YaST to Become Open Source 478
Space_Soldier writes "According to News.com, YaST is going open source: 'For years, SUSE has considered its YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool) software for installing, configuring and managing Linux an advantage over its competitors and forbade them from incorporating it into the products they sold. But with the new plan, to be announced Monday at Novell's Brainshare conference, the company will release YAST under the GPL, sources familiar with the plan said.'" Several years ago, when I first used YaST, I found it to be superior to the rest of the all-in-one administation tools around at the time. It was generally regarded as a great program, save for the licensing. Today, that's no longer a concern.
Good work Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good work Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's hope they can bring the famed Novell ease-of-use to Linux.
Re:Good work Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, all the big players have realised that free software is the future. Business models based on control will be obsolete in a decade or two. Unfortuneatly, Microsofts business model - since they do little other than software sales - their model is based completely on control.
MS are trying to pretend that freedom is not inevitable, hoping that if they can postpone it for long enough, it won't happen. (Due to Trusted Computing or similar.)
Meanwhile the others (IBM, SUN, HP, etc. and now Novell) have accepted it, but they want to slow it down so because it will take time to port their business models to the new way of doing software.
SuSE was one of the big GNU/Linux vendors, but they were slowly declining. Their use of proprietary software showed a gap in their appreciation of how the free software economy will work. Novell seem to have a better grasp on the concept. I'm looking forward to what they do with SuSE.
ease-of-use will come in time. user-orientated free-as-in-cost trustable-as-in-viewable are all functions of free-as-in-freedom. I'm looking forward to all the distros now sharing installer&config code.
Re:Good work Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, humans will establish a viable colony on Mars and the war on terrorism will be over.
Open source is a great idea. It works in some cases. I see zero evidence that it's going to take over the entire universe of software. In a few cases like Linux where you are able to apply the efforts of lots of bright folks to the project, it may well win. In lots of other areas that aren't of general interest, seems pretty unlikely.
Re:Good work Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
This reminds me of an article I read just yesterday about some business guy complaining that OSS hackers weren't working on "uncool" projects like the software you just mentioned. It amounted to him just wanting stuff without having to pay for it.
OSS isn't a way for people to get any software they want for free, it's a way for a community of people to work together and build software that they ALL need. Everyone needs an Operating System, so it's better if it (or several) are available open-source and Free, so we can all benefit, rather than one or more vendors keeping it locked up, and everyone having to pay them a toll to use it. Lots of people also want to have CD burning programs, media players, drawing programs, and basic office programs (word processor, spreadsheet), so it works well for people to work together on this. Instead of everyone having to continually pay money for every new release of a word processor or CD burning program, a group of people has spent some time writing one for Free, and now everyone can stop reinventing the wheel, and spend their time and money on something new.
Pension administration systems are not part of this. No home computer user needs or wants such a thing, and no OSS hacker has any reason to waste their time working on one for no pay; if they contribute work to a media player, they benefit by getting to watch movie trailers or something, which they couldn't do before. If they work on a pension system, they get nothing.
So, for a niche product like this, the business that needs it needs to pony up the money and just buy it. If they're smart, they'll run all their systems on Free software, so instead of having to pay for OS license, CAL licenses, antivirus licenses, AND the license for the pension program, they'll only have to pay a license for the pension program and everything else will be free.
Of course, there's also the school of thought that purchased software should also be open-source--it should come with the source code in case the vendor goes belly up, so the customers can still use and develop the software on their own if necessary. This is good, but is something the customer needs to work out with the vendor that they're paying for this, and has nothing to do with freely-available OSS/Free software.
Re:Good work Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
Not very many companies are making a killing on OSS right now. Some, like IBM, are subsidizing it from their HW sales. Others, like Novell, Red Hat, and Ximian, are still trying to figure it out. I'd say it's a bit early to call it won.
Just about every business model, not just software, depends on control. That's why businesses spend so much money getting IP protection laws passed. Every business wants locked-in customers, it's a good revenue stream. When OSS companies start playing with the big boys (public investors), they're going to have to find a way to keep them happy.
