My openSUSE-10.2 adventure starts...

Tuesday, 10 April 2007 | pipitas

The notebook mentioned in my last blog: yesterday it got an openSUSE-10.2 installation completed.

What tempted me most in favor of openSUSE, was that I had read about their "build service", and that they offer regularly updated KDE4 snapshot RPMs from there, which possibly can save me lots of compile time while I familiarize myself again what's current with KDE developments.

However, KDE4 is not yet installed.

I first had to become familiar with smart, and the dozens of "channels" leading to repositories + sub-repositories in the build service. Cool as the build service in principle is -- the way that its "accessibility" is organized makes it much less useful than it could be.

It took me many, many hours to search for the specific packages and package updates I wanted (mainly printing- and fonts-related stuff). There is no easy-to-use interface to the build service's "fruits" for the end user (and I do not thing of "Aunt Tillie"-type of end users, but people like myself who have by now quite some experience about how to administer their own system, and that of colleagues and customers as well).

Had I not discovered one good soul's openSUSE package search web page (an extremely cool and useful service!), I would not have found half the non-standard (or updated) packages that I have now installed on top of the 10.2 DVD.

So -- thanks a lot, "benjiweber"; your great work just saved me a lot of time (and Novell should reward you for doing their job)!

Update/Addendum:

I found Beineri's hint regarding the build service latest changes news feed quite interesting. What a pitty that I had to use Firefox to see its contents in a recognizeable way; Konqui 3.5.6 (as shipped by the build service) could not display the link properly....