Aborting Installation Package installation can be aborted using the Abort button. However, the system then can be in an inconsistent or unusable state or it may not boot if the basic system component is not installed."
I find this quite interesting. When you cancel an installation in Windows, the installer undoes any changes you make and reverts back. Is this standard procedure for YaST?
There is a default setting in openSUSE’s software package management that has a number of openSUSE users upset because it will download one application at a time, followed by an install of that applicaiton, followed by the next application download/install, the next application … etc … . It makes more sense to many of us that ALL applications should be downloaded first, and only then should the installation start. There is a work around (after installation) to apply a setting, that will ensure applications are all first downloaded, and only then after all are downloaded will they be installed. But that is not a default setting in openSUSE-11.2
Reference being able to roll back, to the best of my knowledge all Linux distributions can have problems if there is only a partial install. Fortunately Linux is fairly robust, and usually it is possible to recover from such a situation, often from the command line in run level 3 (where run level 3 (full screen terminal with no X running) often has internet access).
Because sometimes multiple packages depend on each other, and if one starts an update where 18 packages are downloaded, all of which depend on each other, and they are supposed to download/install, 18 times, but after 8 times it fails, then one has 8 packages installed and 10 not installed. But since they all depend on each other, the 8 installed packages could cause breakage.