Let's see [microsoft.com]. According to the latest FY2004 1st quarter results (ending on Sept 30, 2003), MSFT gets about 15% of their revenue from segments besides OS and Office sales.
However, if you take the time to read thru their segmentations, you'll notice that Server and Tools also includes MSDN training and tools, certifications, MS Press, consulting services, and Premier PSS - all non software revenue. According to their financial highlights, we can calculate that Consulting and PSS revenue was $231 million, and MSDN and MS Press was $190 million. Their Office segment also includes revenu from LiveMeeting and Professional PSS, but they don't give figures to calculate that portion of it.
Adding those numbers together, we can see that non-software revenue is about 20% of their total revenue. That is also significantly higher than the previous year, while their OS and Office segments have been relatively flat (do you think someone at MSFT might have noticed that?).
Okay, so we can realistically claim that 80% of Microsoft's revenue is from software sales. But, that 20% of non-software revenue (which, again, is growing) is a pretty impressive $1.7 billion (that's with a B) per quarter - that's about $7 billion a year.
To put that into perspective, VA Linux's [yahoo.com] revenue is $24 million (that's with a M) a year. Red Hat's [yahoo.com] revenue is $90 million (that's with a M) a year. Novell's [yahoo.com] revenue is $1.1 billion a year. Sun's [yahoo.com] revenue is $11 billion per year (but note that they lost money, even discounting non-recurring expenses).
IBM's [yahoo.com] revenue is a much higher $80 billion a year...but let's take a look at their cost of revenue and expenses. While MSFT [yahoo.com] earns almost an ungodly 30% profit on its revenue, IBM's [yahoo.com] profit is a paltry 8% (I didn't include non-recurring expenses)! MSFT nets more profits on it's $30 billion of revenue than IBM does on it's $80 billion! The story is much the same with HP [yahoo.com], though their profit is a even smaller 5%.
I think it's safe to say that MSFT's non-software revenue is quite healthy, and ever growing.
While I like FOSS, I've yet to see how it can sustain a viable corporate business. And, until that time comes, investor money will continue to flock to MSFT so that they can make even more $$. And, even if FOSS wins the war, expect MSFT to remain around for quite a long time. Despite what Linux zealots may think, MSFT is not stupid, and they know how to make money. In the game of business, that's what it's all about...not the ideals of FOSS.
Re:Good work Novell (Score:3, Insightful)
Red Hat has been able to rack up profitable quarterly results in a very spending averse environment. I'd say they're a bit past figuring out how to make money. Maybe a year or so ago I would've agreed with you but I can't say the same now. Also, circumstantial evidence p
Re:Good work Novell (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know where you got this from. SuSe's market share and profit margin have been increasingly steadily. They've never been in decline, and their sales numbers show that sometime in the next few years they have the potential to surpass Redhat.
Probably due to the fact that YAST makes it easy even for the clueless to install Linux.
Max
Re:Good work Novell (Score:3, Informative)
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
were you really joking? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good work Novell (Score:3, Insightful)
YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Interesting)
My only gripe with YaST was once I ran into a nasty corner case. YaST had the options (and yes, there are times when there's no gui for the bit you want to twiddle) but they didn't work as advertised. As a result I had to partially configure my software by hand and partially via YaST. It was horrible, and took more than 10 times the effort of doing the whole thing by hand in the first place.
I strongly advocate (and I'm sure others do too) that should you use a GUI config tool, use it consistently and exclusively. Most GUI tools are mature enough to handle all the common setup and admin needs for the average user. Some people feel that using a GUI is slightly more risky since there may be a day when the GUI doesn't go where you need to, but in my experience that rarely happens these days.
Note that there is always an exception, and in this case it is RedHat/Fedora. Their config architecture of a database oriented back end which parses the config files and monitors for manual updates (via timestamps) and a GUI front end that connects via network interface isn't exactly lightweight, but at least it's a system that is designed to handle both methods of updating. And no, I'm not referring to their older RedHat configure-everything-with-this-one-app tool, may it rest in peace (forever).
