openSUSE: how to disable "delta RPM"

In order to save bandwidth, zypper is set by default to download so-called "delta RPMs", which are basically just binary patches. The process of applying the delta RPM can be, and often is, more time-consuming than downloading the full RPM.

To disable this behavior, edit the /etc/zypp/zypp.conf file. There are lots of options there and one can learn quite a bit just by reading the comments. The option we are interested in is:

##
## Whether to consider using a .delta.rpm when downloading a package
##
## Valid values: boolean
## Default value: true
##
## Using a delta rpm will decrease the download size for package updates
## since it does not contain all files of the package but only the binary
## diff of changed ones. Recreating the rpm package on the local machine
## is an expensive operation (memory,CPU). If your network connection is
## not too slow, you benefit from disabling .delta.rpm.
##
download.use_deltarpm = false

As in the example above, set it to false.

openSUSE: Where are the kernel headers?

Q. Where are the kernel headers?

A. kernel-devel package.

Long-winded answer: The kernel sources are in the kernel-source package. To make use of the headers/sources, you can install the "Base Development" pattern (at the least) using YaST -> Software -> Software Management -> View (in upper left corner).

Package search: http://software.opensuse.org

openSUSE: How to uninstall GNOME?

Here's how I uninstalled GNOME from an openSUSE system. Actually, it was SLES11-SP2, but the procedure is the same for openSUSE.

First, I listed all GNOME-related packages I have installed:

# rpm -qa | grep gnome

It's a long list. I started from the bottom:

# zypper remove gnome-keyring

That gave me a long list of 35 packages to be removed. I clicked "y" for "yes".

Rinse and repeat until no GNOME packages are installed on your system.