I see that I can use both su and sudo on Opensuse.
What is the recommended method for gaining administrative powers on Opensuse
Answer:For me personally I have always used “su” and to date have had no need to use “sudo”
What is the recommended way to install software on Opensuse?
Answer:
In order of best as I think you mean it there are 3
1st Kmenu>Computer>Yast
2nd Open Konsole
su
zypper in nameofapplicationyouwishtoinstall
3rd The Install Software is for any rpm’s you might find that my or may not be designed for use in suse it is a use at your own risk item
Also, what is the difference between a package manager and 1-click install?
Answer:
Package Manager= A person(some of the Contribs you’ll see on the Software Page Software.openSUSE.org)
or organization that puts together Software exclusively for OpenSuSe(Packman)
One Click Installs IMO is a quick way to put in some software they tend to be a hit or miss thing. I personally have only used 2 of them the restricted media formats & the nvidia drivers both successfully some here haven’t. Also these 1 clicks do tend to install non essential repos or duplicates of repos you already have.
3. Where does Opensuse keep its list of software repositories.
Ubuntu keeps it in a file called sources.list in /etc/apt/
Answer:I was not entirely sure how to answer this one do keep in mind that OpenSuSe is not Ubuntu & vice versa
Closest I can think of to /etc/apt/ in Opensuse is /etc/zypp/repos.d
That maybe what you mean though as a former Ubuntu user myself it’s not a sources list in the way you knew from Ubuntu. AFAIK this distro doesn’t do it the Ubuntu way.
Also, how can I make Opensuse keep the rpms it downloads after installing them. And where does it store downloaded rpms?
When it comes to this one you’ll have to have someone more experienced then I answer it.
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:16:01 +0000, Linuxuser20 wrote:
> I want to ask some questions about Opensuse. Please answer them.
You may want to break your questions down into more specific categories
and target forums that relate to your questions. For example, your
questions about software management really belong in the applications
forum, but your questions about using su vs. sudo may be more appropriate
to the programming-scripting section (for example).
I don’t have answers to these, but I do have a recommendation … which as a new user is for you to keep your list of repositories LEAN and MEAN. OpenSUSE has massive repository proliferation as a result of the build service, and the quality of compatibility of the many rpms on these repositories may not be as good as those on the official repositories. So I recommend you restrict your openSUSE software repositories to: OSS, Non-OSS, and Update. Plus add the largest 3rd party repository: Packman. Just those 4. OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. No others. None. The 1st three official repositories should already be in your repository list. You can add the 4th (Packman) via the guidance here: Repositories/11.2 - openSUSE-Community Again, just those 4 and resist the temptation to add more.
For example, I recommend as a new user you do not add videolan . Why ? Because the videolan packagers and the packman packagers, could never agree on a common location for the codecs for video/audio. Thus packman packaged multimedia applications may not find codecs packaged by videolan, and videolan packaged applications may not find codecs packaged by packman packagers. If you install applications from both you may have a non-functional mess. (the exception being install libdvdcss from videolan).
Now if you need an application that is not on those 4 repositories then add the 5th repository, install the application, and remove or disable the 5th application. That will help you avoid 95% of the problems that plague new users on openSUSE.
Experienced users can ignore the above advice and get away with it. Average users (like me) and new users can not safely ignore that advice.
Note if you select the xine engine (and install libxine1) as your sound backend, you can also install xine-ui (the xine user interface) and then tune the settings in xine to ensure the audio output from the xine engine/backend works well.