-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Thursday 2008-09-25 at 17:44 +1000, Basil Chupin wrote:
The Sunday 2008-09-21 at 11:21 +0200, Clayton wrote:
This crap about what is official and not official is... well... you're not the only one getting annoyed by it Basil :-)
It basically means two things: it is less tested, and you do not get updated through "YOU" (unless they also create it).
Now, that makes it all crystal clear: "and you do get updated through "YOU" (unless they also create it)."
So, if I *only* use zypper and the repo. manager, then it is "official", right?
Er.... no. I'll reword it. The only official repos are the "oss" repo, the "non-oss" repo, and the "update" repo. Only those three, which are the one that get set automatically during installation. All the rest are "non-official". Of those "non-official" some of them hold newer versions of the packages, prepared by the same people that prepare the official ones, so they should be "good". For example, the three OpenOffice repos. Kind of fuzzy, yes. Others are maintained by people that do not belong/work for Novell at all. Notice that there is only one update repo, which is the one that puts the security updates used by YOU; but only the packages from the oss and non-oss repos get updates this way. Any other repo could create their own update repo, but afaik, they don't. In <http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories> you have a list of repos. Maybe not all of them! And notice the "warning" there. For KDE, there is another list: <http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Repositories>. Notice some are maintained by the "KDE team", and some aren't. The "KDE Backports" repos are the safest, but obviously, more limited. Of these, I believe you used the ones marked "KDE 4.1 Factory Development". Notice the warning: Latest KDE 4.1 snapshots as they're developed for openSUSE Factory. These might contain bugs, but are considered mostly useable. Those repositories are incompatible with the STABLE: repos, so you can only use one at a time. and: Latest KDE 4.1 snapshots uses libqt4 as a strong requirement. Don't forget to add this repo to avoid crashes. IMO, these repos are quite dangerous. Only use if you know what you are doing. Certainly not on a production machine.
It also means that it is maintained by some "people", but not by Novell.
But, but, but....... the files come from repositories "sanctioned"/"authorised" by Novell - see the definition of what "official" means in an English dictionary - which means that they are "official".
How do you know they are "sanctioned"? They sit on hardware provided by Novell, that's about all. Even if made by Novell employees, read the warnings. They are not fully tested. «You» are the tester.
Similar thing as the hpijs drivers for my HP printer: they are not supported by HP, although they are probably made by people from HP, on their free time.
Not interested in the slightest of what HP do with the drivers for their printers; all I care about is how openSUSE handles what they provide to its users.
Haven't you seen the "as is" notice on most software? - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjbZg4ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XnGACfSGWSLLp/uq49izorJ8WIXMg9 tg8AnjctWm1rrWDxqgYUpsnFpMCdOtkq =Qf9b -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----