it!) it annoys the hell out of me. Maybe I'm just not familiar with SuSE but it seems to me like any changes you make manually to configs will either (a) not take effect or (b) be overwritten by YaST next time you do something with it. Autoyast is very neat, btw. Apparently RedHat has something similar to that.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[horati0]

Autoyast is very neat, btw. Apparently RedHat has something similar to that.

Yep.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[grolschie]

Same here. An awesome setup tool, however, myself being too Debianized, I try to edit the system files, and YaST overwrites them. arghhh!!!

However, it's an awesome tool. I love their installer and partitioner with the option of automatic NTFS partition resizing and the creation of a dual boot system if it finds Windows on the drive. Superb!

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[texroot]

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.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[ickoonite]

Apple does a good job here with their System Preferences.

On my iBooks, I have a firewall configured the old-fashioned way - using pico :P. If I try to tinker with the firewall using the relevant Preference Pane, I am warned that other firewall software is in use on the machine and that I cannot configure the firewall using Apple's pretty GUI unless I sort this out first. This basic level of protection can't be hard to do.

A better thing would of course be to get the GUI to be kind to custom-written configuration files, but this could be quite hard to do.

iqu :)

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Nailer]

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.

I think a better rule would be not to make excuses for badly written tools.

GUI config tools should follow three simple rules:

• Use the same config as the app does
  
• never modify configuration without asking
  
• display, preserve, and make editable comments about a configuration item that are placed above that item (with blank lines as delimiters).
  

Otherwise they are useless.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Red Storm]

I've been using SuSE since about 5.1 and Yast has come one hell of a long way since then. With Yast there are basicaly three levels of adminstrability. The first is the simplest method using the Yast tool, which works the same in console gui and X-Win gui. Next is using the /etc/sysconfig scripts and then calling SuSEconfig as needed. If you look closely Yast actualy edits the files in the /etc/sysconfig directory and then calls SuSEconfig. Finaly you can turn off SuSEconfig for various programs by changing that programs sysconfig file in the /etc/sysconfig directory. Thus if you want to use your own config file for say bind you can do so without SuSEconfig writing over them.

Overall I think SuSE has struck a very good balance between gui tools, and config files.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Monx]

Strange. On my system, YaST warns that it won't change hand-altered files and instead creates a file with a similar name containing its suggestions. This is a rather old installation, so that may no longer be a feature. On the other hand it could be an option that I set long ago and forgot about.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Conanymous Award]

If you ever want Linux to become a real destop choice to Joe User, it must get more 'newbieized'. Or, to be more specific, 'windows-ized' (*shudder*). I'm not trolling, but speaking out of experience. Lots of it. I've tried to switch to Linux from Windows many times, but noticed that all too often, if I want to make the OS work the way I want, I have to dive into the dangerous world of config files. YaST is a step into the right direction, and with Novell's decision to set it free I'm sure it's going to get even better.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[bobsledbob]

Which is why we should move to something like XML based configuration files. Lets gui tool configurators and manual tweakers coexist happily.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Hooded One]

Actually, SuSE/YaST has a pretty good way of dealing with this. Many of the auto-generated files, e.g. modprobe.conf, have comments explicitly telling you to edit [filename], but to make your own [filename].local, which is incorporated with an include statement at the end of the file, and tweak that to your heart's content. This way all your custom changes are preserved.

Yes, you can do that in other distros as well, but YaST sets it up for you by default.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[ebuck]

I'd say that YaST is great for the average user, not just the newbie. Diehard system admins usually won't use an all-in-one gui anyway, but when they do, they expect a lot more from it than is expected by the average user.

My only gripe with YaST was once I ran into a nasty corner case. YaST had the options (and yes, there are times when there's no gui for the bit you want to twiddle) but they didn't work as advertised. As a result I had to partially configure my software by hand and partially via YaST. It was horrible, and took more than 10 times the effort of doing the whole thing by hand in the first place.

I strongly advocate (and I'm sure others do too) that should you use a GUI config tool, use it consistently and exclusively. Most GUI tools are mature enough to handle all the common setup and admin needs for the average user. Some people feel that using a GUI is slightly more risky since there may be a day when the GUI doesn't go where you need to, but in my experience that rarely happens these days.

Note that there is always an exception, and in this case it is RedHat/Fedora. Their config architecture of a database oriented back end which parses the config files and monitors for manual updates (via timestamps) and a GUI front end that connects via network interface isn't exactly lightweight, but at least it's a system that is designed to handle both methods of updating. And no, I'm not referring to their older RedHat configure-everything-with-this-one-app tool, may it rest in peace (forever).

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Wiz]

The registry?

1. It is way too complex. There is no way you can understand it all or hand edit it if required.

2. If it is corrupted, your whole OS won't even boot.

3. Its huge! 45MB of my fairly clean XP box.(although it is in a domain and has policies applied to it, etc, etc, but not much software)

4. You can't move the registry between machines, let alone between different versions of Windows. I can move my .config file between the 2.4 & 2.6 kernel if necessary, it just ignores what it doesn't know.

Several smaller independent registiries might work better. e.g. one for linux conf, one for X, one for KDE, etc. So each one has a small well definied file for all configs.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[ebuck]

The windows registry sucks because it's a bad implementation of a good idea.

Not all people like the idea of a database to hold you're configuration information, but data is data, and if you hold it in a database or a flat file the end result is the same.

The "suckiness" of the windows registry comes from how badly they implemented the thing, and the incredible lack of accessible documentation in it's early release. Somehow you're supposed to know that

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE ->Autodesk ->
AutoCAD -> R14.0 -> ACAD-12:409 ->
Applications -> AecBase -> LOADCTRLS
is supposed to be set to 0x0000000d (13)
(as opposed to say 5)

Add to that a bad heirarchial organization where you often find directory trees that are confusing in their similarity, and thousands (or so it seems) of entries which are similar but not identical. For example, both "system" and "System" are in the registry multiple times. Sometimes chaning a "system" to a "System" breaks things, other times it does not.

Finally you have my favorites, directories with nearly no meaning at all (at least none that can be discerned) such as:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT -> .$A
(and it's kin)

You have to look at the contents of these beauties to try to figure out what it is they are describing.

