I’m sure you have read plenty of my Linux articles that outline how to install with Ubuntu. That distribution takes advantage of apt-get and dpkg for command line installation. In the OpenSuSE distribution the zypper tool is used for this same task. Believe it or not, zypper is just as easy to use as is the Ubuntu equivalent. And in this article you will see just that.

What is zypper?

The zypper tool is the command line interface to the ZYpp system management library. Zypper can be used to install/update/remove software, manage repositories, perform queries, and more. Using the zypper command does require root privileges, so you will have to first su to the root user before you issue any of the zypper commands.

Usage

The basic structure of the zypper command looks like:

zypper GLOBAL_OPTIONS COMMAND COMMAND_OPTIONS

Although it looks a bit complex it’s not. Let’s take a look at the various tasks you will perform with the zypper command.

Installing software

Installing software with zypper is simple. The command will look like this:

zypper install SOFTWARE

Where SOFTWARE is the name of the software you want to install.

Say, for example, I want to install Scribus (the desktop publishing application). To do this the command would look like:

zypper install scribus

Removing software

Now let’s say you want to remove a piece of software. The command structure for deleting software looks like:

zypper remove SOFTWARE

Sticking with our example, if you want to remove Scribus from your OpenSuSE machine you would issue the command:

zypper remove scribus

Searching for software

Figure 1

Say you don’t know what Scribus is, or you aren’t sure if you know the name of the package. You could use zypper to search the cached database for installation candidates like so:

zypper search scribus

The above command would return something like what you see in Figure 1. As you can see, zypper will report back all possible applications for the search string.

Updating with zypper

Updating with zypper is incredibly easy. Issue the command zypper update and if there are any updates available to your system they will be reported and all you need to do is type “y” (no quotes) and then hit Enter to run all of the updates.

Distribution upgrade with zypper

If you want to do a distribution upgrade with zypper you would use the dup command like so:

zypper dup

With that single command you will upgrade your OpenSuSE distribution (if the upgrade is available).

Final thoughts

Command line package management in OpenSuSE is about as simple as it gets. If you hesitate to use the command line for this task in OpenSuSE, I hope this article has persuaded you there is nothing to fear. OpenSuSE is an outstanding distribution with a lot to offer and it’s package management is on par with just about any other system.



Because of these changes, the Mandriva of today is not the Mandrake of yesterday. The latest version of Mandriva (named 2010) is a modern take on the Linux distribution and in this article you are going to be treated to a walk through of the installation. NOTE: This installation will be done via VirtualBox, so some of the information you might see may or may not apply to your installation.

This installation will be accomplished with the help of the Live CD. You can download the Live CD from the Mandriva download page. You will notice, on that page, there are a number of different downloads. For this installation the download you want is the One 2010 download. Once you have downloaded that Live CD and burned it onto disk, put that disk in your target machine’s disk drive and reboot the machine.

Unlike most Live CDs, with the Mandriva Live CD you will have to answer some questions as well as agree to a EULA. This always takes me by surprise, but it’s a necessity if you want to boot up Mandriva. So agree to that EULA and boot up the Live distro.

Once you are up and running you will see the Install icon on the desktop. Double click that icon to begin the installation. And, of course, the first screen you will see is the inevitable “Welcome” screen. You can just click the Next button to actually begin the installation.

Figure 1

Partitioning

The first work you will have to take care of is the partitioning of your drive. Figure 1 shows the user-friendly configuration tool. With this tool you can either choose to use the free space (the easiest method), or you can create your own, custom partition configuration. As you can see (in Figure 1) this is being installed on a Virtual hard drive 16 Gigs in size. Since this space hasn’t been partitioned, it sees it as free space. So I will select the Free Space option and click the Next button.

Unused hardware support

Figure 2

This is a feature unique to the Mandriva installation. Once you have partitioned the hard drive the installation will compare the available hardware against the installable packages. Any packages that would not be used by the available hardware are not installed. This ensures your kernel will not be loading unused modules which will only slow down boot process, take up space, and use battery. Figure 2 shows the this screen. Just click Next and allow this process to happen. This will take some time (depending upon the speed of your hardware and the amount of packages that will not be installed).

Figure 3

Installation progress

After you hit the Next button you will immediately see the installation progress window (see Figure 3). Depending upon your hardware, this could take some time. Of course you will also be greeted by different information windows during this step. You will learn nothing new by watching…so grab yourself a soda or go play some WoW for a bit and come back when the installation progress reaches its goal.

