graeme_p - 4:36 am on Jul 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

I don't care that a package needs other libraries, I expect that Yast installs any required library itself.

It should do that.

If there is software installable in Yast you have some repositories configured, but they may be mis-configured or updates (on what they contain) may not have loaded. You could try reloading the package info from the repos (no, I do not know how to do that -- try looking around Yast).

Anything more is going to be very Suse specific, so I cannot help you are I do not use Suse myself. Try the openSuse forums.

Do I need to update to a newer version of Suse to make life easier for myself? And if so, can I upgrade from my existing version? Or can I add the repository option to my existing Suse version?

You should be able to solve this particular problem without upgrading to a newer version.

That said, 9.3 is getting pretty old and I would say it is time to upgrade anyway. I generally upgrade roughly annually. You may be able to upgrade from within Yast, but, again, that is a question I think you should ask on a Suse forum.

It might also be a good time to look at other distros. I like Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Mandriva (both pretty good, Mandriva has the edge if you use KDE), but look around, download some live CDs and try a few - there are plenty of good desktop distros around these days. I find it worth the effort of trying a few things to get what suits me best.