Installing basic development tools in Suse 9.1 Personal
 

Hi.

I have used linux a little bit before, but I am definitely still a newbie. Anyway, my problem is this...

(back story - you could skip it)

I have found Suse to be a pretty cool distro every time I tried it and wanted to try the new release, even if I did have to spend some money to get it. So I purchased Suse 9.1 Personal. I had various reasons for getting the Personal version instead of Professional. At the time, money was an issue and I really didn't want most of the extras that were included in Professional. I program a little, and I eventually want to run a mail server and stuff like that, but it didn't seem like a good idea to jump right into server maintenance before I even knew the OS. I knew from reviews that basic development tools, like a compiler and the such weren't installed. However, it didn't seem like it would be that hard to download what I wanted and install it either, since the reviews made it sound rather simple.

Anyway... I've found that some of it's not that bad. But when you're a newbie and it takes you a day to properly install gnumake and gcc and the such, and you go to install kdevelop and you're informed of a million other dependencies, it kind of socks you in the stomach... hard. Especially when you have no Internet connection under linux, and you start to think that, even if you did boot into Windows, download all the stuff you need, install it all (probably incorrectly and in places it shouldn't be) and somehow get *that* program to work, you'd probably have to go through the same thing when you tried to get Anjuta installed.

(the important part)

So, what I want to know is... now that 9.1 is available for download... Does anyone know what I need to download to get things up to where Professional is from the point of installing/creating software? I don't want Apache or most of that other stuff right now, but I'm going crazy just trying to install things. What I'm really hoping is that someone will tell me what to download and Yast will actually do all the hard work for me, so I don't have to be wondering if everything I run is running on top of a precarious framework of newbieness.

Thanks,
kaosyan

To be able to install and download the developping tools for SUSE 9.1 (or any software/RPM package for that matter) you only need to add a couple of installation sources to Yast. in Yast2 go to software, then to change installation source, and you can read the help in the left panel, or just add a new installation source. You can add an FTP, HTTP source, (choose the mirror nearest you -for adresses see the suse website) you can also add a local directory as a source that you can use to download any RPM package from the internet. there are some directories already in your distro that you can use to keep things organized /usr/src/packages/ that you can use for that. Then just open Yast2 and install the software, it has the possibility to read multiple installation sources so all the packages from your local directory, the CD and the FTP server you chose should be available. to find the local RPMs you often have to search them as they sometimes won't come up in the directories.
good luck

Thanks.
 

Alvarez,
Thank you for your post. I have already tried changing the source to a local directory as you said, with rpms downloaded from Suse. However, I would get a problem when starting up Yast afterwards. It would start up, and close right away. I currently dragged the computer to an Internet connection and am getting some of the stuff I needed via FTP and I'm considering just downloading the entire 9.1 directory and using an old computer as a server. Then again, now that I have a new job I am most likely getting the 9.1 Upgrade soon. I just wish I had realized it was the same thing as Pro without a User's Manual and minus 30 days of tech support, which I won't use anyway. If I had I wouldn't have wasted the money on the Personal version. Sigh. It's my fault in the end, I should have asked what the upgrade was, but the term is sort of misleading. I mean, if it can be used as a standalone product, it's not really an *upgrade*. Or at least not *just* an upgrade. Oh well. Can't wait to get this next paycheck and order the Upgrade.

I still don't understand what caused the open/close behavior when I changed the source of installation to a local directory, but soon it won't matter. For a while anyway. lol

Thanks again,
kaosyan

kaosyan,

Are you telling me that you don't have to have a previous version of SuSE for the Upgrade to work?

Also, I did a search for SuSE on Amazon and for what it's worth, there were several sellers listing "New" SuSE 9.1 Professional for under $10.00. It said Generic in the listing and didn't come with Manuals but for $10.00, it may worth a look. I don't know much about Amazons other sources but there were a few on there with 5 Star Ratings.

Regards,
Paul

Well...
 

From what I read in various posts about various iterations of Suse (8.2, 9.0, etc.), yeah, it looks like you don't need an older version installed for the upgrade to work. I could be wrong, so it might be worth double-checking, but I'm pretty sure you can just get the upgrade and install away. Seems like it's just minus the user's manual (you still get the administrator's manual) and 30 days of tech support, but otherwise the same thing as Pro. I don't know if I'm going to go the Amazon route or not. If I'm going to be spending money, I'd just as soon give it to Suse, so they can keep doing what they do.
kaosyan

Kaosyan,
Have you tried to change the installation source or have you actually added extra sources?
I think that if your only source is a local directory you could run into some problems but try to add a local one, leave the CD one and add a FTP from a near by site. You are probably best off to try an FTP install before downloading the set of RPMs localy. Then you can put them in a prioritized order, with the Local 1st, then the FTP and leave the CD last...
If you still can't get it to work like that you can try it with the local and FTP only.

The upgrade for 9.1 is supposed to run even without a previous version of SUSE by the way...
let me know if the FTP install works. At leat you would know how to go about it for the next SUSE if you get the 9.1 CDs