Quick Start Guide
5 Installing or Removing Software
Use YaST's software management tool to search for software components you want
to add or remove. YaST resolves all dependencies for you. To install packages not
shipped with the installation media, add additional software repositories to your
setup and let YaST manage them. Keep your system up-to-date by managing software
updates with the update applet.
Change the software collection of your system with YaST Software Manager. This
YaST module is available in three toolkit avors: Qt (for KDE desktops), GTK+ (for
GNOME desktops), and ncurses (providing a pseudo-graphical user interface in text
mode). This chapter describes Qt and GTK+ avors—for details on the ncurses YaST,
see Chapter 12, YaST in Text Mode (page 153).
TIP: Changing the Toolkit Flavor
By default, YaST is started with the toolkit matching your desktop (GTK+ under
GNOME, Qt under KDE). To alter this default setting system-wide, change the
variable WANTED_GUI in /etc/sysconfig/yast2 to either qt or gtk.
If you do not want to change the system-wide settings, you can nevertheless start
YaST in the desired avor from command line by using the --gtk or --qt parame-
ter, respectively. For example: yast2 --gtk.
NOTE: Conrmation and Review of Changes
When installing, updating or removing packages, any changes in the Software
Manager are not applied immediately but only after conrming them with Accept
or Apply respectively. YaST maintains a list with all actions, allowing you to review
and modify your changes before applying them to the system.
5.1 Denition of Terms
Repository
A local or remote directory containing packages, plus additional information about
these packages (package meta-data).
(Repository) Alias
A short name for a repository used by various zypper commands. The alias can
be chosen by the user when adding a repository and must be unique.
Installing or Removing Software 79