From SuSE Linux 8.1 on, YaST2 comes with a new, powerful package manager. It supersedes the classic YaST2 single package selection and integrates the YaST Online Update (YOU) and post-installation add-on selection at the same time. It lays the foundation for supporting multiple installation sources like a traditional set of SuSE CDs, add-on product CDs, patch CDs, FTP servers or even local directories – all of which may contain software packages
to install. Specially optimized versions were implemented for both graphical user interface (the YaST2 Qt UI) or text interface (the YaST2 NCurses UI), providing each type of user with the tool that best fits his needs. Read more
for the commentary.Our Take: I truly would like to give props to SuSE for this new version,
but judging from the (fair amount of) screenshots available, this seems to be a very crowded and confusing package manager, and
there is no way I would call it ‘elegant’ or ‘simple’. Looking at these screenshots, I can only say that this application is a UI disaster, no matter how you see it. It seems to have terrible usability problems and it does not
solve the real problem: complexity of managing packages on the most Linux distributions. I don’t even need to use this application to make my remarks, pictures are speaking for themselves:
Note: This is NOT a review article, it is a commentary.
There is no on-screen, ever-present, legend for the different states of a package (I can count 9 different states on the left of the package name);
That “Avail. Ver.” and “Inst. Ver.” (sic) are full of version numbers that while power users will easily understand, a Windows user would lose him/herself on the different formats of versioning displayed, and also these versions are mostly developer versions (eg. 1.0.3-96 to take a less difficult example, or 0.9.0.cvs20020903-9 – there are worse showing there) and not versions easily
understandable by plain users, eg. 1.1. Actually, all the user needs to know is that there is a new version available. Nothing else. Because SuSE is a Linux-oriented OS though, the advanced usage of the package manager should be provided via an “Advanced” button. Package managers should be dead simple. If they are less than dead simple, or even just… simple, something is terribly
wrong with their design.
“Color-coded package versions“? What’s that? You got to be kidding me. Look what the lack of standard versioning scheme throughout the open source community is forcing SuSE to do: “Of course this is not 100% fool-proof (some versioning schemes are just too weird to be evaluated automatically), but it can give you a hint to take a closer look.” A commercial OS would have enforce such a standard on all its engineering teams, eliminating such problems, and therefore eliminating the need that the user should check out if there is a new version available or not! Maybe SuSE should rename all their packages (yes, all the thousands of them available via their package manager – who said that it’s going to be cheap?) to a standard versioning scheme.
“Advanced search: Which package provides that library my program needs?” Do you truly think that Joe User needs or should be forced to know or search about this? If your answer is “yes”, then, Mr SuSE, you got no clue about desktop system design.
“Versions view: Which versions are available on all available installation sources?” Great… Let’s confuse the user even more by showing different versions of apps living on different servers that they haven’t been updated yet to the latest version. When a user tries installing an app from an older source/server, the manager should contact the SuSE servers and warn the user that there is already a newer version available and suggest it. There should not be any “versions view” manual comparison that the user should
manually check. The package manager should take care of this checking.
“Complex conflict scenario.Don’t try this at home!” If your system packager allows such a scenario, I better not try it at work either. System libraries should be auto-updated by the OS (like MacOSX and Windows Update does
it) and they should not be allowed to be removed on demand via this package manager. If there is ONE chance that a user can screw up his/her system with your package manager, then it WILL happen. Count on this. It is like creating such a beast and then praying that no one will press the wrong radiobuttons to render his/her system unbootable. Laughable.
I very well understand that in order to fix all these issues and the issues I don’t know yet because I haven’t use YAST2 yet, the developers in the Linux community would have to change the way they work and release software, but
speaking as “the user”, SuSE is the one who tries to sell me this, so it better be good. No matter if it is not truly SuSE’s or Red Hat’s or Mandrake’s fault or not. The problem here is deeper and more… philosophical but I won’t get into it this time.
