Thats probably what all this is about and maybe why Novell are focusing on Gnome, probably way off base here so dont flame me for it :)... For example (just a thought came to me), Novell probably has a good idea of what the largest majority of users desktops are from the online updates (I'm guessing here)... So in order to better address the compatibility issues for this larger (Gnome) user base they're focusing in this area (or they simply have other reasons for pushing Gnome etc). My comments, and thoughts, are as a humble user, I gave up the trying to do the install packages thing (over a year ago, I tried to DIY upgrade Gnome) and now only rarely install packages provided there is a SuSE rpm for it, if not, I just settle for whatever versions are in the distro currently used... Obviously there is a broad spectrum of SuSE userships, and for the most part (in my case) one could say that the SuSE distro (and YaST updates) is my System Administrator (and thus I can only put up with figuring out the install/config stuff once a year --- in all previous instances it has been either when my hard drive died, or when a better version of Gnome was available etc)... -- devosc