Marcel Gagné

A SUSE boxed set comes with thousands of applications, so much so that you may not have to look anywhere for some time. SUSE software installations, as well as software updates are handled throught the YaST interface (command name : yast2). When the YaST control center comes up, select Install and Remove Software. A second window will open from which you can search for a particular package. Let's say you wanted to install a video conferencing application, but you didn't know what the application was called. Enter the word "video" in the search field and all of the packages that have video in either their package name or description will appear in the window to the right (you can specify other search criteria on the page).

Click on a package name and a description of the software will appear in the tabbed 'Description' window in the right lower half of the screen (check the figure below). If this is the package you want, click on the check box next to the package name, then click the accept button in the bottom right-hand corner. Should there be dependencies associated with the package you chose to install, a popup window will appear informing you of this fact. Click Continue and the installation will proceed. That's all there is to it.

Figure 1: YaST package installs (click for larger image).

For those times when you know the package name, you call the YaST installation module directly. For example, let's say that I wanted to install Kover, a package that makes it easy to create CD jewel case covers. In a Konsole command shell, type the following.

/sbin/yast2 -i kover

With my new program installed, I clicked on the main menu (the leftmost button on the panel), chose Multimedia, CD, and Kover.

Remember that everything you install takes disk space. I know it sounds obvious, but when you are madly and happily installing software, you can get carried away. I speak from experience. So, go ahead. Explore! Or as they say on the SuSE login screen, "Have a lot of fun."