As for dependancies, these should be automatically resolved, and if this is not possible, there should not be allowed dependancies of this sort for any of the SuSE packages. Developers should either ship their products with some (not always all) of the libraries statically linked and others as shared; and these shared ones should always be included in the package and installed on a <application’s forlder>/lib/ folder. The OS should first look in the local application’s lib folder, then on the /usr/local/lib/, then on /usr/lib and then on /lib/. BeOS did something similar, and as well as Windows and OSX, it never had such “dependancy problems”. What I am suggesting goes against the whole Unix way of doing things, yes, I know. But you can’t be a Unix and try to sell your product to plain users too. You will
have to do compromises and Innovate at the same time. Like MacOSX had to do when they based their latest desktop/workstation OS on Unix.
The Linux distros are trying to create all these package managers and systems to deal with dependancies. The real problem are not the package managers though. It is the dependancy issue itself. You have to fight the problem in its root people, not by putting shining make-up in the leaves. THEN I will congratulate you for truly giving a wonderful gift to the community, by solving the problem,
not making it a bit more affordable.
Windows and MacOS put “the user” as a priority and not what it might be more convienient for the developer. These OSes do not have such major issues anymore (WindowsXP has pretty much solved dependancy hell, but dependancies were never a big issue on Windows; at least for the users).
If SuSE is aiming for the workstation and desktop market, this package manager does not solve the real problem, it just adds a GUI front-end to it. OSNews recently hosted another excellent article on what
users should be expect from OSes and their package managers.
I might sound harsh many times over here, but please note that I have nothing against Gentoo or SuSE or Red Hat or whoever else. When I am writting an article on OSNews, I write it with the user being the primary concern, no matter if myself I am a power user and I always find ways to make things work for me. You see, the user is the one who pays for these products and the one who gets to use them. In fact, SuSE’s user is the average OSNews ‘customer’ too. Therefore, our articles should always reflect this point of view. I hope this explains most of my articles lately.
So, when creating a product – any product – you should always be asking yourself: “Does this truly solves the problem for the customer”? If the answer is yes, then well done, you have succeeded. If not, you have just created a “hole in the water”, as they say in Greece…
We are talking about Joe User, Joe User uses win9X, so i talk about that.
You want to compare an outdated Windows OS to a new Linux OS?
Linux just has it a little differently: lib*.so hell. The only thing better about Linux is, you can have seperate libs in the same dir, and different programs can use their own libs, but now there is twice the disk space taken up.
In all versions of Windows since (3.1?) each application can have its own copy of a particular DLL. Windows XP allows multiple versions of the same DLL to be stored in the system folder.
And before you jump in and claim that Windows doesn’t have any such problems, allow me to save you the embarassment. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve installed Windows software and been prompted with multiple dialog boxes notifying me of DLL conflicts.
That actually happens to you? I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so stupid as to write software that requires an *exact* version of a *system-wide* DLL. Luckily Windows XP handles these programmer errors automatically.
You see, Windows avoids the dependency problem by throwing up its hands and saying, “Not our problem!”
Yes, older versions of Windows complain when programmers are so dense that they try to force the entire system to use one specific version of a DLL. Intelligent developers know how to place such DLL’s in the application’s folder.
And in many circumstances, the only resolution to the conflict is to choose, as the user, which program you want to have working.
Yes, that is unfortunate. 🙁
This is the approach Windows uses if you think about it. (Of course, if you recall, the Windows installer allows you to turn on/off various capabilities, and does handle dependencies…but only at install time.)
The Windows Installer software is quite flexible, but not enough people use it. It allows users to add and remove features while the application is running. Office 2000/XP can do this – try opening an office file type that is not installed, and the Office app’s will bring up a dialog asking for the install media. 🙂
For the next major version of Windows (Longhorn?), Microsoft should make the old software installation API’s completely incompatible and force everyone to use the Windows Installer – but make it freely available. The problem is that there are just too many third party setup programs out there, and they do not all behave very well. End users should not suffer because of this; installing/removing/configuring software ought to be an integrated component in the operating system.
Package management is not an easy thing to do. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now. Why? Because package management remembers that YOU are in control of YOUR machine, not Microsoft, Apple, Eugenia, RedHat or even Debian Project. And it’s WAY easier to be a brain-dead and hand over your machine to somebody.
Just because Linux *allows* you that level of complexity does not necessarily mean that Linux distributions that are trying to be user-friendly should *dump* all that complexity in the user’s lap. YAST2’s new package manager looks like it would be nice for hackers and the SuSe team, but there needs to be a simpler package manager for SuSe users. I believe that is Eugenia’s point.
