Ok, I asked for an apt-like installer for OpenSUSE 10.1 and it is already there. It is “RUG”, the ximian red carpet service that has been ported to work with YaST and ZenWorks. I have already hosed my system trying to install packages and updates using YaST and ZMD, so now I am going to try rug. I’ll post how it goes, but it looks similar to apt-get.
Going to add the following source to rug: http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/
Here is a good page on rug commands:  http://en.opensuse.org/Examples_using_rug

I have upgraded my IBM laptop to OpenSUSE 10.1 and am pretty happy with it. I would give this distro high marks for easy of use and many improvements.
I decided to try out Gnome instead of the standard KDE. I used Gnome years ago when I was running RedHat 9.0 on an HP laptop and it was pretty nice but somewhat slower ( in my opinion, don’t flame me ). It is still slow, and I would recommend to KDE users to stick with KDE; however, most of the applications I like to use are Gnome-native (see The Good).
The Good

I really like Beagle, the desktop search engine, even though there are performance problems; NetworkManager is awesome for connecting to any type of network; F-Spot is as good as iPhoto/Picasa and loads faster for managing photos; Banshee rocks for playing music; and Evolution, even though it is very buggy, works well within Gnome and integrates with Exchange/Imap/Pop3 and keeps everything organized in a single place.
The Bad

There are a couple of issues that I haven’t been able to figure out yet. I still cannot get the ATI drivers for this laptop to work no matter what I do. I have searched high and low for solutions to this, but none of them have worked. If you have an IBM Thinkpad T42 and run SuSE 10.1 with 3D enabled, please post below on how you did it.

Other than that, all the other hardware works fine out of the box, including wireless.
The Ugly

There are many problems with the update manager. Rug, Zen, YaST and all other tools have failed me. Is it so hard to have a solution from someone like Novell/SuSE that works like APT ( I know about apt4rpm, it isn’t the same )? YaST slows to a crawl (92% of CPU taken) when I go to install or update packages. I never had this problem with 9.3 Pro.

10.1 is a bumpy release, and most people I have seen have been waiting for 10.2 to fix these issues ( I think I read that Novell is even waiting to release their enterprise desktop until they have the package management fixed ).

While the 10.1 release is a significant step forward and takes a few steps back, I am quite happy with it. I am hoping that 10.2 will fix some of the problems that everyone has observed.

Using VMware player (free) and EasyVMX (free website), you can create your own VMWare images of virtually any operating system (maybe except OS X86, which is the one I really want).

I did this on my Linux box so I could run my copy of Windows XP.

1. Download and install VMware player
2. Get your install CDs or DVDs ready
3. Create a virtual vmx in EasyVMX
4. Download and upzip the file provided
5. Insert CD or DVD and start up Vmware player, pointing it to the .vmx file created from EasyVMX

The OS should install fine inside of VMplayer. If you ever need to change any settings, the .vmx is a text file and can be edited for different parameters, just back it up before you do anything.