Here’s an update from me. I still think OpenSUSE is the best KDE distro. But, due to package management, I went back to Kubuntu (for now). I plan to give openSUSE another try in the future when I have more time to invest in learning to deal with the nuances of rpm’s and zypper. In case it sheds any light on where I’m coming from, I installed Synaptic in Kubuntu. That gives me what I want (for now).
wrong command! You should not use sudo in this context. Try instead:
su
rpm -vv --rebuilddb
I wonder now how many other wrong commands you sent to get in this mess?
Without context, thats not very useful. Context would mean providing output of:
zypper lr -d
Given you have already shown you use the wrong command (thinking it correct) I’m wondering what else has been inappropriately done.
Supposing it still works, give us the output of
rpm -qf /usr/lib/librpmio.so.1
and/or
rpm -qR rpm
I always said that “rpm hell” was vague description. But until now I though it was always used to name problems related to dependencies… Now we should accept zypper crashes as “rpm hell”?
From the data we have right now… wait, I didn’t saw the
zypper: relocation error: /usr/lib/libzypp.so.800: symbol gztell64, version ZLIB_1.2.3.3 not defined in file libz.so.1 with link time reference
part!!! Now it’s even more clear.
The problem here is that martinmartiini substituted ZYpp and RPM!! He removed the official versions from openSUSE 11.3 and instead installed another (Factory?) version that wasn’t even compiled against openSUSE 11.3. Whatever it was compiled against, it had a zlib library with symbol versioning… zlib from openSUSE 11.3 hasn’t symbol versioning.
“RPM is bad because if I change the working version that came with the distro for a bad version from another distro (or version of the same distro) it stops working”.
“And now that I showed my deep knowledge of the topic I have no problem in saying things like”
face it people, deb (debian, ubuntu) is just superior and better packaging system.
or
whoever is the lead manager in opensuse, need his head blast off with a shotgun!!!
These things don’t even surprise me anymore. Call me when someone substitutes librpmio for a ROM of a Nintendo 64 game and complains about rpm hell… But no, I have still not seen a rpm hell example is this forum.
The simple fact that you can juggle some repositories and essentially dup-sync your computer with the active repos is awesome. I would like to see apt or synaptic pull something like that! No prob at all with zypper.
Ex: Tried out KDE 4.5 and don’t want it any longer? That’s cool. Just remove/disable the repos and do a zypper dup… you’ll get a ton of downgrades as zypper installs all the packages for the stable repo. Log out and back in and you’re back to KDE 4.4.x .
Or am I just making stuff up?
The only thing I’d like to change about openSUSE 11.3 is in regards to the package manager. The existing YaST tool for handling software is effective, but I’d like to see a more novice-friendly program added. Ubuntu offers a good example of this where they have a beginner-friendly Software Center and a separate menu entry for Synaptic. The way Linux handles software packages is, in my opinion, one of the operating system’s greatest strengths and it’s important not to frighten people away from it.
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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 364, 26 July 2010
Feature Story (by Jesse Smith)
The main problem’s for most are the differences in the actual approach of the Distro’s in question. Ubuntu for all it’s good and bad is Debian, it’s based on Debian. OpenSuse is based on Suse.
I don’t personally find a problem with the package management, as imo OpenSuse is NOT aimed at “New Users” in the way Ubuntu is. Ubuntu is very easy and a good “introduction” to linux but it also hides a lot of the strength’s of Linux in package management behind Synaptic and the whole Apt way of doing thing’s.
RPM has a lot of strengths when tied to Yast/Zypper and i personally think this makes OpenSuse a lot stronger.
Opensuse imo is for those that don’t want the “hand holding” of Ubuntu and Debian and are willing to look past the differences.
Is the package management different? Hell yeah.
Is the package management harder to use? No, harder to learn and pick up quickly but not at all harder to use.
The two distro’s have totally different approaches to a lot of thing’s. OpenSuse is imo the best implementation of the KDE desktop environment, Kubuntu on the other hand is the “red headed step child” of Ubuntu and upto the last release (10.04) had a lot of issues with thing’s. A lot of this was caused by Kpackage kit that is the default Package management for KDE.
I agree that OpenSuse isn’t the same as Ubuntu or it’s variants in a lot of respect’s. OpenSuse can seem rather daunting to a “first time” linux user, but if they stick at it… I don’t feel they will go anywhere else. The problem is everyone expects Linux now to be like Ubuntu and forget the fact that linux is what “YOU” make it. Ubuntu offer a good “Newbie/Intro” package, OpenSuse offer imo a much more balanced/focused package.
