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Novell management tool going open source (News.com)
News.com reports that Novell will be open-sourcing the SUSE YAST administrative tool.
"By putting YAST under the same open-source license that governs Linux itself, Novell hopes the program will gain widespread acceptance as a module used by management software powerhouses such as Computer Associates International, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, sources said." That may or may not happen, but this move will address a longstanding complaint against SUSE from parts of the community.
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yast Posted Mar 19, 2004 16:32 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Personally, I'm not too fond of yast, mostly because I'm a UI freak. The layout and attention to detail is very lacking in the UI, even tho the tools themselves are very functional. Too much useless technical information is pushed onto the user (look at the update module - URIs, service types, etc. should just be "Select Location" and "Update", with advanced stuff stuff somewhere else), the layout of controls is amateurish (as almost every company these days do, including the big "Desktop" companies like Ximian/Nocell, Red Hat, etc.), etc.Some cleanup and loving by a UI designer could make yast very, very, very good, not only for Linux techies but also for the common home/office user. (I.e., those without linux techies to take care of things for them).
brew your own Posted Mar 19, 2004 17:12 UTC (Fri) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link] You can do that yourself, the QT and ncurses frontendare just plugins to a configuration engine. If you have any good ideas you can code a better one.
yast Posted Mar 21, 2004 1:18 UTC (Sun) by robert83 (guest, #20342) [Link] I think apt-get and yum are a lot more better and simple then YAST, and they do the same thing...[update]. Sincerely
yast Posted Mar 28, 2004 1:51 UTC (Sun) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link] YAST does a lot more than just updates. My current desktop installation(SUSE 9.0) has 62 different configuration modules covering the configuration of pretty much everything in the system. It has both X-Windows and console modes which should make both CLI- and GUI-phylic people happy. And it is careful to make backup copies of any files it changes. There is no reason why a specific distribution couldn't replace the online_update module to use portage/apt-get/yum/whatever. Same for whatever other differences there are between distributions. IMO what we really need is a common configuration framework that works across all major distributions. What makes Linux great is that there are distributions with different focuses and different strengths, but that doesn't mean that configuring each distribution has to be so completely different. This is the reason why most independent software vendors only list one or two Linux distributions as "certified". Each distribution is too different, even where it doesn't make sense.
yast Posted Mar 30, 2004 18:27 UTC (Tue) by shadow8479 (guest, #20546) [Link] Dont get me wrong, Yast is indeed a nice setup tool, but I just upgradedfrom SuSe 6.1 to SuSe 9.0 Professional and even tho it finds my mouse in the initial installation, it seems as if it somehow loses my mouse when I have to reboot, thus making me have to install linux all over again. Am I missing something here?? any help would definitely be appreciated. Thank You, you can e-mail me at shadow8479@yahoo.com
Novell management tool going open source (News.com) Posted Mar 19, 2004 18:14 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] This would be a fantastic event for Linux as a whole. Linux's infrastructure is highly capable, but for average users it absolutely needs a bug-free, all-encompassing configuration interface. Yes, even YaST's usability can be improved, but it goes a long way ...I just wonder what will happen if YaST loses its tight integration with specific versions of the things which it configures ...
Novell management tool going open source (News.com) Posted Mar 19, 2004 21:32 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Linux's infrastructure is highly capable, but for average users it absolutely needs a bug-free, all-encompassing configuration interface.I haven't used YAST for a while now (since SuSE 6.1 I think), but my main dissapointment with configuration tools in general is that most of them don't preserve the original file very well. A good tool should have a parser that preserves the original format as much as possible, including whitespace. I absolutely abhor tools (HTML editors come to mind) that strip comments and reformat the file. I like to edit files with a text editor, but if I had a config tool that didn't mess up the files I might use it.
file placement Posted Mar 19, 2004 20:34 UTC (Fri) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] does not address basic imcompatability with RH on program and configuration files location - that's what makes SUSE a PIA - _four_ standards: tarball, Debian, RH, and Suse (RH modified) - uugh
file placement Posted Mar 20, 2004 9:56 UTC (Sat) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link] That is of course assuming that Red Hat is the standard that everybody should follow. Down that road lies Microsoft. Where do you get the idea that SuSE is Red Hat modified? simply because they use RPM's as a default mechanism? Would using apt/.deb make them Debian modified? I don't think so. Packaging philosophy, configuration, hardware support, and loads of other factors determine the nature of a distro, and SuSE isn't "Red Hat modified" in any way....
Maybe I can try them now Posted Mar 21, 2004 10:59 UTC (Sun) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] I may actually have to try them one of these days, with this happening. Irejected them pretty much right off, when I discovered they were semi-proprietary, as I was attempting to figure out which distrib should be my MSWormOS jump-off tool. To me, if I was to settle for that, I would have been better off staying with MSWormOS, with which I had, after all, a decade of experience. I simply wasn't interested in jumping from proprietary to proprietary. (I ended up with Mandrake, which I'm using now, tho I'm looking into Gentoo presently. Both Mandrake and SuSE are supposed to be good for newbies, but SuSE wasn't free.. Mandrake does their stuff GPL. If I was going to actually make the effort, then, to jump from MS, my choice was clear..) Duncan
Maybe I can try them now Posted Mar 21, 2004 15:29 UTC (Sun) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link] Calling SuSE semi-proprietary is a bit too much. YaST is less than 1% of the whole software offer (although I recall SuSE used do put other proprietary stuff in their CD in the past). And YaST comes with sources and with the right to change it for yourself and your friends (the distribution is only restricted if it is for profit).So, let's settle for one-tenth-proprietary, and it is still unfair to SuSE :-). And no, I don't use SuSE, and whish you to be forever happy with Mandrake or Gentoo or whatever ...
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