Taking a look at Win2000 machine 2 meters behind me. Oh, system32 is 580MB large, in task manager there is process called wSYOfQmF. What the hell it is and where it is coming from? No idea. But i suspect it is responsible for that IE windows popping up occsasionally with some casino ads. I’d bet that the software it came with packed as free bonus is long gone. Winnt dir is 1250MB.
That depends on what third-party software you install.
One more thing: The start menu is almost unusable. Which idiot came with idea to sort by supplier? I’d like to have all html editors in one folder. “What? You must be crazy… that is very hard to use and could confuse Joe User seriously”.
I agree. And there are a lot more improvements to be made with the Start Menu…but this is getting off topic.
Still, there is no cruft on my box. There are old configs laying, but i could easily purge them if i wanted to. No problem. And they are registered as such, at least. I don’t speak about apt-get install/upgrade/dist- upgrade, others did.
Why would the average user care about this?
But i’d like to point out nice tool: aptitude. It is about 10 times easier to use than average setup.exe
.
I have not used aptitude, but it would be pretty hard to improve on the average Windows setup program. Click next a few times and then finish, and presto! The app is installed. It even makes its own menu entries. 😉
— Setup.exe install procedure:
That has nothing to do with setup.exe or the Windows operating system. If finding software is a problem, then that is the fault of the third party manufacturer and the web sites you are using to find software.
That actually happens to you? I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so stupid as to write software that requires an *exact* version of a *system-wide* DLL. Luckily Windows XP handles these programmer errors automatically.
No, you’ve entirely missed the point. Often the software itself comes with a different version of the DLL with an older date. Whether or not the newer one will work is a toss-up thanks to Microsoft’s development practices.
Yes, older versions of Windows complain when programmers are so dense that they try to force the entire system to use one specific version of a DLL. Intelligent developers know how to place such DLL’s in the application’s folder.
Not the case. See above.
For the next major version of Windows (Longhorn?), Microsoft should make the old software installation API’s completely incompatible and force everyone to use the Windows Installer – but make it freely available. The problem is that there are just too many third party setup programs out there, and they do not all behave very well.
You obviously have a very different philosophy on operating systems than I have. I believe in freedom and in the fact that there’s more than one way to accomplish any task. You seem to believe in forcing people to do things your way or not at all.
This is also Microsoft’s philosophy. So please, by all means, continue using Windows. I, for one, would prefer that such philosophies never infect the Linux community.
Whether or not the review was not a review but a commentry does not excuse the fact that you did not even use the software. Any software can look like crap when all you have are some screenshots and a few lines of commentation by the developers. SuSE is one of the best distro’s that I have used and I have used virtually all of them and I use Windows and MacOS at work but even I wouldn’t comment on a program unless I had seen it in action. It’s like buying a computer game purely on the graphics on the front of the box (which generally are “enhanced”). It’s foolish to do so.
To compare Windows and MacOS with Linux (and any of it’s GUI servers) can be misleading. The reason Windows etc are easy to use from a “user” point of view is because it hides all the technical workings of the computer system from the user. Most of the people I know who use linux wish to do so because they want to understand the computer. But I also know people who don’t want to know this yet they still talk about how good it is to feel like they understand the computer instead of just using it. If you can stand an analogy, look at people who drive cars. Your car breaks down and you have no idea how to fix it. Isn’t it better to have knowledge of the workings of the car so that if something goes wrong you are able to fix it or atleast understand where the problem is and can then take steps to repairing it. The same goes with computers and their O/S. Educating users is what Linux does (even if not intentionally) and it’s better to have understanding than to be oblivious.
Unfortunately, most people don’t want to be educated. It breaks the routine. I live in the US, so I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but it seems that, as a culture, we try more and more to think less and less. We want a risk-free society where all the “little” decisions are made for us. This does not free us, it merely breeds that dull grey social fungus known as mediocrity.
…judge without using it. that is not fair.
QUOTE by “Rob”
———-
1) Download “Setup.exe”
2) Double-click it
3) Click “Next” -> “Next” -> “Next” -> “OK”
4) Click “Start”
5) Point to the newly-created group under “Programs”
*At this point, WindowsXP will even highlight the new program group for you, with a friendly pop-up tooltip saying “New Programs Are Installed” (which can be turned off, of course)
6) Start your newly-installed program.
