Installing new programs - best practice

I am trying to get up to speed on opensuse and I find it a bit slow (me, not opensuse) I am also limited by the amount of time that I have to work on configuration etc - so work flow is constantly interupted.

I would like to understand better adding programs and how YaST works. For example I am currently running Transmission BT (1.30) as installed from YaST (I am on 10.3 Gnome) There is a new ver of Transmission, that has new features that I would like to use, out but it is in the 11.0 repository. Does this mean that…

A) I can install from the 11.0 repository and YaST will handle the dependencies?

or

B) I would have to build from the source to be able to run on 10.3?

C) D/L the RPM from 11.0 and do a rpm -u command line install?

Or am I entering the same type of environment that you get in MS Windows where new programs or updates require or take advantage of ‘core’ changes - so you are somewhat ‘forced’ to upgrade the OS, does this mean that I will need to move to 11.x? This makes me wonder as just as you get a ‘stable’ system you might enter the realm of reconfiguring again and having a issue with drivers for older hardware.

Thanks for reading…

Stephen

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Good questions. First, Yast is just a frontend (when it comes to
installing packages) for the RPM database, as it seems you already
understand. So to go with your questions:

A. Probably.
B. You could do this, but probably unnecessary.
C. ‘-U’ (capital) actually, but yes. This will probably work assuming
dependencies are already satisfied on the system. If they are not Yast
may do a better job since it can look for the dependencies but if they
can’t be met in the 10.3 repositories you will probably be better off
trying 11.x. Yes you can often mix/match packages between versions (and
even different Linux distributions like RedHat/SUSE/Mandriva/etc.) as
long as the package system is the same (RPM vs. other types of
packages). Dependencies are usually the problem with this
mixing/matching and also you enter a realm of untested setups which
provides excitement and/or pain.

Good luck.

db9 wrote:
> I am trying to get up to speed on opensuse and I find it a bit slow (me,
> not opensuse) I am also limited by the amount of time that I have to
> work on configuration etc - so work flow is constantly interupted.
>
> I would like to understand better adding programs and how YaST works.
> For example I am currently running Transmission BT (1.30) as installed
> from YaST (I am on 10.3 Gnome) There is a new ver of Transmission, that
> has new features that I would like to use, out but it is in the 11.0
> repository. Does this mean that…
>
> A) I can install from the 11.0 repository and YaST will handle the
> dependencies?
>
> or
>
> B) I would have to build from the source to be able to run on 10.3?
>
> C) D/L the RPM from 11.0 and do a rpm -u command line install?
>
> Or am I entering the same type of environment that you get in MS
> Windows where new programs or updates require or take advantage of
> ‘core’ changes - so you are somewhat ‘forced’ to upgrade the OS, does
> this mean that I will need to move to 11.x? This makes me wonder as just
> as you get a ‘stable’ system you might enter the realm of reconfiguring
> again and having a issue with drivers for older hardware.
>
> Thanks for reading…
>
> Stephen
>
>
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Thank you for taking the time to reply.

So if I start YaST the repository config points to 10.3 (as it should) BUT if I want to pick up a particular 11.0 program and its dependencies, how would I configure YaST for a onetime shot, so I wouldn’t get confused about other programs - or will YaST tell me that it is from the 11 repository and another is from the 10.3 etc…