Just a little possive news. I switched yesterday from 10.2 to SuSE 11.0
(developer retail DVD) and is is just great. Finally online update
configured easily and does what it is meant to do. Sound (Intel HDA)
works fine out of the box, finally showing the 'Mic Boost' and I really
love the fact that you have to wait 10 seconds instead of 5 minutes for
Software management to come up. Overall it feels faster, but that might
be imagination. Great job! As always some small glitches:

* First time the installation stalled at `Initalizing package
manager' (if I recall correctly). Switch VTs, but couldn't find
a cause!? Possibly some warnings on an existing ReiserFS
filesystem? Retried and all ran just fine.

* I had to give my NIC a new hw ether address due to a replaced
card (and the difficulty getting sysadmins to change DHCP). This
breaks automatic network config, but is so special its hard to
blame the installation.

* The on board GeForce 7300 LE graphics failed totally, leaving
the system in text mode :-( After installing the nvidia driver
through text based yast all went smooth. Might have been nice if
the download and installation instructions for this driver are
in the paper docs; now used internet on another machine to find
out.

* qgit2 depends on itself!? Had to install qgit. Also a little
annoying: git still develops so fast I want to stay up-to-date,
but installing qgit (from packman? would be nice if software
management can tell you where the RPM is!) forced the
installation of an older git, to be removed using "rpm --nodeps
-e git-core". Ok, but not elegant.

* As the system now examines existing Linux partitions, it would
be kind if it allowed for a one-click "keep the current
partition table and mount points as starting point". I have two
root partitions and install new versions on alternating root
partition, keeping the old one to copy settings and simply have
it bootable if all fails. With disk space so cheap SuSE could
stimulate this setup and automatically create a grub menu that
allows booting the old root.

* Long on my wish-list: an automatic way to do a clean
installation, staying as close as possible to the current
set of installed packages.

Thanks for 11.0!

--- Jan

Jan Wielemaker wrote:
> * The on board GeForce 7300 LE graphics failed totally, leaving
> the system in text mode :-( After installing the nvidia driver
> through text based yast all went smooth. Might have been nice if
> the download and installation instructions for this driver are
> in the paper docs; now used internet on another machine to find
> out.

use Lynx, links, w3m or any othe text browser. ;-)

> * qgit2 depends on itself!? Had to install qgit. Also a little
> annoying: git still develops so fast I want to stay up-to-date,
> but installing qgit (from packman? would be nice if software
> management can tell you where the RPM is!) forced the
> installation of an older git, to be removed using "rpm --nodeps
> -e git-core". Ok, but not elegant.

If it is from Packman, you must blame Packman. And you can find out from
where it is. In YaST you go to the 'Version' tab after you found the
package. With me it says: 2.1-0.pm.1-i586 from packman. In the
Dependencies it says: conflicts qgit. So best inform packman about the
problem.

> * As the system now examines existing Linux partitions, it would
> be kind if it allowed for a one-click "keep the current
> partition table and mount points as starting point". I have two
> root partitions and install new versions on alternating root
> partition, keeping the old one to copy settings and simply have
> it bootable if all fails. With disk space so cheap SuSE could
> stimulate this setup and automatically create a grub menu that
> allows booting the old root.

I can imagine that so much can and will go wrong there that the amount
of time doing this will be very hard to do,

> * Long on my wish-list: an automatic way to do a clean
> installation, staying as close as possible to the current
> set of installed packages.

YaST, Software, Software Management, File, Export. That is then
something you can Import again with the next instalation if saved on
e.g. a floppy (all the kids now go: what is a floppy?) or wherever.

However understand that new things might be coming onboard and other
things will be removed, so this might be a problem for some packages
that do or so not exist anymore with a new distribution (e.g. 11.1)

houghi
--
You can have my keyboard ...
if you can pry it from my dead, cold, stiff fingers

houghi wrote:
> If it is from Packman, you must blame Packman. And you can find out from
> where it is. In YaST you go to the 'Version' tab after you found the
> package. With me it says: 2.1-0.pm.1-i586 from packman. In the
> Dependencies it says: conflicts qgit. So best inform packman about the
> problem.

On a related issue:
http://dev-loki.blogspot.com/2008/07...kage-bugs.html

houghi
--
The blue light suddenly flashed on my horrified face. What a disaster!
Oh, the humanity! I never thought it would happen to me. How terrifying
it is to see for yourself "*The Blue Screen of Death*".

On 2008-07-10, houghi <houghi@houghi.org.invalid> wrote:
Thanks for the comments.

