Comments on: Zypper versus Smart

By: cees

cees — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:19:43 +0000

Correction.
I guess that stating browsers don’t support 64 bit plugins is not quite correct. Firefox doesn’t support a 64 bit java_sun_plugin, because sun doesn’t make a 64bit java plugin. (see: http://en.opensuse.org/How_To_use_Java_with_Firefox_on_64-bit_openSuSE_10.3 for Novell’s solution)

BTW checking your original message I guess you don’t use a x64. Your problem was that you can’t install 1.5 and 1.6 plugins at the same time

By: cees

cees — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:51:20 +0000

Hi Jason,
If I’m correct the problem is that browsers (mozilla) don’t support 64 bit plugins. So to use a 32-bit plugin you need ‘nspluginwrapper’. Zypper (and Yast) complains because it detects an architecture change (a 32bit plugin for an x64 (java)installation).

I don’t know if zypper is too “sensitive”. Yast and zypper might not be the fastest kids on the block, but I really hate an updater which corrups my system very fast

By: Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:10:09 +0000

Hi @ElCheVive,

Okay, well that’s helpful information, certainly. Thank you.

By: ElCheVive

ElCheVive — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:23:34 +0000

You should have used this command line option in zypper:

zypper update -t package

to update the packages. The update ‘lonely’ option is for patchs only…

By: gurning banana

gurning banana — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:18:36 +0000

i don’t know about you but when i get trapped in my zypper, i smart for days.

sorry, just trying to be apt…

By: Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:33:15 +0000

It must be cross-platform then… i.e Sparc/S390/etc…

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:26:12 +0000

I use Apt on 64-bit Ubuntu and it works fine.

By: Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:23:57 +0000

Hey Antonio! =:D

Heh. I’ll withhold judgement on the life of Zypper. =:) SUSE has some of the best and brightest working for them, so I have no doubt that they’ll improve things.

I personally still like apt best, but I guess there’s some problems with it on 32/64-bit or cross-platform or something.

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:12:02 +0000

This is a good example of “worse is better’. No matter how architecturally elegant Zypper is, if the user experience it provides is not better than Smart, it’s DOA. There’s no future if it doesn’t work *now*.

By: RedDwarf

RedDwarf — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:57:10 +0000

The zypper video only shows that Michael Schröder’ solver is faster. We still need to see if it makes *correct* dependency resolutions.

About how Smart solved the problem… libzypp is able to complain about dependency problems that don’t exist at all. So it is possible that Smart just didn’t need to solve anything.

But the worst problem with zypper isn’t that it s slow or that it creates imaginary dependency problems. The worst thing about zypper is how it explains the problems!!! Do you really think it is an easy read? Sometimes it doesn’t makes any sense at all.

Anyway I see that a lot of problems that libzypp has are with patch/delta RPMs, that Smart ignores. In this case we also have one of these “atom:”.