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. [redhat.com]
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it seems more vendor neutral. It's not something I've checked, though. It's definitly something to look at, if you need such a thing.
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Informative)
However, it's an awesome tool. I love their installer and partitioner with the option of automatic NTFS partition resizing and the creation of a dual boot system if it finds Windows on the drive. Superb!
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Aggravating, but I've seen the case made for this typical behaviour elsewhere. The justification is that if joe user invokes the gui tool you want predictable results, not results subtly sabotaged by a previous botched hand edit of config files.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
OT: ftp_conn_track? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It is way too complex. There is no way you can understand it all or hand edit it if required.
2. If it is corrupted, your whole OS won't even boot.
3. Its huge! 45MB of my fairly clean XP box.(although it is in a domain and has policies applied to it, etc, etc, but not much software)
4. You can't move the registry between machines, let alone between different versions of Windows. I can move my
Several smaller independent registiries might work better. e.g. one for linux conf, one for X, one for KDE, etc. So each one has a small well definied file for all configs.
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a programmer problem, not a design problem. Not to mention that many config files are way too complex as well. One thing that's nice about config files, however, is that you can include comments. While you could do this with the registry (with the EXPAND_SZ, expand string, type) it's not optimal as it increases the size. And nobody does it. [aside]If programmer's don't want you to change values or the
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that the files that will keep Linux from booting if corrupted are mostly static. Rarely, for example, is /etc/inittab edited. So, the likelihood that these files will suddenly be corrupted is fairly low.
The Registry is anything but static. Apps write to it all the time. That increases the likelihood that one wrong w
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all people like the idea of a database to hold you're configuration information, but data is data, and if you hold it in a database or a flat file the end result is the same.
The "suckiness" of the windows registry comes from how badly they implemented the thing, and the incredible lack of accessible documentation in it's early release. Somehow you're supposed to know that
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE ->Autodesk ->
AutoCAD -> R14.0 -> ACAD-12:409 ->
Applications -> AecBase -> LOADCTRLS
is supposed to be set to 0x0000000d (13)
(as opposed to say 5)
Add to that a bad heirarchial organization where you often find directory trees that are confusing in their similarity, and thousands (or so it seems) of entries which are similar but not identical. For example, both "system" and "System" are in the registry multiple times. Sometimes chaning a "system" to a "System" breaks things, other times it does not.
Finally you have my favorites, directories with nearly no meaning at all (at least none that can be discerned) such as:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT ->
(and it's kin)
You have to look at the contents of these beauties to try to figure out what it is they are describing.
The registry idea isn't bad. Some may not like it, but others do. But certainly, the Windows Registry totally sucks (as in, my will to live).
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Insightful)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE ->Autodesk ->
AutoCAD -> R14.0 -> ACAD-12:409 ->
Applications -> AecBase -> LOADCTRLS
is supposed to be set to 0x0000000d (13)
(as opposed to say 5)
I suggest you take that complaint up with Autodesk; MS can hardly be held responsible for how other companies store their apps' configuration settings, and the documentation they may or may not provide.
True, MS are just as bad in this respect, but surely you could have picked a better example? That's like saying that text config fles are bad, because of sendmail's one.
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these "issues" wouldn't even exist if the documentation was clear, concise, and available. Then we would be saying:
Of course it should be 13, 13 means "load last file upon launching".
Whether it's Autodesk's fault for not including some sort of documentation, or MS's fault for not requiring descriptive strings for elements in the registry is up for debate. The prevailing opinion that the
Re:registry - one advantage... permission (Score:3, Interesting)
These other files can have different permissions, and if ACL is your cup of tea, you can set it up and enjoy. Or you can use the standard user/group/other UNIX permission set as you like. How you slice and dice the file is up to you.
But who would really do this anyway? Apache is a server, and you
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Windows registry is not easy to repair, having a binary on-disk format. What is worse, is that the most important things (system and personal settings) are condensed into one single database file each.
