YaST
More info
- Creator
- SUSE
- Released
- Type
- System configuration tool
- License
- GPLv2+
SUSE's answer to "why should configuration be scattered across twenty files?" — one tool for installation and system settings.
YaST — "Yet another Setup Tool" — has shipped with SUSE since 1996 and is what most sets the distribution apart from its neighbours. Rather than editing config files by hand, it offers modules for partitioning, networking, users, services, the firewall and software, and runs both as a GUI and in text mode over ncurses — handy on a headless server.
The engine was long written in SUSE's own YCP language but was rewritten in Ruby in the mid-2010s. Critics have called YaST a crutch that hides how the system actually works; fans see it as the only sane path through Linux's sprawling configuration.