I've just migrated from Fedora---> got thoroughly sick of its sound bugs.

Though I am pleased with SUSE, I have noticed that unfortunately there are significantly fewer packages available for it, and I avoid compiling whenever I can.

However, I was once on a website for something where the author of the package said that he had created an rpm on a suse 6.0 machine, but that it would probably work on redhat /fedora systems too.

...Is it safe to try and use packages for other distros generally, without borking my system? And if so, which distro's packages should I use: Fedora / Mandrake / etc.?

Using YAST to install them will never bork your system(or at least I don't think so and they haven't yet for me), if it doesn't/won't work for your system, it won't install the RPM. So it never hurts to try(In My Experience) but I have not had great luck in general, I am working to find a pattern, but don't really get enough to know.
I have seen a thread or two mentioning possibilities of what takes more often and is "more compatible" but I don't really know for sure.

I usually advise against using packages not created for your distribution.
In the case of SuSe, I strongly advise not to use non-SuSe rpms.

Yves.

I would trust your recommendation more than my meandering experience.

That said, I commonly find almost everything compiled for SuSE. just not some of the kde-look stuff and the occasional rare piece of software.

I would just go through and add as many sources as possible as install sources from the sticky thread at the top of this forum, you will probably found just about everything without leaving yast.

Thanks

(But why *especially* on SUSE not to use other distro's rpms, by the way, Yves?)

RPM was created by RedHat.
Then a number of other distributions began using the RPM format for their own packages.

Overall, most distributions using the RPM format name their packages and resources (requires / provides) more or less as RedHad would do, split applications roughly the same way, and so on.
It is not an exact fit, but close enough. Besides, most RPM-based distributions have very similar filesystem layouts.

SuSe however, chose a very different way of naming their packages and resources, and they have more than average differences in filesystem layout than other RPM-based distributions, compared to RedHat.

I don't say that SuSe does it the wrong way! Not at all. I only say that they chose their own way, for best or worst.
Indeed, in my experience, it is almost impossible to automatically resolve dependencies as expected, when mixing SuSe RPMs and non-SuSe RPMs.

My experience with SuSe, however, is as old as year 2000! Once in a while, though, I do read a post or two that seem to indicate that SuSe still is "different". I can't be sure, though. Things change.

Yves.

One major difference between SuSE and other rpm-based distros, is the number of major apps installed in /opt instead of /usr (kde and gnome for example). The SuSE concept of /etc is more convoluted that any other distro I've used. SuSE makes heavy use of scripts not seen in other distros. Then there's the issue of YaST, which won't touch anything installed from command-line unless you remember to run /sbin/SuSEconfig IMMEDIATELY after the installation, before doing anything else.

My recommendation, if you want to install something on SuSE which isn't a SuSE rpm, go with the tarball. Get encap, install it. Then use the epkg utility to install the tarball. Encap has several advantages. The entire package is installed into a folder in /usr/encap. If you want to upgrade that tarball to a newer release/version, encap detects the previous installation and upgrades it. The files in the encap folder are symlinked to the locations a tarball would otherwise install its files. Uninstall is as easy as deleting the folder and its contents, then run something like the symlinks utility to detect and remove dangling symlinks.

So far, encap and stow are the only utilities I'm aware of that handle tarballs this way.

I don't recommend stow because I couldn't get it to work properly. Ymmv.

I didn't know about this "encap" thing! It seems to be a lot like my "optpm" (see my linux page on software installation). I'll take a look.
I'd be happy to depreciate my "optpm" in favour of "encap", because then I wouldn't have to maintain my own program LOL
Thanks for the info!

Yves.

Encap and optpm sound good, I'll try them.
What is the "epkg" utilituy, may I ask?


Also, can you post the web address / provide a link?

Thankyou

No I can't, sorry. This would be considered self-promotion, or an advert, or whatever you name it, by LQ rules. Use the WWW link as a starting point:
My site > Computing > Linux > Software/installation.

Yves.