I’ve used other linux systems but this one seems pretty frustrating and not like any of the others. I need to know where to find a few things.
First I need to install the following items:
Thunderbird
El Falso ?(mp3 tagger)
amsn
quantas plus
dc++
IE4linux
Java? not sure if this is already installed with the OS
I’ll most likely need to install some other things too. I just cannot find them in the add/remove programs thing. There is hardly anything in it! Where is the Synaptic Package Manager or something like that where you can search for something and then actually get a result?
Looks like you have not enabled any repos, I would first check into that. Most people have the OSS, Non-OSS, and Packman repos enabled. Then you should be able to find more software. Another way is by looking through Webpin.
As for synaptic, that is an *Buntu/Debian package manager. It is not available in openSUSE. Lastly, if you are used to the command line version of apt, you can use the openSUSE equivalent of zypper.
You need to add repositories that contain these packages. There are quite a few available. Visit openSUSE.org and serach for repositories.
Once the repositories are there (by default, you will have already a minimum set of repositories install), you can search for any package as follows:
zypper search package
Here, the package can be a pattern. For example,
zypper search thunder
Once, you found the package, you can simply install them, for example:
zypper install MozillaThunderbird
You may also use Yast to manage software packages once you have the repositories in place.
However, some of the packages are not available from any repositories. That is because, they are not really packages. Fox example, IE4Linux is not a package. It is a mechanism to download and configure wine to run IE under Linux. You can just follow the instructions given at Main Page - IEs4Linux to download and configure wine for that.
Right. You need repos. This also means you ignored things during install, or did not have a networkconnection available. If not, the oss, non-oss repos are enabled by default, including at least Thunderbird.
Like switching from a windu to a ubuntu-user needed a big ‘getting used to’, switching from a debian based linux to an rpm-based linux requires some time and reading
The equivalent to synaptic is the Yast package manager. You can find this under Yast in the “software management” option (I think that’s the name, I’m not in front of it right now).
Adding repositories will help with your limited selection of packages.
If you continue to get frustrated by the configuration of the software manager, a quick and easy way to looking for packages is to search the repositories using Software.openSUSE.org. All of the packages you find will provide you with a one-click install interface. Watch out for the repositories though; the only repositories you should need now are Updates, Oss, Non-Oss, and Packman.
I need to know where to find a few things.