On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 08:34, John Pettigrew wrote:

In a previous message, Takis Diakoumis wrote:

...

in trying to update my system i noticed that it does not retrieve or list for update a lot of packages that are otherwise available for update via ftp from the suse download page.

YOU doesn't upgrade your system - it updates the installed packages. That is, it doesn't go from one version to another, but it will download patched versions of the same software you have installed. SuSE release patches for each version, even backporting fixes from later versions of software. However, they reckon that if you want more recent versions (i.e. with new features), you'll have to buy a more recent copy of the distro :-) Of course, distros are never bang up to date so if you want something newer than is on your disks (such as Gnome 2.4), you have to do it yourself. If you only want the latest security patches, YOU will do that for you.

And if you install anything not contained on the CD's/DVD or from YOU you do so at your own risk and may break your system or make it unusable. Not usually a big deal but be careful what you install and keep good records so you can undo something that does break your system. -- Ken Schneider unix user since 1989 linux user since 1994 SuSE user since 1998 (5.2)