——–
More like Download setup.exe, double-click it (setup scans for netscape and breaks it), click next (setup sets all audio files to use WMP) click next (windows checks for evil Novell Office software and modifies api to run slow) click next (don’t monkeys do this when they click a button for a dose of crack in a lab) Click finish and you’re DONE!
YaST is for people who want control of thier computer, that means it needs to be “robust” and “rich” in it’s features so that power users and developer can use it as an actual tool and not a “let me do everything for you”. I don’t want a Homer Simpson in a MooMoo scenario when using my computer.
See
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/
New:
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/#audience
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/#bg_conflicts
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/#bg_versions
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/#bg_libs
http://www.suse.de/~sh/YaST2-Package-Manager/#bg_license
The screenshots on the SuSE web site only highlight
improvements.
Ideally you should work with or look into all of YaST,
not only the changed areas.
YaST allows an inexperienced user to select a set of
packages which is defined in a very simple way
(such as graphical install with office – not the
exact description as this is from memory).
YaST is a useful and powerful installation and
administration tool. The only downsides I know are :
1. slowish
2. won’t run on my 8-year old PC in single user
installation mode (not enough memory)
No, you’ve entirely missed the point. Whether or not the newer one will work is a toss-up thanks to Microsoft’s development practices.
No, I think you missed my point. The third party developers are to blame for their own problems because they did not bother to write programs in accordance with the API’s they were given. Whether or not the newer one will work is a toss-up thanks to third party development practices.
Windows XP solves the DLL version related problems introduced by third party installation programs because it allows multiple versions of a DLL with the same filename to coexist within the system directory and then provides each program with its own version of that DLL.
You obviously have a very different philosophy on operating systems than I have.
I certainly hope so. My philosophy on operating systems is that it is the system’s job to prevent third party programs from interfering with each other and the system itself. I believe that allowing third party applications to mess up each other and the system while doing a simple thing like installing software is stupid. You can call that freedom if you like, but it remains stupid.
I suppose that we should fault MS for use the x86’s memory protection features, too, for that would prevent third party programs from mucking about in system memory?
I believe in freedom and in the fact that there’s more than one way to accomplish any task.
So why allow third parties to *force* the user to use a buggy installer that can’t even properly remove the program it installed? I would rather force the third parties to behave so that the users can be assured that the software packages the user has installed can be properly removed when the user so chooses.
You seem to believe in forcing people to do things your way or not at all.
Yeah, and I even run a firewall and some anti-virus software to prevent Joe Virus Writer from overwriting my boot sector. Poor Joe!
“Never the less, Debian testing & unstable experience dependancy problems. Unless you run unstable and don’t update for a few months you won’t (to my experience) have an unresolvable dependancy.”
Yeah this is my experience with Debian pretty much. I’ve been running unstable both on my server and desktop for sometime now and I haven’t any problems with it. apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade is all you need. To tell you the truth I’ve only seen a dependecy problem once when I upgraded from potato to woody ages ago. I can’t remember exactly what it was (that was how trivial it was) and the fix could be found in all the standard places like Debian Planet etc. very simple. The updates are fairly quick on most packages (the large ones like X and KDE being the exception) so you’ll have to supplement your sources.list with unofficial archives to keep semi up-to-date on the large ones.
What I would like to see is a bastardization/merging of the portage and apt-get systems. That way you could install debian style packages for stuff you don’t really care about or use ebuilds to set up for the debian system for the bleeding edge stuff you want optimize. Yes Debian does have deb-src and it does a good job of compiling packages at that. However, think some of the Debian binaries are out of date, holy monkey deb-srcs are worse (perhaps I just chose the wrong packages to compile *L*).
Troll Begins Here:
As for Redhat and Mandrake (the AOL of Linux) I won’t touch with a 10ft pole (both are a pain in the ass to upgrade compared to Debian although I hear Redhat has a version of apt-get for RPMs now). They are plagued with really strange filesystem setups (almost seems like they move stuff around just to piss people off) as opposed to the Debian Filesystem Hierarchy Standard,non standard packages, fairly lax security, and in some cases just plain unstable even when compared to Debian Unstable (Mandrake big time on this one).
As for the Windows champions on here….. two words:
Code Red :-p