Config files have the benefit of being able to hook into the filesystem permissions, by sheer virtue of being a file.
Additionally, by seperating out each configuration file, there is no single point of failure. (Other than rm -rf
Anyway. If you want a key-value registry, look at gconfd of GNOME. (Even that isn't a single monolithic database, it is actually stored as a folder hierarchy on disk, and the file format is based on XML)
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better rule would be not to make excuses for badly written tools.
GUI config tools should follow three simple rules:
Otherwise they are useless.
We need to get the apps devels to participate too (Score:4, Insightful)
What we need is for a standardized way for the application developers to communicate the possible configuration choices and their legal values to the config tools, and for the tools to communicate these choices to the applications.
The interface must be extremely simple to use and light weight in order to be acccepted by the application developers. And it must be stand alone, not depend on any particular framwork or other libraries. The primary interface should be to the application developers, because it is their accept we need first. Our ultimate goal, to serve the users, will have to come next. We won't serve users by having a cool interface that no applications support.
I believe it can be done, though. I got such an interface accepted among Emacs developers, and I suspect similar tools are accepted in the limited domain of KDE and Gnome. That such a tool can exist in the whole domain of free software, is shown by the acceptance of the gettext interface. Those free software projects that do localization, tend to use the gettext interface. Because it is so simple, non-intrusive, and toolkit independent.
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Interestingly, those are the same rules that I followed when developing Webmin, yet another administration GUI. Other programs that keep their own databases of settings from which the actual config files are built annoy me, as they make it hard to interoperate with other tools. Some of Redhat's control panels and Linuxconf are guilty of this
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you can do that in other distros as well, but YaST sets it up for you by default.
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:4, Interesting)
On my iBooks, I have a firewall configured the old-fashioned way - using pico
A better thing would of course be to get the GUI to be kind to custom-written configuration files, but this could be quite hard to do.
iqu
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:5, Informative)
Overall I think SuSE has struck a very good balance between gui tools, and config files.
Re:Stop with this newb crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you change a file directly SuSEconfig can tell that has happened and will not touch it in virtually every case that I did that. But, the best approach is to edit
Why do people insist things are great for newbs when it makes ones life easier, and makes it quicker to get to the point where you want to be. Why should I spend two hours setting up a TV card manually in
Re:YaST - great for newbs but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gets my thumbs up. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gets my thumbs up. (Score:3, Interesting)
restarting yast development (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:restarting yast development (Score:4, Informative)
Yast makes me happy (Score:4, Insightful)
I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this really such a good thing, in the long run?
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Funny)
It looks to me like they are keeping their focus on the enterprise which has very little use for YAST but is more then willing to pay for an awsome product like eDirectory or Zenworks.
I have spent the last two weeks banging my head against Active directory and let me tell you if my CIO said they were switching to Edirectory I would litereally kiss his ass and wash his car.
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't discredit the selling power either. This probably won't hurt the sells of SuSE at all, in fact, it very well might augment sales, due to the people without fast internet connections wanting to get a taste of the YaST code. Don't count on it, but the potential's definitely there. Novell's making a good move here, I commend them.
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
Could be another reason behind opensourcing YaST: give it a GTK2 interface and wala, you've got a complete, working corporate desktop platform, which of course, they can then use to sell their own eDirectory software, and others as well... It's all about building a platform. Microsoft understood this too, how do you think they became so powerful? They built two seperate houses, both very shady but they got the job done. Then they skinned one house when they realized it was about to collaspe. Moved the skin from the first, to the second, and poof, a solid platform. Now they can sell Active Directory, Office, and other software for it, and not look like bumbling rejects.
It's all about process, format, proceedure.
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is if it increases SuSE's penetration as a distro. Before Novell (reasonably deep pockets) bought SuSE (pretty small pockets), the distro had to be a profit centre. Now Novell can afford to allow the entire distro to be free (a la Red Hat), so that more people use it and use Novell/SuSE's server and service offerings as a result.
