I’ve already added many repos like packman and build services but still, I find that the softwares that shown in Opensuse’s website package search results can not be found using zypper search or Yast software management.
I can’t remember too many for now but like the package “alien” is not available in all those default repos is kinda shocking to me too, while it can be found by a opensuse’s package search. Is there a repo called “opensuse website package query”? Thank you for answering the newbie question.
First: the more repos you add the higher the chances of dependency conflicts and instability. “Stick to the four distribution + update + Packman repos” is a sane piece of advice.
Second: the software search page searches all repos, literally all. So including all the build service projects. The word “unstable” often shows up.
What I do if I need software that’s not in the official repos, is install it through the website per one-click, then deactivate/remove the repo the package comes from, to avoid conflicts with other packages from those repos.
And yes, the question is not: “How many repos can I add?”.
The question is: “How can I keep my number of repos at a minumum and still install and maintain the software I need?”.
Is that too many? I also noticed that when wine had an update, it didn’t update itself during the online update process, but I had to manually ask it to update to the newer version shown by the Yast software management. Why didn’t it update while its repo has been enabled?
YaST online update only updates what is in both (OSS and non-OSS) Update repos.
But you have a terrible list. The most obvious is that you have repos in there two times. E.g. 13 and 28 are both the OSS repo. Same for more of those. You should clean up that first so we get a better insight in the rest.
And about your questiuon" How many repos". That depends in fact completely in the question where you want to use your system for.
When you want a system for digging around in all types of software, to play with products and see how to tests all things existing in the wordl, you may need many for your hobby.
When, on the complete other side of the scale. you only want to e-mail, visit web-sites, use your banking account, listen some music, view some video, and that all on a stable base, you realy only need those 5 repos.
Most people are a bit in between, they have some other hobbies on the system, maintain a website, edit music/videos, add their family in a genealogic program. They will probably have a few (few!) extra repos they trust and have them disabled most of the time (only enableing them when they think there is a good/stable new version of that specific software to update to).
You have to find out what your needs are. But in all cases having repos more times in the list is at least confusing.
openSUSE Build Service hosts 33634 projects, with 218475 packages, in 49550 repositories and is used by 36822 confirmed developers.
I simply cannot imagine a person that would need and use all of these.
To keep things stable, here’s some tips:
Stick to the 5 repos as described above
If you want something done, try using what you have first, or install additional software that comes with your desktop. Both GNOME and KDE are very complete for daily use.
Thank you. That answered my question. Yeah I found it confusing too as I saw the repo names were similar but I didn’t know the difference and have forgotten when and in what situation I added all those repos. So they must be some kind of mirrors. Will clean them up.
Zypper is already pretty awesome, but I’m just getting lazier, hoping it finds all !