The registry idea isn't bad. Some may not like it, but others do. But certainly, the Windows Registry totally sucks (as in, my will to live).

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[zhenlin]

Put all your eggs in one basket! Yessiree, this basket will hold any kind of egg, and very many eggs too!

The Windows registry is not easy to repair, having a binary on-disk format. What is worse, is that the most important things (system and personal settings) are condensed into one single database file each.

Config files have the benefit of being able to hook into the filesystem permissions, by sheer virtue of being a file.

Additionally, by seperating out each configuration file, there is no single point of failure. (Other than rm -rf /etc ; or equivalent corruption)

Anyway. If you want a key-value registry, look at gconfd of GNOME. (Even that isn't a single monolithic database, it is actually stored as a folder hierarchy on disk, and the file format is based on XML)

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Doctor Crumb]

This is what package managers are for. Any program that overwrites the config file from another program is broken and should be fixed.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Tim C]

Somehow you're supposed to know that

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE ->Autodesk ->
AutoCAD -> R14.0 -> ACAD-12:409 ->
Applications -> AecBase -> LOADCTRLS
is supposed to be set to 0x0000000d (13)
(as opposed to say 5)

I suggest you take that complaint up with Autodesk; MS can hardly be held responsible for how other companies store their apps' configuration settings, and the documentation they may or may not provide.

True, MS are just as bad in this respect, but surely you could have picked a better example? That's like saying that text config fles are bad, because of sendmail's one.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[chegosaurus]

As do Solaris and HP-UX.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[ebuck]

Sendmail's config file has documentation. It may be long and unfriendly, but it is possible to understand it.

Most of these "issues" wouldn't even exist if the documentation was clear, concise, and available. Then we would be saying:

Of course it should be 13, 13 means "load last file upon launching".

Whether it's Autodesk's fault for not including some sort of documentation, or MS's fault for not requiring descriptive strings for elements in the registry is up for debate. The prevailing opinion that the MS registry sucks (as it exists today) is hardly every questioned.

For so many companies (including Microsoft) to be using the MS registry so badly, I'd shudder to think that best pratices concerning the registry are being followed (or even published).

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Lennie]

Supposedly FAI is supperior to all of the above.

Because it seems more vendor neutral. It's not something I've checked, though. It's definitly something to look at, if you need such a thing.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[jcam2]

> GUI config tools should follow three simple rules:

Interestingly, those are the same rules that I followed when developing Webmin, yet another administration GUI. Other programs that keep their own databases of settings from which the actual config files are built annoy me, as they make it hard to interoperate with other tools. Some of Redhat's control panels and Linuxconf are guilty of this ..

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[Trongy]

Oh no! A 45 MB file, in an age of 300 GB hard drives! The horror! ;)

You are missing the point. Storage space is not the only problems associated with the size. How long does it take to read the file?

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[ssbljk]

YaST change files if it is said to it to change them, but it won't change manually configured files because it keeps track through MD5 sums of files, and instead of that it will save config to backup file so you can use it on your own.
When you need manual config, most of config files that YaST use have ability to include other files, so you deal with your own modifications in another file and no need to change ones that YaST created.

Nowdays YaST is very usefull so I'm switching most configs to use them from YaST because it saves me lot of time when dealing with lot of machines.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[zelbinion]

Documentation is what makes text files superior to the Windows registry (and possibly database configurations in general.) Many of the config files I edit on a regular basis have the documentation of what the options mean (and sometimes what options are available) IN the config file itself.

The windows registy doesn't have this. Unless you happen to have a copy of the manual handy for every little app that has polluted the registry with dwords and hex values and what these mean, the registry is incomprehensible.

Plus, if I do a man sshd_config, I get a reasonably usable manual on what I can put into the config file and what it means. Where is this on Windows? Windows help? Nope. Application help? (maybe, but probably not.)

Putting all configuration options in a registry may or may not be a good idea, but if you loose the ability to include documentation with the configuration, then IMHO it is a net loss.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[shyster]

1. It is way too complex. There is no way you can understand it all or hand edit it if required.

That's a programmer problem, not a design problem. Not to mention that many config files are way too complex as well. One thing that's nice about config files, however, is that you can include comments. While you could do this with the registry (with the EXPAND_SZ, expand string, type) it's not optimal as it increases the size. And nobody does it. [aside]If programmer's don't want you to change values or the values are meaningless...why make it changeable? Why not hard code it?

A redesign of the registry with a seperate table for comments would be interesting, I think. That way, when using editing tools, the comment table could be referenced. But, when loading or executing software, the comments would not hinder performance.

If it is corrupted, your whole OS won't even boot.

While I somewhat agree on this point, I have to note that corrupted config files will also prevent Linux from booting. I don't know the format that Windows uses for the registry tables, but it should be recoverable. Also note that I've yet to see any registry corruption on Win2000+, except with HW failures. I think the inclusion of something similar to BartPE or ERD Commander would also be a worthwhile replacement to MSFT's extremely limited Recovery Console. And frequent, automated, timed backups of the registry (at least OS configuration) should be done.

3. Its huge! 45MB of my fairly clean XP box.(although it is in a domain and has policies applied to it, etc, etc, but not much software)

My Win2003 server, excluding registry backups and the user.dat portion, is only 23MB. 17MB of that is in HKLM\SOFTWARE (I have a lot of software installed). Perhaps someone handier than me in Linux could tell us what size all of the config files for a normal desktop come to (actual space on disk, ot just data size).

You can't move the registry between machines, let alone between different versions of Windows. I can move my .config file between the 2.4 & 2.6 kernel if necessary, it just ignores what it doesn't know.

While true that you can't move some parts of the registry between machines (parts dealing with hardware and the like), software configuration is easily moved. I don't recommend moving the entire hive, as it would no doubt cause problems, but .REG files can be imported/exported with no problem. And .REG files are pretty portable (and text based), though it does require some editing and checking of data types to move from NT based to 9x based machines. With NT becoming the standard, though, that concern should go away.

Several smaller independent registiries might work better. e.g. one for linux conf, one for X, one for KDE, etc. So each one has a small well definied file for all configs.

Perhaps a DBA could chime in with better info, but I think that you would then be duplicating database structure overhead on each of those files. While I see the concern of a single point of failure for all software in the machine, automated backups and sensible defaults should mitigate that somewhat.

