All of us who are in computers know that at present we are using enhanced software products for applications, which our predecessors never thought about or used. Why do we need a word processor when a simple text file does the same job of documentation.Why do we need Access or Oracle like DBMS when spreadsheets can do the same job of data storage. Why do we need an IDE like Visual Studio.NET or Borland when we can use vi or emacs for code writing.The answer lies in the ease of use and comfortable handling. We all love when the software does the bothering of trivial management and we are left only to concentrate on the important or core stuff of the application.
When I installed SuSE 9.0 Prof on my machine I was totally zapped by the way of its functionality and user friendliness. I have been in Linux for the past 4 years. [Not much I know] and have used various flavors [RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slackware FreeBSD etc]. My most favorites till date being Fedora Core Yarrow and Debian Woody 3.2. I have seen that all of them are improving in their user friendliness with the eye-candy applications in the GUI. Thus posing as tough competitors to the Microsoft Windows OS.
I think SuSE 9.0 Prof is the most amazing and user friendly flavor of Linux. Can anybody argue on that ? With its neat and colorful interface and ease of application deployment even the most diehard users of Windows XP are tempted to install it on their box. But the real icing on the cake is YaST2 the standard configurator for SuSE. I have never used SuSE before but have heard from my friends that YaST was a real bliss even in the earlier versions. Many people might argue that why do we need a rich and easy configurator in Linux, isn't 'linuxconf ' good enough to do all the configuration and ‘kudzu’ for new hardware detection. But hey my hacker friends and tux nerds, we are talking here of easy functionality and user friendliness. Guys, seriously the future of software lies in easy application deployment and newbie friendliness. In fact it's rumored that Oracle has gone so much in costumer friendliness that it has declared that its next RDBMS can be installed and managed by an average 7-10 year old kid ! Call that believable.
So when I popped in the CD No.1 and booted the machine the first thing I noticed was the trademark chameleon icon on the blue screen and various languages welcoming the user to the world of the penguin. A good place to start for a novice. It then asked for the type of installation (Boot from the Disk, New Install, Manual Install). I selected new Auto Install [ I think I'm still a newbie !] Then with the initial system profile understanding the YaST2 configurator was directly loaded. Now here, I don't mean to compare but I see the difference between RedHat's and SuSE's approach. There is no Anaconda and CD testing. SuSE knows that all the CD's it has provided are perfect and without wasting any time it means business. [ After all it's a German company] So once the colorful YaST2 is launched the first thing it asks for is the language selection. Then it asks for the type of installation setting. The choices are (New, Repair, Upgrade and Boot) . Once again good thinking here very clear for any user, not to confuse the newbie with the custom option and the default types (server, personal. Laptop) . When I selected the New option..........whoaaa ! Now wait here, what's this ? YaST2 configured every thing on it's own. The keyboard (/d4 key US), the mouse (PS-2 Web-wheel wireless) and even the partitions- it selected the most appropriate one on my disk for formatting (/dev/hdb2) as swap and (/dev/hdb3) for / which I had previously allocated to Slackware 9.1. My other partitions (/dev/hdb1) containing Fedora Core Yarrow, (/dev/hdb5) containing Debian Woody and disk (/dev/hda) partitioned as (/dev/hda1) Windows 2000 C: and (/dev/hda5) D: were detected and mounted as well. I just had to sit and watch – no fdisk or disk druid here. Everything done automatically. Now even for an experienced user with multiple OS on the disk partitions YaST2 selects the most appropriate empty space and configures the default reiserfes file format. Changing the default stuff if you want to install each directory on separate partitions ( /, /usr, /var, /boot etc) is a matter of few clicks. Then comes the software – where it selects the default home user or workstation packages consisting of KDE 3.1 as the desktop interface and file manager along with a few web related apps. Even here if you want GNOME 2.2 as well as other kernel, GNOME, KDE, TCL/TK dev kits as well as other networking packages you may select them as groups or individually. [Seen in almost all Linux flavors]. If you select all the apps the total size comes to around 5 GB.
Yes, finally we are done that too in such a small amount of time. It outputs a message in a complete green window warning about the formatting and deletion of the selected partitions, now is the last chance for you to go back. As you accept it, its ready.....the desired SuSE Linux of your choice is ready, and as the installation process begins you can sit back and relax. YaST2 will take care of everything. You merely have to change the CDs. If you have gone for a complete install then it would take about 2 to 2 1/2 hrs depending on your processor speed. Finally once the install process is over it asks for the root password setting. After choosing a strong root password and an additional user password the next screen asks for the network settings it starts by detecting the NIC as well as auto configuring via the DHCP. It also asks for the other network settings to install like DHCP, ISDN and Proxy. After this is done the system configuration is written and the installation is over. Bingo! The system directly starts with the KDE desktop interface. WELCOME to the SuSE world new user. Now out of curiosity any new user will start clicking and experimenting with the new system. And yes SuSE is so good that even a stark new user doesn't need any guidelines to follow. Forget about bash and command line shell this is indeed a new transition in Linux development. The colorful rich eye-candy apps are a true pleasure to the eyes. This is so much fun !
But oh.... almost forgot to configure the system as a Samba server during the installation. Well don't think about it twice just call in your favorite configurator YaST2 via the command prompt [if you still are a die-hard Linux nerd] or by clicking in the System-Settings. When YaST2 is launched its so easy that there is no need for me to explain, fiddle around with it for a while and you will know it for yourself. It basically consists of 7 main components. (Software, Hardware, Network Devices, Network Services, Security-Users, System Settings, Miscellaneous Settings) Now as you want to install the Samba server, you would like to go to the Network Services part and in there select Configure as a Samba server. That's it ! It’s a breeze you are done. Of course you still have to select your LAN Workgroup and other settings like name of the server but comparing to the command line interface of any Linux flavor this is really far too easy, thanks once again to YaST2.
- "Survey of YaST2, Page 1/2"
- "Survey of YaST2, Page 2/2"
