Hello and thanks for reading my newbie post! As an experienced Windows user (boo!) who is trying to migrate his personal server over to Linux, I find that I am struggling with some of the software updating conventions that exist in the *nix world.
I understand how YaST is used to install and update software in my SUSE 9.2 installation, but there are some things that puzzle me, and a search on these boards don't quite provide me the answers I'm looking for, perhaps because I'm more interested in conceptual understanding than actual step-by-step walkthroughs.
Here are my questions:
1) I see that I can change YOU sources to one of various SUSE mirrors scattered around the world. Even in the best of all possible worlds, these mirrors will probably not be completely in sync. If I have listed several FTP mirrors in YOU, is YaST smart enough to figure out which mirror has the most up to date version of the software I am looking for, or is the version offered merely a result of whichever mirror is at the top of my YOU source list?
2) I've noticed that the SUSE YaST sources don't have the latest versions of popular applications like Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. Are the mirrors constantly updated with the latest versions, perhaps lagging by a certain amount of time, as some kind-hearted soul builds a YaST.source file? (Did i use that term right?) Or am I stuck with the version that resides within the 9.2 distro directory?
3) I've found a wonderful package called XAMPP from Apachefriends.org that appears to have all the latest versions of the apps that I would like for my server, and the installation went seamlessly. However, YaST seems to have no idea that I've got this package installed, along with all the relevant libraries. Later on, when I go to install a package through YaST that requires Apache, Squirrelmail for example, YaST wants to install an older version of Apache and all its dependencies! Is this just something that cannot be helped, or is there a way to keep YaST apprised of applications that I compile and install outside of YaST?
Thanks for any help you can provide in helping me understand this strange, new world!