I think the main advantage of the registry is a central location for configurable values. By using a database, you should also have the advantage of database reliability and performance. Of course, the real problem with it would be getting everyone to use it.

Re:YaST - great for newbs but...

[J. J. Ramsey]

If it is corrupted, your whole OS won't even boot.

While I somewhat agree on this point, I have to note that corrupted config files will also prevent Linux from booting.

The difference is that the files that will keep Linux from booting if corrupted are mostly static. Rarely, for example, is /etc/inittab edited. So, the likelihood that these files will suddenly be corrupted is fairly low.

The Registry is anything but static. Apps write to it all the time. That increases the likelihood that one wrong write will mess up the whole thing.

Gets my thumbs up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that uses a pineapple as an icon for "Misc" is alright in my book.

Re:Gets my thumbs up.

[kevcol]

Ya know, I never once even thought about it when firing up yast but yeah- it's hilarious now that you point that out! A kitchen sink icon would have done nicely as well but that being sorta logical would perhaps make that less funny than a pineapple.

User Friendly

[oO Peeping Tom Oo]

This looks like the least intimidating Linux setup i've ever seen! Forget sending a debian distro to less tech savvy friend, this seems like the way to go.....

restarting yast development

[Truval]

The problem is that YAST has been going downhill ever since Rolf Schilling left the project. Now they have to GPL it to get development going again. It was a great AI1 tool once but it has languished for at least a couple years now.

Re:restarting yast development

[rindeee]

Huh? Downhill in what way. I have used YAST since, shoot, a long time anyway, and I've seen nothing but improvments all along. Can you give some examples as to what has degraded, regressed, etc. over time? And for what it's worth I would imagine that Novell is GPL'ing it as YAST's lack of GPL has been one of the biggest gripes of SUSE users over the years.

AT YAST!

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

AT YAST! an open source system configuration/management tool for us all!

Yast makes me happy

[tokennrg]

I've been using Yast for the last few months. I've been really happy with it. Updates are a breeze. Installing new software couldn't be easier. It hasn't missed a dependency yet. Usability is pretty good and fairly intuitive.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

This should cut the number of comments in any Suse story in half.

Re:Great

[bsharitt]

Red Hat: Doesn't include MP3

Debian: Outdated

Gentoo: Takes to long to compile

SuSE: Now we need a new thing to complain about SuSE.

How about that Gecko think, I never liked him any way.

I love open source, BUT

[RLiegh]

aren't Novell giving away the store here? Just the same way that frustrated OpenBSD users distribute unauthorised OpenBSD iso's, now frustrated SuSE fans will be legally able to distribute home-rolled SuSE isos...or worse yet: Steal YaST lock stock and barrel and take away Novell's market.

Is this really such a good thing, in the long run?

Re:I love open source, BUT

[k_head]

Not really. In a recent speech the CEO of novell said that they are no longer an operating system company. They make their money selling things on top of an operating system like eDirectory, groupwise, red carpet, ximian connector etc.

It looks to me like they are keeping their focus on the enterprise which has very little use for YAST but is more then willing to pay for an awsome product like eDirectory or Zenworks.

I have spent the last two weeks banging my head against Active directory and let me tell you if my CIO said they were switching to Edirectory I would litereally kiss his ass and wash his car.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[ciroknight]

Thing is, I think Novell's got the idea. Once we can develop good, solid, working ways to install the operating system, supporting it should be a lot easier. And Novell knows that there's no reason to NOT tap the millions of people online willing to help code this platform. I personally believe Novell's trying to secure itself as the second large Linux supporting company. By buying Ximian, they gave themselves a very viable desktop, by buying SuSE, they gave themselves a stable platform. Now they just need to do the middle work such as getting it to work on all hardware, and making it easy to support. And IMO, open source is a hell of a lot easier to support, especially since the people with the problems, usually know how to go about fixing them, and will send patches.

Don't discredit the selling power either. This probably won't hurt the sells of SuSE at all, in fact, it very well might augment sales, due to the people without fast internet connections wanting to get a taste of the YaST code. Don't count on it, but the potential's definitely there. Novell's making a good move here, I commend them.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[pavon]

To add to the previous three posters who all made excelent points - RedHat GPL'd most everything and provided ISO's for download, and still managed to make money off of Red Hat Linux. This will just increase install base, not decrease sales.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[ciroknight]

This comes just a few months after Anaconda, the RedHat installer, started being used for another distro (is it Debian's new installer?). Novell obviously saw this move as a good thing.

Well, I dunno what other OS is using it as it's installer, but it's not debian. Debian's new installer's self rolled, text only, very basic stuff. Anaconda has, however, been ported to install Debian by Progeny. Pretty neat, but I don't see it eever taking precidence to the Debian Installer.

And I do agree with you that it probably won't take away any market share. If anything, it sets up SuSE as running against RedHat, which should be a very interesting battle. And we are the ones to benefit.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[Zeddicus_Z]

No, not at all.

You need to realise that Novell's product is not a Linux distro - that was never their reasoning behind the purchase of SuSE. Rather Novell purchased SuSE to give them a strong, established Linux distro on which to base their directory service offering.

Prior to purchasing SuSE, Novell evaulated its position in the market. What they found was that while they had a kick-ass directory service product, they were being kicked in the pants when it came to new deployments - primarily by MS Windows and Active Directory.

Rather then attempt to re-build and re-position the NetWare brand among IT decision makers, Novell realised they could do much better by taking an existing base Operating System with widespread appeal, and integrating NDS with that.

Essentially Novell's cut NetWare* and tied its future to NDS on Linux.

Enter Linux. It had everything Novell needed: stability; maturity; widespread developer support; GPL (why write a new base when you can modify an existing one?); a wicked reputation among IT techs and, best of all, an increasingly bright future with the potential to topple all challengers.

Announcing NDS on Linux and then subsequently purchasing a well established Linux distro was, not to put to fine a point on it, absolute genious. NDS gets the best possible base, loss of market share to Active Directory is significantly slowed or halted (and eventually reversed if all goes to plan) and Novell regains the reputation it had among techs back in the days when MS' best offering was WfW.

