I have a P4 2.4GHz running 10.1 and used to learn Linux commands from hte command prompt, configured Samba, etc.
I want to experiment with OpenOffice and other applications. The OpenOffice-installation from the distribution fails and I am looking for rpm’s on internet.
However, the available rpm’s on ftp.opensuse.org are for version 10.2 onwards. Can I install a ‘10.2’ rpm on a system running 10.1? Any other suggestions?
It can be done,providing you meet all the dependencies.But, i’ll say this, you may or may not be successful and may or may not run into problems,YMMV
Andy
On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 18:36 +0000, ikengijzijnwij wrote:
> I have a P4 2.4GHz running 10.1 and used to learn Linux commands from
> hte command prompt, configured Samba, etc.
> I want to experiment with OpenOffice and other applications. The
> OpenOffice-installation from the distribution fails and I am looking for
> rpm’s on internet.
> However, the available rpm’s on ftp.opensuse.org are for version 10.2
> onwards. Can I install a ‘10.2’ rpm on a system running 10.1? Any other
> suggestions?
Variables… version level of rpm… other dependencies.
One possible (better) solution is to download the source rpm for the
package on 10.2 and do a rebuild under 10.1. You still may run
into a slew of dependency issues, but at least you’ll be creating
10.1 rpm’s that you can use.
Frankly, the real solution is to upgrade. You could go to 10.3,
but even so, it’s going away, so I’d go for 11.0 (or 11.1 if it’s
out by time you decide). If this is for anything truly
important, go to a long term product like SLES.
My advice would be to try the latest release of openSuse. ie os11. You will then have much more recent packages (like OOO) to play with;)
My wife’s pc is a pentium 4 and runs it fine, though you may wish to try the distro live first.
In case you are afraid to loose your user-settings, simply choose to include your /home-partition unformatted when instaling 11.0, that might save you a lot of work.
Don’t stay with 10.1. It is not supported anymore (= insecure) plus is the worst SuSE-Version I ever experienced (out of five).
Using .rpms not matching your SuSE-version should only be done after at least three years in a tibetian Linux-zen-monastery. And even then, actually… not.
Yeah, mixing RPMs from different releases should only be done if you are already bald, so there is no longer any risk of tearing out your hair. lol! And it is totally foolhardy to mix RPMs from different distros. Probably won’t get past the install anyway.
If you really must backport a RPM, the way to do it is to start from the SRPM and build it on the old system. Note this may trigger a long chain of -devel dependencies. Even then, there might be glitches for which you should spend a few years in the RPM monastery to have the serenity to tackle.
Did we already mention that 11.0 is the way to go? 
It just popped into my mind that the option to upgrade to SuSE 11.0 should also be considered. Anyone in here ever thought of that?