Rarely used Zypper ,only used it when detailed instructions were available,Always used YAST for installation.There were few hiccups in 11.0/Gnome,major improvement was seen in YAST in 11.2/Gnome.Upgraded from 11.2 to 11.3 using zypper today.If such a OS upgrade can be done using openSUSE package management(zypper) then,it should fit the bill perfectly well.
Also whenever i downloaded rpms from sites either packman or rpmbone,they installed fine.Also i find that opera browser can be updated very easily using rpms in openSUSE/ Gnome than using YAST based approach ,many thanks to opera team for that .
Also whenever a rpm installation failed it used to point out the libraries that were missing.On installing the dependencies the rpms used to install.Also for rpm installation i use GUI based approach(right click on rpm) as opposed to popular command line approach.
Note:-I am using SUSE for past few months may be for 8 months or so,but now i feel more @ home with SUSE than the crappy windows that i use @ work even though I used to be a avid windows user
Thanks openSUSE for a great job
From a very lazy point of view, I think that typing:
zypper in,rm,up xxx is faster than apt-get install, remove,update xxx
For the really lazy…just use aliases:
alias zypin='sudo zypper install'
or
alias aptin='sudo apt-get install'
Which makes both the same.
Yeah, that’s what I love about zypper also, haven’t tried others so don’t know if it is possible with deb/apt/synaptics… but I love this feature nonetheless.
Ex: Tried out KDE 4.5 and don’t want it any longer? That’s cool. Just remove/disable the repos and do a zypper dup… you’ll get a ton of downgrades as zypper installs all the packages for the stable repo. Log out and back in and you’re back to KDE 4.4.x .
Don’t know about downgrades,but upgrade from 11.2 to 11.3 in Gnome worked !!!
Downgrading back from Factory to 11.3 did not worked for me, lucky I have a backup and am running inside VirtualBox 3.2.8.
I had to go back as I cannot get Full Screen with Mouse support (vboxadd-x11) to the latest “zypper dup”
I too was confused with openSUSE’s package management system when I first started using openSUSE. At first I used the online software search a lot, and I did not know that I’m supposed to maintain only “stable” repos, and ended up in dependency hell because of unstable updates. I wished there was more warning about adding nonstable repos.
Now I’m very comfortable with openSUSE’s package management system. Just maintain proven repos and your system is very stable.
Only one inconvenience is that there are some applications which only provides deb packages. It is due to the number of Ubuntu users; it is natural to support the most widely used package first if your resource is limited. But still it is inconvenient.
Best regards,
Joon
correct
yes, I must admit my own fault and stupidity … yet again … Im defeated
I added factory repos and tried upgrade … which failed …
so … I had to replace and force downgrade zypper
rpm -ivh --force zypper-1.4.5-1.10.i586.rpm
enable only official 11.3 repositories and do full system downgrade
…so … yes … must admit that rpm might even be better than apt !!!
enable only official 11.3 repositories and do full system downgrade
…so … yes … must admit that rpm might even be better than apt !!!
Actually, you can’t compare RPM to apt. It’s like comparing apple to rabbit : it’s two different things.
Either you must compare .rpm to .deb (containers), RPM to dkpg (the tool that handle these containers, which are pretty similar), or zypper to apt/aptitude (or yum or urpmi or pacman or …). The latters solve the containers dependancies - and one of those is using a complete solver, and that makes a big difference - at least to me.
oho … interesting
zypper removed ITSELF !!!
not sure apt or aptitude display capability of removing itself
Martin-HP:/home/martin # zypper verify
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
10 Problems:
Problem: cannot install both zypper-1.4.7-3.3.i586 and zypper-1.4.5-1.10.i586
Solution 1: deinstallation of zypper-1.4.5-1.10.i586
Solution 2: deinstallation of zypper-1.4.7-3.3.i586
Removing zypper-1.4.7-3.3 [done]
Removing libzypp-8.1.1-2.2 [done]
Martin-HP:/home/martin # zypper verify
bash: /usr/bin/zypper: No such file or directory
Interesting… Initially, how did you install two different zypper version at the same time ? 
I guess you were using the last svn zypp available in zypp:Head repository, right ?
If I can reproduce the bug, I’ll report it.
Somebody needs a nap!