GPLing YaST isn't a loss for Novell, it's a gain for Linux. Which makes it a gain for the base OS Novell will see increasing use of NDS on. Which makes it a win for Novell.

*Yes, Novell will continue to support and even offer NetWare-based NDS installations. But the fact remains that if all goes to plan, Novell will see its new business increasingly tied to NDS+Linux rather than the old bundle of NDS+NetWare

Re:I love open source, BUT

[ciroknight]

eh, I'm not gonna go into the desktop wars, saying why Novell did something one way or another, I'm not on the Board of Directors and I wouldn't know these things. But Ximian is doing a damned good job at making a desktop along with the rest of the GNOME and KDE world. By buying SuSE, they gave themselves a floor, walls, electricity, the basic framework of what they'd need if they want to move all their products to linux. By buying Ximian, they gave something to skin the house, make it look pretty, make people want to buy it. SuSE is a KDE distro, but there's no reason you couldn't install Ximian over it, and that's one reason they may have bought the two companies, to give themselves a more diverse enviroment to attack RedHat at their own game.

Could be another reason behind opensourcing YaST: give it a GTK2 interface and wala, you've got a complete, working corporate desktop platform, which of course, they can then use to sell their own eDirectory software, and others as well... It's all about building a platform. Microsoft understood this too, how do you think they became so powerful? They built two seperate houses, both very shady but they got the job done. Then they skinned one house when they realized it was about to collaspe. Moved the skin from the first, to the second, and poof, a solid platform. Now they can sell Active Directory, Office, and other software for it, and not look like bumbling rejects.

It's all about process, format, proceedure.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[Asic Eng]

now frustrated SuSE fans will be legally able to distribute home-rolled SuSE isos

But they've been able to do this all along - the restrictions in the Yast license solely applied to commercial distribution. Giving it away for free, modifying the source etc - that's all been allowed already. I can see your point though, that someone selling the SuSE ISOs could reduce their sales.

Re:I love open source, BUT

[Karma Sucks]

Is that why Suse Personal 9.1 only has KDE on it?

Ability to Adapt

[thedillybar]

You need to be able to adapt if you want to stay alive in this world. The United States has been along for so many years because of the "necessary and proper" clause which allows the government to adapt to a changing world.

Clearly Novell is taking the hint. They're aware of the fact that the world is going Open Source, and they're willing to deal with it. If they ensure a good relationship with the open source community now, they'll be rewarded with success for years to come. If they distance themselves from the open source community, like SCO, then they will make more money in the short term but be ousted in the long term.

Novell is a good organization that has been around since the beginning (or, at least, for a long time). I, for one, hope they continue to be around and keep up the good work.

Novell's doing?

[Coryoth]

So is this a sign of the "We are really taking open source on board" that Novell has been trying to sell us, or is this just an internal SuSE decision? To be honest, I'm quietly hoping this was a Novel call, and that it's a sign that we have a big player really taking open source and GPL seriously. That, and hopefully it would be a sign that Novell might eventually start open sourcing some of their own applications, which would be a tremendous boost for FOSS.

Jedidiah.

Re:Novell's doing?

[xutopia]

Remember the roots of Novell. They are a network administration company and this is what they want to do. By making a decent, freely(or cheaply) available linux distro more popular in the business and home world they are causing a threat to the MS monoculture model and will have an advantage with dealing with all the different types of systems out there. They'll be the ones calling the shots of the network, where all really happens.

Will it actually be useful...

[bangular]

Many distributions have open sourced their installers and administration tools, but for the most part, many have been useless for other distros. Many expect the EXACT filesystem hierchy of the original distro, exact package tools, etc. etc. So if I want to make a distribution and base it on someone else's installer or admin tools, I either have to dig into their source and do it myself, or make another distribution. There are some notable exceptions (webmin being one of them). While this is mostly good news, what I question is, will I be able to use it on linux from scratch without heavy porting? If not, it's not much use to many people.

Re:Will it actually be useful...

[ebuck]

I can't speak about YaST, because it's just now available and it takes time to adopt such things, but I can tell you the answer could be a resounding YES.

Compare the situation with RedHat's installer Anaconda. Anaconda has been open for quite some time now, and by being open my company (and a large number of others) have been able to build custom "in-house" distros for the automated installation of systems.

In our case, it's as simple as deciding if it's going to be a desktop, network monitoring server, vanilla RedHat box, proxy/firewall, or Tomcat server, and then booting the system off a floppy to perform the install (or re-install).

This would not be feasible without Anaconda being open; however, the reason it's not adopted more often is because it takes time to wade through the numerous little problems to figure out why it's not working in your case (and honestly, not that many people need this kind of functionality).

YaST vs. Anaconda?

[Xystance]

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?

Re:YaST vs. Anaconda?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:YaST vs. Anaconda?

[harlows_monkeys]

I don't think YaST's appeal comes from its installer aspects, but rather from its system management aspects after you get installed and running.

Other Closed Programs in SUSE?

[Landaras]

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

Re:Other Closed Programs in SUSE?

[sflory]

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.

Different view.

[eddy]

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.

Several years ago, when I came from Slackware to SuSe (just playing around), I found YaST to be extremely irritating, confusing and all together useless. I'd make a small change in a menu and that would trigger the running of lots and lots of mysterious scripts all over the place, doing gawd knows what. Went back to slackware after that.

(This was, as I said, years ago and is not a comment on YaST as of today).

Not exactly the Second Coming

[mandolin]

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.

That is not saying much. I always felt a little sorry for the Linuxconf authors (for example), it looked like they tried to make a flexible program (at least front-end wise), but their proggy was always buggy presumably because they couldn't track all the various configuration file changes across different distributions.

It's certainly nice that Suse is moving farther in the open-source direction, though.

YaST over SSH

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:YaST over SSH

[jrcamp]

No, you must not be very familiar with YAST. Starting it from the command prompt yields a ncurses GUI with the same functions that you would get from the Qt version. So, the parent is quite correct in that it is easy to use over a plain SSH connection.

Re:YaST over SSH

[Flaming_Ice]

From experience Synaptic the graphical frontend for apt-get can also be run over ssh without X forwarding. I find it very usefull when updating my router box that only has a power cable and 2 network cables connected to it.