Novell/SuSE will want as many people to try their software as possible: making their entire distro GPL-friendly will accomplish this, along with Red Hat's official abandonment of desktop Linux. Sure, short-term this may hurt them (I was planning on purchasing 9.1 soon, I may not now). It is *because* of the long-term benefits that this makes sense.
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to realise that Novell's product is not a Linux distro - that was never their reasoning behind the purchase of SuSE. Rather Novell purchased SuSE to give them a strong, established Linux distro on which to base their directory service offering.
Prior to purchasing SuSE, Novell evaulated its position in the market. What they found was that while they had a kick-ass directory service product, they were being kicked in the pants when it came to new deployments - primarily by MS Windows and Active Directory.
Rather then attempt to re-build and re-position the NetWare brand among IT decision makers, Novell realised they could do much better by taking an existing base Operating System with widespread appeal, and integrating NDS with that.
Essentially Novell's cut NetWare* and tied its future to NDS on Linux.
Enter Linux. It had everything Novell needed: stability; maturity; widespread developer support; GPL (why write a new base when you can modify an existing one?); a wicked reputation among IT techs and, best of all, an increasingly bright future with the potential to topple all challengers.
Announcing NDS on Linux and then subsequently purchasing a well established Linux distro was, not to put to fine a point on it, absolute genious. NDS gets the best possible base, loss of market share to Active Directory is significantly slowed or halted (and eventually reversed if all goes to plan) and Novell regains the reputation it had among techs back in the days when MS' best offering was WfW.
GPLing YaST isn't a loss for Novell, it's a gain for Linux. Which makes it a gain for the base OS Novell will see increasing use of NDS on. Which makes it a win for Novell.
*Yes, Novell will continue to support and even offer NetWare-based NDS installations. But the fact remains that if all goes to plan, Novell will see its new business increasingly tied to NDS+Linux rather than the old bundle of NDS+NetWare
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:3, Insightful)
But they've been able to do this all along - the restrictions in the Yast license solely applied to commercial distribution. Giving it away for free, modifying the source etc - that's all been allowed already. I can see your point though, that someone selling the SuSE ISOs could reduce their sales.
Re:I love open source, BUT (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I dunno what other OS is using it as it's installer, but it's not debian. Debian's new installer's self rolled, text only, very basic stuff. Anaconda has, however, been ported to install Debian by Progeny [progeny.com]. Pretty neat, but I don't see it eever taking precidence to the Debian Installer.
And I do agree with you that it probably won't take away any market share. If anything, it sets up SuSE as running against RedHat, which should be a very interesting battle. And we are the ones to benefit.
Ability to Adapt (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly Novell is taking the hint. They're aware of the fact that the world is going Open Source, and they're willing to deal with it. If they ensure a good relationship with the open source community now, they'll be rewarded with success for years to come. If they distance themselves from the open source community, like SCO, then they will make more money in the short term but be ousted in the long term.
Novell is a good organization that has been around since the beginning (or, at least, for a long time). I, for one, hope they continue to be around and keep up the good work.
Novell's doing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jedidiah.
Re:Novell's doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
YaST is not one of those (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Will it actually be useful... (Score:4, Interesting)
Compare the situation with RedHat's installer Anaconda. Anaconda has been open for quite some time now, and by being open my company (and a large number of others) have been able to build custom "in-house" distros for the automated installation of systems.
In our case, it's as simple as deciding if it's going to be a desktop, network monitoring server, vanilla RedHat box, proxy/firewall, or Tomcat server, and then booting the system off a floppy to perform the install (or re-install).
This would not be feasible without Anaconda being open; however, the reason it's not adopted more often is because it takes time to wade through the numerous little problems to figure out why it's not working in your case (and honestly, not that many people need this kind of functionality).
YaST vs. Anaconda? (Score:5, Interesting)
I purchase SuSE 9.0 Professional, DVD.
I boot off the DVD, and I get a whopping five step process that takes me through everything from network configuration, partitioning, and hardware configuration AS WELL as choosing a password for root and another user.
