[ale] Staying current with mainstream distribution

[Keith Hopkins]

BruceG wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
>       I am running SuSE 9.0 on one desktop, and Debian testing/unstable (from 
> Knoppix) on another. I noticed with the Debian desktop I can do an apt-get 
> update, apt-get dist-upgrade and end up with the latest and greatest Gimp, 
> Open Office, Mosaic, KDE, Wine ... - it all just upgrades to the latest 
> versions (well, maybe after some apt-get -f install, and a rare dpkg 
> --force-overwrite on occasion).
> 
>       Are there any tools in the SuSE world that will let me upgrade to the 
> latest packages, or do I just wait for the most recent release and do an 
> upgrade of all packages? Does Ximian red-carpet offer that kind of service, 
> and is it at cost?
> 
>       I like how stable and reliable SuSE has been, but don't feel confident 
> in upgrading specific packages by RPM - I kind of prefer Debian's way of 
> dealing with that. Any thoughts or recommendations?

   I've been a long time fan of the SuSE "Professional Edition".  Some of their releases had lots of problems, but most were pretty good.  I'm in the midst of upgrading a several 9.0 machines to 9.1.  I've seen a big jump in quality from 8x to 9x.  I almost pulled off upgrading a RH9 distro to SuSE 9.1.  I was amazed at how complete the upgrade was (unfortunately, it didn't dig out enough of the RH specific stuff, and failed to get past single user mode.)

   For keeping it updated, there is Yast's Online-Update (YOU) or Novell's (ex Ximian) Red-Carpet (still free).  But they both only serve up what SuSE has provided.  Of course, sometimes you might get lucky on rpmfind.net.

   There are other excellent sources of newer, or non-crippled software for SuSE, but they fall into the download-and-install-the-rpm mode.  The best of these is http://packman.links2linux.org/ (or http://packman.links2linux.de/ if you prefer it in German), which even lists/provides non-SuSE dependency packages.  Someone else mentioned http://www.usr-local-bin.org/, but he tends to only release for whatever the current version of SuSE is out there.  I know of http://guru.linuxbe.org/index.php who also maintains a apt2rpm repository, plus there is http://lenz.homelinux.org/RPMs/ and http://gaugusch.at/susepackages.shtml (but I've never used either of the last two).

   For less painful updates, try apt4rpm http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ and Fou4s http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/

-- 
Found in Sydney,
   Keith