Like I've mentioned before I think it's good to have Rug for Cli, Zen for Joe Six Pack and YaST for more advanced in depth packagemanagement. I won't comment on the backend setup - libzypp, zmd etc.
- Update in YaST is a mess. ....
I think there is a danger of thinking along the lines of how can we make the current situation less bad. SUSE has never had superb package management, new releases bring incremental updates which make the situation "less bad" (excluding 10.1). It might be time to take a step back and reconsider what the users need to be able to do and then how the technology should work to enable that. 10.1 introduced new technologies with potential, but even if they worked flawlessly it is even more confusing for users than the situation before. There is no point in having the most technologically advanced system if no-one is able to use it. Benjamin Weber