Incredible. Combined with hotplug even X configuration may not be necessary. This really could put the barriers to installing, configuring, and beginning to use Linux (for the general public of course) to rest.
But, what about the Anaconda installer?
Relatively simple install and relatively problem free. Not quite as "pretty" as SuSE has made YaST, but it does the job just as well. Then why hasn't Anaconda become a defacto standard? (Though, look at installing Gentoo from binary stages and GRP packages through Anaconda... looks damn good)
So, why does Mandrake choose to make their own installer? Why do other "user-friendly" distributions choose to use other installers? What are the deficiencies in Anaconda that have not attracted others to this install process? Are those same deficiencies non-existent in YaST?
Therefore, I pose the question
Anaconda vs. YaST : All other variables made equal, which is easier to use as a user, and which is easier to implement as a distro developer?
Re:YaST vs. Anaconda? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I am not mistaken, the reason that Mandrake dosn't use anaconda, is that at the time that they made thier own installer, the anaconda installer just wasn't up to par. It, and all the redhat-config-* tools, have improved dramatically since RH8 and up.
Re:YaST vs. Anaconda? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other Closed Programs in SUSE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Before, SUSE kept individuals from reselling their ISO's by leveraging YaST. Specifically, the YaST license states that you can freely make copies of ISO's containing it, and give them away. However, no money could change hands in the process.
Want to host SUSE ISO's containing YaST for all of your friends? The YaST license says 'go for it.' Want to charge them five dollars to download them (just to cover your hosting costs). The YaST license says you can't do that.
You could still extract OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other GPL'd (or similar) software from the SUSE distro and distribute those as you wished, but it was YaST that you could only give away, never sell.
Novell appears to be opening YaST up to try to get the market and other parties to standardize on it. I applaud this, as I definitely consider YaST to be a best-of-breed application.
My question is, is there any other software within the SUSE distro that Novell could leverage to keep the SUSE ISO's from being sold?
- Neil Wehneman
Re:Other Closed Programs in SUSE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that Novell isn't in the Linux distro business. Suse is a way for Novell to sell services, and additional enterprise software around. That and counter blance MS, and RH. Let's face it if Intel, and IBM actually liked Red Hat. Suse would have been out of business long ago. Then again having dealt with RH selling their RHEL product. I'm beginning to understand the feeling.
Different view. (Score:3, Interesting)
Several years ago, when I first used YaST, I found it to be superior to the rest of the all-in-one administation tools around at the time.
Several years ago, when I came from Slackware to SuSe (just playing around), I found YaST to be extremely irritating, confusing and all together useless. I'd make a small change in a menu and that would trigger the running of lots and lots of mysterious scripts all over the place, doing gawd knows what. Went back to slackware after that.
(This was, as I said, years ago and is not a comment on YaST as of today).
Not exactly the Second Coming (Score:3, Interesting)
That is not saying much. I always felt a little sorry for the Linuxconf authors (for example), it looked like they tried to make a flexible program (at least front-end wise), but their proggy was always buggy presumably because they couldn't track all the various configuration file changes across different distributions.
It's certainly nice that Suse is moving farther in the open-source direction, though.
YaST over SSH (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:YaST over SSH (Score:5, Informative)
I got on board (Score:5, Interesting)
I also switched everyone I know to Suse and they all agree, Suse is damn good stuff.
This is great news and I know that this will boost Suse sales. I push Suse and now I have another selling point.
Thank you Suse, thank you Novell..
Re:I got on board (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still trying, 'cause I'd rather not use Windows for various philosophical and technical reasons. I'm disappointed, though.
Specifically YAST broke my network configuration multiple times by adding a network card when I configured something in a seperate unrelated part of the tool. Try to find that error as a linux newb. The apps Suse comes with have multiple minor, but irritating bugs. Mozilla's scroll bars disappear, the address mana
SaX (Score:5, Interesting)
I ask because SaX saved me a few hours ago. I came home from school for a week, and left my 19" monitor at my apartment. I'm using a spare 17" monitor while at home. Unfortunately the refresh rate configured for the 19" monitor is incompatible with the lesser monitor.
