Myrlyn doesn’t allow offline viewing of the last list. That is, when I’m not connected to the internet, I can’t see what is available.
In YaST, you can skip the refresh of the list when online so it doesn’t take a long time refreshing. Myrlyn seems to do something quickly. Not sure if it’s the new list or one must manually click refresh list. If the latter, then this is better.
When adding or changing a repository, Myrlyn closes the program and stops rather than automatically reloading and refreshing. Not a major thing, but inconvenient.
Doesn’t keep history of most recently searched for applications. The search box only has a X, not a dropdown.
While Discover does, Myrlyn doesn’t show details of updates, what the changes are, what the security issue was.
Doesn’t allow to keep the download cache even after I manually did a modifyrepo to keep.
Such as:
There are no cached downloaded files in /var/cache/zypp/packages/
The folders are empty. So if you install something, uninstall it, reinstall it, I presume you have to download the whole thing again. For instance, if I remove wine to attempt to reinstall it or to use flatpak, but then decide to put it back like it was, that is a huge download which makes me now want to even try it, unless I know it’s going to make it better.
If I’m missing how to do some of these things, let me know.
The --keep flag enables caching. The rpm cache is only kept for as long until the package got installed. Installing a package from the cache, removes it from the cache.
So that has changed from YaST? Because I have lots of megabytes in my 15.6 system cache. Or maybe you are saying the --keep flag is different from in YaST where you can say keep the downloaded files in the repository setup? Is there a way to do that with Myrlyn?
This is so people like you won’t start complaining (as you inevitably would) when things get out of sync between the old in-memory representation of the libzypp database and the repo status that you just changed. This is what taking any shortcuts would cause.
Besides, how many times are you adding or removing repos so this could possibly ever become a problem?
Some people can just never be satisfied; one additional mouse click is already too much. Maybe I should have left out the entire repo management part entirely and leave you with zypper commands.
YaST had a combo box for the last search terms, but the values were never saved anyway, so its use was very limited. But it did get in the way of fluid keyboard operation the way users expect.
If you are using a distro that has patches like Leap and not just updated packages like Tumbleweed, there is the aptly named “Patches” view if patches are available where each patch has a patch description with CVE and other changes on the bottom half of the left side panel where the patches are listed, and the package versions that make up the patch in the package list on the right side.
But you can also use the “Updates” view that list all the packages that can be updated (that have a newer version available) and one of the “Package Update” or “Dist-Upgrade” buttons.
The result will be the same because a patch is considered installed (“satisfied”) when all package versions that it consists of are installed.
Looks very much like you never discovered the “Patches” view despite using Leap.
Myrlyn does what libzypp does because that’s what it uses internally. No idea why you would want to keep package versions that you just installed, but if you do, see man zypper about those settings in the zypper / libzypp configuration.
Actually I have to fill in my password again besides a couple of mouse clicks. But it’s not too often. I can’t remember for sure, but thought some of the updates required a restart, too.
Ah! Thank you very much. That’s what I was looking for and missed. Previous versions had the patch tab visible as default on Software Update. I saw the current Updates tab and just never searched for Patches. I had found the Packages Classification and thought that was interesting and could have been useful if YaST had something like that in the past.
So I don’t have to wait for a re-download time for whatever reason I uninstall and re-install. Not everyone has a fast internet connection. And I had read man zypper which is where I got the --keep-packages. It just doesn’t keep them.
Maybe --dry-run? I tried it and see “read only”. Maybe that’s one purpose for clicking on the (read-only) listing for Myrlyn? I’ll have to get offline and try it. If not, I could always create a new menu entry for --no-repo-refresh.
Use --no-repo-refresh if that slows you down too much.
But be aware that this means that any package operations may fail with a download error if you try to install or update a package that isn’t available on the server anymore in that exact version because there is now a newer version with a higher version number.
This will happen on a regular basis with Tumbleweed because TW only keeps the latest version of most packages around (to avoid the servers from overflowing with new versions arriving all the time). On Leap this will happen a lot more rarely, but it still can.
If you do that often, you might want to rethink your approach to package handling.
I can understand installing a package, testing it, and removing it if it doesn’t do what you wanted it to do. But then installing it again? I don’t know.
In Tumbleweed if I add --keep-packages (either manually via zypper or via YaST) to a repo definition, .rpm’s are kept in the cache and Myrlyn finds them.
If the repo is managed by a service, that setting might be reset if a service refresh changes the repo definition but that doesn’t happen often and can be reversed by zypper mr (or YaST if you still have it like in Tumbleweed); the only “problem” is that you cannot use Myrlyn to do that repo modification.
Unless zypper is different on Leap 16.0 (I doubt it but didn’t check) I don’t understand what you are arguing about on this specific point.
Yes, I’m aware of that and it’s happened in the past, especially when I was on dialup. Sometimes, the package I had chosen to install happened to be the one that was updated just within a day of the last refresh. But mostly what I use it for, is not to install anything, but just to see what packages are available, if it’s in the repositories, or if I have to find a new repository that has the package.
Yeah, not often. Again, when I was on dialup, the penalty was very great. And the advice was to uninstall and reinstall it again.
Well, I had set it to keep packages, but it didn’t. I might be mistaken, but thought I had done it quite quickly after install, and there’s been a few updates since then. And I’ve installed things.
Case in point: I was having trouble with q4wine not working, but sfalken tried installing and it worked for him. So I uninstalled everything and installed it again. It took 30 minutes for Discover to download q4wine again. It didn’t work anyway. I don’t know how to make it keep packages, but that’s the reason I wish to. If I didn’t have to wait 30 minutes to re-download it, I would have tried it right off the bat to eliminate that possibility of problems instead of trying to figure out other things.
And as you see in my original post, they are set as keep. Last night, I found something to add, and noticed in /var/cache/zypp/packages/ it created x86_64 and placed the files there. It did not place them in /var/cache/zypp/packages/openSUSE:repo-oss/x86_64 where I would have expected. This morning, after Discover refreshed, it is gone.
I do not understand how “managed by a service” fits in, but could Discover be ignoring and clearing the files?
