OK, YaST is the best OS configuration tool I have ever used, and I've been using it since S.u.S.E. 5.1. But here's a somewhat necessary evil I don't like about it. It removes the user from the actual configuration. In the Microsoft (ignorance is strength) world that is a design intent. But in the Linux world, such tools that make life easier are not intended to dumb us down. Nonetheless, that is exactly what happens when we use it without understanding what it does behind the scenes.
One example of how YaST can work against me is when I configure things by hand. I'm not sure what it's likely to do these days, but in the past, it would overwrite configuration files. A hashing system was introduced which would detect changes to configuration files, and YaST would used that to create a file with an extension indicating that it was intended to replace the user-modifed file. That has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it didn't undo my changes. The disadvantage is that it any fixes to the file contained in an update were not applied.
Once upon a time, email was sent to the root user announcing such events, but I don't see that happening recently.
Another big problem with having software autoconfigure things is that we don't learn what the settings mean, so when something goes wrong, we don't know why things were configured the way they were. I'm usually nervous about changing what YaST configures because I'm not sure what I might break.
With all that being said, I believe YaST is one of the things that makes openSuSE the best Linux distribution available.
One example of how YaST can work against me is when I configure things by hand. I'm not sure what it's likely to do these days, but in the past, it would overwrite configuration files. A hashing system was introduced which would detect changes to configuration files, and YaST would used that to create a file with an extension indicating that it was intended to replace the user-modifed file. That has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it didn't undo my changes. The disadvantage is that it any fixes to the file contained in an update were not applied.
Once upon a time, email was sent to the root user announcing such events, but I don't see that happening recently.
Another big problem with having software autoconfigure things is that we don't learn what the settings mean, so when something goes wrong, we don't know why things were configured the way they were. I'm usually nervous about changing what YaST configures because I'm not sure what I might break.
With all that being said, I believe YaST is one of the things that makes openSuSE the best Linux distribution available.