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Up2date is crap but yum works fine on fedora.

I prefer to use apt on suse btw.

> Apt is the way to go.

The problem with apt is that it's unmaintained - especially the port to rpm. Conectiva did the port, but stopped maintaining it some time ago - no distro is using it now, and nobody actively maintains it.

> urpmi is not a SUSE tool, therefore it is
> out of the question, as simple as that.

Why? yum wasn't a SuSE tool either, now it is. It wasn't even a Fedora tool, it became a Fedora tool later, and now it's also a SuSE tool. Things change.

BTW: Something will definitely change in the future. It's not yet decided, but it's clear that YaST in it's current state won't be the primary package manager in the future.

One thought is to change YaST's backend to yum with a new, friendlier frontend, and another idea is to choose a backend that supports multiple types of repositories. The only thing that's quite clear right now is that package management will be redesigned. Check out the openSuSE mailing lists.

Yellow Dog Modified .

YUM is not great, it dies when a repository is down. Urpmi from mandrake is far better in this concern. It is almost as good as APT.

Yast is too slow, and tries to be too many things at once. Have you noticed how much is going on in the background when you are just installing one RPM ?

Mandriva always get critisised for the drake tools, however, I think they are excellent. If an APT based distro, like Ubuntu, for example adopted the drake tools for configuring the system, and kept APT, then it would be a killer distro.

exactly,
I, (being a mandriva user), think the drake tools are excellent, but, I also keep a Ubuntu machine and think it would be simply amazing to combine these with APT.
There have been a lot of people saying since YAST has been GPL'ed, there will be a lot more distros using it... no thanks.
Yast is nice to use, don't get me wrong, and it is good having just one place to go to do things... but I just don't like it.

"YUM is not great, it dies when a repository is down."

No. It doesnt. It automatically switches mirrors and only fails if all the repositories are unreachable but no tool can succeed in that case

Well, to the people criticising yast, do you realize that yast manages all things related to the system, not only packages? I agree, yast's package management is not very good, but why toss the whole yast "suite" just for one module?

Agreed, but Yast probably isn't the way ahead. It is monolithic and can be clunky. Folks have to know where to find something. And it represents another "layer" to learn on top of the desktop DE. Changing settings from within the DE is probably the way to go, and of course Gnome and KDE are already some way down this road. If SUSE rewrote Yast as a series of discrete gtk modules, they'd probably be doing the Linux world an enormous favour (no flames for KDE, please).

Also, if you got the 3 of them on the dvd, why argue? Those who like yast, use yast, those who like apt, use apt, and those who like yum, use yum. It's nice if you come from fedora or from debian to find the tool you're already used to. I, myself, keep the 3 of them =)

Fair enough, but what this tells me is that SUSE don't currently know what they want to do. Not a good message for this company to give out. I'd much prefer one outstanding package manager to three so-so ones with varying degrees of support. If I had to choose it would be apt/synatpic which "Just Works" (TM) and hides a great deal of complexity from the user. Debian's system of feeding in suggested and recommended packages is also a very nice touch.

You obviously never played with YaST on SUSE. First of all, it IS modular based. Second, all YaST modules can be found in KDE control center. So there's no need for 'gtk modules' because they already exist.

[i]You obviously never played with YaST on SUSE. First of all, it IS modular based. Second, all YaST modules can be found in KDE control center. So there's no need for 'gtk modules' because they already exist.<i/>

I've "played" with SUSE for over four years now, thanks. And no, Yast is not modular in the way that one of the Gnomne configuration panels is modular. Say, Desktop -> Preferences -> Network Proxy. You don't have to fire up Yast in order to get to it. That's what I meant. The existence of Yast at all is, arguably, a distraction these days and more learning required though SUSE fans may not see it that way. (I would say the same of the KDE control center, too, regarding being monolithic. But then I try not to use KDE.)

I've "played" with SUSE for over four years now, thanks. And no, Yast is not modular in the way that one of the Gnomne configuration panels is modular. Say, Desktop -> Preferences -> Network Proxy. You don't have to fire up Yast in order to get to it. That's what I meant. The existence of Yast at all is, arguably, a distraction these days and more learning required though SUSE fans may not see it that way. (I would say the same of the KDE control center, too, regarding being monolithic. But then I try not to use KDE.)

Neither the KDE nor the Yast control centre are monolithic. The modules of either are loaded on-demand when selected, and they can also be started outside the control centres.

It's due to that very modularity that Suse can integrate the Yast modules into the KDE control centre.

urpmi is not a SUSE tool, therefore it is out of the question, as simple as that.

yum neither is a SUSE tool (as far as I know).

"yum neither is a SUSE tool (as far as I know)."

Indeed, but whilst urpmi is seen very much as a Mandriva tool (and even Mandriva might drop it eventually in favor of Smart), Yum by now is seen as distro agnostic.

Personally I prefer Apt.

I do prefer apt, but my second choice is urpmi.
In fact, my order of preferences :
1) apt
2) urpmi
3) smart
4) yum
5) yast
Why ? Because my first need is to have a quick package manager. Take a look at apt-cache and its speed, it's brillant !

says who? anonymous.

and if there's one thing that i've learned over the years, then it's not to believe anonymous.