I got on board

[pair-a-noyd]

with Suse 9.0 and I knew then that it was the right move. I used (and started out on) Mandrake 8.1 and stuck with it through 9.1, but when 9.2 released I switched to Suse.

I also switched everyone I know to Suse and they all agree, Suse is damn good stuff.

This is great news and I know that this will boost Suse sales. I push Suse and now I have another selling point.

Thank you Suse, thank you Novell..

Re:I got on board

[ojQj]

I'm a linux newb and I started with Suse 9.0 about a month ago.

I'm still trying, 'cause I'd rather not use Windows for various philosophical and technical reasons. I'm disappointed, though.

Specifically YAST broke my network configuration multiple times by adding a network card when I configured something in a seperate unrelated part of the tool. Try to find that error as a linux newb. The apps Suse comes with have multiple minor, but irritating bugs. Mozilla's scroll bars disappear, the address manager refused to save my filters for a while and then suddenly fixed itself, some of the screen savers crash the computer entirely, and etc.

So yeah, I'm still trying, and since I am a programmer, I may just go in and fix the bugs rather than living with them. Because YAST is going GPL, I have a chance to be able to help out there. But with all the hype I'd been reading here on Slashdot about GPL'ed projects and specifically Linux, I was expecting better. Oh well...

That's probably the point.

[debest]

Is this really such a good thing, in the long run?

It is if it increases SuSE's penetration as a distro. Before Novell (reasonably deep pockets) bought SuSE (pretty small pockets), the distro had to be a profit centre. Now Novell can afford to allow the entire distro to be free (a la Red Hat), so that more people use it and use Novell/SuSE's server and service offerings as a result.

Novell/SuSE will want as many people to try their software as possible: making their entire distro GPL-friendly will accomplish this, along with Red Hat's official abandonment of desktop Linux. Sure, short-term this may hurt them (I was planning on purchasing 9.1 soon, I may not now). It is *because* of the long-term benefits that this makes sense.

SaX

[Landaras]

The article doesn't mention SaX, which I believe to be a fully separate program. For those who don't run SUSE, SaX handles video cards and monitors.

I ask because SaX saved me a few hours ago. I came home from school for a week, and left my 19" monitor at my apartment. I'm using a spare 17" monitor while at home. Unfortunately the refresh rate configured for the 19" monitor is incompatible with the lesser monitor.

I dreaded having to get a crash course in X configuration in order to manually change the refresh rate, but thankfully had SaX. I just restarted, chose "failsafe" from the GRUB options, hit SaX2 after logging in at the shell, and SaX automatically corrected the resolution and refresh rate to my new monitor.

I still haven't convinced my Windows 2000 box (damn you iTunes!) to adjust to the new monitor.

I'll poke with the Windows box some more in the morning, but I found it interesting that SaX fixed this problem quicker and with less fuss than Windows 2000.

- Neil Wehneman

Re:SaX

[Jeff Mahoney]

SaX2 is LGPL, according to /usr/share/doc/packages/sax2/LICENCE

Thanks SUSE/Novell

[Adrian De Leon]

As one of the "OSS" zealots that has bitched and moaned about Yast's licence in the past, I would like to thank SUSE/Novell for this license change. ;-)

Now I can recomend and use SUSE without any holdups.

Please support SUSE with this decision by voting with your wallet.

It seems that Novell is making the right moves regarding Linux! I hope it pays off for them and the Community

Obligatory

[Gherald]

You forgot Microsoft ;)

Ximian YaST

[Coryoth]

So with YaST going open source and having a much larger developer base willing to scratch odd itches, I wonder if we'll get a GNOME/GTK port of YaST that will get included in Ximian Desktop?

Anyone want to give some odds?

Jedidiah.

Re:Ximian YaST

[jrcamp]

I suppose if somebody is that bored, then yes, they could port it to GTK. But the better question would be why you would want to do it? What is there to gain besides now having two GUI implementations to support? I don't see anything.

Re:Ximian YaST

[MS_is_the_best]

No need to install QT on a gnome only desktop-system. (or even no gnome, but fluxbox, xfce etc.).

Widgets behave the same in all your applications, no need remember if it was a GTK or QT app.

No kidding, try "make xconfig" and "make gconfig" on a linux kernel (2.6.x). The xconfig just doesn't make sense to me as a GTK-user, and I can totally understand that a QT (KDE) user finds the gconfig version annoying.

Try it!

[invisik]

I suggest anyone who hasn't seen SUSE 9.0 Pro to go out and try it. YaST is so simple and SUSE has done an excellent job in integrating things on the desktop with lots of standard drivers.

I can't wait for 9.1! I'm really excited to get on an integrated 2.6 and KDE 3.2 distro.

-m

Thanks!

[Nermal6693]

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.

were you really joking?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Remember that Microsoft won an Open Source Product Excellence award at LinuxWorld NY 2003.

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[account_deleted]

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YaST support for console

[0x0d0a]

Does YaST support running in the console as well as X?

I ask because this is important to many people -- and I remember that a good point of Red Hat's old Linuxconf was that it ran in both the console and X.

Re:YaST support for console

[Jeff Mahoney]

Yes, the YaST ncurses interface is fully on par with the X-based version. You can even choose not to install the graphical version if you don't want it. The actual heavy lifting is shared, and the front-ends are only interfaces to use it.

Re:YaST support for console

[rsax]

Yes it works even if you don't have X installed.

$ rpm -qa | grep curse
ncurses-5.3-110
yast2-ncurses-2.8.20-3

There is a ncurses version and best of all you can find all the options and menus in the same places as you would with the X version - very consistent. It's funny I replied to another poster earlier today who was complaining about YaST being "closed source". This is great news because hopefully now we can put this "non-gpl" argument behind us and support Novell & SUSE with our wallets on May 6th when SUSE 9.1 becomes available. Or pre-order it now - I don't know from where though. I do remember seeing a link somewhere during a Google search.

Re:YaST support for console

[houghi]

$ rpm -qa | grep curse

Intsall 'pin' and then do:
$ pin programname. It will give you a LOT of info.
While I am at it. If you need to compile something yourself, use checkinstall instead of 'make install' and make your own RPM files.