>> * As the system now examines existing Linux partitions, it would
>> be kind if it allowed for a one-click "keep the current
>> partition table and mount points as starting point". I have two
>> root partitions and install new versions on alternating root
>> partition, keeping the old one to copy settings and simply have
>> it bootable if all fails. With disk space so cheap SuSE could
>> stimulate this setup and automatically create a grub menu that
>> allows booting the old root.
>
> I can imagine that so much can and will go wrong there that the amount
> of time doing this will be very hard to do,

It can already find the linux partitions. If I ask for upgrade it will
ask for the root (if I recall well) and nicely get the installation
config from there. Shouldn't be too hard to use that info for a new
install too, I guess. Now I have to dump /etc/fstab before the update,
select to create a new partition table (which is a bit contra intuitive;
I want to keep the old one) and re-assign the mount points as they where
before. Not a disaster. As we see though, a lot of people update using a
fresh install. It would be nice if the system supports this a bit
cleaner by proposing an initial partition table that supports this (at
least place /home on a seperate partition) and automatically base the
fresh install on the old one.

>> * Long on my wish-list: an automatic way to do a clean
>> installation, staying as close as possible to the current
>> set of installed packages.
>
> YaST, Software, Software Management, File, Export. That is then
> something you can Import again with the next instalation if saved on
> e.g. a floppy (all the kids now go: what is a floppy?) or wherever.

Might try that next time :-)

> However understand that new things might be coming onboard and other
> things will be removed, so this might be a problem for some packages
> that do or so not exist anymore with a new distribution (e.g. 11.1)

I understand this is complicated. On the other hand, it is always a bit
annoying to have to use software management so often the first couple of
days after an update to re-add all the things you used frequently and
are not yet installed (thanks to a much faster zypper this is a lot more
acceptable). One of the reasons for a fresh install is to get the
software collection SuSE thinks is good. Guess ideally I'd like it to
make everything available that has been used recently (better:
frequently & recently), possibly suggesting `now, app X is the suggested
app to do T, would you like the old Y or should I install X?'.

Used recently can be obtained in the old system before upgrade from
file access times, but this is generally unreliable. Better would be
to use info from accounting, but this is not installed by defaut.

Cheers --- Jan

Jan Wielemaker wrote:
> It can already find the linux partitions. If I ask for upgrade it will
> ask for the root (if I recall well) and nicely get the installation
> config from there. Shouldn't be too hard to use that info for a new
> install too, I guess.

Ah, the famous 'shouldn't be too hard' words. :-D

Well, file a bugreport and perhaps they think is is a good idea and
include it.

> I understand this is complicated. On the other hand, it is always a bit
> annoying to have to use software management so often the first couple of
> days after an update to re-add all the things you used frequently and
> are not yet installed (thanks to a much faster zypper this is a lot more
> acceptable).

The best advice I can give you is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So
no need to update unless you must. I am sure there are many people still
enjoying their 10.1 or 10.2 (or even older) openSUSE.

> One of the reasons for a fresh install is to get the
> software collection SuSE thinks is good. Guess ideally I'd like it to
> make everything available that has been used recently (better:
> frequently & recently), possibly suggesting `now, app X is the suggested
> app to do T, would you like the old Y or should I install X?'.

Oh boy. That would realy be nice to have. Unrealistic at this moment due
to the amount of work that goes into it, but nice.

> Used recently can be obtained in the old system before upgrade from
> file access times, but this is generally unreliable. Better would be
> to use info from accounting, but this is not installed by defaut.

OK. Let us look at this in a realistic way at what would happen. First
of all what you are actualy doing is an upgrade. Why not try an upgrade
and do the following:
1) Backup
2) Try the upgrade
3) If the upgrade fails do the new installation

That way almost all will be upgraded.

Now concerning your wish and what would happen:

You run 10.3 (and I am going only to think about one version new
install/upgrades. Going further would make it even MORE difficult).
It sees that you run KDE 3 and ask if you want to run KDE 4. You say
yes. Now you have to answer wether or not you would like to have a newer
version of each and every program that you ran on 10.3.

Now some version of software might be very logical to decide (e.g. FF2
or FF3) others might not be so clear. Then there will be the dependency
hell afterwards to clean up.

And this is not even going into the fact that some software might not
even be available anymore or isn't even distributed by openSUSE, so they
have NO idea wether this would work or not.

houghi
--
The blue light suddenly flashed on my horrified face. What a disaster!
Oh, the humanity! I never thought it would happen to me. How terrifying
it is to see for yourself "*The Blue Screen of Death*".

On 2008-07-11, houghi <houghi@houghi.org.invalid> wrote:
> Jan Wielemaker wrote:
<snip>
> The best advice I can give you is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So
> no need to update unless you must. I am sure there are many people still
> enjoying their 10.1 or 10.2 (or even older) openSUSE.

That cannot be denied. On the other hand, many of us are a bit gadget
minded and -for me- 10.2 was a bit broken. I never managed to get
automatic updated to work (yast->online update did work), my sound card
refused to show a `boost mic', making it unusable for VOIP, if my app
hung due to a deadlock, attaching GDB and ask for a stack trace only
produced an `internal error' message resulted, etc. One gets used to
that (though as a developer of multi-threaded applications the latter
was very annoying), but there is some hope 11.0 is better. It is! All
these problems are solved. Ok, you know you have to go through the
installation and make everything work again. All this was about raising
these issues and consider some routes to make the burden of upgrading a
bit smaller. I know that is a real challenge!

