On Thursday 24 of June 2010, Will Stephenson wrote:
Updated version incorporating your comments
BEGINS ==Repositories== Repositories are collections of Linux software. They can be used to extend your openSUSE installation with software that is not included in an openSUSE release for size or policy reasons, or to update it with newer software versions that were not available at the time of release. [Note: there are offline repositories as well (ie: DVD). ]
Repositories may contain software of any trust level and may replace important system packages as well as adding new software. In addition, by combining many different repositories and installing their software, conflicts between software versions may arise which cause some packages to be uninstalled.
Before registering arbitrary repositories to your openSUSE installation, you should consider these risks. The repositories suggested by the Community Repositories list in YaST's Installation Sources module are intended to be safe and free of conflicts. However, when installing or updating software you should always look at the proposed changes to make sure nothing is being added or removed that could compromise the integrity of your installation. If in doubt, do not continue.
==Debug packages== To help improve openSUSE, you can report bugs when a program crashes. The crash handler can install additional debug packages to improve the quality of this crash information. For openSUSE releases, these packages are contained in a separate repository due to their size. This repository can be added by opening Software Repositories in YaST, Add a repository, select Community Repositories, check Main Repository (DEBUG), then select Ok.
First of all, the repo-debug repository is added by default, so the steps are incorrect, the repo just needs enabling. Second, this is from the dialog before Software Repositories is launched, so the first steps are incorrect too. But in general, I find this too vague and theoretical. It's nice that the user is explained what a repo is, but what they want to know in the first place is what they should do. IMO there should be a DO-THIS section that says for debug packages enable the repo, for others add a repo this way and try the community repos if you don't know, for multimedia stuff follow this link. The Yast2 dialog is big enough to be already confusing enough as it is (see e.g. [*] ) and adding even more while still leaving it up to the user to figure it out is not improving it. [*] http://kdedevelopers.org/node/4232#comment-8953 -- Lubos Lunak openSUSE Boosters team, KDE developer l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org