The intent of Yast, it seems, is to provide coordinated control over the software that's installed on one's system. It certainly works well for the software provided by SuSE, and from what I've read it also works tolerably well for some (but not all) packages in RPM format. The hangup there seems to be packages that were specifically configured for RedHat systems. But what's missing is a facility for keeping track of packages that aren't provided by SuSE and are in .tgz form. It was suggested to me that the instmon tool would help with those - but that still leaves me with two different, uncoordinated package managers. I'd very much like to see Yast enhanced to become a really effective general package manager. There are several cases to consider: 1. Packages not provided by SuSE at all. 2. SuSE updates to previously installed .tgz packages. 3. .tgz updates or extensions to SuSE packages. Installing a .tgz package has two basic steps: unpacking the package and installing its contents. The installation typically involves three substeps (for Gnuish software, anyway): ./configure make all (which does the compilation) make install However, there are lots of variations, so I see little hope of automating the installation phase. What Yast *could* do would be to do the unpack to a standard location, take a snapshot of the system, and then instruct the user to do the installation. After the installation is complete, Yast would then take a second snapsnot. (That's more or less what instmon does.) Those snapshots could then be used for automated uninstallation. Optionally, the unpacked files could then be discarded. The package would be included in Yast's list of what's in the system. Yast does in fact process .tgz files - but all it does is to unpack them to the root directory--which is worse than useless. A couple of examples of things I've done or plan to do: - Installing KDE 1.1 on a SuSE 5.3 system (works fine, but I dread the next update) - Installing the TeXLive distribution Thoughts, anyone? Paul Abrahams - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>