He could also install apt/synpatic on openSUSE or use SMART.

Sepero - Obviously I wasnt aware (or knowledgeable enough by your tone) of the pitfalls of installing via the tarball...I am aware enough about what a tarball file is, so I thought I would be getting all the files necessary for a particular program rolled into one file...I quess not. If you believe reinstall is the only cure for my ills then I suppose I should look closer at other distro's that might be alittle more easier on beginners like me...I am not trying to sound snotty, I do appreciate your input.

pixellany - actually, I do like YAST and what if provides for the user/root...
I just dont understand the different modules and how to install programs...as my teenager would say "My Bad" (God I hate that saying)...I will probably take Sepero's advice and either reinstall the latest SuSE or perhaps check out another distro that is easier for this 21 yr ET to understand... --

Thanks to all that took the time...

ET---extraterrestrial??
extended teenager?--no, he has a teenager.
Entertainment Tonight?? perhaps
.et ? (domain suffix for Ethiopia)

If you think Linux is bad for this, try Windows. Go into a system folder and look at all the .dll files with undechiperable names.
With a good package manager, you don't have to understand the modules

You're welcome for my advice. If you notice my posts around the forum, I don't softly guide people in the direction they need to go. We're virtually all adults here, and babying people doesn't work for me. Instead, I tell them the cold hard truth, then it's up to them to either take it or leave it.

Best of luck with your reinstalls. Remember to backup /home.

cbjhawks, I am glad to see that, after a period for reflection, you have decided to heed the advice from sepero, pixellany and myself.
Just to make life even easier for you, here's another piece of advice.

Before installing openSUSE 10.2 have a thorough read ofJem Matzan's excellent article, "Hacking openSUSE 10.2".

The article can be found at:-

http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60/

The article as a whole should be *compulsory viewing* for all users of openSUSE 10.2, which in my opinion is one of the finest Linux operating systems in existence.

*Perhaps the administrators would like to put up a "sticky" to this effect*.

cbjhawks:

I know what you are talking about. I have been using Suse exclusively since about 5.3,( perhaps 1999 ?) At that time Suse was much smaller and worked better for me that the other linux distros I tried - some linux distros I tried I could not even get running right, even Red Hat gave me trouble - Suse worked for me so I didn't even look at other distributions after that - if my OS/2 had not been getting too outdated for my newer hardware , I would have stayed with it. I didn't have broadband so I would buy the boxed set every time it came out and usually gave my old manuals away whenever I upgraded, more recently I started using OpenSuse. In most ways Suse has improved a lot, but even with all the improvements, I still run into far more problems with dependencies far more often that I should - it's ironic that a package is available via Yast but when it comes to installing it I, will get an error there are no sources for a particular library that is needed. A few releases back I was using "apt-get" and that worked better for me many of the times. As for Yast, I really liked the original version better, and it did as well as todays version for most dependencies - but it didn't look like the Yast used today. I also find it frustrating that it takes Yast so long to get the software module ready, of course I could save some time by turning refresh off but that increases the chances of it not resolving all the dependencies. These days, I really don't like spending a lot of time playing with the operating system itself, prefer to just use it . I need to replace my hard drive and seriously thinking the time has come for me to move to Kubuntu as I find more ubuntu help on most subjects these days than Suse - it seems everywhere I go there is something for ubuntu.

Kubuntu or Mepis---my 2 current favorites. Also, PCLinuxOS (based on Mandriva, but uses the same package management as the Debian/Ubuntu family.

Also, if you are suspicious about the Novell/MS alliance, then that is also a reason to get away from SUSE

I might suggest you try out Debian or Kubuntu. Apt is one of the best package managers. The only problem I found was that packages installed weren't always the latest, but it did work. This was on Debian, I can't speak for Kubuntu. Debian is known for being a little "Behind the times" so to speak. After all, YOU try maintaining an FTP server with 14,000 packages and making sure that every one is at the current version!

I used Debian for a few months, and by far apt was one of my favorite parts of it. But I tend to prefer Mandriva for desktop PCs, hence why I'm using it now. But I'd take a Debian based system for a server any day, just because of the package management system.

According to what source???
Sometimes misinformation can be worse than no information.

Meaning their packages aren't always the latest versions. Once again, as many packages as Debian tries to maintain with their OS, this is understandable.

Unstable isn't bleeding edge enough? You're a braver man than me

cbjhawks

If you want to use YAST as the package manager some reading is required. Don't mean to sound harsh but it's just not optional. It's well documented at Novell's own site and several other places. Learn to use it or have an unstable system. It's less intuitive than the debian style package management imo. Looking into SMART as reddazz suggested might be a good idea.

Sticking with the official sources is good in theory but what about multimedia? Most Suse users depend on the packman source for this. The Jem report spells it out.

Something that might be worth checking out is "klik". It is supposed to allow a program to be run without the usual install routine. Sort of a "ride before you buy" to the best of my understanding.

Warning: some of the above is based on my Suse experience which is a little (9.2) out of date.

As for your complaint about having to re-0install all the special programs manually if you do a clean install of Suse 10.2, I would think Suse has to have a capability to LIST all the installed packages on your system so you could easily duplicate the package set on a new machine.. SInce I'm a Debian person as well I'll show you how we would do it and leave it up to you to research how to do the same thing on Suse..

On the old machine type the following command to get alist of all the installed packages on the system and put that list in a text file.
dpkg --Get-selections > selections.txt

Copy that file to your new clean installed system and issue the following command
dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt

This will take the selection list from the old box and tell the package manager on the new box this is the configuration you want.

apt-get update - update the available package list from the repositories
apt-get upgrade - install the packages in the selection list

and shazam !! the new install now has all the packages the original install had, and you can set about configuring anything special you had setup..

Suse HAS to be able to do a similar procedure using their package management solutions.. now its just up to you to find out exactly how.

I concur with the above responses that Debian is NOT sorely out of date if you are running testing or sid.. both versions are extremely stable, and relatively up to date. I also have a very difficult time locating any program that is not already included in the Debian repositories, so dependency issues are a thing of the past back in the old days when I ran redhat v.6 - v.9. the advantage of installing and updating everything from a repository means that program STAYS up to date with version changes and security issues. Beats the heck out of haveing to recompile an app and it's dependencies every time I need to update it, or having to manually track all the security fixes for programs installed on my machine **shudder** Either way I think with a bit of research you can get Suse to perform in a similar fashion.

Never do that! rpm is NOT supposed to be a user friendly program, but a program to be used by other front ends, in case of SUSE, it is Yast.

instead, I used to do this:
yast2 --install whatever.rpm

Install without resolving dependency.... then close the yast.

Now restart yast... go to 'installing software' section (I dont remember the name now since now I work on Gentoo), and without selecting any program, just press accept. Yast will automatically resolve the dependencies etc., and ask you to proceed. In case it is not available, you would know!

Also, if you know what you installed using 'tar-balls', you can almost ALWAYS undo it!

Just download the *same* tarball again (anywhere). Give the same commands again for './configure' (I mean with whatever options you used to install with). Then instead of doing 'make && make install', do a 'make uninstall'. The do a 'ldconfig' (or whatever Suse equivalent is, Suse users will remember). That's it! You can uninstalled the program!

PS: If you hate dependencies and like installing from source balls, try Gentoo! It is like debian, but with source code.