Hi, I am not new to linux but I am very new to SUSE. I have tried many distros before and I think the best of them are Ubuntu and Debian, because of the superb package management and the ease of upgrading. However, I think the versions of the packages are a bit old so I have started out to look for another distro.

I have heard that SUSE is a very user-friendly distro, and furthermore now it is more open, so I would like to give it a try. But before that, I have a few questions to ask.

1. How is the package management in SUSE? Is it done through the famous YaST? Is upgrade of packages easy? What about system upgrade from an older release to a newer one?

2. Now 10.0 RC1 is out. Is it easy to upgrade later to the official release? I don't want to download the 3.3 GB ISOs twice...

Thanks for your replies.

Hi koyi,

I am currently using OpenSuSe 10.0 RC1 and it is working very good but with some small issues (problem installing packages not supplied in the DVD). but not mayor ones, just annoinces. But keep in mind this is not the final version. Now answers to your questions;

1. Yes, the main package manager is Yast (rpm), but I also use Apt4Rpm with Synaptics as a front end and also KPackage.

System upgrades are very simple there is an option in Yast, and also when you bootup from the new version it gives you the option to upgrade your system (generally,it has no issues unless you did something out of the ordinary, like manually installing nvidia drivers, which you will have to reinstall later.)


2. I have not seen any post on the contrary, it should upgrade just like any previous versions. I am counting on it, since I do not expect or want to do a reinstall. But if you are not sure, I suggest you wait a couple of more weeks and get the final version.

Hope this helps you, take care.

Thanks for the quick reply
I think I will grab it now and give it a try.
Hope that this is my final destination

Im not quite sure about this, but if I have understood correctly, OpenSuse community will release delta isos when the final version will hit the stores. That is in early October.

Atleast that is what they did with the betas. If you have lets say RC1 cds, you can download the rc1_to_final deltaisos and combine them with the cds you have already got. The deltaisos are much smaller files than the originals.
For example the beta4_to_RC1 were:

SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-Beta4_RC1-CD1.delta.iso 07-Sep-2005 18:45 106M
SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-Beta4_RC1-CD2.delta.iso 07-Sep-2005 18:55 20M
SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-Beta4_RC1-CD3.delta.iso 07-Sep-2005 19:02 39M
SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-Beta4_RC1-CD4.delta.iso 07-Sep-2005 19:14 17M
SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-Beta4_RC1-CD5.delta.iso 07-Sep-2005 19:26 13M

Oh, if then that is better!

But how do I use those delta CDs?

Download the delta isos to same directory where the originals are located (or convert cds to isos) then use this command:

applydeltaiso old-rc1-cd1.iso delta.rc1-final-cd1.iso final-cd1.iso

now you can burn the isos to cds and update or
mount the isos and and add them to sources

This is just one way of doing the update, you can use apt if prefer that or when the final version is available you can add ftp sites to your yast sources and do system update with that.

Official release date of SUSE10 is by the way 6th of October, and when its released I´m quite sure we will find here some great guides to do the update...