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Suse is RPM based distribution and its package repositories are YUM-compatible.
Among supported packages on suse 11 are:
Suse 10 additionally suppports
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In addition to this, two new tools were also created in order to work with the new libzypp:
- zypper, an advanced, featureful command-line tool. Below are a couple of usage examples to see zypper in action:
Displaying your repository list:
opensuse:~ # zypper repos
# | Enabled | Refresh | Type | Name | URI
+++++
1 | Yes | Yes | yast2 | 10.3 - Main Repository (NON-OSS) | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-Factory-non-oss/inst-source-extra/
2 | Yes | Yes | rpm-md | KDE:Community | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Community/openSUSE_Factory
3 | Yes | Yes | yast2 | 10.3 - Main Repository (OSS) | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-OSS-factory/inst-source/Installing a package:
opensuse:/home/francis # zypper install filelight
* Reading repository 10.3 - Main Repository (NON-OSS) cache
* Reading repository KDE:Community cache
* Reading repository 10.3 - Main Repository (OSS) cache
* Reading installed packages [100%]
The following NEW package is going to be installed:
filelight
Overall download size: 619.3 K. After the operation, additional 1.0 M will be used.
Continue? [y/n]: y
Downloading package filelight-1.0-6.1.i586, 619.3 K (1.0 M unpacked)
* Installing: filelight-1.0-6.1 [100%]
- openSUSE Updater, a software updater applet that notifies you about software updates. The new one contains a small dialog to notify you of its progress:
What kind of advantages does this package management have over the old, pre SUSE Linux 10.1, package management?
The pre-10.1 stack, while mature, was showing its limitations. With the ZYpp based stacks we got:
- A better resolver than before
- Predictable behavior supported by a testsuite of upgrade and install scenarios
- More information about why a package is installed or no solution is found
- A better integration of all those feature that were added over the years to our package manager.
- A common handling of packages *and* patches together
- Dependency handling for update packages
- A better way to handle selections (we call them patterns now)
- More flexibility in handling of different repositories, e.g. it is possible to have additional patterns for each repository.
- Additional dependencies based on language (for fonts, translations, etc.) or hardware (for drivers)
And now in 10.3 you will get:
- Cleaner separation of different tasks like repository management, repository refresh, dependency resolution, package download and package installation. No more refresh and parsing during startup.
- More compatibility with tools like yum and smart, we use the standard .repo files to list known repositories. The same format smart and yum uses and the same files you can find in the openSUSE build service repositories.
- More speed for the common use case: install a package, search from the command line or upgrade your system.
- More user-frendly notification applets.
- A saner policy for 3rd party packages. They are not locked by default.
Upgrade candidates are considered from the same vendor, so you dont jump automatically between feature-sets and vendors as new versions are available.
As I've mentioned before I'm an openSUSE user, and as long as they don't make the "U" lower case again, I'll probably stick with it. When it comes to package management, OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprice (and SuSE before them) are usually associated with YaST (and yes, I'm still waiting for them to upper case the "a"). YaST works well but it's a bit verbose for installing a single package, and of course that's just more fodder for the apt-getters with all their apt-get install this and their apt-get install thats. And you can't argue with them, but there are other options with openSUSE: yum and apt4rpm come to mind, but the preferred solution is zypper.
Zypper is a command line tool for package management, it's based on ZYpp, aka libzypp. The WikiPedia entry for Zypp says:
Unlike other common package managers, it provides a powerful satisfiability solver to compute package dependencies and a convenient package management API.Since we don't want our heads to explode we'll just take it for granted that a powerful satisfiability solver is a good thing.
It turns out that YaST is also (now) based on ZYpp so you don't need to worry that you're missing out on something by using zypper.
Zypper is fairly straightforward to use. If you want to search for a package do zypper search STRING.... The STRING(s) can include * and ? wildcards and there are options for matching all or any of the strings and for full exact matches (the default is a partial match). If you want to search the package descriptions there's an option for that also. For example to search for packages with the word "mail" in the name or in the description do:
$ zypper search --search-descriptions mail $ # --search-descriptions can be abbreviated as -d Reading installed packages... S | Name | Summary | Type --+----------------------+----------------------------------------+----------- | Buddi | Buddi - Personal budget software ... | package | CgEddie | A simple editor with syntax high ... | package | FrostWire | Gnutella peer-to-peer (P2P) file ... | package ... i | yast2-mail | YaST2 - Mail Configuration | package | yast2-mail-plugins | YaST2-Users/Group Plugins for the ... | package | yum-updatesd | YUM update notification daemon | packageWhen installing packages with zypper, as you'd expect/hope, zypper takes care of installing the package's dependencies:
$ zypper install Buddi Reading installed packages... The following NEW packages are going to be installed: BrowserLauncher2 swingx Buddi jcommon jfreechart Overall download size: 4.1 M. After the operation, additional 5.2 M will be used. Continue? [YES/no]:Some of the other interesting commands that zypper supports are:
- refresh - to refresh the package information from the repositories you have defined.
- addrepo - to add a new repository.
- remove - to remove a package.
- list-updates - to list the updates/patches that are available for the packages you have installed.
For a full list of the commands that zypper supports type zypper help and check the man page for more details.
One of Ubuntu's WOW factors seems to be apt-get dist-upgrade, i.e. the ability to upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu (and actually it's a feature of any debian based distro). This is another thing that the apt-getters puff up about, well enter zypper dist-upgrade or zypper dup. This allows you to upgrade from one version of openSUSE to the next. I have not used this feature yet, but posts on the openSUSE wiki seem to indicate that it works well.
So to all you apt-getters out there, all I can say is: zypp it.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Technical Specifications Detailed descriptions of all packages included on SUSEฎ Linux Enterprise Server. Check the support site to see the list of supported packages.
Package Management With Zypper Linux Journal
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Last modified: January 15, 2010