* Kevin McLauchlan;
problems while maintaining the system ( note maintaining is used as security updates not developing edge)
Well, not to disagree with one of the gurus of the list, but I have run into considerable grief by just running a YOU on the wrong day. The archives of this list are littered with the bones of other people who have encountered the same.
Well as they say YMMV :-) I ahve not had a single issue with YOU yet. On the other hand My SUSE is uptodate with regards to updates published bia YOU. Now it is woth to mention that I do not have any of the cutting edge softwares' applications installed system wide. Not that I do not install them but they are only avaliable via my $PATH and they are basicly Docbook related stuff where they will not affect the system.
In fact, my approach to YOU (now, anyway) is to watch the list and see if a few days go past *without* people complaining that "I just did a YOU update and all my WXYZ stopped working!" Then, I cross my fingers and activate YOU, and hope that I'm in the middle of a "stable" period between dangerous/flaky YOU passes.
I know the feeling I have 8.1 running but not on my production system and to move from 7.2 to 8.0 was a big decision. My firewall is still with 7.1 ( and I know within like six months I have to upgrade it otherwise I will be missing SuSE's security related updates as support will be discontinued for that particular version)
don't like) the majority of the problems are arising from installing the developing edge applications and this is sad.
Well, this is such a difficult area -- what is a developing-edge application?
Please don't tell me that *that* is a risky, developmental software.
No but playing around with KDE3.1 when it is not even it's beta stage would be cutting edge or using a 2.5.47 kernel is.
Well, that sounds good, too, except that my experience with (say) YaST is that it does many things quite well, but it hides many things and does not give the possibility of optional approaches within its interface.
Well I agree YaST does not do everything like if you remeber the thread couple of days ago regarding configuring apache while making sure SuSEconfig does not bark. That approach editing a new file and making sure /etc/sysconfig/apache has it and SuSEconfig --module apache will parse it is basicly understanding the limitation of what YaST can do and can not do. YaST is an ideal administration tool for a basic system. However as things gets complex for example /etc/sysconfig/network/igcfg.template has a warning when you want to set up aliases via option two # 2) multiple IP addresses per config file: # !!! YaST2 is not able to read multiple addresses from one file. Use # this only # if you configure your stuff manually anyway !!! So YaST is just a basic tool "YeT Another Setup Tool" it will do the job but not everything.
Thus, the tool itself should have perhaps a novice and an expert mode, with various nags and expository text files (maybe even links to some of the recent threads on this list? :-) for the newbies, which could be turned off for the advanced user.
Well I liked the approach but human nature always is curious about the expert or advanced option as "Novice" is not what majority would like to hear. So yes but :-)
implementation of KDE, then your printing is done via CUPS/KUPS and you are not allowed other options? If you want to install JUST a printing capability that is not CUPS, then you are required to sacrifice most-of/all-of KDE due to dependencies and conflicts?
Well I agree that the rpm dependecy is a major headache. If you want something installed for example kdenetwork3 then immeiatle I am told to install ppp why on the earth some one thinks I have to install ppp maybe I am on a ethernet network and I have no intention of using "ppp" but I think it is a packaging philosophy and to find the right combination will take time Now you can remove ppp package but then you welcome the future problems toganm@earth:~/projects/sfnet/suse/website> sudo rpm -evvv --test ppp D: opening database mode 0x0 in /var/lib/rpm D: requires: ppp unsatisfied. D: package kdenetwork3 require not satisfied: ppp error: removing these packages would break dependencies: ppp is needed by kdenetwork3-3.0.4-6 So what I learnt, to live with it and I have no headaches when I install a package (knock the wood) -- Togan Muftuoglu Unofficial SuSE FAQ Maintainer http://dinamizm.ath.cx