I dreaded having to get a crash course in X configuration in order to manually change the refresh rate, but thankfully had SaX. I just restarted, chose "failsafe" from the GRUB options, hit SaX2 after logging in at the shell, and SaX automatically corrected the resolution and refresh rate to my new monitor.
I still haven't convinced my Windows 2000 box (damn you iTunes! [slashdot.org]) to adjust to the new monitor.
I'll poke with the Windows box some more in the morning, but I found it interesting that SaX fixed this problem quicker and with less fuss than Windows 2000.
- Neil Wehneman
Re:SaX (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks SUSE/Novell (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I can recomend and use SUSE without any holdups.
Please support SUSE with this decision by voting with your wallet.
It seems that Novell is making the right moves regarding Linux! I hope it pays off for them and the Community
Ximian YaST (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone want to give some odds?
Jedidiah.
Re:Ximian YaST (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ximian YaST (Score:3, Interesting)
Widgets behave the same in all your applications, no need remember if it was a GTK or QT app.
No kidding, try "make xconfig" and "make gconfig" on a linux kernel (2.6.x). The xconfig just doesn't make sense to me as a GTK-user, and I can totally understand that a QT (KDE) user finds the gconfig version annoying.
Try it! (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't wait for 9.1! I'm really excited to get on an integrated 2.6 and KDE 3.2 distro.
-m
Thanks! (Score:5, Interesting)
YaST support for console (Score:5, Interesting)
I ask because this is important to many people -- and I remember that a good point of Red Hat's old Linuxconf was that it ran in both the console and X.
Re:YaST support for console (Score:5, Informative)
Re:YaST support for console (Score:5, Informative)
$ rpm -qa | grep curse
ncurses-5.3-110
yast2-ncurses-2.8.20-3
There is a ncurses version and best of all you can find all the options and menus in the same places as you would with the X version - very consistent. It's funny I replied [slashdot.org] to another poster earlier today who was complaining about YaST being "closed source". This is great news because hopefully now we can put this "non-gpl" argument behind us and support [suse.com] Novell & SUSE with our wallets on May 6th when SUSE 9.1 becomes available. Or pre-order it now - I don't know from where though. I do remember seeing a link somewhere during a Google search.
In Sun Java Desktop too (Score:5, Interesting)
Portability (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that YaST is a lot more refined and user friendly then d-i but the later was designed more as a highly portable framework that can be imporved upon with shiny GUIs as people see fit.
I want to be clear YaST was great last time I used it and I applaud Novell for opening the source. I'm just currious about it's portability. It's been some time since I've installed SuSE on anything.
Open Source Oscar of the year goes to Novell (Score:4, Interesting)
I applaud this move. I don't mind paying for tools if I know that the tools will be available if, god forbid, a company goes out of business or is bought out by an unscrupulous company.
Excellent, insightful move that signals that Novell does get the essence of what open source is about.
Now, GPL OpenExchange and let it become the de-facto groupware server in the open source world and watch as the knowledge pool of people who can configure it grow and as it does it quickly eats into Microsoft's exchange sales.
Re:Open Source Oscar of the year goes to Novell (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think it's that easy: http://opengroupware.org/en/users/faq/index.html [opengroupware.org]
How does OGo compare to SuSE OpenExchange?
A: SuSE OpenExchange is actually two things: an OpenSource messaging server based on Cyrus and OpenLDAP and a closed source, proprietary web groupware server (ComFire).
OGo is very similiar to the groupware server part and indeed you can install OGo as the groupware component on an OpenExchange server to save the ComFire license costs and use a solution wholly composed of OpenSource software.
Perhaps Novell will make ISO's available. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Perhaps Novell will make ISO's available. (Score:3, Informative)
Why? I don't see how the (old) Yast license would have had any influence on that matter. Certainly not for SuSE, but also others could distribute Yast freely as long as no money is involved.
