Little Blue Penguin

As I mentioned in my previous post “That eternal question…” one of my biggest reasons for choosing openSUSE as my starting point for getting into KDE was the system management tool “YaST“. YaST automates (or at least greatly eases) the task of getting and installing or updating many of the applications available for the Plasma Desktop. It is important to note that YaST is a tool that is specific to openSUSE (but not to KDE) so if you are following along from a different distribution you will not be able to use YaST, however most distributions have a tool similar to YaST that is specific to them.

Without further ado!

In tonight’s post I will be covering how to use YaST to retrieve an application from the repositories and wind up with a working program on your Plasma Desktop! When I started using openSUSE I was very confused about how to get software, fearing I would have to learn how to retrieve source, configure, build and install all in one night before I would be able to do anything. However after some digging I was able to find out a bit about YaST and from there I poked around until I had a new application. Detailed below are the steps for you to follow in order to retrieve and install whatever application you may need (so long as it is available in the repositories). For our example we will be installing Filezilla, a popular FTP client.

Two steps forward (none back!)

Using YaST is a very simple, painless process that you will quickly fall in love with.

Start by simply launching YaST from the Application Launcher (the openSUSE equivalent of the start button), highlight the “Computer” tab, then click on the “YaST” icon.

You will be prompted to enter your administrator password as this tool access system level functions, so provide that when prompted.

The goodness of YaST

This will open the YaST Control Center which will present you with a myriad of options. From here you could edit your repositories, change various system settings, or check the status of various hardware.

For tonight’s example however we want to continue into the “Software Management” portion of the Control Center, as shown.

A refreshing experience

At this point YaST will take a moment to refresh all of the repositories that it knows about. Repositories are managed locations where applications can be stored by developers to make them available to applications like YaST and thus to you, the end user.

(Note that you are able to control exactly which repositories that YaST will connect to but that will be another article in the coming days.)

Finders Keepers

Once all the repositories have been refreshed you will be presented with the main window we will be concerned with tonight. From this window you are able to search all of the repositories that were refreshed and apply various filters seen on the left. Feel free to poke around here for a bit but when you are ready type “Filezilla” in the search field and press Search.

You should be returned one result matching your search term. If you single click on this result you can tab through the various information available about the package at the bottom of this window. Most of this is purely informational but we do want to check the Version tab to ensure that the version selected for download is the proper one.

On the version tab you will find that for Filezilla (in the default repositories at least) there is only one version available. However we can still learn what we should look for here. The important thing to check is that the version you are selecting matches your version of the OS.

In my case pictured here I am running openSUSE 11.2 and that is the only version shown so this is a simple validation. However, as I learned the hard way, downloading applications who’s version details do not match your OS version can cause system instability. If no version matches your OS version then you should check the vendor website if possible, or join the application’s community channel on IRC and seek help.

Once you have verified that the right version of the application is selected simply right click on the applications line item in the top window (the search results) and select Install. You should see a green check box appear where the empty white box was signifying the selection. Press Accept and you’re off to the installation races!

Almost.

While most of us know that applications depend on various background files in order to operate those of us coming from a lifetime on Windows rarely think about having to actually “get” those files. On Linux these dependancies, as they are called, have a slightly more prominent position, however, here again YaST saves us many headaches.

Most of the applications found in the various repositories via YaST can also find their dependencies in the very same manner. If an application you are installing signals to YaST that it has dependencies which are not present on the system YaST will try to find those packages as well and ask you if it’s OK to install them as well. (It should be the case that on a clean openSUSE install you will see this dialogue while installing Filezilla, if not it simply means you already had all requisite files.)

Finally out of the gates!

Once you have cleaned up any dependency issues you really are off to the races this time. YaST will download the selected package and all necessary files to complete the installation.

(Please don’t be to jealous of this wonderful hotel internet connection you see demonstrated in my screen shot! That amazing 50kbps very rapidly settled down at an astounding 5kbps.)

Cleaning up the installation.

Once the download and the installation has completed you will encounter a new screen which is responsible for writing the system configuration changes necessary to make our new software work.

This again is YaST hiding much of what would otherwise make our first few days in Linux far more scary. (I hope to talk about some of what is being done here in a future post as I learn more about it myself however, so stay tuned for more advanced articles as you and I progress!)

How rude!

Once the writing o f the configuration files is complete we are met with an unexpected turn of events wherein the Software Manager simply closes leaving us looking back at the Control Center. Don’t worry though as this is (apparently) normal behavior and our application should now be installed.

Kicking the tires.

Now it’s time to fire up our new program and give it a test run. Simply click on the Application Launcher again and find Filezilla by typing its name in the locator bar. (Alternatively you will find it on the Applications tab under Internet>Data Exchange.) Clicking on the Filezilla icon will launch our newly installed application ready for us to send and receive files!

As you can see YaST is a very easy tool to use to find and install new packages for your Plasma Desktop. These steps can be repeated to retrieve any application available in the repositories, and yes, you can flag multiple applications for installation at a single time; YaST will handle all the busy work once you click Accept.

Questions?

Hopefully this tutorial/walkthrough will be useful to you, I know it would have been to me! Please leave your thoughts in the comments section on what was good/bad and how I can make the next posts better. Anything constructive, complement or criticism, is welcome!

-chrisj