YaST is not one of those

[r_j_prahad]

I'm running YaST Online Update (YOU) in the background even as I type this, downloading a new Athlon kernel and associated security patches. YaST is not your run-of-the-mill useless sysadmin megascript; it's forty or fifty inter-related packages that address every important aspect of managing a Linux system. Microsoft doesn't have anything close to it. I don't know of any reason why you couldn't use it on any RPM-based distro, but I have to admit I've been using it solely on desktops, and not in a server environment. It's the newb's answer to keeping a healthy up-to-date patched Linux box on the Internet that won't be a detriment to it's neighbors or an embarassment to the Linux community.

In Sun Java Desktop too

[mcbridematt]

Also interesting is the fact that YaST is in Sun Java Desktop. You wonder how they did that?

Re:In Sun Java Desktop too

[R3]

Bu using SuSE 8.1 (or was it 8.2?) as the base for Java Desktop - essentially adding Sun logos and some extra content to it.

Portability

[kinema]

YaST is a great installer. Does anyone know how portable it is? One of the major things that the up and comming Debian installer has going for it is it's nearly toatal platform agnosticism.

I know that YaST is a lot more refined and user friendly then d-i but the later was designed more as a highly portable framework that can be imporved upon with shiny GUIs as people see fit.

I want to be clear YaST was great last time I used it and I applaud Novell for opening the source. I'm just currious about it's portability. It's been some time since I've installed SuSE on anything.

Re:YasT may be good but

[Visceral Monkey]

The problem is SuSE and distros like it are NOT suited for you. You sound like someone who wants to do everything themself. Try slack, gentoo or arx, not SuSE. Use the CLI, it sounds like what you want and need. Or, as an alternative, a version of YaST that has various levels of interaction, like simple, moderate or expert.

Installing no problem, eh?

[Xystance]

Fair enough...

Then we look at YaST's tools for maintaining a system. Easy to understand, more comprehensive then the KDE Control Panel... that's something anaconda doesn't even touch.

I didn't think about that. :)

So, either you use YaST, or you edit config files manually, but no combination of the two really works.

(Walks off to ponder)

Re:Compare to redhat-config-*

[rsax]

I don't have much experience with Redhat but one thing that I like about YaST is that all the configuration can take place by just typing yast at the command line. You don't have to deal with separate redhat-config-* packages, just one command and from there it's all very simple.

Re:Stop with this newb crap

[StarTux]

When you get a new system, please learn how to use it. If something annoys you, find a way to switch it off, or change its behavior.

Actually, if you change a file directly SuSEconfig can tell that has happened and will not touch it in virtually every case that I did that. But, the best approach is to edit /etc/sysconfig files directly, you'll love how it streamlines things. That way you will have more time for other things.

Why do people insist things are great for newbs when it makes ones life easier, and makes it quicker to get to the point where you want to be. Why should I spend two hours setting up a TV card manually in /etc/modules.conf for instance, just to watch TV on my Linux box?

Open Source Oscar of the year goes to Novell

[LibrePensador]

One of the things keeping me from using Suse was that I simply do not do proprietary distributions. That's why I left the proprietary camp.

I applaud this move. I don't mind paying for tools if I know that the tools will be available if, god forbid, a company goes out of business or is bought out by an unscrupulous company.

Excellent, insightful move that signals that Novell does get the essence of what open source is about.

Now, GPL OpenExchange and let it become the de-facto groupware server in the open source world and watch as the knowledge pool of people who can configure it grow and as it does it quickly eats into Microsoft's exchange sales.

Re:Open Source Oscar of the year goes to Novell

[rsax]

Now, GPL OpenExchange and let it become the de-facto groupware server in the open source world and watch as the knowledge pool of people who can configure it grow and as it does it quickly eats into Microsoft's exchange sales.

I don't think it's that easy: http://opengroupware.org/en/users/faq/index.html

How does OGo compare to SuSE OpenExchange?

A: SuSE OpenExchange is actually two things: an OpenSource messaging server based on Cyrus and OpenLDAP and a closed source, proprietary web groupware server (ComFire).

OGo is very similiar to the groupware server part and indeed you can install OGo as the groupware component on an OpenExchange server to save the ComFire license costs and use a solution wholly composed of OpenSource software.

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[account_deleted]

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Yast...A Great Tool for everyone

[Elusive_Cure]

I've been using SuSe since it's 7.2 version, constanty upgrading on every major distro upgrade (7.2 - 9.0). Throughout all these releases i've seen Yast growing from a weird config manager to a robust application that takes only 5 steps to deliver a fully working linux environment with all the devices autoconfigured and working. It's dependency checking is brilliant as well as it's package management and configuration abilities are competent enough to not fuck things with your installation. I shared my SuSE 9.0 DVD with a ms advocative friend and flatmate and watched him changing lanes through the last three monts. All I have to say is WELL DONE+THANK YOU SuSE (novell) for this great operating system, i'm looking forward to upgrade to 9.1 .

Re:YAST vs urpmi

[King_of_Crunk]

SUSE even required user accounts be managed through YAST, what kind of nonense is that? Hmmm adding users in both YaST and from the command line using useradd works for me... Heck YaST even shows them and don't overwrite or change them not matter which way I add users... Not sure but maybe my SuSE Version 9 distro is diffrent from everyone elses.

Perhaps Novell will make ISO's available.

[rindeee]

I believe that YAST was the "big reason" that SUSE (my personal favorite Linux distro) didn't have ISO's for download. I never had any trouble installing from FTP, and I will continue to buy the retail packages for the great manuals, but ISO's would SURE be nice.

Re:Perhaps Novell will make ISO's available.

[ahillen]

I believe that YAST was the "big reason" that SUSE (my personal favorite Linux distro) didn't have ISO's for download.

Why? I don't see how the (old) Yast license would have had any influence on that matter. Certainly not for SuSE, but also others could distribute Yast freely as long as no money is involved.

Re:YAST vs urpmi

[pe1chl]

>YAST? well, the day it actually works, and does something useful I'll consider it.

Another requirement is that you actually study what it does to determine if that is useful to you.
Up to now you apparently did not do that.

YaST does not, like some older Unix administration programs, take over all administration from you and prohibit your own changes.
For example, you can add users with commandline tools like useradd or by editing the 4 relevant files, and YaST will have no problem with that.

