Re: Suse vs Red Hat

yntgn_at_ckhwyp.com.ct
Date: 08/28/03 

Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:13:04 GMT

|1. YAST sucks - it is supposed to make life simpler, but if you want to
|change the configuration of something, you generally end up with two
|copies. It is better to delete and reinstall.

What you've probably encountered is when YaST detects that you have
modified a downstream config file manually then it refuses to overwrite
it but saves it under *.SuSEconfig. In that case you need to reconcile
the current config with *.SuSEconfig and then it won't complain next
time. To avoid the problem altogether, don't edit the config files
outside of YaST. But this is hard to follow all the time, and isn't
useful policy when you're adminstering a machine remote, in which case
you just have to know which upstream config files (usually in
/etc/sysconfig) to edit to influence what you want. Then run SuSEconfig.

|2. Software dependancies are wierd. It insists that you need K3B
|(a cd writing tool I think) Oh no you don't! It gets installed

Hmm, I see that I have k3b but I don't use it so I can't comment. rpm -q
--whatrequires k3b returns null so maybe I'll try to delete it and see
what happens.

|3. Too much nonsense gets installed, eg Kbear "a comfortable ftp program"
|I'm more than comfortable with command lind ftp.

You can let it install the default set, and then trim it down with YaST,
if disk space is an issue. With 80G disks, I'm not too worried about a
few extra packages.

|4. Loads of stuff that should be there isn't, eg gimp development
|libraries (try compiling plug-ins without it), kcharselect (if you download
|this from SuSE's web site it says "programs not used by many people";
|I use it everyday. Oh yes, the version on their web site doesn't work either)
|I also tried to compile xine; no sweat under RH7.1 but there are too many
|missing filesets under SuSE. That pretty well sums it up; if you want to
|compile something, you have to load lots of other libriaries first.

Generally things are more difficult for developers. Often I find it's
missing some -devel or other when I compile something out of the
ordinary. The alternative, to install all the -devel packages, is not
appealing either. Might be a good idea to keep the DVD in the drive all
the time. 

--

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