Figure 4

Bootloader

After all of the packages have been installed you will have to deal with the bootloader installation. Your best bet is to stick with the defaults. If you load the bootloader on the wrong disk your installation will not boot.

As soon as you click the Next button you can then add, delete, or modify all of the entries in your boot menu. This is another section of the installation process that you should leave to the defaults. The only reason you would want to modify any of this information is if you are dual booting or you need to pass specific parameters to Grub for one of your entries. But more than likely, this step will be left to the defaults, so just click the Next button in this window as well.

The final installation window is the bookend for the Welcome screen – the Congratulation screen. This window will inform you to remove your Live CD and reboot your machine. Do this to complete the installation process.

Final steps

Figure 5

Of course you are not completely finished. Did you notice something missing from the installation process? No root password was created and no users were created. Both of these steps are taken care of post-installation. In fact, both configurations are taken care of in one screen (see Figure 5).

After you complete this step, click the Next button only to find yourself on one more screen. This final screen wants you to register with Mandriva, take a survey, and contribute to Mandriva. You can decline all of this if you like by scrolling down and clicking the Decline buton.

After you either decline or complete the various optional information you will finally get to log into your newly installed Mandriva 2010 Linux installation. congratulations, you are the proud user of an outstanding, user-friendly Linux box.

In this article I am going to show you the basics of some of the more popular package management systems as well as the basics of installing via source. I will not spend too much time on each (otherwise this article could grow rather overwhelming). By the end of this article you should know how to install, querey, and remove applications with the more popular tools.

Source

Let’s start from the source. Generally when you download a package for installation that ends with tgz, gz, bz2, or *zip this will be a source installation. For these installations you are going to take advantage of some powerful compilation tools. But before you can start the compilation you have to unpack the source directory. If your file ends with a “bz2″ you will first have to ucompress the file will the command bunzip2 APPLICATION.tar.bz2. This will result in a new file like APPLICATION.tar. Tar is an archive system that rolls up directories into a file. To unpack the directory you would issue a command similar to tar xvf APPLICATION.tar. Unpacking the directory would then result in a directory (in our example) APPLICATION.

If the downloaded file ended in tgz or gz then you have a compressed archive and you simply have to add the “z” switch to the tar command to both uncompress and unpack the archive. This command would look like tar xvfz APPLICATION.tgz, which would result in the directory APPLICATION.

Once you have your directory unpacked you need to change into that directory (with the command cd APPLICATION). Once inside this directory issue the ls command. You will most likely see either a README file or an INSTALL file. Open those up and see if there are any special instructions for installation. If there are no special instructions then the standard compilation steps will most likely work. Here’s how this works:

• su to the root user
• From within the APPLICATION directory issue the command ./configure. This will generate a make file for the compilation.
• Issue the command make.
• Issue the command make install

That’s it. If all went as planned, the application should be installed.

RPM

RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. Installing via RPM is actually quite simple. Here’s how this works. Once you have downloaded the rpm file you want to install, open up a terminal window and issue the following commands:

• su (you will be prompted to enter the root password)
• rpm -ivh filename.rpm (where filename is the actual name of the file you downloaded)

That’s it. If all went well your package should now be installed.

If you want to make sure your package was installed you can issue the command rpm -q filename and you should see the name of the package and the version that is installed.

If you want to remove that package you just installed (or another package) issue the command:

rpm -e filename

and the package will disappear.

APT-GET

This is one of the best installation systems available. With apt-get you do not have to download a package, you just have to know the name. Here’s how apt-get works (I am going to assume Ubuntu is the distribution, so you’ll make use of sudo). Open up a terminal window and issue the following:

sudo apt-get install package_name

to install the needed package.

To remove a package with apt-get you would issue the command:

sudo apt-get remove package_name

to remove the package from your system.

URPMI

The urpmi system is from the Mandriva distribution and is similar to apt-get. To install a package with urpmi you would open up a terminal window, become the root user, and issue the following command:

urpmi package_name

to install the needed package.

To remove a package with this system you would issue the command:

urpme package_name

and the package will be removed.

DPKG

This is the Debian installer and is as easy to use as any other. To use dpkg you will open up a terminal window and issue the following command to install a package:

sudo dpkg -i package_name

to install a package.

To remove a package issue the command:

sudo dpkg -r package_name

and the package will be gone.

Final Thoughts

There you go. A very basic description of package management with the more popular tools. Yes, there is much, much more to them than what you have just read, but this will give you enough of a foundation to get you going