Though I do agree YaST is far superior to the only other package manger I tried - urpmi - it is still very complicated. Newbies like me have a hard time because of the need to scour the net for sources. The ones listed on the opensuse website often are broken or simply wrong.
Yup... I haven't been brave enough to step in and change things... mainly because I'm never sure that my method of "fixing" it so I could actually get it to work is the right way to do it.... it just happens to be the way that works for me. I've been using SUSE since 6.0. I've been through the days when I had to recompile the kernel provided by SUSE just to get my sound card working. I'm no expert by any means, but I am comfortable in SUSE, and in Linux in general... yet.. I REALLY struggle to get package management working "nicely" in SUSE. Smart is OK, but as I've pontificated on this list in the past, I think it's UI is horribly designed. You ony have to compare to Synaptic and Adept to see just how horrible Smart-gui is in terms of useablity. Trying to explain (over the phone) to a new SUSE user how to add sources in YAST is impossible. I put them on to Smart-gui with a LOT of caveats, and a huge long email explaining how to view what is new since the last update, and how to guess if they are getting or even need an update/upgrade to an installed app... how to pick the most recent version and on and on.... If they use Synaptic or Adept... it's immediately obvious. Oh well.... It's a small issue when viewed in the context of everythign else in SUSE that is far better than anythign else on the Linux market :-) C.