To switch off yast (SuSEconfig in fact) (Score:5, Informative)
You'll notice this:
"## Path: System/SuSEconfig
## Description:
## Type: yesno
## Default: yes
#
# Some people don't want SuSEconfig to modify the system. With this
# entry you can disable SuSEconfig completely.
# Please don't contact our support if you have trouble configuring your
# system after having disabled SuSEconfig. (yes/no)
#
ENABLE_SUSECONFIG="yes""
Set that to no then, saves the trouble in switching over to a completely different distro. Whilst you're at it, check the other files in that directory.
Wrong headline (Score:3, Informative)
Future! (Score:4, Informative)
YaST is nice and makes a great foundation for configuration. Are we talking YaST and/or YaST2? But SaX2, the X11 configuration tool, has been exceptional in my experience.
Anyone can configure a Linux machine these days, but few can get the X11 configuration working correctly.
If linux is truely aiming for the Desktop, wouldn't it make sense to have X11 configuration realiable and easy?
The real test now is coming into the configuration of peripheral devices more than the core OS and applications. Email and Web is not hard to do if you pay some attention to what you are doing.
But getting USB, FireWire, printers, sound, video all working cleanly and consistently will be the real test. Many distributions do this well to different degrees of success, but as always you have to check your hardware carefully before you buy it. This peripheral support is still a factor holding back the adoption of Linux
But consistent with the problem of obtaining a Desktop Linux is the problem with Multimedia. Multimedia support under free sucks really bad. SuSE ships with the lamest install of xine/mplayer I've ever experienced. And it's not just SuSE or Debian. It's the multimedia libraries and all the Intellectual Property bullshit. There's no innovation here folks, just territorial land grabbing.
Maybe with the EU having the balls to make a judgement against Microsoft and the chance of them sticking with it in the vote today, there's a chance that some day we'll be able to watch DVD's on our Linux computers without the need to hide in closets.
I think the release of YaST means this:
YaST2 and the entire Linux community has developed to such a point that YaST no longer holds a leading edge against the competition to the extent that it used to. As such it would be a better investment if YaST was more freely available to evolve according to the OS environment as we (SuSE/Novell) concentrated our efforts on other tools that still provide a leading edge over the competition (YaST3?, SaX2..)
This isn't to say in any way that YaST isn't still a valuable tool. But it might be a matter of, "We have a pretty good tool, lets give it back to the community.... Now that's done we can gather around another project more intensively."
Like Anaconda.
I wonder what Debian or Gentoo has to say... They need some help with this stuff, especially Gentoo.
Re:Future! (Score:3, Informative)
YaST (ver 1) is obsolete and no longer used. YaST2 is the "only" YaST that exists today (save those run fairly old versions of SuSE). If in a shell, when "yast" is called it is merely a symlink to
Cheers
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
Debian: Outdated
Gentoo: Takes to long to compile
SuSE: Now we need a new thing to complain about SuSE.
How about that Gecko think, I never liked him any way.
Re:YasT may be good but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Compare to redhat-config-* (Score:3, Informative)
Re:YAST vs urpmi (Score:4, Informative)
Re:YAST vs urpmi (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, mine works the same way as yours. Heck, I even mix adding packages on my SuSE box with "kpackage" and "rpm" as well as with YaST. Somehow, it all just works together. Remember that cartoon showing a huge flowchart on a blackboard where the middle box was labeled "magic happens"?
Re:YAST vs urpmi (Score:3, Informative)
Another requirement is that you actually study what it does to determine if that is useful to you.
Up to now you apparently did not do that.
YaST does not, like some older Unix administration programs, take over all administration from you and prohibit your own changes.
For example, you can add users with commandline tools like useradd or by editing the 4 relevant files, and YaST will have no problem with that.
Re:Finally... (Score:3, Informative)
That's one of the things I like about YaST, I can SSH in and run it to install packages or configure without having to think.
Re:Fantastic News (Score:3, Interesting)
YaST is a LOT better than linuxconf was or ever will be, BUT it still has some issues to work out. However this can only be a good thing, because now, there should be a LOT more people looking at YaST and working on fixes and features.
The problem I