Hi Guys.
I have been using openSUSE 11.1 for some weeks and I m loving the experience. I mostly learn things by trial and error. I m particularly flattered by KDE 4.1. And I do browse this forum for troubleshooting.
How do I know which applications are installed on my computer? There is of course this “Software Management” in yast which gives me a list of all applications, but it is not like the list of “Add and Remove programs” in WinXp. I guess this is the Linux way of doing things and I should get used to it (And I m a glad learner:)). But then how do I know which package belongs to which application? I understand again that there is a description of that package when I click on it. But to be honest, I, sometimes, am really scared to tick/untick them cause I dont want to worsen my system by doing something stupid that I have no idea of.
So I want to know how do i know which applications are installed and how do I know which package is the install file and which are the supporting packages? How would I know this?
Also I have this problem being faced by my friend:
when he is on the login screen and he wants to login into KDE environment he does not have the option of KDE4.1. He has the option of only KDE3 and gnome and other environments. And when I open “Software Management” in yast I can see that lot of KDE4 packages being tick marked (and I m assuming that it means they are installed). I do not know now however as to which is the one that needs to be installed so that my friend can login into the KDE4 environment. Or more correctly, I m not even sure whether KDE4 is installed may be I m not seeing it due to some other problems.
To fix this I tried to repair the system using the installation DVD. I did so because his windows D drive was not mounting too. And then I thought may be we could update the system using installation DVD and we could see KDE4 . But sadly the repair-from-dvd action of ours did mount the drive but sadly changed GRUB and now we are doomed! The system does not boot! It does not even go to the screen where we could select the OS of our choice. :(. ) And this saddens me and makes me feel guilty cause I had influenced him to try openSUSE and Linux. I had told him all sort of wonderful stories. He gladly changed and now everything is so bad.
So guys please help me. And answer two these questions in particular,
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How do I figure out which applications are installed and which are not? Or more correctly how do I determine which is the main package and which are complimentary packages of any applications ( I hope I m right in the analogy with windows installations, where .exe is the main file and all other are complimentary files. I m sorry if I wrong and please correct me. ). Any links to installing applications in openSUSE would be great I guess. Any document or any html page, pdf, etc.
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How do I overcome such catastrophic problems like my friend faced? Any suggestions?
Thank you i advance for your replies.
And I m dream is to be a Linux expert someday working for Novell and helping guys answer the questions. 