The inner workings of openSUSE

I used to love the SuSE boxed sets. You'd wait impatiently until a large Linux store in Sydney finally indicated that the packages were available and you'd then get your pre-order in the post or by courier.......and savour installing from a set of up to 6 individual CD's with the SuSE logo on them......And there'd be manuals and guides and goodness knows what else including stickers of the SuSE chameleon........and it was all so very, very exciting.

But then those were also the days when you actually DID need those extra bits and pieces. If you wanted to get a Linux OS like SuSE running exactly how you wanted, it was quite a job and you were really, really happy when you finally got there. Updates ? Can't remember how I did them; I simply used to refer to the SuSE set of CD's and hope what I wanted was on them somewhere. I still have SuSE 10.0 as a CD set.......and wouldn't part with it, even if it is utterly useless now.

How times have changed.......now it's a download of openSUSE of about 4.2 Gig on a single DVD......updates automatically, and slip into VLC and Packman and get the unlocked versions of whatever software it is that you want. And the OS and KDE are so darn easy to work with, generally speaking, who needs a manual ? Progress is fantastic and I love it and wouldn't ever, every want to go backward.....but one can still feel a little misty over those more primitive times when you really got down and dirty and ......I suspect........learnt a darn sight more. Oh well, reminiscences are fun - if you don't have to actually go back and drive the model T when at the moment you are used to a Ferrari. :-)