OT: ftp_conn_track?

[GileadGreene]

Why don't you just use the ftp_conn_track module for ip tables? Then you don't need to leave large ranges of ports open, just the standard ftp port. Once a connection is established the connection tracker will manage opening and closing of ephemeral ports.

If Novell is going the GNOME route...

[Ho Kooshy Fly]

With Ximian in hand, and word of GNOME afoot doesn't it seem logical that YAST will go through a major change and go the GTK/GNOME route? It seems to me that YAST on SUSE with integration with KDE may become unsupported. This is too bad becaues in SUSE 9 it is pretty slick for those users who are not experts. I wonder what kind of future the whole of GNOME/Ximian/SUSE will hold...

-Fly

Re:YAST vs urpmi

[r_j_prahad]

Not sure but maybe my SuSE Version 9 distro is diffrent from everyone elses.

Nope, mine works the same way as yours. Heck, I even mix adding packages on my SuSE box with "kpackage" and "rpm" as well as with YaST. Somehow, it all just works together. Remember that cartoon showing a huge flowchart on a blackboard where the middle box was labeled "magic happens"?

To switch off yast (SuSEconfig in fact)

[StarTux]

Quite a few people seem to hate SuSEconfig changing what they had manually changed, check here: /etc/sysconfig/suseconfig

You'll notice this:

"## Path: System/SuSEconfig
## Description:
## Type: yesno
## Default: yes
#
# Some people don't want SuSEconfig to modify the system. With this
# entry you can disable SuSEconfig completely.
# Please don't contact our support if you have trouble configuring your
# system after having disabled SuSEconfig. (yes/no)
#
ENABLE_SUSECONFIG="yes""

Set that to no then, saves the trouble in switching over to a completely different distro. Whilst you're at it, check the other files in that directory.

Wrong headline

[jayminer]

YaST has already been open source. It was just not GPL'd.

We need to get the apps devels to participate too

[Per Abrahamsen]

The whole idea of having the GUI config tools work "on top" of independtly developed applications, written with no thought of GUI, or even non-nerd, configurations, is a loss-loss situation.

What we need is for a standardized way for the application developers to communicate the possible configuration choices and their legal values to the config tools, and for the tools to communicate these choices to the applications.

The interface must be extremely simple to use and light weight in order to be acccepted by the application developers. And it must be stand alone, not depend on any particular framwork or other libraries. The primary interface should be to the application developers, because it is their accept we need first. Our ultimate goal, to serve the users, will have to come next. We won't serve users by having a cool interface that no applications support.

I believe it can be done, though. I got such an interface accepted among Emacs developers, and I suspect similar tools are accepted in the limited domain of KDE and Gnome. That such a tool can exist in the whole domain of free software, is shown by the acceptance of the gettext interface. Those free software projects that do localization, tend to use the gettext interface. Because it is so simple, non-intrusive, and toolkit independent.

Re:YasT may be good but

[halsathome]

I think you've got the mentality wrong.

The architecture supporting YaST is (very simplified*) like this:

1. Yast edtits the files under /etc/sysconfig.
2. Yast runs /sbin/SuSEconfig which will run:
3. /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig."whatever". These things read the /etc/syconfig files and produce app-specific configurations.

"whatever" is things like apache, gdm2, tetex and loads of other stuff. Sometimes all of them gets run, but most will not actually do anything if nothing has changed. (md5 checksums ar kept for lots of things).

Several of the files under /etc/sysconfig have variables to turn off parts of the SuSEconfig machinery, meaning that the actual config files of the apps will not be changed. That way you can make your own changes stick, while still using YaST for most things.

You can add your own custom stuff to the /etc/sysconfig/* files, and add calls to custom stuff in the /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.* scritps. Also when I've changed my /etc/sendmail.cf without turning off YaST processing of sendmail, SuSEconfig writes its version in a different file, allowing me to do a diff and maybe incorporate what I like in the actual sendmail.cf. These kinds of things will usually be disabled by an upgrade though, so it's best to keep custom stuff in separate files and just insert a "source" command in the stuff that belongs to YaST.

* "very simplified" means e.g that some things under /etc/init.d read the /etc/sysconfig/* stuff directly, YaST may stop/restart a service that is about to have its config files changed, and that there are lots of nooks and crannies in YaST I haven't stumbled upon.

Re:registry - one advantage... permission

[raju]

The Windows registry is nothing more than a glorified file system. It is in fact a set of files that gets loaded. But, there is one difference: permissions. One can assign full NT ACLs to registry keys. One cannot lock down a part of Apache httpd.conf file on Unix, for example. One would have to set file permission on the whole file which, in some cases, is too coarse-grained.

NT did not bother too much about locking down the registry though the facilities were there. Sure, there were whole trees that were off-limits to mere mortals but they could have done a much better job. I hear that Windows XP does a decent job in this department.

Fantastic News

[Kumochisonan]

I have recently come to realise that one of the problems with Linux, and one of the reasons why most ISP's won't support it over the phone is because of a lack of standardised configuration tools.

I am hoping that this Open Sourcing of YaST will mean that other distros will begin including it as a configuration interface, making it a whole lot easier to support.

I am aware that almost every distro has it's own friendly GUI tools for config, but what we need is a standard tool across all distros, so that companies that offer support over the phone can easily train first-liners on how to support customers running Linux.

Re:Fantastic News

[emtboy9]

We had that once. It was called linuxconf. And it really really sucked. In fact, when I was providing linux end user support, one of the first questions I asked users was: "Have you used linuxconf?" and if so, the first suggestion was always rpm -e linuxconf.

YaST is a LOT better than linuxconf was or ever will be, BUT it still has some issues to work out. However this can only be a good thing, because now, there should be a LOT more people looking at YaST and working on fixes and features.

The problem I see is this: There are no real standards. Red Hat starts services one way. SuSE another. Debian yet another, and so on and so on.

They sometimes put things in different locations (/lib v /usr/lib) and sometimes do things completely different.

I realize that each distro HAS to provide some difference, or some sort of value-add to survive. Traditionally, its been support for peripherals, better filesystems, support for more processors/ram and package management. Debian has .deb, Red Hat has rpm, and so on.

