On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 19:26:54 -0400, Andy Stewart wrote:
Those of you who attended the most recent WLUG meeting might remember me complaining that the version of YaST on OpenSuSE 10.1 has a pathetically slow program for handling software installation. Greg Avedissian mentioned the Smart package manager (http://labix.org/smart) as an alternative, so I gave it a try.
The Smart package manager appears to be Linux distribution agnostic. It works on systems whose package management is based on RPM, APT, APT-RPM, YUM, etc.
I went to the page you gave, and was suitably impressed with what they had to say. Enough so, that I promptly installed it on my laptop running FC5. "yum install smart*" was enough to get the things installed that I needed. (Yes, I'm a 'yum' fan. <g>) Right now, it's been chugging "Updating channels". Any idea how long that takes, initially? It's been about two hours so far. Considering that I did a "yum upgrade" yesterday, I wouldn't think there would be a lot to do, shy of populating a DB or something for Smart to refer to...
I tried it on my laptop, where I was having the most performance issues with YaST's software handling program. I am quite pleased with the Smart package manager! Thanks, Greg, for the recommendation!
I don't know if this is indicative of where Red Hat is going, but the RPM header for Smart, which was generated at Red Hat, describes Smart as "the next generation package manager"...
I haven't yet installed the Smart package manager on my "good" system, but I probably will if Novell doesn't fix YaST in OpenSuSE 10.2. The Smart package manager has found a permanent home on my laptop.
Funding for the development of the Smart package manager is being supplied by Canonical Ltd., the same folks who are funding Ubuntu Linux.
I thought that was pretty interesting, too. :) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com "Would that the risks could be as great for those that authorize a war as it is for those that have to fight it." -- William Smith * TAG! v3.2 *