>> One of the reasons for a fresh install is to get the
>> software collection SuSE thinks is good. Guess ideally I'd like it to
>> make everything available that has been used recently (better:
>> frequently & recently), possibly suggesting `now, app X is the suggested
>> app to do T, would you like the old Y or should I install X?'.
>
> Oh boy. That would realy be nice to have. Unrealistic at this moment due
> to the amount of work that goes into it, but nice.

I'm not really sure this is unrealistic. Upgrade already knows version X
of package P is replaced by X+N; that is no big issue and the normal
flow. Sometimes packages are dropped. I recall I was a fan of xmms,
but at some stage I was forced to recompile it myself or switch. Glad
I found amarok. We already have package groups. Decisions like dropping
a package are made with care. So are the decisions to use certains apps
as default (i.e. add them to the default menus and associate applications
with certain MIME-types to them). That could provide the info needed.

>> Used recently can be obtained in the old system before upgrade from
>> file access times, but this is generally unreliable. Better would be
>> to use info from accounting, but this is not installed by defaut.
>
> OK. Let us look at this in a realistic way at what would happen. First
> of all what you are actualy doing is an upgrade. Why not try an upgrade
> and do the following:
> 1) Backup
> 2) Try the upgrade
> 3) If the upgrade fails do the new installation
>
> That way almost all will be upgraded.

Not so bad, but upgrade takes *way* longer that new install (unless this
has changed recently), I'm glad I'm rid of a lot of old junk I never use
after a fresh install and even, it can fail. I feel much safer with two
root partitions and installing a new version next to the one I used
sofar.

> Now concerning your wish and what would happen:
>
> You run 10.3 (and I am going only to think about one version new

10.2 on the machine we talk about.

> install/upgrades. Going further would make it even MORE difficult).
> It sees that you run KDE 3 and ask if you want to run KDE 4. You say
> yes. Now you have to answer wether or not you would like to have a newer
> version of each and every program that you ran on 10.3.

As the packagers of OpenSuSE already recognised, KDE4 is too big a jump
for default usages, so they nicely allow installing KDE3 or KDE4 (and
with some work both).

> Now some version of software might be very logical to decide (e.g. FF2
> or FF3) others might not be so clear. Then there will be the dependency
> hell afterwards to clean up.
>
> And this is not even going into the fact that some software might not
> even be available anymore or isn't even distributed by openSUSE, so they
> have NO idea wether this would work or not.

Most of these issues already hold for upgrading. Well, maybe I want
something impossible. I guess I see progress in the new releases and
generally I want to follow as much as possible of this but as we all
want, with as little as possible effort and risc :-)

Maybe I should keep using the two root partition system and when
considering upgrade, simply copy root A to root B and then upgrade one
of them.

Cheers --- Jan

Jan Wielemaker wrote:
> As the packagers of OpenSuSE already recognised, KDE4 is too big a jump
> for default usages, so they nicely allow installing KDE3 or KDE4 (and
> with some work both).

'Some work'? I just installed 11.0 on my portable. Complete fresh
install. I installed it with KDE3 and when seeing this, I went into
YaST, Siftware, Software Management and selected the filter on Patterns.
Then I selected "KDE4 Desktop Enviroment" and hit "Install". It told me
that it was going to do some more and I accepted that as well.

The process above (excluding the actual downloading) took less time then
it took me to type the above lines.

Logging out and then I can select KDE3, KDE4, and some other things to
run as.

When I hear "some work" I am under the impression that it is not very
easy. Selecting a pattern is not something I would call "Some work".

It is harder to install MPlayer, because you have to add Packman first.

> Maybe I should keep using the two root partition system and when
> considering upgrade, simply copy root A to root B and then upgrade one
> of them.

That is what I do. One for the prevbious version and obe for the current
version.

houghi
--
You tried, and you failed, so the lesson is, never try. - Homer J. Simpson.

houghi wrote:

>> Maybe I should keep using the two root partition system and when
>> considering upgrade, simply copy root A to root B and then upgrade one
>> of them.
>
> That is what I do. One for the prevbious version and obe for the current
> version.
>
> houghi

Not meaning linguistic disrespect, but what is "obe" ?

Godzilla

Godzilla wrote:
>> That is what I do. One for the prevbious version and obe for the current
>> version.
>>
>> houghi
>
> Not meaning linguistic disrespect, but what is "obe" ?

one. Missed the n.

houghi
--
Dr. Walter Gibbs: Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs
will start thinking and the people will stop.
-- Tron (1982)

houghi wrote:

> Godzilla wrote:
>>> That is what I do. One for the prevbious version and obe for the current
>>> version.
>>>
>>> houghi
>>
>> Not meaning linguistic disrespect, but what is "obe" ?
>
> one. Missed the n.
>
> houghi

For a moment, I thought that you were attempting to say "obi," which is the
Japanese large bow which is worn on a formal Kimono. ;-)

Godzilla