Those are fine, but until all the major distros focus on standardization, at least at the base kernel and filesystem level, Linux will not succeed like it most definitely could. That is why you can go to rpmfind and find the same program compiled for 4 different distros... more in some cases. There are kernel differences, compiler differences, and more that all conspire to keep each distro at the "just different enough" level to prevend such things from functioning.

Personally, I would like to see all the major distros (the smaller ones would probably follow suit on thier own pace) settle on ONE kernel version per release. ONE GCC version, ONE library version; you get the drift.

After that, everything else is a value add, and can be what makes one distro more appropriate than another for a given use. But at least at that point, you will be able to use binaries from one distro on another without having to worry if 2.4.21 in Red Hat is really 2.4.21, or is it 2.4.18-lots_of_patches_and_Red_Hat_tweaks.

can the distros now learn to work together?

[protomala]

For me the big question is: now that yast is open-source, will other distros follow and open their tools, or will they start working together on yast? The amount of reinventing-wheel the distros have done all this time by creating their own tools is s complete shame. For me, I want Mandrake to change to yast asap! Why? Mandrake is a KDE distro, but their tools are in gtk, they promissed to switch to QT, but never did, now the tools are there, they should only get them. (they can even keep their installer that is great IMHO, but use yast as tools). I use Mandrake, and would love to see them cooperating into making yast great so more distros could take advantage of those tools. Anyway, little distros probally will start using yast as default tools too, I belive.

Hope it helps for Mandrake

[Maljin Jolt]

because mandrake drak* tools are the most buggy thingies from the whole distro, for ages.

Future!

[tacocat]

YaST is nice and makes a great foundation for configuration. Are we talking YaST and/or YaST2? But SaX2, the X11 configuration tool, has been exceptional in my experience.

Anyone can configure a Linux machine these days, but few can get the X11 configuration working correctly.

If linux is truely aiming for the Desktop, wouldn't it make sense to have X11 configuration realiable and easy?

The real test now is coming into the configuration of peripheral devices more than the core OS and applications. Email and Web is not hard to do if you pay some attention to what you are doing.

But getting USB, FireWire, printers, sound, video all working cleanly and consistently will be the real test. Many distributions do this well to different degrees of success, but as always you have to check your hardware carefully before you buy it. This peripheral support is still a factor holding back the adoption of Linux

But consistent with the problem of obtaining a Desktop Linux is the problem with Multimedia. Multimedia support under free sucks really bad. SuSE ships with the lamest install of xine/mplayer I've ever experienced. And it's not just SuSE or Debian. It's the multimedia libraries and all the Intellectual Property bullshit. There's no innovation here folks, just territorial land grabbing.

Maybe with the EU having the balls to make a judgement against Microsoft and the chance of them sticking with it in the vote today, there's a chance that some day we'll be able to watch DVD's on our Linux computers without the need to hide in closets.

I think the release of YaST means this:

YaST2 and the entire Linux community has developed to such a point that YaST no longer holds a leading edge against the competition to the extent that it used to. As such it would be a better investment if YaST was more freely available to evolve according to the OS environment as we (SuSE/Novell) concentrated our efforts on other tools that still provide a leading edge over the competition (YaST3?, SaX2..)

This isn't to say in any way that YaST isn't still a valuable tool. But it might be a matter of, "We have a pretty good tool, lets give it back to the community.... Now that's done we can gather around another project more intensively."

Like Anaconda.

I wonder what Debian or Gentoo has to say... They need some help with this stuff, especially Gentoo.

Re:Future!

[crusher-1]

"YaST is nice and makes a great foundation for configuration. Are we talking YaST and/or YaST2? But SaX2, the X11 configuration tool, has been exceptional in my experience."

YaST (ver 1) is obsolete and no longer used. YaST2 is the "only" YaST that exists today (save those run fairly old versions of SuSE). If in a shell, when "yast" is called it is merely a symlink to /sbin/yast2, but in the ncurses form. Whereas calling "yast2" brings up a QT/gui version (unless in init 2 or 3).

Cheers

Re:registry - one advantage... permission

[ebuck]

Apache supports the inclusion of files into it's (normally) one config file format. This means that you can use the Include directive to move a portion of the config file into another file on the file system.

These other files can have different permissions, and if ACL is your cup of tea, you can set it up and enjoy. Or you can use the standard user/group/other UNIX permission set as you like. How you slice and dice the file is up to you.

But who would really do this anyway? Apache is a server, and you don't take a server and distribute the configuration between a group of people, each that can only touch these bits, but not those. You give the power to the administrator of the machine (or the server).

With a fragmented server configuration you run the risk of someone setting thier own slice of control to some nonsense which stops or cripples the operation of the entire server. With the apache http server, those who need to tweak their own hosting permissions can do so without fancy ACLs and a fragmented config file system. That's what .htaccess is all about.

Mabye there's a time and place where your argument will be much stronger, but Apache's HTTP server isn't the best example for proving your point.

Plan 9 (the OS, not the movie) really turned everything into a (very glorified) file system. It was interesting, but after using it, there seem to be limits as to what is comfortably put into a configuration file system, and what is better off in a plain vanilla config file.

NewtonOS took a completely different approach, it didn't have a file system per se, rather it had a underlying database. Configuration issues did not disappear, but they were much easier (my opinion) to handle. Some found it inconvienent to have documents be entries in a database, but that may have been a side effect of it's novelty.

Perhaps the real problem is that file systems (in general) make lousy databases? Look at the clunky implementation of the registry "find" function, and you'll see that an elegant solution is begging to be found.

YAST

[g0bshiTe]

As a SuSe home user for 3 years, I say it's about time. This tool has made SuSe the perfect distro for a Linux newb such as myself. Had it not been for the YAST module I believe I would have spent countless hours, trying to figure out configurations.

Though the documentation was lacking in the SuSe distro, YAST made my transition from a strictly Windows user to a multi OS user. I now use Windows strictly for playing those games that refuse to work proerly under WINE. PSSST MESSAGE TO THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY. How about improving the video acceleration of Linux! We need better games. And yes I did read the GAMES FOR LINUX ARTICLE

At any rate the article made no mention of YAST2 though. Is this to remain outside the GPL?