Comment # 22 on bug 984778 from Tony Mechelynck

P.S. IMHO the most useful uses of zypper are the following:

* man zypper
* zypper help
* zypper help *command*
* zypper info *packagename*
* zypper lu -t package -t patch
* zypper patch --with-update
* zypper --releasever *nn.n* dup
  * but only after changing the URL (and optionally the name and/or alias: I
personally use it in the name but not the alias) of all repository entries in
the *.repo files (even Packman if present) so that the openSUSE version is
replaced by the text "$releasever" (without the quotes of course)
  * It is possible (and IMHO less error-prone when tweaking the repositories'
description manually, for instance to add $releasever) to have a single .repo
file (named, for example, /etc/zypp/repos.d/all.repo) rather than a separate
one for each repo, but this is only my own preference, and it admittedly makes
the all.repo rather bulky; another user might prefer separate .repo files for
this reason.

For more complicated package management actions than the above, I find YaST
more user-friendly. Again, YMMV.