Singing the OpenSUSE Package Manager Blues

A link distro is not going to be of much use to people if the package manage sucks. Apparently, eWeek has uncovered some issues to this regard in OpenSUSE 10.1.

My current favorite desktop Linux is OpenSUSE 10.1. I can say all kinds of good things about it, except when it comes to the package manager. Unfortunately, the package manager, which the administration tool YaST uses for adding new programs and updating old ones, currently has serious problems.

The default package management software in SUSE 9 and 10 was YOU (YaST online update) in YaST2 and the susewatcher system tray applet. This, however, has been replaced by Libzypp in 10.1.

Libzypp is a back-end program that uses RPM (RPM Package manager) packages for installing, removing, and querying program packages. This new program is an attempt by Novell to marry the best features of SUSE’s yast2 package manager and Ximian’s libredcarpet…. Source: eWeek

[tags]opensuse,rpm,package manager,blues[/tags]