Should YaST Become Independent?

Nov 10, 2008

Kristian Kissling

Californian Ben Kevan, server administrator for Linux and VMware, ponders the future of YaST in his blog.

Kevan's blog includes a number of screen shots from a current YaST build. He feels that YaST from openSUSE is now ready to be ported to other systems: "I would have to say it is far from 'Yet another Setup Tool'. I consider it 'The ultimate Setup Tool'."

Kevan ultimately presents the notion of forking YaST to other distributions, based on an idea openSUSE community manager Joe Brockmeier offered last Friday in his blog. Brockmeier wondered if YaST should be released separately from openSUSE, an idea he in turn inherited from Stanislav Visnovsky, who asserts in his own blog that "YaST is a tool that can be used across distributions and there are people interested in this to happen."

Brockmeier cites several arguments in favor of the separation. "Linux, after all these years, still lacks a good, comprehensive, and cross-distro system management tool." Also, YaST releases would get more attention by being independent. Not least of all, more users would test the product, thus providing better chances for improvement.

Comments

Meh

Meh
Talk to Novell!!

It's like asking Microsoft to go open source.

Won't be happening anytime soon :S
Should YaST be Ported to Other Distros

Miles Bradford
Yes - absolutely. I've been waiting since SuSE 7.3 for YaST to become universally ported. It is the best in the west as for my experiences...not saying there are other installers for Linux that do very good jobs - but, YaST is by far the best. It's most advanced features that allow you to save the day with it's uses of LVM installation and selecting or deselecting softwares is the most reliable. You can click things to NOT be installed and make them "NEVER" be installed and YaST takes care of that even on updates whereas other distro installers may allow selective installation to begin with - YaST is the only one as of now that I have seen that actually preserves the initial installation and upon updating - only updates what you initially installed and doesn't go ahead install a complete new load of "ALL" the programs of the distro. This is totally important in setting up servers - just in case you need to know why I object to my original install being weighted down with programs and games that should never even be on the computer.