Hi,
I use openSUSE10.2. Because of a broken KMail address book, I chose to freshly install 10.2 in another partition (hda11, actually ).

I am lost among the program management tools and would like to know which I can ditch and which are preferred for general use. Almost all of these tools are accessible from the menu: Applications -> System -> Configuration. The names shown with the icons are obscure, the first 4 tools have the same icon, designated here 1. To find out more about these tools, I looked at the link properties and will list it all here:

Tool name icon command line
Install software 1 zen installer %F
Install software 1 package-manager %F
Remove software 1 zen-remover
Update software 1 zen-updater
(note: for the above all icons are identical and the first two titles of icons are indeed the same - Install software.)
SMART package manager 2
SMART package update checker 2
yast2 - ye good olde yast, but it ain't what it used to be.

I need smart because I use python-IDLE, which seems no longer available in yast2. Alltogether, there are 7 different management tools. Can someone enlighten me where I can find information about these tools? Any recommendations which of these I should dump?

All information will be greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance.

OldAl in sunny Canberra autumn.

You might want to start with http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Management/Tools. It has brief introductions to them. There are some more in depth discussions on the same site about how to get things working acceptably. But, personally, I don't feel that SUSE's package management is where it should be. I find I have to use at least three package managers, sometimes four, in order to get things the way I want them.

When I am finished with a project that I am working on right now I am going to dump SUSE for Slackware, partly because of it's package management, partly because of its speed and stability (programs load slowly and I experience random mouse and keyboard lockups that leave me no alternative but to do a hard reset), and partly because of Novell.

I've been resorting to compiling software from source code... and am finding it easier to do that than to deal with rpm's. But to answer your question, start with the url I quoted above. It may lead to more help for your situation.

Thank you for your reply. I will read the information in the link you gave me - it sounds very much what I need in the first place.

I am ignorant of other packages, so I am intrigued why you want to switch over to Slackware? I agree that there is at least one good reason for ditching SUSE, a Novell product. But why Slackware?

I also note that your profile says that you are using suse 10.1. I dropped suse 10.1 because IMHO it was a completely unstable and unsatisfactory product. OTOH, openSUSE 10.2 turns out to be very stable. I have not experienced any lockups or other abnormal behaviour.

Why and how did I wreck the KMail address book, I have no idea. It probably is more related to KDE than suse and to the fact that I tend to "doctor" different distribution installations to share data and mail between all of them.

Thank you again for your very prompt and most useful reply,

OldAl - and the autumn in Canberra is still sunny...

I've gotten used to compiling software and am finding that Slackware provides a nice build environment and that many of the packages I need are pre-compiled for Slackware with the right defaults, so I don't have to go chasing down additional packages that should have been installed in the first place. An example is gd support in the php package. I need this for web development. It is a very common package used on web servers. SUSE does not include it. It is not in their standard repositories. It is only available from third-party repositories. Slackware just does the right thing in this case. I also find that Slackware runs faster than SUSE on my system. Programs start up faster and run snappier than they do in SUSE. And then there is that elusive just-feels-right sensation. I used to have this when I first started using SuSE, but as more time goes by I find SUSE feels less right. I started searching for a different distribution about a year ago. Recently, I tried Slackware and found that it was relatively easy for me to configure and that it gave back to me that just-feels-right experience.